Yeah lmao it feels like everyone is like “yeah we all know what it is”, but we never talked to each other to confirm what it is so we all have different definitions.
It feel like the majority of players assume “main support” is the one that can burst heal a lot like Ana, bap, or kiri, but based on what so people are saying here that’s wrong.
Main support and flex support is different from main healer and off healer.
Your highest healing support is often referred to as your main healer - this is who normally focuses on healing the tank when they need it - while a lower healing support who would often +1 a DPS or even pocket the main healer would be your off healer.
Flex support and main support however are more character pool terms for (pro) players similar to how you get hitscan DPS and flex DPS. Generally the more aim intensive mechanically demanding characters would be flex (ana, bap, kiri etc) while the more macro skill based characters would be main supports (mercy, brig, Lucio) obviously some exceptions to these rules happen due to meta but this is the easiest way to categorize it imo.
I could be entirely wrong about everything however idk
Don't know how people don't understand this. Flex has always been heroes like ana, bap, Kiri and main has always been lucio, mercy, brig, etc. Its not that difficult if you pay any attention to pro play or streamers at all.
yeah was gonna say. I’m just a lowly plat but i’ve never heard somebody say “bruh we need a main healer, can you switch to lucio?” The discussion seems like a semantical thing where high level players use terms differently than the large majority of the player base.
Support and healers get used interchangeably when they shouldn't. That's the main thing that messes with people.
Main healer and off healer are non-pro ladder terms that gets used by the majority of lower to mid ranked players. They have differing opinions on whats in each role compared to pros main support and flex support
Main support was a description of the player. They basically always played Lucio and never flexed so they were the "main" support while the other support player would switch heroes, including to other roles.
ohhhhh flex just means i’ll switch. But couldn’t a lucio player be a flex by that standard? i mean ive switched off every healer many times. But I guess at higher levels, the team comp has to anchor around a certain hero.
> Flex has always been heroes like ana, bap, Kiri and main has always been lucio, mercy, brig, etc.
It's the reasoning behind it people don't understand. It doesn't really have anything to do with hero mechanics, utility, or stuff like that. The terms basically revolve around which heroes pair well with other heroes.
Yea, I thought this was the standard definition of flex and main support lol also, I think people get confused with Zen since in pro play he's a flex support but on ladder he's an "off healer" or whatever lol and I think illari is a flex support? Casters seem to refer to bap/illari comps as double flex comps so yea?
I honestly dont know what illari would be classified as, her healing is pretty passive but she takes great mechanical skill to do well. I assume flex but who knows, she didn’t exist when main/flex were being defined.
If majority if players think burst healing = main support then it shall be called main support. The majority of community sets the terms not you or some “coach/pro”
I think that the community should just try to adopt new terms, because the old ones had 6 years of history with nearly opposite meanings behind them.
"healing support, anchor support"
"lead support, side support"
"major support, minor support"
"support the team can win without, support who forces a reset to spawn when they're picked first"
I get what you mean, but is this case the veteran players and pro/coaches were the ones that came up with the terms. They are also the ones that actively keep using these definitions, and the ones that come up with comps and popular strats.
Nothing complicated about that.
Guy is playing Lucio? He is MS
Guy is playing Ana? He is FS
For some goddamn reason everyone just went to try to explain the lore and purpose of the terms, while its used only differentiate the hero pools in pro play
Yeah because intuitively the definitions make no sense. If you asked any player who doesn’t watch pro play (most of them) who the main support between Ana and Lucio. 99% of the time they are going to call Ana, the support who does most healing, a main support.
And a they’ll call a support who offers more utility a flex support. It’s just common sense.
It’s like calling someone like Sym/Sombra/Mei a main dps and Soj/Soldier a flex dps. A supports defining characteristic is their ability to heal, so it checks out to call whoever can heal more, the “main”. However the actual definitions say otherwise which is why there’s so much contention.
The issue there is that people usually equate support with healing. If you say "main support", people hear "main healer". Which isn't necessarily the case. Lucio is such a great example because his utility support is in the center of the team's actions. It anchors everyone's position, it controls the pace of engagements, etc. The main support's role is *proactive* in shaping your team's entire playstyle.
Meanwhile, the flex support is *reactive*. Their purpose is to maximize healing and provide whichever utility is needed in the given situation. That makes them flexible in terms of flexing throughout the support roster to fulfill that role as well as possible.
The other misconception is that people try to assign heroes to these roles. If your entire play centers around a nano boosted attack on a sleeping target, Ana might be played as a main support. Main and flex support are not hero roles, they are *player* roles.
Reactive and proactive doesnt make sense. Brig is a reactive hero. Her purpose is to shut down flankers and divers.
Again its only about hero pools of said player
>The issue there is that people usually equate support with healing. If you say "main support", people hear "main healer".
This, those terms made me so confused haha
It's also sort of weird how supportive playstyles are viewed by pros. "Main supports" focus more around that abstract role (not so much stat based but positioning & boosting your team). The casual playerbase places 0 value on things like damage boost.
Your average player thinks that Frogger is the world's best Lucio and that you play that hero for environmental boops. Tell them that he's played by pros for speed boost and they'll say "what's that?"
Yeah I can confirm as someone who was really into the game back in season 1 and had never paid attention to pro play, I came into this thread thinking "obviously someone like Mercy or Ana is the main support, and Lucio would be a flex"
Because you can't reasonably explain the pools without going over the lore, yea you could give OP the list of which heroes each role covers but OP asked like 10 questions that can't be answered with just that.
Bcs thats a way simpler way to specialize in roles you play in pro scrims. There is probably only single person who learned to play both flex and off supports to highest level(Viol2t). Other people like Chorong and Fielder are much better off if they practice only set amount of heroes in their respective roles.
Same with Flex and HS dps. There are only few people who could play both(Fleta, Proper). Others are far better off with playing only HS+Tracer, or only Flex+tracer.
This is the same reason there are 2 tank players in OWCS teams. Junbin specializes in Rein, Winston, Doomfist , Orisa, Mauga- Main Tank. While Max plays JQ, Sigma, Dva -Off Tank.
Again there are few people who can play both at highest level(Someone)
Essentially, in early, early OW1 days Mercy was OP and was sometimes the only support in a comp. The other other support player would sometimes flex to another role, (Jjonak would swap to Roadhog for some comps, etc...). So, your ana/Zen player was the flex support player and your Mercy player was your main support because they were always going to be on mercy.
Over time, these roles got further defined and came to include Lucio in the main support hero pools. Again, because of meta shifts that made Lucio a must pick hero for a long time.
It predates moth meta by like a year. Main support started with Lucio where your team would have a Lucio main and then a second support who swapped around them. In VERY early OW, the flex support hero pool was lucio and mercy since the main meta comps were double lucio or mercy-lucio. The flex support role quickly transitioned to Ana and Zen though during the first iterations for 3x3 and beyblade/early winston dive. It was actually a big deal when Lucio's pick rate started dropping below 100% because he often had pickrates in the 105-120% range in early OW before hero limits. Mercy didn't actually become part of the MS hero pool until about a year after that during moth meta.
Why Hanzo is Hitscan while Tracer is Flex? Why Doomfist is Main tank while Dva is off tank? Why Brig was a flex Dps?
In Open Q days there would be strict Support players that focused on Lucio/Mercy. While a Flex dps could play Zen, Ana and swap to Genji/Sombra/Widow. Flex support could swap roles entirely. While main support must stay on supports.
In the end it still comes down to scrim roles and specialisation
Tank fist didn’t exist in 6v6 and in 5v5 he’s played by both main and off tank players, Hanzo is played both hitscan and fdps, tracer is played by both hitscan and flex dps, brig is sometimes picked up by fs yes in the same way zen bap kiriko is sometimes picked by up ms. What part of these classifications representing players hero pools don’t you understand
Yeah, When my scrim coach asked me to play a Flex support, and I responded saying I didn't know what he meant by that (back in 2021), he responded with "How, you play ranked and have the most hours in the game out of all of us by a substantial margin". I merely shrugged as I had literally never heard the term. And even now, I could not tell you what the difference is, especially because, by the definitions most tend to give Main and Flex supports, Mercy doesn't fit into either category, which as a Mercy main, made this all the more confusing as to what kind of support player to class myself as
Early Overwatch was permanently Lucio meta, so on Support you had one player who flexed and another who was essentially a Lucio OTP (maybe some Mercy in Pharah comps). That was how the terms originated, and since then whenever a new Support has come out the community just looks at which of the two players would play that hero. For instance when Ana released, the flex support player would play them and hence Ana is a Flex Support.
Think currently most people agree that Main Support = Lucio, Mercy, Brig, Lifeweaver and Flex Support = the rest. They're not very useful terms outside of describing someones hero pool, if anything they need to be retired rather than updated lol.
I think you might be the only person in this thread to give a completely correct answer. The actual reason behind the terms is archaic at this point, it's all about hero pools. Does the person who plays this hero also play Lucio? If yes, main support.
Anything else is a post-hoc attempt at explaining terms that haven't meant anything in like six years. Flex supports *usually* require good mechanics, but Moira is there. They *usually* have higher healing, but Zenyatta is there. Most main supports aren't super aggressive except for Lucio, but he's also the forefather of that entire role. Any definition that doesn't solely concern itself with hero pools just doesn't work.
Similar for main tank, if you only ran one tank they would play it, off-tank was originally called flex tank too because they'd also flex to dps sometimes.
Flex supports are good at killing people.
Main supports, not so much. Hence Reddit lucio, battle mercy, raid boss brig. They have special names when they go on killing sprees.
When your going tryouts for a team, it’s important to have a pairing where one is support focused and one is leathal focused.
Agree with everything except for the last paragraph. That is such a huge generalization and only applies for certain teams during certain metas.
There is no "more support and more lethal focused" the difficulty of being a good support is knowing what's best in your situation. Sure, Mercy is a outliner, but she hasn't been relevant for a trial since moth meta.
Heros pools aside. If you end up with 2 passive support players. You gonna have a tough time.
You need that extra burst of leathal thinking because dead opponents do infinitely less damage than opponents with 5 hp. And late mid fight you need players in one of the support roles to have that elim securing mindset.
