How To Be A Great Healer In Competitive Games, Synergy

In my last post, I went into detail about what it takes to be a great healer in competitive games. Here, I'm going to expand upon the ideas from that, and go into more specific detail about synergy with the characters I play. To keep things short I'll go into the synergy between the healer and only one other character in each game. 

What is synergy? 

Creation of a whole that is greater than the simple sum of its parts. 

In short, this means you, as a healer, can combo with other characters [tanks/assassins/other healers] in such a way, that both you and the other character are that much more powerful [assassins], tanky [can take up more damage without dying, tanks], or durable [ other healers]. Your powers combined with others is so powerful that it is actually one of the most important deciding factors in if your team wins or loses the game. Other than actual skill. 

Now, I'm going to go into quite a bit of detail about synergy with the healers that I play in Overwatch, Heroes of the Storm, and Team Fortress 2. Yall ready for this? 

First, Overwatch. I have 340 hours as a Mercy player and she's the reason why I play the game, because I really enjoy her playstyle, which is sort of campy, sort of like a ninja, and her synergy with other characters is astounding. When Mercy follows a character, healing and damage boosting them throughout the round, this is called pocketing, essentially Mercy is a great character to pocket with because she can use her cadeous staff not only to heal and keep the character she's pocketing alive, but she can also damage boost them as well, increasing their damage by 30% while doing so. Essentially, every time someone doesn't need healing, as a Mercy player, you always want to be damage boosting, in that circumstance. 

So, in Overwatch one of the strongest combos to synergize with is the Mercy/Pharah pocket. Pharah is a girl who shoots rockets and can fly in the air. Mercy can use her L-shift to fly with her in the air as well, creating a space force style combination, that, in the right hands, can be downright unstoppable. As Mercy, I want to make sure that Pharah can survive long enough to do as much splash damage with her rockets as possible, so I want to heal her in certain key firefights, and I want to damage boost her accordingly, like when she's hitting three or more enemy players with rockets, raining hell from above, with me beside her, flying around. I've found that every time Pharah uses her ultimate ability, Rocket Barrage, I always want to make sure in that moment that I'm healing her instead of damage boosting, because it takes a second before the rockets start shooting, and in that split second the enemy team can insta-kill her easily.

This is one of the strongest combos in Overwatch but it is beatable. If the enemy team plays a hit scan [like Soldier 76, Ash, McCree, Orisa], or two, sometimes, if need be, they can easily either kill Pharah as she's being pocketed by Mercy, or kill Mercy first, and then Pharah once she doesn't have that Mercy support. However, there are some Pharah players who are so good that they simply won't die to any hit scans, as long as they have the healing/damage boost support, they will always kill enemies. Combine that with a Mercy player who is superb, and you have a combination that is simply unstoppable. The strongest combo in the game. And for me the most fun. Add to that the fact that the combo has a funny name; Pharmacy.

Second, Heroes of the Storm. Varian is the King of Stormwind, from World of Warcraft, the leader of the Alliance. When he goes full tank mode, he uses a sword/shield, can parry attacks, charge to enemies/allies, and he's also super strong, probably the best tank in the game, IMO. My main character is Morales, she's a medic from Starcraft Broodwar. She's basically Mercy/Medic [from Team Fortress 2] but in MOBA form [massive online battle arena, like Dota, like League, what Heroes of the Storm is]. She uses a ranged single target heal that can be empowered with level ups and different talent choices. She has a Safeguard that can throw some shields on allies, an ultimate ability called Stim, where she can power up an ally to give them more attack power, and a Displacement Grenade which she can throw to enemies, displacing their attacking/defensive positions. 

Varian is a high tier hero and Morales is mid-tier because she doesn't have many escape routes and she's easy to kill. However, when you combine Morales with Varian, it is almost unstoppable. She can pocket Varian, making sure he doesn't get low on health. She can grenade any enemies that try to flank Varian or herself. She can stim Varian in a pivotal fight to turn the tide of battle. She can safeguard Varian to increase his defenses in fights. If you're a good Morales and watch your positioning so well that you hardly ever die, Morales will be able to keep Varian alive most of the time. And Varian will be able to tank through most of the enemy team damage, leading to easy, flawless victory. Basically, the strategy is foolproof. I can't even count how many games I've won with this combination with my friend Ip. The classic tank/healer dynamo of Heroes of the Storm, for me.  

Third, Team Fortress 2. If you made it this far, obviously my main character is the Medic ["Ocktober Fest!"]. I have 100 hours on medic and counting. My favorite character to pocket in TF2 is actually the Soldier, which is basically the same as the Mercy/Pharah combo except no flying, no damage boosting, all healing, all ground foot moving, and positioning. 

