Just two weeks after launch surveillance 2is the fourth seasonLifeweaver is getting a pretty significant update to make it more usable as a support hero.
Shortly thereafter, Blizzard added the thai pansexual herbal hero, many players (including me) realized that Lifeweaver was a pretty ineffective healer. Not that every supporting character has to be Baptiste or Moira, mind you. Most people don’t complain too much about Zenyatta’s lack of healing power because he’s pretty good at banging heads. But Lifeweaver’s usefulness couldn’t quite make up for its lack of big healing games. So the team has confirmed that some of their numbers will increase on April 25th. Lead Hero Designer Alec Dawson posted the changes on his personal Twitter account, breaking down each change the team will be making in the next update.
Healing Blossom (a healing projectile that engages on teammates)
- Ammo up to 20 (out of 12)
- Slow while charging now occurs 1 second after fully charging
Thorn Volley (Alternate fire that deals damage)
tree of Life (ultimate ability that raises a tree on the map that heals nearby teammates)
- Health up to 1200 (from 1000)
- Heal per tick up to 75 (up from 50)
parting gift
Ultimately, his main healing ability, Healing Blossom, doesn’t get a huge buff in terms of count, but Lifeweaver can now throw more of his 65-point Heal Blossoms before having to reload, up from 12 uses to 20. The team has also shifted around the slowdown effect the ability has on Lifeweaver. Right now, the hero’s movement is slowing down while charging Healing Blossom, which obviously leaves him open to enemy fire. Now the snare effect doesn’t start until the ability is fully charged. This should hopefully make it easier to position yourself to heal a teammate without sacrificing movement speed right at the start of the attack. Hearing that only gives Lifeweaver a second of normal movement, it might not sound like much, but surveillance 2 is a game defined in split seconds, so it matters.
Healing Blossom may have gotten a significant buff, but those who were unhappy with the original (still fairly low) 65 HP heal count probably won’t be happy with this change. However, the numbers that went up were in his Tree of Life ultimate. With this, Lifeweaver raises a tree on the map that releases healing impulses in a small radius. It’s not an instant life-saving ultimate like Lucio’s Sonic Barrier or Zenyatta’s Transcendence, but it has respectable healing power and can serve as cover. Now it’s better at both things because the update will give it 200 more health alone, allowing it to fire more shots before it’s destroyed, and each healing pulse it sends out heals for 75 points instead of 50 points. It’s still not quite as effective as Transcendence, but hopefully this can help offset the potential damage taken to make it a more useful defensive ability.
For me, one of the most exciting changes is Lifeweaver’s Thorn Volley alternate fire. This rapid-fire projectile is reminiscent of something like the Needler in gloriole, but for now it has quite a wide spread that makes it more useful at close range. But it sounds like the plan is to narrow the spread so it’s more accurate. Despite being a support character, Lifeweaver can do quite a bit of damage with this ability. So this will be useful for doing some damage to him, whether that be to dissuade pursuers or get a kill or two.
The only debuff Dawson lists here is that the team removes Lifeweaver’s passive ability Parting Gift. Originally, when Lifeweaver was killed by an enemy, it would drop a healing flower for another player to pick up. While it would heal allies more than enemies, it gave the character a semblance of strategy when it came to it Where On the map you died. If you find yourself in a bad situation, could you reach a place where a teammate would be more likely to pick up the flower than an enemy? It made it important to keep your distance as a Lifeweaver so you wouldn’t give your enemy team a helpful item even if a Widowmaker sniffed you in the backline. Now it seems like Blizzard just decided to scrap that entirely. Apologies to parting gift fans. Farewell is such a sweet sorrow.
In addition to these changes, the surveillance 2 The team is also trying to alleviate some frustrations that gamers have had with Lifeweaver’s extensive kit and its keybindings. As a console player, the main issue I had playing Lifeweaver is that Thorn Volley was mapped as an alternate weapon in the default button layout. This means you have to press directly on the d-pad to switch to Lifeweaver’s only offensive ability, and having all of his other functions mapped to triggers means I’m constantly using Claw Grab to use all of Lifeweaver’s moves. Director Aaron Keller posted on his Twitter about a new default hero control scheme, while also clarifying that the one that Lifeweaver started with will still be available for those who are already used to it.
This kind of controller snafus has always been a problem that peripherals like DualSense Edge And Xbox Elite Controller trying to make up for this, sometimes the controller we received doesn’t always match every experience. Hopefully these changes will help those who have had a frustrating time with all of Lifeweaver’s capabilities. Personally, I’m pretty used to the first control scheme, so I might just keep using it unless the new one immediately feels better. to be determined.
What Blizzard doesn’t address with all of these changes is Lifeweaver’s Life Grip ability still lets Griefer pull teammates off the map– maybe in the next patch.