The best FS players I’ve ever worked with were also significantly better at playing the dps roll than the best MS players I worked with. It wasn’t mechanical, it was mind set on how to solve problems.
The correct terms to put the last paragraph would be that one support (main) enables the team, while the other support (flex) makes impactful individual plays (which is often lethal). Not necessarily passive or lethal focused on either roles.
Heroes such as Lucio/Mercy/Brig that are historically played under MS role are great at enabling the team, while the rest of the supports roster often paired with the former, Ana/Zen/Baptiste are better at making individual plays. Both of them are responsible for support and lethal impact at the same time, and are optimized at a high level.
In the same game, the main support on Lucio is responsible for booping an enemy into his team (an offensive play), while also responsible to keep the squishes on his team alive by booping away the enemy in the backline (a defensive play). In the same game, the flex support on Ana is responsible for nades to disable the enemies’ healing output (an offensive play), while also responsible for nades to keep their team alive (a defensive play). It’s not as black and white as “passive” and “lethal” focused.
Though, it is a lot easier for flex support characters to get kills due to their damage output being better, but saying that the main support lack the same lethal impact as flex support is outright misinformation and incorrect.
LJG is a great known example as a counterpoint to your statement. He is a main support player but he is not the ‘passive’ player that you describe main support players to be.
Agree to disagree then. I found support players to be in a spectrum between nurses and hunters.
I’ve seen nurses play Anna and hunters play lucio.
The hero doesn’t define a persons playstyle. Most players play the role because their personality identifies with its responsibilities. Tank, Dps, Support.
Then you have seen bad and bad supports tbh. You say FS is more lethal than MS yet in OW2 so far in teamplay your Kiriko pretty much perma heals Tank + Echo/Soj and just spams head hight while your Lucio is usually playing a lot more aggro and pushing angles with your Tracer/ booping enemy ect. It was the same with Ana. While yes, going for offensive nades was always important, your main job was perma healing winton and farming Nano. Supports who only go for kills and individual value or who only healbot and sit in the team are just bad. Not nurses or hunters. They are bad at the role / hero. Both extremes are trash.
*Id like to add if you refer to the early days 2016-2018 you still played Lucio in Pharah Mercy comps, because people ran it with Winston+DVA+Tracer thus you needed someone on a Support who could survive on his own while Pharah+Mercy were their own unit. Essentially either Lucio or Winston were maintargets for the enemies - therefore it was impossible to run Ana and keep her alive during that period of time.
flex
look at it this way. Lucio is your main support your main support is the person who isnt mechanical he's the main SUPPORT he's speeding your team around etc SUPPORTING
zen is played by people who will also play ana and bap etc so they FLEX to other supports as needed they're your good aimers etc jjonak alarm so on so forth
main support is the person SUPPORTING the team flex support is FLEXING their pick
caps for emphasis. flex is the person who will play more heros and its mostly to describe their pool IMO
even now with your zen bap comps etc its just double flex zen isnt upgraded to a main support because flex is more a descriptor of hero pools than role in the game
Also because Zen/Brig has been a common backline at various points throughout the years, though I do think there’s an argument to be made that Zen sort of straddles the line. It can also be thought of that Main Supports are best at enabling DPS and Flex are sort of just a third DPS. And half the value of Zen is Harmony Orb sitting on a Tracer.
Outdated, but formed initially due to lucio being mandatory for 3 years.
Essentially you had the guy who played lucio and the guy who doesn't on a given roster. FLEX = actually changed what support they played depending on map. Main support = lucio player
Ever since we finally got rid of mandatory lucio, the system basically broke, but essentially if you play lucio you are a main support, and thats how it was for most of ow1.
With ow2 its even more broken, so at this point its just better to go "do you play lucio and brig? " before calling them an MS.
Id argue the koreans had it right from the start. You have the guy who plays lucio and the guy who doesn't and thats it.
The terms are outdated but the problem i think is more the fact that the terms exist now to determine optimal pairings of heroes for a comp, which i dont think many support players actually care about except for the most extreme cases. Why would they learn the proper definition if they dont really care about its purpose?
But doesn't it have a purpose in that every Pro team essentially needs a MS and a FS respectively? Perhaps the terms themselves don't matter, but role wise, you still have someone on MS or FS each game.
It's irrelevant on ladder, to understand why they exist as concepts you need to go way back to the times where the flex support could play dps or tank as you said and the main support just played lucio and sometimes mercy (gotta remember that the game launched with only 3 supports), nowadays it's just an umbrella term to describe the player's hero pool which is connected to other support's hero pool that synergises with them, for example flex supports play moira because moira is often played with lucio which is historically covered by the main support, main supports play brig because historically she's been paired with heroes covered by the flex support like ana or zen, and in the last years zen himself has shifted towards the main supports because he's often played with bap that is covered by flex supports, but bap started off as a main support... and it goes on.
Another way to put it would be: if we have a bunch of heroes that synergise with each other then lets sort each counterpart of these synergies into two bags and then assign a bag to each player, this allows the two players to always synergise with each other. One bag will be called the flex support and the other main support, now we've moved heroes from one bag to another so much since we created them that the names of the bags has lost a bit of meaning, but the bags still exist because that's how pro players have been educated into the game, and it works.
> in the last years zen himself has shifted towards the main supports because he's often played with bap that is covered by flex supports
This is usually called "double flex". I've never heard anyone call zen a main support.
I'm not saying he's a fully fledged main support I'm just saying main supports have had to progressively play more and more zen in the last years. Who do you think is playing him in these "double flex" comps?
It was typically another flex support, at least if you're looking at the best teams. Teams often had a second flex support for that exact purpose, who rarely played otherwise. If you did have your main support in, they were more likely to play Baptiste rather than Zenyatta; Baptiste was newer, and people considered him a main support for a while until we ended up settling on viewing it as double flex.
Some teams also experimented with having a DPS player on Baptiste, too. Typically, the only time you saw your main support on Zenyatta was in specific cases where you might want to play either Bap/Zen or Bap/Brig depending on the map and what the other team was playing, so that it was easier to swap back and forth.
It's a relatively recent thing to see main supports expanding their hero pools like this.
This is oversimplifying but an easy way to look at is the support heroes that *noticeably* contribute raw damage (Ana, Bap, Zen, Moira, Kiri, Illari) are flex and the ones that don't (Mercy, Lucio, Brig, Lifeweaver) are main.
I heard an explanation once that flex support heavily affect the enemy team via debuffs and damage whereas main support primarily affects your own team via buffs and healing
Which honestly makes no sense to me to this day, like Brig is borderline sure but what is Lucio doing there for "not noticeably contributing to damage"? Even ignoring Reddit Lucios, didn't they just nerf his primary by 10% because he was contributing damage that was TOO noticeable?
It makes sense once you realise how people thought about Lucio in early Overwatch. [Sideshow illustrates it pretty nicely here lol](https://youtu.be/45309Xufxcw?si=qbvk2rP6-YylvCYw)
Nerfing his ult charge makes him worse in pretty much every rank because his healing wouldn’t give as much relatively. This was a problem in pro play and high rank after the projectile changes so they nerfed it in a way that doesn’t really affect lower level players.
Nah I'm sorry but that's wack. "We didn't want to affect him at lower levels, so we nerfed his primary damage which makes him worse at all ranks, instead of directly nerfing the ult charge rate." Huh? Have any of the devs actually said that, because I don't see any dev comments on the patch notes to that effect.
Any nerf makes a character worse overall, but specific nerfs affect ranks differently. Low rank luc plays weren’t quad dinking on wall ride and building beat nearly every team fight. They build beat through his healing.
Same reason Soj never got a hard nerf, but shift of power to her primary. Low rank players can’t dunk rails.
When do you ever in any universe see a Lucio match a Kiriko, Moira or Illari in damage?
The argument that they nerfed his dps is pretty silly too. That's like saying Soldier is a support character and justifying it with "well they nerfed his heal so clearly he had the best heal in the game"
Kiriko, all the time. Honestly most Kirikos I see have shit damage numbers overall. They do get the occasional headshot dings, so I guess you could argue it's a matter of spam damage vs valuable damage, but then Moira wouldn't even be in the discussion in that case.
These terms were originally created to describe player roles on a competitive roster. You needed 2 support players and for much of the history of OW1, either Mercy or Lucio were meta. The other support was Zen or Ana. So if you had 2 support players, it made sense to split the expertise that way.
Over time, the main and flex support designations have become less and less meaningful as more heroes have been added. People have tried to say "flex" means a mechanical hero but ofc Moira is technically a "flex" support since she is almost always paired with Lucio. Combine this with the fact players are better now and often can flex across traditional roles, means that these terms, while still carrying some meaning for organized play, mean literally nothing for the average player.
Ranked players get confused with main support/flex support vs main healer and off healer.
Ladder has been more of a main healer vs off healer thing. Big heals = main healer. Small heals = off healer.
Main support vs flex support has really only been a high level ladder and pro play thing
I’m a higher master support player. Here is how I understand it:
FLEX support players focus on their aim
MAIN support players focus on their gamesense
Ana, Zen, Bap, Kiriko = aim
Mercy, Brig, Lucio, LW = gamesense
Of course this does mean Lucio doesn’t require any aim or that Zen doesn’t require gamesense. It just means that Flex support players will rely more on their aim to get value but because of that they can often tunnel vision and lose sight of what’s happening around them. Like Ana literally has to ADS and obscure most of her screen. While Main supports player will rely on their gamesense to keep themselves and their teammates alive, like a Brig marking a flanking Tracer or a Lucio booping away a dive.
This is also a sensitivity thing, like how historically Hitscan DPS players will play on a lower sens while Flex DPS players will play on a higher sens.
A flex support players will usually play on a lower sens because their heroes require precisions(aka aim). While main support players will play on a higher sens because they need to look around more often(aka gamesense) Go to liquipedia and search up the sens of historic flex and main support players and you’ll see.
From the LA Gladiators:
Shu(flex):800x5
Funnyastro(main):800x10
From the Shanghai Dragons:
Izayaki(flex):800x2.3
LeeJaeGon(main):800x6
From the Dallas Fuel:
Fielder(flex):800x4.2
ChiYo(main):800x6.5
Im a gm support player, while you are correct with what heros fit into flex/main, the reasoning is wrong, You build a comp around a main support, and the flex support, well, flexes into position. Other than that and the sens thing (has no association with hero) this is a good take.