But actually it might not be the best nor the strongest. If you have a Heavy on your team in TF2, that is the character you want to pocket. The heavy is a tall, fat, gent with a mini-chain gun. He sometimes eats sandwiches to gain health, which he can also throw out to you when you're low on health. The Medic is a German doktor. He's the OG Mercy, meaning he heals with a ranged single target heal. However, he can't damage boost. But, he has the choice of being able to have different weapons in hand 1, hand 2, and a melee weapon. This is where TF2 gets its strategic qualities because the way you customize your weapons options heavily modifies your gameplay and game experience. For simplicity's sake, we're going to say the Heavy and the Medic are both using stock equipment that comes with the game. 

Okay, so the Heavy has the mini-chain gun as his primary weapon and the medic uses the medgun as his primary weapon. Here's where TF2 gets more interesting than Overwatch. The medic's medgun, when fully charged, at 100% makes any character he uses it on invulnerable for 8 seconds. Yes, you read that right. The medic's medgun makes any player he uses it on invulnerable for 8 seconds. This is so strong that it's primarily the reason why I enjoy playing TF2, and it changes the tide of most firefights if used on the right ally player at the right time. 

So, going back to our Heavy/Medic combo, the Medic can pocket the Heavy when securing points or pushing the payload. And when the Heavy is surrounded by tons of enemy players, you can pop Uber on the Heavy [it's called uber because the Medic is German], and he can literally mow down the entire enemy team in one fell swoop because his mini-gun has a far range, rapid fast fire, and it's super strong. For me the Heavy/Medic combo is the best combo in pc gaming history. A real bromance to Overwatch's sisterhood of the traveling pants.

That's all for now. There are plenty of other combos in these games, but for me these are by far the strongest that I utilize on a regular basis. Practice finding different combos as healers and you will find that there's almost nothing that can't synergy at least a little bit. You want to find what combos well and what doesn't and be able to see it on the enemy team as well, as this is a very strategic element of playing healers and winning games. 

"Have you tried not dying?"

How To Be A Great Healer in Competitive Video Games, An Essential Guide

 
Hello, ladies and gents. I've been doing a lot of writing exercises, mostly of a somewhat serious nature. Here I thought I'd lighten the mood up and write about how to be a great healer in competitive video games. 

This guide adheres to any kind of healing in any competitive video game but in this specific context I'm referring to healing in Heroes of the Storm [a Blizzard moba], Team Fortress 2 [class based shooter from 2007], and Overwatch [Blizzard's first-person shooter]. 

First, why would you want to play healers? Well, the reason I play healers is that I just prefer to be the backline of the team, not doing damage, not tanking damage [absorbing damage, and mitigating it], and healing the team, ensuring our victory by making sure that every player gets to survive fights more easily, making the entire team more durable, stronger. 

The other reason is that healers are naturally the playmakers of the team. If you're playing the healer you have the most important job, ensuring everybody's survival, mostly the tanks [the big brutes of games, that can take damage but can't dish it out as much as the DPS], but also the DPS [damage per second, the assassins of the team, getting the kills]. So if you're naturally a leader you'll gravitate towards being a tank or a healer, or if you're not naturally a leader but want to play a leadership role, then you'll gravitate towards being a healer. This is mostly of a personal nature for me, but it applies to other people as well. 

Or, you could want to be a healer because it just fits your personality. I don't have fun playing tanks and assassins, it's not my cup of joe. Girls gravitate more towards tanks and healers in online games, I've noticed, but other times they're on the frontlines getting the kills, so you can never judge a book by its cover. 

Second, it's all about positioning. As a healer, you're supposed to be in the backline of the team, making sure you don't get hit too much, or die very often, if at all. For example, the best thing you can do as a Mercy player in Overwatch is simply to not die very often and keep on healing as much as you can, and damage boosting if need be [don't worry about that for now]. The longer Mercy is alive and keeps healing, the better job she is doing. 

As a Mercy main myself, I've found that the best way for me to maximize my healing with the cadeuous staff is to simply not die. This is harder than hell, as most enemy players will be looking for you, Mercy, throughout the entire round to kill you, so that you can't keep healing. 

The trick is to be ninja-like. The less time the enemy team sees you, the easier it will be for you to survive. In fact, I know that the enemy Mercy is a really good player if I hardly ever see her throughout the entire round. The best way to do this is by using all obstacles in the map to your advantage; walls, monuments, buildings, ally players, and your abilities like your flight L-shift button. It should also be mentioned that you must know how to super jump to be an effective Mercy. To super jump, simply press L-shift and crouch at the same time while flying to an ally, and right before you reach the ally hit the space bar. This will give you a super jump, making it harder for enemies to hit you and making it easier for you to get to places where you can be ninja-like; hide, heal behind walls or around corners, or get to the high ground on maps so you can avoid fire on the ground level. 

Positioning by itself is a very simple concept. But, like playing healers or maining [I only play healers, maining is a term referred to when you only play healing characters as oppsed to tanks or DPS] it's easy to learn but hard to master. Steep learning curve. As a healer this is something you'll work on all the time, always improving upon. You'll never be a grandmaster of positioning as even grandmasters die out of position. 

