Overwatch 2’s New Support Has Been Out A Day, Changes Already Coming

The Season 4 content patch for Overwatch 2 has finally deployed, and with it come the radiant beauty of Lifeweaver, the newest support hero to join the roster.

He comes with perhaps the most curious set of abilities to grace the landscape of Overwatch – with moves that can be uses to displace both friends and foes on the battlefield. But curiously enough, this part of his kit is not what people have beef with.

The issue? Dude needs to manually rotate his hand to shoot hurt-y bullets, instead of heal-y ones.

bro lifeweaver is literally impossible to use on console his fuckin controls make no sense like blizzard literally called it a day while making his damn key binds like i literally didnt even have a button to switch to his weapon until i did it myself like i definitely need to

— nadia 🐈 (@roseantix) April 11, 2023

While weapon swapping is not a new concept, in the case of Lifeweaver it comes down to the straw that may not be outright breaking camels back – but it’s absolutely buckling it. In fact, he is the first new character to be released into Overwatch 2 that incorporates the separate weapon mechanic; the other multi-weapon people have been in the game since it’s inception.

As the tweet above lines out, console players are the ones that suffer the most with a bloated control scheme – their poor fingers tied into knots as they try to effortlessly weave damage and healing together as part of their team input. PC players can of course fiddle with keybinds and even macro something a little more palatable – but even then it begs a question of whether it ever needed to be this convoluted. It doesn’t help when there other support classes that utilise a far more direct method of weaving damage and healing, such as:

• Kiriko – Heals with one mouse button, flings kunai with the other
• Baptise – Fires regular bullets with one button, launches healing grenades with the other
• Moira – Mists a healing stream on one hand, vampirically leeches health from enemies with the other

If anything, these schemes have become so comfortable to downtrodden support gamers that perhaps the biggest portion of frustration simply comes from familiarity. I initially questioned if the weapon-switch mechanic was a carefully balanced gameplay weakness, with the weapon swap delay maybe being an offset to Lifeweaver’s ability to paste a poor sucker who got too close. But in reality, he just isn’t that kill-y.

The news is positive however, as the game director for Overwatch 2 – Aaron Keller – shot off a very concise tweet to let everyone know that it’s on their radar:

The team is looking into alternative control methods for Lifeweaver's dash and weapon swap in order to make the transition from healing to damage smoother. Additional details and timing coming soon.

— Aaron Keller (@aaronkellerOW) April 12, 2023

Players have even stepped into the in-game workshop environment to tweak and fiddle with what could be the ideal control scheme for Lifeweaver, posting some very promising results – simply moving his damaging abilities to a mouseclick and making his dash ability behave like Hanzo’s air dash:

Fixing Lifeweaver's awkward keybinds thanks to u/SammyisSeiso 🖱️✨

Having to switch weapons in the heat of the moment doesn't feel great and is a huge pain for controller players — here's how we'd make Lifeweaver feel more fluid in #Overwatch2 🪷

🧰 Try it yourself: D4P5J pic.twitter.com/CIoDdGQ72U

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— Overwatch Cavalry (@OWCavalry) April 12, 2023

It’s impressive to see the rapid response that Blizzard provides to a community that seems united on an issue. A big part of Overwatch 2 moving to it’s newest release model was a promise of more communication and deployment of changes – and this seems like an excellent example of the concept working out just fine.

Have you had a chance to play Lifeweaver yet? How do you feel about his control scheme? Let us know in the comments or on social media.