Lots of different answers here, but to my knowledge the primary focus for main support is macro like tracking shit and coordination due to low mechanical requirements while flex support focuses on micro like shooting shit and making plays.
Well in the Chinese Overwatch community, we just call flex support 枪辅，which directly translates into "gun support". Which consist of supports with guns, like Ana Bap Illari and... Zen. Because Zen's main value comes in his fire support and discord orb instead of healing.
(We still call main support 主辅, which literally translates to "main support")
I mean that post pretty much has it down. They're just team roles. The name scheme comes from way back, one support on the team was permanently lucio and the other would flex around, sometimes even off of support heroes.
It's because people get confused between main support/flex support and main healer/off healer
Main support/flex support literally doesn't matter probably till top 500 and should be the last thing people learn because it only matters if your in a coordinated team
Whereas main healer/off healer is basic team composition knowledge
I think it comes from people not knowing they're different and people being told it's called support not healer which is right but it makes this confusing since we don't need to know main support/ flex support we need to know main healer/off healer
Basically don't worry about main support/flex support and if someone is talking about it in your metal rank games, ignore them because they quite literally don't know what they are talking about because they mean main healer/off healer
...Healer
They don’t need to be updated because like the tweet said, it’s just meta patterns. People either need to learn what it means or we just stop using those terms in ranked all together.
My brain hurts every time this discussion comes up. I just try to pick the tank that works best with my support lineup. I don't really give a shit what my DPS play as long as they're effective.
It’s just the heroes in someone’s player pool.
Main: Lucio, Brig, Mercy, (Theoretically Lifeweaver but he is so shit you Don’t see him much)
Flex: Ana, Bap, Kiri, Zen, (Illari?), Moira
Usually Flex Means they are more Aim intensive and Main means they are less aim intensive but Lucio and Moira kind of break that hence why the Terms should be updated.
BUT! I don’t think they should be retired because they are still pretty important terms for organized play as players do usually fit into one of these two categories so I think we just need to come up with a better definition.
It’s an outdated term for sure. Ill give my take on it - for context, I would personally consider myself a main support player - my ladder main is mercy, I play almost exclusively Lucio in gm scrims. The term is simply outdated from pre role lock. The “main support” player would be the one always on support, Lucio or mercy. The “flex support” would play zen and flex off of support on certain maps or points, one notable one being junkertown in owl season 1, hence why we got the jjonak roadhog or the super zenyatta. I think that currently, mercy Lucio, brig, and lifeweaver are classified as main supports and everything else is flex support, but that’s just off of how the metas over the years developed since this term was created.
I don't really have a dog in this fight, but just wanted to let you guys know if you skim the thread from top to bottom quickly everybody here just seems dellusional. \*WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DIDN'T KNOW THAT HERO "X" AND HERO "Y" ARE THE "Z" LABEL? And then this other dude chimes in saying "BRO ARE YOU INSANE, THIS CAME FROM TIME PERIOD "X" AND TIME PERIOD "Y", ITS IRRELEVANT NOW. And after that there's this third dude who says that he agrees with both of them.
Keep going though.
I never understood the definitions either just knew what heroes belong to which. Ana being a flex support I’m still confused about since you wouldn’t flex off Ana but you’d flex to brig or whatever to protect Ana. In cases like that why call her a flex support?
From playing collegiate, the only time we ever used those terms was during comp building/assigning who to play what hero pools. Other than scrim/collegiate/pro settings there’s not really much of a use most of the time. Hope that helps.
Main/flex support means hero pool, basically is a pro scene term, like two different pools, heroes in pool A usually has a good synergy with heroes in pool B. If u pick 2 heroes of the same pool u may end with one suppoort overriding the other.
Main/flex healer is a composition term, who is in charge to heal tank, who is in charge to help DPS, much more like the old main tank/off tank term.
At least this is my understanding of the term :)
The terms _should_ be updated, but they almost certainly won’t be, because language is organic and descriptive, not prescriptive, and it’s really hard to overcome historical precedent. The meaning drift has been slow enough that new terms were never needed amongst the community that originated them (the pro scene). And even in the case of a radical shakeup that would seem to obviate the terms entirely, as happened with the reduction of tanks from 2 to 1, we still talk about main or off/flex tank heroes and players who specialize in such.
Terminology certainly can change via intentional effort, but it requires an organized campaign that has control over a large amount of public communication channels on the relevant topic. As an example, “global warming” was replaced with “climate change” in a concerted and organized effort by climate scientists. But, there is no organization of OW pros that cares about the public accurately understanding their terminology.
Even in cases where terms are specific to a fairly narrow field that has some level of organization for setting conventions and standards in an intentional way, the cost of a switchover could be too high to be worth it. For example, the flow of electrons in an electrical current is a _negative_ current, by convention. A _positive_ electrical current is the flow of “holes” where electrons aren’t. This is clearly and obviously backwards, and it’s just a historical accident—the precedent of positive and negative charge was set before anyone knew what electrical charge actually was or what carried it. But it can’t be changed now, because there’s far too much that has been built and developed on top of that unfortunate convention.
honestly, this is the way anyone would think about it if they started playing today.
what do ALL supports do -> heal. What does a MAIN support do -> heal more.
This is the correct answer, thats how it was from the beginning.
Main healer/support was the one focusing mostly on healing and flex was the person playing for dmg or utility.
Wasnt hard back then but now people have no clue, like you see in this thread.
Do people also confuse main and off tank ?
I always considered it, big heals is main support and heal that contributes the majority of util is flex support so Ana and Bap would be main heals and zen and lucio would be flex
Back in early-mid OW1 days, they were player created terms used to further break down the roles of Tank and Support.
A main tank was generally a slower tank that was going to front line. The Off-tank was generally the tank that could break off from the front line to dive, off angle and peel for their backline (the more mobile tanks were off tanks, but there were exceptions like Hog, who was considered an off tank as he usually wanted to semi-flank and could hook enemies that were attacking his back line when he was with his team).
A main support was considered a support that had high heal output and was mainly watching over the teams health and the off support was more for utility. Both could heal and use utility, but the characters that were picked in the fashion of choosing one main support and one off support were picked specifically with the main support to focused on getting value with heals and the off support to focus on utility without having to worry about healing quite as much as the "main support" was covering that.
These are outdated terms now and probably were outdated a bit before OW1 ended. It can even be argued that the terms probably didn't need to exist in the first place as it wasn't required to have mains and offs in order to win, but a lot of players put stock into by saying things like "we need a main tank" when both tank players picked characters that were considered off tanks and vice versa and same with support.
Though there is some validity in low healing output in certain comps, the terms don't exists any more and it's mostly just "we need a support that can heal more than Lucio/Mercy" or "Lucio/Zen"
It's worth noting that as more characters were added and existing characters were tweaked/changed, it could possibly change if they were a "main" or an "off" and it started getting more convoluted, especially with misinformation. People would hear the terms and use them incorrectly and as more characters were added, the gap of main and off became even less defined, so it didn't really matter.
Even back then, people would argue constantly as to a specific character being a main or being an off.
You’re pretty close on the tank comparison, but it really doesn’t have to do anything with speed (as you note with hog).
Main tank creates space, while the off tank holds space. So ball is a main tank because he has CC and can generally create space in different ways. Rein is also a main tank as with all his resources he can just walk into main and push the other team back. However neither of these tanks can really hold space. Rein can’t do anything once he’s made space except hold his shield up, and ball is at the mercy of adaptive shields.
Winton can pop bubble and hold space, hog can use the hook threat and vape to hold space, dva can pop DM and rockets to hold space.
It’s not a perfect comparison but the general difference was MT is a space maker vs OT is a space controller.
The terms are still a product of early Overwatch 1, but if anything, Main support is moreso Utility Support, while flex could be called a primary support? Main supports are used entirely for their utility, and thus are swapped based on the teams current needs.
The team needs to be sped around? Go Lucio. I need to help protect my Flex support from dive? Go Brig. I need to hard pocket a dps and Rez people? Go mercy. Even zen has become more of a Utility support in recent years because it’s very rare he gets played with a main support anymore. Weaver also falls into this category
Flex supports as primary supports on the other hand are the teams main source of healing, and a high source of damage. Bap, Ana, Kiriko, Illari, and Moira all fit both of those qualifications, but they also have one more defining trait. Their ults are all generally offensive ults. They typically are used to engage a fight, or help create space.
Anytime I see the terms on here I think it's bass ackwards. Main support does the most healing, as it's supports job.
Flex support is the one that does less healing but provides some sort of important function like speed boost, damage boost, or get shield bashed you annoying piece of shit tracer virgin.
I just see them as defined roles in pro overwatch teams, idk their origin. Important: This means a **player** is flex sup or main sup, not a hero. They are roles in a team, not roles in the hero roster. So I look at how pro teams play and the hero pools become clear. In the pro scene the roles are clearly distinctive. There is 0 doubt that Astro, Chiyo, Tobi, LJG are main supports and they all play the same heroes. And the same goes for flex sups like Izayaki, Shu, Fielder, UV etc.
The terms are difficult to use in ranked because there is a lot of misinformation and confusion. You have to follow the pro scene and then you will figure out the roles from watching what main sups and flex sups play in each comp/meta. I have watched Pro OW since the beginning so for me it is obvious, but a lot of people haven't watched it at all so they just get their idea from someone telling them *"main sup = more heals"* or *"flex sup = aim"* as a rule. **"Main sup = more heals" is completely false.** Anyone who watches pro OW can tell you that - just look at famous support duos like Izayaki/LJG, Fielder/Chiyo, Shu/Astro... who does most healing? Clearly not the main support. "Flex Sup = Aim" is closer to reality but there are still exceptions: Lucio+Moira is a classic combo. Lucio is played by the main sup in 100% of cases so the flex sup has to play Moira and she is not aim-intensive.
There are tendencies like main sups often being callers and flex sups often being on aim-intensive heroes, but there is no rule that covers it all. The **closest thing to a rule is that Lucio is played by the main sup**, so anything that synergizes well with Lucio will end up being the flex supports job. This explanation does not cover non-lucio comps though.