Third, know your character. This is a given but you'll be surprised to see how many players out there will play their character the wrong way [their own way or just being clueless, which can be misguided and cause more losses in pug {pick up group} games].

There are so many players that think they've got their character down. They have hundreds of hours in the game, they keep perpetually playing the same healer characters, and then they wonder why they keep losing games all the time. Obviously, it's inevitable that sometimes you're going to lose games, but you can mitigate some of the percentages of losses if you simply know your character, so well, that you understand the mechanics of the character better than most of the other healers in your rank. 

How well do you know your character? Well, you simply play a lot of that one character. But that's only the beginning. The flip side is that you have to study up on your character; look up videos on how to play the character better, read forums where lots of different people give insight on how to play the character better, and lastly, learn from your deaths. If you know what keeps killing you and you utilize that knowledge to your benefit, you can lessen the number of deaths that keep happening the same way, and then start to learn more from the more random elements that kill you. Again, a very simple concept. But the meta for knowing your character is steep. 

Lastly, have fun. The whole point of competitive video games is to have fun. Yes, there will always be toxic players [people who can't restrain themselves, take their anger out on the team, cuss people out, are childish and stupid], and throwers [people who purposefully lose games because they're either not good players, or they want to make a point to the team that they're especially toxic] but for the most part, most players play for fun, and they play to win. Keep that in mind. Fun AND winning. Not just winning, not just having fun. The correlation between the two is strong as heck, but it should be noted yet again that if you aren't having fun you should simply log off the game and do something else. Fun is the one thing money can't buy and if you aren't having fun playing healer then you should definitely play a different class [tank/assassins] or take a break from gaming; perhaps go for a nice walk, or enjoy a nice novel. As a healer, your job is the most important to you and the team. With great power comes great responsibility. Use it wisely. 

Medic [from Team Fortress 2 w/ German accent]: Get on the cart dummkopfs!

Christmas of Goodwill

(Here's another sort of vlog or personal blog post for you)

Today was a terrific Christmas. I started the day off by waking up early at nine-thirty to play some Heroes of the Storm. Then I proceeded to play Destiny 2, which my brother got me for Christmas. Its a great science fiction fps mmorpg (that's a lot to say!) created by Blizzard Activision under Bungie, there's a lot of companies working together on this game. They did a pretty good job with the product. For an mmo that doesn't cost a monthly subscription its a fantastic game. Definitely worth the buy, or in my case worth trying out.

I got past the beginning areas and was playing Crucible mode with my brother. Crucible mode is Destiny's pvp (player vs player) combat system. We did this mode called quick play where we had to capture points and kill any enemies that tried to take them from us, basically king of the hill from Call of Duty, Team Fortress 2, or Overwatch, other popular fps's. I'll probably end up leveling my character mainly through pvp. Its fun. More on me getting sliced by an energy sword and dying instantly in another post.

After that we went to lunch at this Korean bbq place, except we didn't cook bbq. Instead, we had this clear broth beef stew with pot stickers, all these cold items, and this great hot steaming egg dish. It was excellent. My dad and I talked a lot about new music, avant-garde classical music. By then it was around three or four.

Later in the day I went to one of my best friends' house. We relaxed, exchanged gifts, played Smash 4 (he won most of the games), and watched a little of Metropolis by Fritz Lang and a bit of The Day the Earth Stood Still, both of them are two super old science fiction movies on Netflix. Metropolis is from 1926 and The Day the Earth Stood Still is from the 50's. I'll definitely want to finish both. I've already seen Metropolis but The Day the Earth Stood Still seemed quite interesting.

Approaching seven I went back home. My brother and I exchanged gifts and opened them by the fireplace. The gag gift I got that was also quite amazing was a framed picture of Mercy from Overwatch, a gift from James, my brother. Its quite good artwork. Its a head portrait but you can also see a little of her bodysuit armor as well as her characteristic halo and blonde hair. Sick.

In addition to that I got Starbucks coffee (I'm a coffee addict as of October), chipotle sea salt peanuts, a Lucio Pop figurine, a $25 Panda Express card, a Zelda wallet (from my friend), and the first science fiction cyberpunk novel written in the 1950's called The Stars My Destination. I think I scored the motherload. It feels really great to have people who care about me so much and got me great thoughtful and utilitarian gifts.

I called my mother and spoke to my younger brother. It was nice to hear their voices. I told my brother that he's really helped me get situated into reading more books and increasing my knowledge, improving my writing, and finding an audience for this blog. He's an inspiration although he can't take all the credit, (laughs). My mother seemed to be doing well and she said she was going to ship one of my guitars from Wisconsin out to me here. The guitar I'm speaking about is a heavily modified (Frankensteined) Godin guitar, a Canadian guitar brand. I got the guitar because I've seen John Mclaughlin playing Godins. It will be really cool to get that guitar out here eventually. I could use it for jams, recording, and band practices.

Yeah, things really turned out well on this Christmas day. It was a great occasion for good food, good friends, good family, and a good optimistic outlook for tomorrow. It couldn't get any better.