Healing should become more rewarding in Overwatch . Will it be easier to rank up as a healer in Season 2?
The Healer Problem in the Ranked System
The first season of Overwatch had one major issue: healers received less skill rating than their teammates. This was largely due to the fact that “personal performance” also factors into the calculation of skill rating.
The problem: When healers play in a “good” team that takes a tactical approach, then the characters take less damage – consequently, the healer has less to heal. If the opposing team plays poorly, the enemy healer has it easier because where there is a lot of damage, there can also be a lot of healing. The healer in the “good” team ends up at a disadvantage in the assessment, as he has “underperformed” in healing – simply because there was less to heal. This leads to a poorer assessment and therefore a lower skill rating.
It gets even more absurd when taken to the extreme. Currently, on the test realm, it is possible for players to complete all their placement matches as a 6-person group. However, the supporters of the group may (most likely) end up with a skill rating that is so low at the end of the placement matches that the system then forbids them from playing ranked mode with their friends anymore. It is no wonder that healers are up in arms and loudly calling for changes.
Jeff Kaplan has addressed this issue in the official forum.
“We are still gathering data from all heroes and all roles to assess how they perform in the placement matches. We are actively analyzing it. I know you all would like to see a list of immediate actions, but I cannot provide that to you at the moment. We are still in the analysis phase. It is more difficult to obtain good data from the PTR [reason: reduced number of players], which is why we don’t want to jump to conclusions too hastily.”
So the developers are aware of this problem. We can only hope that by the start of Season 2 on September 6 we will have a better system – otherwise, healers will likely be left out in the cold once again.
For more news and articles about Blizzard’s hero shooter, you can find on our Overwatch game page. The collected knowledge regarding the upcoming season can be found in the “Season 2 overview article”.