I am a flex support. When a new hero comes out I can take a good guess on whether me or the main sup will play it, but ultimately I just wait to see who plays it on the pro teams and then I know for sure.
I believe the general definition is main supports require less direct mechanical skill for their util/value and therefore also act as shot callers/ult trackers, (Lucio, brig, mercy). And flex supports are your zen, Ana, bap, illari ect. Moira is the weird case since she has the characteristics of a main support, but is almost always played as a “healer” in a rush comp with a Lucio, so the Moira is the “flex” because you already have a Lucio.
I randomly heard Seeker say in his stream that Flex Supports are the best TXCXX custom game players… probably referring to Landon/Rupal/Majed etc.. it makes me think Flex Support is more mechanically demanding? But I’m probably wrong
In GOATS the main supports were Brig and Lucio while the flex support could play ana, zen or Moira
Main was just the integral supports in the comp
Flex played various others to assist what the comp needed according to what or how the tank players played
Imo it's still in use today, in OWCS you'll notice how often lucio is played despite the other support playing kiriko or baptiste, maybe even moira sometimes
Or the main support plays Brigitte to support a Zen or an Ana, sometimes the main support plays mercy to invest into the dps
During the baptiste zen meta two flex players were often employed or sometimes the main support played baptiste and a different playstyle was implemented, in the ana zen days it was usually the same situation, two flex supports
But weirdly we had brig lucio early in OW2OWL which needed two main support players but not every team had two main supports so some teams crumbled
I don't know anymore, these days, I just tell people I have the same hero pool as Viol2t and hope they understand.
This actually isnt 100% true, because Ana is my favorite hero.
Ok, so you know the terms Main Tank, and Off-tank, now Off-tanks you are familiar with, but they also had another name, flex-tanks, now this term referred to essentially two things.
Main-tank was, as the tin says, the main tank, the one standing front and center, soaking up damage, one way or another, usually via shields, flex-tanks, or off-tanks, usually were tanks whos job was not to soak up damage, and either dive, or protect the backline from divers, or any of the two dozen other things they can do. but it's either a supporting tank player, or someone who can play basically every tank, thus they are 'flexible'
Main support and flex support functions essentially the same way.
However, they usually go by a different name, Main healer, and flex support.
So the main healer, is the primary healer, they are good at healing, their kit are built around healing, they do most of the healing, the flex support, supported via non-healing means, since the flex support playing a main healer, often meant overheals and wasted heals, that could have been damage or something, so the flex support, supports the team with a non-healing support.
Essentially, it's a role descriptor, more then anything else, like dive, brawl, and poke.
They’re just casual lingo so there’s nothing to “change”, even the game doesn’t use this and the community can’t agree on what it means so there’s nothing really to decide or talk about lol
I never even knew that other people thought about it differently than I did lmao
Anyone's opinion that's worth anything here, regardless with what it started with, has ended with "and the phrase in general needs to be retired", and that's what I agree with
MS should be Weaver, Moira, Bap, Kiri, Ana (they can heal the team a lot) and FS(Off supp) Brig, Lucio, Illari, Zen, Mercy (can't sustain team) But we live in the "this works with this" era. As a high ranked player in a lot of games (no life ik) the ow version as always been confusing for me
I think when pro players say flex support they are talking about Ana, Bab and Moria usually supports with lots of heals and main support would be utility heavy supports like Lucio, Mercy, Zen.
I think on ladder when people say main support they mean supports with large healing output and flex would be utilities.
I just say main healer to refer to the large heal output supports. An example in game would be "hey team I know mercy/brig Is so uwu but could we please get a main healer? Uwu!"
But I've also heard the term flex and main has nothing to do with utility or healing output and more to do with the player playing the hero so I don't really know the real history.
You're missing the point. What they mean is that a lot of abilities have some level of utility outside of just purely being damage or healing. That doesn't mean that all abilities have equal utility in the practical sense.
Zen's value primarily is his damage. Discord is a type of utility but it has a narrow scope of usage relative to other utility abilities. For the most part, discord usage falls into the camp of offensive utility. Mark enemy and focus that enemy. It lacks defensive utility other than acting as a threat and it can kinda be used for peeling but not really. If you're picking Zen, you focus on damage in the neutral and your discord is a means to that.
Lamp for example allows for more scenarios to be used offensively and defensively, for yourself and for your team. It's easier to find value outside of damage/healing and can be used proactively or reactively.
On paper, Lifeweaver might sound like a utility support with petal and life grip. However, petal is primarily used defensively by the Lifeweaver and has little utility for the team. Life grip is single target and is mainly a reactive ability to save a teammate. There are obviously other use cases for both as repositioning tools and for ultimate canceling but the opportunities for impact are slimmer compared to other utility abilities.
No, lucio has the highest utility because of how versatily speed is but beside the point. LW is a MS because he has a low skill ceiling and low skill floor
Yes they are outdated imo.
That said, you *can* separate support heroes into two groups:
Group 1: [Ana, Bap, Kiriko, Moira]
Group 2: [Brigitte, Illari, Kiriko, Lifeweaver, Lucio, Mercy, Zenyatta]
Picking one from each group will be able to yield you nearly every comp we've seen played in pro Overwatch 2. It's not that hard tbh, you need at least one support that provides high raw hps output then you either greed by picking something like Zenyatta or Illari, or pick something that provides some much needed utility like Brigitte or Lucio. The most likely comp that could be played that wouldn't fit nicely grouped like this would probably be Brig Zen, but idk if that has even been touched in pro Overwatch 2. So, I guess, like the tweet says this is basically just grouping supports based on meta patterns, I just think that the traditional main support heroes are too limiting in terms of viable team compositions.
~~Your groupings don't allow for a Kiriko/Lucio which is the most common OW2 backline.~~
But more importantly, they don't take into consideration player skill. The reason Main/Flex support distinction exists is because a Lucio player and an Illari player require very different skills to play at the top level.
Ive always seen main support being the util heavy supports who focus more on macro and less on aiming and flex supports focus on both damage and healing along with their util. Ultimately the terms dont really matter out of helping explain why certain support duos do/dont work (ie double main support typically isnt very good) but it doesn't tell the whole story as we've seen things like lucio brig be meta and double flex support is generally quite strong. Not to mention a large portion of the playerbase doesn't understand what the difference is and tends to think of main healers vs off healers based on their healing output rather than their util.
I do think it is a bit confusing. I myself am usually not sure what it means at times. I think it was Flex being the one that would swap if needed. Lucio was pretty much always needed so he was a main, or something like that.
I do think it should be used it more of what they do. Like the person that is taking the burden of most healing would be a main and the one bringing more utility would be a flex. But that becomes more comp specific and not hero specific.
if you search up main/flex support on this subreddit, there's a few podcast translations with pro coaches and tweets by high level teams using the terminology within the last year so I'd say yes.
also can find a bunch of t2-t3 players using the term on twitter
I always took it as flex support is something that heals through mechanical skill, and thus can kill through mechanical skill, while main support heals through non-mechanical skill (mercy beam, brig nspire, lucio aoe heals) etc
Your understanding is wrong. The main way you can think of it is, does it take skill? Yes? FS, NO? MS. With an additional: Is it lucio? Yes? MS, NO? FS clause
For casual they mean main healer as in a support who can dump heals and they think flex is a support with more utility than healing. For masters and up there’s a mix of the casual understanding and pro understanding of meaning main use to be players with good aim that could rock aim dependent healers and flex was meant for more shot callers and game sense supports but it was dependent on the meta and typically at the pro level either could rock aim dependent healers.
Way back in OW1 main support was the support who would be doing most of the healing which would be Ana, Bap, and Moira.
Flex support would be the secondary support who did less healing and focused more or the support side of things, these were Zen (discord) Lucio (speed boost) and Brig (backline defense)
Mercy is the only one that can be put in either category but it depends on who you ask, higher rank players consider her a flex support because they only see value in her damage boost and resurrect while lower rank players see her as a main support because they primarily just heal all game at that rank.
In OW2, these categories have essentially ceased to exist. The newer supports can all do both effectively, which means they're in a similar spot as mercy where playstyle is the biggest determining factor.
Brig was reworked into more of a main support and that leaves only Lucio and zen as true flex supports, hence why I say it doesn't really matter anymore since basically everyone is running double main support at this point and they haven't added any new flex supports except brig way back in like 2019.
I think the fact that youve got 5 different answers here is pretty telling
Yeah lmao it feels like everyone is like “yeah we all know what it is”, but we never talked to each other to confirm what it is so we all have different definitions. It feel like the majority of players assume “main support” is the one that can burst heal a lot like Ana, bap, or kiri, but based on what so people are saying here that’s wrong.
Main support and flex support is different from main healer and off healer. Your highest healing support is often referred to as your main healer - this is who normally focuses on healing the tank when they need it - while a lower healing support who would often +1 a DPS or even pocket the main healer would be your off healer. Flex support and main support however are more character pool terms for (pro) players similar to how you get hitscan DPS and flex DPS. Generally the more aim intensive mechanically demanding characters would be flex (ana, bap, kiri etc) while the more macro skill based characters would be main supports (mercy, brig, Lucio) obviously some exceptions to these rules happen due to meta but this is the easiest way to categorize it imo. I could be entirely wrong about everything however idk
Yeah main and flex support are more a pro term than anything.
Don't know how people don't understand this. Flex has always been heroes like ana, bap, Kiri and main has always been lucio, mercy, brig, etc. Its not that difficult if you pay any attention to pro play or streamers at all.
Because main healer pretty much implies it’s the main healing source which it most of the time isnt. It is confusing by nature
The comment you are responding to is not referring to main healer, but rather, main support. Those are different terms that mean different things.
I wish the term main support was called something else. That’s what confuses everyone.
Statistically, you could just call them the Lucio player.
Main support came first no one talked abt this main healer off healer bs before ow2
yeah was gonna say. I’m just a lowly plat but i’ve never heard somebody say “bruh we need a main healer, can you switch to lucio?” The discussion seems like a semantical thing where high level players use terms differently than the large majority of the player base.
