By default, Overwatch 2's new support [[link]] hero has one of the most complex control schemes in the game.
While sending out heals, Lifeweaver needs to drop his flower platform, destroy it, dash out of danger, pull allies, and swap to his secondary weapon to deal damage. Misusing one of these abilities can get him killed pretty easily compared to other supports who have much higher survivability.
Immediately after his release last week, players found playing him a chore. Less than an hour after his release, there was a popular Reddit thread simply titled, "Lifeweaver's controls are a*s" with 190 comments discussing how to fix them.
After only a few hours, Reddit user SammyIsSeiso had an entire custom game and video to demonstrate the community's desired keybinds, which circulated around enough to catch Blizzard's attention.
Every change in the popular [[link]] video will be implemented next week, according to a tweet from game director Aaron Keller. "This will become the new default, with options to use the old style," he says.
Here's exactly how Lifeweaver's keybinds will change:
- Healing Blossom - Left click
- Thorn Volley - Right click
- Petal Platform - Shift (cancels on second press)
- Rejuvenating Dash - Double tap space bar
The change to Lifeweaver's Healing [[link]] Blossom and Thorn Volley will probably save your life now that you don't have to swap between them using a keyboard key. Some players took his Petal Platform off of right click and made it swap his weapons, but you still had to fire with left click. With the new controls, tapping right click will swap and start to fire the gun with one click.
Like Hanzo's leap, double tapping space bar will activate Lifeweaver's dash. Lifelong jump spammers might struggle with not using it accidentally, but it frees up the shift key for Petal Platform, which you don't have to cancel with a separate key anymore.
Other than the obvious accessibility problems with Lifeweaver's original controls, it never made any sense why he didn't follow the same logic as some of the existing heroes. Initially, Blizzard implied that it wanted players to only swap to Thorn Volley occasionally because it's the least important part of his kit, but I think it underestimated how many people want to squeeze out every bit of damage they can. Support players, including Mercy players, know how important it is to be able to pull out a gun when you're being hounded by tanks and DPS. Good support play involves dealing damage when there's nothing else to do.
Keller said a slight nerf to how fast Lifeweaver auto-reloads his Thorn Volley while you are using Healing Blossom will come to compensate for how quickly you can swap to it. And lead hero designer Alec Dawson said on Twitter that other balance changes to Lifeweaver will be announced later this week.
Overwatch 2 season 4 launched last week with a space opera-themed battle pass and a community-made map that looks a lot like Quake. It also came with a ridiculous Lifeweaver bug that sends your teammates flying across the map.