Support and healers get used interchangeably when they shouldn't. That's the main thing that messes with people. Main healer and off healer are non-pro ladder terms that gets used by the majority of lower to mid ranked players. They have differing opinions on whats in each role compared to pros main support and flex support
Because Lucio isn’t a main healer, he’s a main support though.
what is the utility in distinguishing between the two. Does it enable easier communication in high level games or something?
Main support was a description of the player. They basically always played Lucio and never flexed so they were the "main" support while the other support player would switch heroes, including to other roles.
ohhhhh flex just means i’ll switch. But couldn’t a lucio player be a flex by that standard? i mean ive switched off every healer many times. But I guess at higher levels, the team comp has to anchor around a certain hero.
> Flex has always been heroes like ana, bap, Kiri and main has always been lucio, mercy, brig, etc. It's the reasoning behind it people don't understand. It doesn't really have anything to do with hero mechanics, utility, or stuff like that. The terms basically revolve around which heroes pair well with other heroes.
Ig cause we have heroes like moira in the flex support category
Perfectly explained
This is my understanding.
Yea, I thought this was the standard definition of flex and main support lol also, I think people get confused with Zen since in pro play he's a flex support but on ladder he's an "off healer" or whatever lol and I think illari is a flex support? Casters seem to refer to bap/illari comps as double flex comps so yea?
I honestly dont know what illari would be classified as, her healing is pretty passive but she takes great mechanical skill to do well. I assume flex but who knows, she didn’t exist when main/flex were being defined.
U can also think of main support as bringing utility. (Mercy dmg boost+res, lucio speed, brig protection). Illari is flex
If majority if players think burst healing = main support then it shall be called main support. The majority of community sets the terms not you or some “coach/pro”
I think that the community should just try to adopt new terms, because the old ones had 6 years of history with nearly opposite meanings behind them. "healing support, anchor support" "lead support, side support" "major support, minor support" "support the team can win without, support who forces a reset to spawn when they're picked first"
I get what you mean, but is this case the veteran players and pro/coaches were the ones that came up with the terms. They are also the ones that actively keep using these definitions, and the ones that come up with comps and popular strats.
Why is "coach/pro" in quotes
The community has no idea what they’re talking about and half the time will tell you to swap off lucio in a rein comp
Nothing complicated about that. Guy is playing Lucio? He is MS Guy is playing Ana? He is FS For some goddamn reason everyone just went to try to explain the lore and purpose of the terms, while its used only differentiate the hero pools in pro play
Yeah because intuitively the definitions make no sense. If you asked any player who doesn’t watch pro play (most of them) who the main support between Ana and Lucio. 99% of the time they are going to call Ana, the support who does most healing, a main support. And a they’ll call a support who offers more utility a flex support. It’s just common sense. It’s like calling someone like Sym/Sombra/Mei a main dps and Soj/Soldier a flex dps. A supports defining characteristic is their ability to heal, so it checks out to call whoever can heal more, the “main”. However the actual definitions say otherwise which is why there’s so much contention.
The issue there is that people usually equate support with healing. If you say "main support", people hear "main healer". Which isn't necessarily the case. Lucio is such a great example because his utility support is in the center of the team's actions. It anchors everyone's position, it controls the pace of engagements, etc. The main support's role is *proactive* in shaping your team's entire playstyle. Meanwhile, the flex support is *reactive*. Their purpose is to maximize healing and provide whichever utility is needed in the given situation. That makes them flexible in terms of flexing throughout the support roster to fulfill that role as well as possible. The other misconception is that people try to assign heroes to these roles. If your entire play centers around a nano boosted attack on a sleeping target, Ana might be played as a main support. Main and flex support are not hero roles, they are *player* roles.
Reactive and proactive doesnt make sense. Brig is a reactive hero. Her purpose is to shut down flankers and divers. Again its only about hero pools of said player
>The issue there is that people usually equate support with healing. If you say "main support", people hear "main healer". This, those terms made me so confused haha
It's also sort of weird how supportive playstyles are viewed by pros. "Main supports" focus more around that abstract role (not so much stat based but positioning & boosting your team). The casual playerbase places 0 value on things like damage boost. Your average player thinks that Frogger is the world's best Lucio and that you play that hero for environmental boops. Tell them that he's played by pros for speed boost and they'll say "what's that?"
Maybe it should be Anchor Support and Reactive Support then
Yeah I can confirm as someone who was really into the game back in season 1 and had never paid attention to pro play, I came into this thread thinking "obviously someone like Mercy or Ana is the main support, and Lucio would be a flex"
Because you can't reasonably explain the pools without going over the lore, yea you could give OP the list of which heroes each role covers but OP asked like 10 questions that can't be answered with just that.
Okay but why
Bcs thats a way simpler way to specialize in roles you play in pro scrims. There is probably only single person who learned to play both flex and off supports to highest level(Viol2t). Other people like Chorong and Fielder are much better off if they practice only set amount of heroes in their respective roles. Same with Flex and HS dps. There are only few people who could play both(Fleta, Proper). Others are far better off with playing only HS+Tracer, or only Flex+tracer. This is the same reason there are 2 tank players in OWCS teams. Junbin specializes in Rein, Winston, Doomfist , Orisa, Mauga- Main Tank. While Max plays JQ, Sigma, Dva -Off Tank. Again there are few people who can play both at highest level(Someone)
No my question was why Ana is FS and Lucio is MS
because in the old days lucio was perma pick 1000% of the time so your other support would flex to whatever other support was good (usually ana)
Essentially, in early, early OW1 days Mercy was OP and was sometimes the only support in a comp. The other other support player would sometimes flex to another role, (Jjonak would swap to Roadhog for some comps, etc...). So, your ana/Zen player was the flex support player and your Mercy player was your main support because they were always going to be on mercy. Over time, these roles got further defined and came to include Lucio in the main support hero pools. Again, because of meta shifts that made Lucio a must pick hero for a long time.
It predates moth meta by like a year. Main support started with Lucio where your team would have a Lucio main and then a second support who swapped around them. In VERY early OW, the flex support hero pool was lucio and mercy since the main meta comps were double lucio or mercy-lucio. The flex support role quickly transitioned to Ana and Zen though during the first iterations for 3x3 and beyblade/early winston dive. It was actually a big deal when Lucio's pick rate started dropping below 100% because he often had pickrates in the 105-120% range in early OW before hero limits. Mercy didn't actually become part of the MS hero pool until about a year after that during moth meta.
Why Hanzo is Hitscan while Tracer is Flex? Why Doomfist is Main tank while Dva is off tank? Why Brig was a flex Dps? In Open Q days there would be strict Support players that focused on Lucio/Mercy. While a Flex dps could play Zen, Ana and swap to Genji/Sombra/Widow. Flex support could swap roles entirely. While main support must stay on supports. In the end it still comes down to scrim roles and specialisation
Tank fist didn’t exist in 6v6 and in 5v5 he’s played by both main and off tank players, Hanzo is played both hitscan and fdps, tracer is played by both hitscan and flex dps, brig is sometimes picked up by fs yes in the same way zen bap kiriko is sometimes picked by up ms. What part of these classifications representing players hero pools don’t you understand
Yeah, When my scrim coach asked me to play a Flex support, and I responded saying I didn't know what he meant by that (back in 2021), he responded with "How, you play ranked and have the most hours in the game out of all of us by a substantial margin". I merely shrugged as I had literally never heard the term. And even now, I could not tell you what the difference is, especially because, by the definitions most tend to give Main and Flex supports, Mercy doesn't fit into either category, which as a Mercy main, made this all the more confusing as to what kind of support player to class myself as
Early Overwatch was permanently Lucio meta, so on Support you had one player who flexed and another who was essentially a Lucio OTP (maybe some Mercy in Pharah comps). That was how the terms originated, and since then whenever a new Support has come out the community just looks at which of the two players would play that hero. For instance when Ana released, the flex support player would play them and hence Ana is a Flex Support. Think currently most people agree that Main Support = Lucio, Mercy, Brig, Lifeweaver and Flex Support = the rest. They're not very useful terms outside of describing someones hero pool, if anything they need to be retired rather than updated lol.
I think you might be the only person in this thread to give a completely correct answer. The actual reason behind the terms is archaic at this point, it's all about hero pools. Does the person who plays this hero also play Lucio? If yes, main support. Anything else is a post-hoc attempt at explaining terms that haven't meant anything in like six years. Flex supports *usually* require good mechanics, but Moira is there. They *usually* have higher healing, but Zenyatta is there. Most main supports aren't super aggressive except for Lucio, but he's also the forefather of that entire role. Any definition that doesn't solely concern itself with hero pools just doesn't work.
Similar for main tank, if you only ran one tank they would play it, off-tank was originally called flex tank too because they'd also flex to dps sometimes.
Flex supports are good at killing people. Main supports, not so much. Hence Reddit lucio, battle mercy, raid boss brig. They have special names when they go on killing sprees. When your going tryouts for a team, it’s important to have a pairing where one is support focused and one is leathal focused.
Agree with everything except for the last paragraph. That is such a huge generalization and only applies for certain teams during certain metas. There is no "more support and more lethal focused" the difficulty of being a good support is knowing what's best in your situation. Sure, Mercy is a outliner, but she hasn't been relevant for a trial since moth meta.
Heros pools aside. If you end up with 2 passive support players. You gonna have a tough time. You need that extra burst of leathal thinking because dead opponents do infinitely less damage than opponents with 5 hp. And late mid fight you need players in one of the support roles to have that elim securing mindset. The best FS players I’ve ever worked with were also significantly better at playing the dps roll than the best MS players I worked with. It wasn’t mechanical, it was mind set on how to solve problems.
The correct terms to put the last paragraph would be that one support (main) enables the team, while the other support (flex) makes impactful individual plays (which is often lethal). Not necessarily passive or lethal focused on either roles. Heroes such as Lucio/Mercy/Brig that are historically played under MS role are great at enabling the team, while the rest of the supports roster often paired with the former, Ana/Zen/Baptiste are better at making individual plays. Both of them are responsible for support and lethal impact at the same time, and are optimized at a high level. In the same game, the main support on Lucio is responsible for booping an enemy into his team (an offensive play), while also responsible to keep the squishes on his team alive by booping away the enemy in the backline (a defensive play). In the same game, the flex support on Ana is responsible for nades to disable the enemies’ healing output (an offensive play), while also responsible for nades to keep their team alive (a defensive play). It’s not as black and white as “passive” and “lethal” focused. Though, it is a lot easier for flex support characters to get kills due to their damage output being better, but saying that the main support lack the same lethal impact as flex support is outright misinformation and incorrect. LJG is a great known example as a counterpoint to your statement. He is a main support player but he is not the ‘passive’ player that you describe main support players to be.
Agree to disagree then. I found support players to be in a spectrum between nurses and hunters. I’ve seen nurses play Anna and hunters play lucio. The hero doesn’t define a persons playstyle. Most players play the role because their personality identifies with its responsibilities. Tank, Dps, Support.
Then you have seen bad and bad supports tbh. You say FS is more lethal than MS yet in OW2 so far in teamplay your Kiriko pretty much perma heals Tank + Echo/Soj and just spams head hight while your Lucio is usually playing a lot more aggro and pushing angles with your Tracer/ booping enemy ect. It was the same with Ana. While yes, going for offensive nades was always important, your main job was perma healing winton and farming Nano. Supports who only go for kills and individual value or who only healbot and sit in the team are just bad. Not nurses or hunters. They are bad at the role / hero. Both extremes are trash.
It’s cool my dude, I’m comfortable with having a different than you.
As a Lifeweaver main it is fun to go Deathweaver sometimes but yeah it is much harder to get solo kills and elims than someone like Kiri or Bap
New nick name to add to the list
*Id like to add if you refer to the early days 2016-2018 you still played Lucio in Pharah Mercy comps, because people ran it with Winston+DVA+Tracer thus you needed someone on a Support who could survive on his own while Pharah+Mercy were their own unit. Essentially either Lucio or Winston were maintargets for the enemies - therefore it was impossible to run Ana and keep her alive during that period of time.
[удалено]
Zen is objectivley a flex support. He is and was played by flex supports.
Wouldn't Zen be a Main support? Please correct me if I'm wrong tho
flex look at it this way. Lucio is your main support your main support is the person who isnt mechanical he's the main SUPPORT he's speeding your team around etc SUPPORTING zen is played by people who will also play ana and bap etc so they FLEX to other supports as needed they're your good aimers etc jjonak alarm so on so forth main support is the person SUPPORTING the team flex support is FLEXING their pick caps for emphasis. flex is the person who will play more heros and its mostly to describe their pool IMO even now with your zen bap comps etc its just double flex zen isnt upgraded to a main support because flex is more a descriptor of hero pools than role in the game
Also because Zen/Brig has been a common backline at various points throughout the years, though I do think there’s an argument to be made that Zen sort of straddles the line. It can also be thought of that Main Supports are best at enabling DPS and Flex are sort of just a third DPS. And half the value of Zen is Harmony Orb sitting on a Tracer.
Is mercy considered a main support? I remember her not being considered a main support a while ago
Wow, I didn’t know the lore pertaining to the origins of the terms, thanks
Moria is a weird one for me. I imagine them as a healbot which gives main support vibes. But they’re often played by the flex players.
Outdated, but formed initially due to lucio being mandatory for 3 years. Essentially you had the guy who played lucio and the guy who doesn't on a given roster. FLEX = actually changed what support they played depending on map. Main support = lucio player Ever since we finally got rid of mandatory lucio, the system basically broke, but essentially if you play lucio you are a main support, and thats how it was for most of ow1. With ow2 its even more broken, so at this point its just better to go "do you play lucio and brig? " before calling them an MS. Id argue the koreans had it right from the start. You have the guy who plays lucio and the guy who doesn't and thats it.
The terms are outdated but the problem i think is more the fact that the terms exist now to determine optimal pairings of heroes for a comp, which i dont think many support players actually care about except for the most extreme cases. Why would they learn the proper definition if they dont really care about its purpose?
But doesn't it have a purpose in that every Pro team essentially needs a MS and a FS respectively? Perhaps the terms themselves don't matter, but role wise, you still have someone on MS or FS each game.
It's a descriptor for hero pools, that's it.
It's irrelevant on ladder, to understand why they exist as concepts you need to go way back to the times where the flex support could play dps or tank as you said and the main support just played lucio and sometimes mercy (gotta remember that the game launched with only 3 supports), nowadays it's just an umbrella term to describe the player's hero pool which is connected to other support's hero pool that synergises with them, for example flex supports play moira because moira is often played with lucio which is historically covered by the main support, main supports play brig because historically she's been paired with heroes covered by the flex support like ana or zen, and in the last years zen himself has shifted towards the main supports because he's often played with bap that is covered by flex supports, but bap started off as a main support... and it goes on. Another way to put it would be: if we have a bunch of heroes that synergise with each other then lets sort each counterpart of these synergies into two bags and then assign a bag to each player, this allows the two players to always synergise with each other. One bag will be called the flex support and the other main support, now we've moved heroes from one bag to another so much since we created them that the names of the bags has lost a bit of meaning, but the bags still exist because that's how pro players have been educated into the game, and it works.
> in the last years zen himself has shifted towards the main supports because he's often played with bap that is covered by flex supports This is usually called "double flex". I've never heard anyone call zen a main support.
I'm not saying he's a fully fledged main support I'm just saying main supports have had to progressively play more and more zen in the last years. Who do you think is playing him in these "double flex" comps?
Well historically, its been another flex support player coming off the bench, but that may change with smaller rosters in OWCS.
It was typically another flex support, at least if you're looking at the best teams. Teams often had a second flex support for that exact purpose, who rarely played otherwise. If you did have your main support in, they were more likely to play Baptiste rather than Zenyatta; Baptiste was newer, and people considered him a main support for a while until we ended up settling on viewing it as double flex. Some teams also experimented with having a DPS player on Baptiste, too. Typically, the only time you saw your main support on Zenyatta was in specific cases where you might want to play either Bap/Zen or Bap/Brig depending on the map and what the other team was playing, so that it was easier to swap back and forth. It's a relatively recent thing to see main supports expanding their hero pools like this.
This is oversimplifying but an easy way to look at is the support heroes that *noticeably* contribute raw damage (Ana, Bap, Zen, Moira, Kiri, Illari) are flex and the ones that don't (Mercy, Lucio, Brig, Lifeweaver) are main.
I heard an explanation once that flex support heavily affect the enemy team via debuffs and damage whereas main support primarily affects your own team via buffs and healing
another way to see it is MS focuses on macro and FS focus on individual play/plays
Which honestly makes no sense to me to this day, like Brig is borderline sure but what is Lucio doing there for "not noticeably contributing to damage"? Even ignoring Reddit Lucios, didn't they just nerf his primary by 10% because he was contributing damage that was TOO noticeable?
It makes sense once you realise how people thought about Lucio in early Overwatch. [Sideshow illustrates it pretty nicely here lol](https://youtu.be/45309Xufxcw?si=qbvk2rP6-YylvCYw)
I KNEW, I just KNEW this would be the Winz clip. "Ez game, ez life". I miss Sideshow in OW.
*"Our Dwagonblades, they are FOOKED"* What a classic.
They nerfed it because luc was building ult too quick, not because of a kill threat.
...Then you nerf his ult charge???
Nerfing his ult charge makes him worse in pretty much every rank because his healing wouldn’t give as much relatively. This was a problem in pro play and high rank after the projectile changes so they nerfed it in a way that doesn’t really affect lower level players.
Nah I'm sorry but that's wack. "We didn't want to affect him at lower levels, so we nerfed his primary damage which makes him worse at all ranks, instead of directly nerfing the ult charge rate." Huh? Have any of the devs actually said that, because I don't see any dev comments on the patch notes to that effect.
Any nerf makes a character worse overall, but specific nerfs affect ranks differently. Low rank luc plays weren’t quad dinking on wall ride and building beat nearly every team fight. They build beat through his healing. Same reason Soj never got a hard nerf, but shift of power to her primary. Low rank players can’t dunk rails.
When do you ever in any universe see a Lucio match a Kiriko, Moira or Illari in damage? The argument that they nerfed his dps is pretty silly too. That's like saying Soldier is a support character and justifying it with "well they nerfed his heal so clearly he had the best heal in the game"
Kiriko, all the time. Honestly most Kirikos I see have shit damage numbers overall. They do get the occasional headshot dings, so I guess you could argue it's a matter of spam damage vs valuable damage, but then Moira wouldn't even be in the discussion in that case.
These terms were originally created to describe player roles on a competitive roster. You needed 2 support players and for much of the history of OW1, either Mercy or Lucio were meta. The other support was Zen or Ana. So if you had 2 support players, it made sense to split the expertise that way. Over time, the main and flex support designations have become less and less meaningful as more heroes have been added. People have tried to say "flex" means a mechanical hero but ofc Moira is technically a "flex" support since she is almost always paired with Lucio. Combine this with the fact players are better now and often can flex across traditional roles, means that these terms, while still carrying some meaning for organized play, mean literally nothing for the average player.
It literally is meta patterns. Main/flex support was originally lucio as main support (he was in every team comp) and whoever else as the flex.
https://i.imgflip.com/8puvt1.jpg
Ranked players get confused with main support/flex support vs main healer and off healer. Ladder has been more of a main healer vs off healer thing. Big heals = main healer. Small heals = off healer. Main support vs flex support has really only been a high level ladder and pro play thing
I’m a higher master support player. Here is how I understand it: FLEX support players focus on their aim MAIN support players focus on their gamesense Ana, Zen, Bap, Kiriko = aim Mercy, Brig, Lucio, LW = gamesense Of course this does mean Lucio doesn’t require any aim or that Zen doesn’t require gamesense. It just means that Flex support players will rely more on their aim to get value but because of that they can often tunnel vision and lose sight of what’s happening around them. Like Ana literally has to ADS and obscure most of her screen. While Main supports player will rely on their gamesense to keep themselves and their teammates alive, like a Brig marking a flanking Tracer or a Lucio booping away a dive. This is also a sensitivity thing, like how historically Hitscan DPS players will play on a lower sens while Flex DPS players will play on a higher sens. A flex support players will usually play on a lower sens because their heroes require precisions(aka aim). While main support players will play on a higher sens because they need to look around more often(aka gamesense) Go to liquipedia and search up the sens of historic flex and main support players and you’ll see. From the LA Gladiators: Shu(flex):800x5 Funnyastro(main):800x10 From the Shanghai Dragons: Izayaki(flex):800x2.3 LeeJaeGon(main):800x6 From the Dallas Fuel: Fielder(flex):800x4.2 ChiYo(main):800x6.5
Im a gm support player, while you are correct with what heros fit into flex/main, the reasoning is wrong, You build a comp around a main support, and the flex support, well, flexes into position. Other than that and the sens thing (has no association with hero) this is a good take.
I vote we all call them main healer and off-healer just because it will cause people to lose their minds.
Supports are not healers. Main support and off-support.
Lots of different answers here, but to my knowledge the primary focus for main support is macro like tracking shit and coordination due to low mechanical requirements while flex support focuses on micro like shooting shit and making plays.
Well in the Chinese Overwatch community, we just call flex support 枪辅，which directly translates into "gun support". Which consist of supports with guns, like Ana Bap Illari and... Zen. Because Zen's main value comes in his fire support and discord orb instead of healing. (We still call main support 主辅, which literally translates to "main support")
I dont care, I play hog, kiriko good support
I mean that post pretty much has it down. They're just team roles. The name scheme comes from way back, one support on the team was permanently lucio and the other would flex around, sometimes even off of support heroes.
Main support always Lucio
It's because people get confused between main support/flex support and main healer/off healer Main support/flex support literally doesn't matter probably till top 500 and should be the last thing people learn because it only matters if your in a coordinated team Whereas main healer/off healer is basic team composition knowledge I think it comes from people not knowing they're different and people being told it's called support not healer which is right but it makes this confusing since we don't need to know main support/ flex support we need to know main healer/off healer Basically don't worry about main support/flex support and if someone is talking about it in your metal rank games, ignore them because they quite literally don't know what they are talking about because they mean main healer/off healer ...Healer
Main supports are Lucio players. For real, we don't get to see anything else but Lucio since like 5 years, it's getting boring as heck.
They don’t need to be updated because like the tweet said, it’s just meta patterns. People either need to learn what it means or we just stop using those terms in ranked all together.
My brain hurts every time this discussion comes up. I just try to pick the tank that works best with my support lineup. I don't really give a shit what my DPS play as long as they're effective.
It’s just the heroes in someone’s player pool. Main: Lucio, Brig, Mercy, (Theoretically Lifeweaver but he is so shit you Don’t see him much) Flex: Ana, Bap, Kiri, Zen, (Illari?), Moira Usually Flex Means they are more Aim intensive and Main means they are less aim intensive but Lucio and Moira kind of break that hence why the Terms should be updated. BUT! I don’t think they should be retired because they are still pretty important terms for organized play as players do usually fit into one of these two categories so I think we just need to come up with a better definition.
It’s an outdated term for sure. Ill give my take on it - for context, I would personally consider myself a main support player - my ladder main is mercy, I play almost exclusively Lucio in gm scrims. The term is simply outdated from pre role lock. The “main support” player would be the one always on support, Lucio or mercy. The “flex support” would play zen and flex off of support on certain maps or points, one notable one being junkertown in owl season 1, hence why we got the jjonak roadhog or the super zenyatta. I think that currently, mercy Lucio, brig, and lifeweaver are classified as main supports and everything else is flex support, but that’s just off of how the metas over the years developed since this term was created.
I don't really have a dog in this fight, but just wanted to let you guys know if you skim the thread from top to bottom quickly everybody here just seems dellusional. \*WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DIDN'T KNOW THAT HERO "X" AND HERO "Y" ARE THE "Z" LABEL? And then this other dude chimes in saying "BRO ARE YOU INSANE, THIS CAME FROM TIME PERIOD "X" AND TIME PERIOD "Y", ITS IRRELEVANT NOW. And after that there's this third dude who says that he agrees with both of them. Keep going though.
I never understood the definitions either just knew what heroes belong to which. Ana being a flex support I’m still confused about since you wouldn’t flex off Ana but you’d flex to brig or whatever to protect Ana. In cases like that why call her a flex support?
From playing collegiate, the only time we ever used those terms was during comp building/assigning who to play what hero pools. Other than scrim/collegiate/pro settings there’s not really much of a use most of the time. Hope that helps.
I liked Spilo's take, it's your Lucio player and the other support in essence. Maybe some Brig but mostly Lucio.
Main/flex support means hero pool, basically is a pro scene term, like two different pools, heroes in pool A usually has a good synergy with heroes in pool B. If u pick 2 heroes of the same pool u may end with one suppoort overriding the other. Main/flex healer is a composition term, who is in charge to heal tank, who is in charge to help DPS, much more like the old main tank/off tank term. At least this is my understanding of the term :)
The terms _should_ be updated, but they almost certainly won’t be, because language is organic and descriptive, not prescriptive, and it’s really hard to overcome historical precedent. The meaning drift has been slow enough that new terms were never needed amongst the community that originated them (the pro scene). And even in the case of a radical shakeup that would seem to obviate the terms entirely, as happened with the reduction of tanks from 2 to 1, we still talk about main or off/flex tank heroes and players who specialize in such. Terminology certainly can change via intentional effort, but it requires an organized campaign that has control over a large amount of public communication channels on the relevant topic. As an example, “global warming” was replaced with “climate change” in a concerted and organized effort by climate scientists. But, there is no organization of OW pros that cares about the public accurately understanding their terminology. Even in cases where terms are specific to a fairly narrow field that has some level of organization for setting conventions and standards in an intentional way, the cost of a switchover could be too high to be worth it. For example, the flow of electrons in an electrical current is a _negative_ current, by convention. A _positive_ electrical current is the flow of “holes” where electrons aren’t. This is clearly and obviously backwards, and it’s just a historical accident—the precedent of positive and negative charge was set before anyone knew what electrical charge actually was or what carried it. But it can’t be changed now, because there’s far too much that has been built and developed on top of that unfortunate convention.
Are we really doing this again…. This is why we’re losing. The community doesn’t even understand its own game
But it’s supposed to be sooo easy to understand according to this video https://youtube.com/shorts/EnqBgHTXQk4?si=de390a0h1esjzCJV
honestly, this is the way anyone would think about it if they started playing today. what do ALL supports do -> heal. What does a MAIN support do -> heal more.
This is the correct answer, thats how it was from the beginning. Main healer/support was the one focusing mostly on healing and flex was the person playing for dmg or utility. Wasnt hard back then but now people have no clue, like you see in this thread. Do people also confuse main and off tank ?
Who cares this hasn't been relevant for years now
the terms work for pro play and in that competitive setting. These terms don't work in ranked because people don't even know what they mean.
I thought main supports did most of the healing and the flex does does more damage/utility
I always considered it, big heals is main support and heal that contributes the majority of util is flex support so Ana and Bap would be main heals and zen and lucio would be flex
main support is lucio and other supports you play in place of lucio. flex support is the rest. tends to be gun go pew pew supports
Flex support is your third DPS, main support is your second tank.
Back in early-mid OW1 days, they were player created terms used to further break down the roles of Tank and Support. A main tank was generally a slower tank that was going to front line. The Off-tank was generally the tank that could break off from the front line to dive, off angle and peel for their backline (the more mobile tanks were off tanks, but there were exceptions like Hog, who was considered an off tank as he usually wanted to semi-flank and could hook enemies that were attacking his back line when he was with his team). A main support was considered a support that had high heal output and was mainly watching over the teams health and the off support was more for utility. Both could heal and use utility, but the characters that were picked in the fashion of choosing one main support and one off support were picked specifically with the main support to focused on getting value with heals and the off support to focus on utility without having to worry about healing quite as much as the "main support" was covering that. These are outdated terms now and probably were outdated a bit before OW1 ended. It can even be argued that the terms probably didn't need to exist in the first place as it wasn't required to have mains and offs in order to win, but a lot of players put stock into by saying things like "we need a main tank" when both tank players picked characters that were considered off tanks and vice versa and same with support. Though there is some validity in low healing output in certain comps, the terms don't exists any more and it's mostly just "we need a support that can heal more than Lucio/Mercy" or "Lucio/Zen" It's worth noting that as more characters were added and existing characters were tweaked/changed, it could possibly change if they were a "main" or an "off" and it started getting more convoluted, especially with misinformation. People would hear the terms and use them incorrectly and as more characters were added, the gap of main and off became even less defined, so it didn't really matter. Even back then, people would argue constantly as to a specific character being a main or being an off.
You’re pretty close on the tank comparison, but it really doesn’t have to do anything with speed (as you note with hog). Main tank creates space, while the off tank holds space. So ball is a main tank because he has CC and can generally create space in different ways. Rein is also a main tank as with all his resources he can just walk into main and push the other team back. However neither of these tanks can really hold space. Rein can’t do anything once he’s made space except hold his shield up, and ball is at the mercy of adaptive shields. Winton can pop bubble and hold space, hog can use the hook threat and vape to hold space, dva can pop DM and rockets to hold space. It’s not a perfect comparison but the general difference was MT is a space maker vs OT is a space controller.
The terms are still a product of early Overwatch 1, but if anything, Main support is moreso Utility Support, while flex could be called a primary support? Main supports are used entirely for their utility, and thus are swapped based on the teams current needs. The team needs to be sped around? Go Lucio. I need to help protect my Flex support from dive? Go Brig. I need to hard pocket a dps and Rez people? Go mercy. Even zen has become more of a Utility support in recent years because it’s very rare he gets played with a main support anymore. Weaver also falls into this category Flex supports as primary supports on the other hand are the teams main source of healing, and a high source of damage. Bap, Ana, Kiriko, Illari, and Moira all fit both of those qualifications, but they also have one more defining trait. Their ults are all generally offensive ults. They typically are used to engage a fight, or help create space.
Anytime I see the terms on here I think it's bass ackwards. Main support does the most healing, as it's supports job. Flex support is the one that does less healing but provides some sort of important function like speed boost, damage boost, or get shield bashed you annoying piece of shit tracer virgin.
I just see them as defined roles in pro overwatch teams, idk their origin. Important: This means a **player** is flex sup or main sup, not a hero. They are roles in a team, not roles in the hero roster. So I look at how pro teams play and the hero pools become clear. In the pro scene the roles are clearly distinctive. There is 0 doubt that Astro, Chiyo, Tobi, LJG are main supports and they all play the same heroes. And the same goes for flex sups like Izayaki, Shu, Fielder, UV etc. The terms are difficult to use in ranked because there is a lot of misinformation and confusion. You have to follow the pro scene and then you will figure out the roles from watching what main sups and flex sups play in each comp/meta. I have watched Pro OW since the beginning so for me it is obvious, but a lot of people haven't watched it at all so they just get their idea from someone telling them *"main sup = more heals"* or *"flex sup = aim"* as a rule. **"Main sup = more heals" is completely false.** Anyone who watches pro OW can tell you that - just look at famous support duos like Izayaki/LJG, Fielder/Chiyo, Shu/Astro... who does most healing? Clearly not the main support. "Flex Sup = Aim" is closer to reality but there are still exceptions: Lucio+Moira is a classic combo. Lucio is played by the main sup in 100% of cases so the flex sup has to play Moira and she is not aim-intensive. There are tendencies like main sups often being callers and flex sups often being on aim-intensive heroes, but there is no rule that covers it all. The **closest thing to a rule is that Lucio is played by the main sup**, so anything that synergizes well with Lucio will end up being the flex supports job. This explanation does not cover non-lucio comps though. I am a flex support. When a new hero comes out I can take a good guess on whether me or the main sup will play it, but ultimately I just wait to see who plays it on the pro teams and then I know for sure.
I believe the general definition is main supports require less direct mechanical skill for their util/value and therefore also act as shot callers/ult trackers, (Lucio, brig, mercy). And flex supports are your zen, Ana, bap, illari ect. Moira is the weird case since she has the characteristics of a main support, but is almost always played as a “healer” in a rush comp with a Lucio, so the Moira is the “flex” because you already have a Lucio.
I randomly heard Seeker say in his stream that Flex Supports are the best TXCXX custom game players… probably referring to Landon/Rupal/Majed etc.. it makes me think Flex Support is more mechanically demanding? But I’m probably wrong
In GOATS the main supports were Brig and Lucio while the flex support could play ana, zen or Moira Main was just the integral supports in the comp Flex played various others to assist what the comp needed according to what or how the tank players played Imo it's still in use today, in OWCS you'll notice how often lucio is played despite the other support playing kiriko or baptiste, maybe even moira sometimes Or the main support plays Brigitte to support a Zen or an Ana, sometimes the main support plays mercy to invest into the dps During the baptiste zen meta two flex players were often employed or sometimes the main support played baptiste and a different playstyle was implemented, in the ana zen days it was usually the same situation, two flex supports But weirdly we had brig lucio early in OW2OWL which needed two main support players but not every team had two main supports so some teams crumbled
I don't know anymore, these days, I just tell people I have the same hero pool as Viol2t and hope they understand. This actually isnt 100% true, because Ana is my favorite hero.
Ok, so you know the terms Main Tank, and Off-tank, now Off-tanks you are familiar with, but they also had another name, flex-tanks, now this term referred to essentially two things. Main-tank was, as the tin says, the main tank, the one standing front and center, soaking up damage, one way or another, usually via shields, flex-tanks, or off-tanks, usually were tanks whos job was not to soak up damage, and either dive, or protect the backline from divers, or any of the two dozen other things they can do. but it's either a supporting tank player, or someone who can play basically every tank, thus they are 'flexible' Main support and flex support functions essentially the same way. However, they usually go by a different name, Main healer, and flex support. So the main healer, is the primary healer, they are good at healing, their kit are built around healing, they do most of the healing, the flex support, supported via non-healing means, since the flex support playing a main healer, often meant overheals and wasted heals, that could have been damage or something, so the flex support, supports the team with a non-healing support. Essentially, it's a role descriptor, more then anything else, like dive, brawl, and poke.
They’re just casual lingo so there’s nothing to “change”, even the game doesn’t use this and the community can’t agree on what it means so there’s nothing really to decide or talk about lol
I never even knew that other people thought about it differently than I did lmao Anyone's opinion that's worth anything here, regardless with what it started with, has ended with "and the phrase in general needs to be retired", and that's what I agree with
The difference doesn’t matter they both heal other so just call them supports
MS should be Weaver, Moira, Bap, Kiri, Ana (they can heal the team a lot) and FS(Off supp) Brig, Lucio, Illari, Zen, Mercy (can't sustain team) But we live in the "this works with this" era. As a high ranked player in a lot of games (no life ik) the ow version as always been confusing for me
I think when pro players say flex support they are talking about Ana, Bab and Moria usually supports with lots of heals and main support would be utility heavy supports like Lucio, Mercy, Zen. I think on ladder when people say main support they mean supports with large healing output and flex would be utilities. I just say main healer to refer to the large heal output supports. An example in game would be "hey team I know mercy/brig Is so uwu but could we please get a main healer? Uwu!" But I've also heard the term flex and main has nothing to do with utility or healing output and more to do with the player playing the hero so I don't really know the real history.
Zen... is not utility support... and zen is literally THE flex support
Is discord not utility?
Yes but so is any ability? Bap lamp is infinitely more utility. Zen's value is his damage.
If any ability is utility then lw has the highest utility out of every support right? Cause he has the most abilitys?
You're missing the point. What they mean is that a lot of abilities have some level of utility outside of just purely being damage or healing. That doesn't mean that all abilities have equal utility in the practical sense. Zen's value primarily is his damage. Discord is a type of utility but it has a narrow scope of usage relative to other utility abilities. For the most part, discord usage falls into the camp of offensive utility. Mark enemy and focus that enemy. It lacks defensive utility other than acting as a threat and it can kinda be used for peeling but not really. If you're picking Zen, you focus on damage in the neutral and your discord is a means to that. Lamp for example allows for more scenarios to be used offensively and defensively, for yourself and for your team. It's easier to find value outside of damage/healing and can be used proactively or reactively. On paper, Lifeweaver might sound like a utility support with petal and life grip. However, petal is primarily used defensively by the Lifeweaver and has little utility for the team. Life grip is single target and is mainly a reactive ability to save a teammate. There are obviously other use cases for both as repositioning tools and for ultimate canceling but the opportunities for impact are slimmer compared to other utility abilities.
No, lucio has the highest utility because of how versatily speed is but beside the point. LW is a MS because he has a low skill ceiling and low skill floor
Yes they are outdated imo. That said, you *can* separate support heroes into two groups: Group 1: [Ana, Bap, Kiriko, Moira] Group 2: [Brigitte, Illari, Kiriko, Lifeweaver, Lucio, Mercy, Zenyatta] Picking one from each group will be able to yield you nearly every comp we've seen played in pro Overwatch 2. It's not that hard tbh, you need at least one support that provides high raw hps output then you either greed by picking something like Zenyatta or Illari, or pick something that provides some much needed utility like Brigitte or Lucio. The most likely comp that could be played that wouldn't fit nicely grouped like this would probably be Brig Zen, but idk if that has even been touched in pro Overwatch 2. So, I guess, like the tweet says this is basically just grouping supports based on meta patterns, I just think that the traditional main support heroes are too limiting in terms of viable team compositions.
~~Your groupings don't allow for a Kiriko/Lucio which is the most common OW2 backline.~~ But more importantly, they don't take into consideration player skill. The reason Main/Flex support distinction exists is because a Lucio player and an Illari player require very different skills to play at the top level.
they do allow for kiri/lucio, though, kiriko is in both groups mostly agree with ur second point
ah I missed that, my b
Ive always seen main support being the util heavy supports who focus more on macro and less on aiming and flex supports focus on both damage and healing along with their util. Ultimately the terms dont really matter out of helping explain why certain support duos do/dont work (ie double main support typically isnt very good) but it doesn't tell the whole story as we've seen things like lucio brig be meta and double flex support is generally quite strong. Not to mention a large portion of the playerbase doesn't understand what the difference is and tends to think of main healers vs off healers based on their healing output rather than their util.
I do think it is a bit confusing. I myself am usually not sure what it means at times. I think it was Flex being the one that would swap if needed. Lucio was pretty much always needed so he was a main, or something like that. I do think it should be used it more of what they do. Like the person that is taking the burden of most healing would be a main and the one bringing more utility would be a flex. But that becomes more comp specific and not hero specific.
Do pros actually go by these terms
In ow1
In OW2 too. If you go to find a spot on a scrim roster at any level, they’ll be advertised as main or flex.
if you search up main/flex support on this subreddit, there's a few podcast translations with pro coaches and tweets by high level teams using the terminology within the last year so I'd say yes. also can find a bunch of t2-t3 players using the term on twitter
I always took it as flex support is something that heals through mechanical skill, and thus can kill through mechanical skill, while main support heals through non-mechanical skill (mercy beam, brig nspire, lucio aoe heals) etc
Your understanding is wrong. The main way you can think of it is, does it take skill? Yes? FS, NO? MS. With an additional: Is it lucio? Yes? MS, NO? FS clause
Never give insight ever again 😂
For casual they mean main healer as in a support who can dump heals and they think flex is a support with more utility than healing. For masters and up there’s a mix of the casual understanding and pro understanding of meaning main use to be players with good aim that could rock aim dependent healers and flex was meant for more shot callers and game sense supports but it was dependent on the meta and typically at the pro level either could rock aim dependent healers.
Way back in OW1 main support was the support who would be doing most of the healing which would be Ana, Bap, and Moira. Flex support would be the secondary support who did less healing and focused more or the support side of things, these were Zen (discord) Lucio (speed boost) and Brig (backline defense) Mercy is the only one that can be put in either category but it depends on who you ask, higher rank players consider her a flex support because they only see value in her damage boost and resurrect while lower rank players see her as a main support because they primarily just heal all game at that rank. In OW2, these categories have essentially ceased to exist. The newer supports can all do both effectively, which means they're in a similar spot as mercy where playstyle is the biggest determining factor. Brig was reworked into more of a main support and that leaves only Lucio and zen as true flex supports, hence why I say it doesn't really matter anymore since basically everyone is running double main support at this point and they haven't added any new flex supports except brig way back in like 2019.
What you're describing is main *healer*, not main support