About Ed Thorn
Ed joined Metabomb in May 2017 and is responsible for the Overwatch and Destiny sections of the site.
There's a lot more to life as a Support Hero in Overwatch than simply keeping your team alive, and we think the developers at Blizzard have done a pretty amazing job of providing an interesting mix of Support characters in the game. Regardless of whether you enjoy sustaining your teammates with healing powers, boosting up their damage output, or just laying devilish traps for enemy Heroes to tumble into, we think you'll find a firm favourite in this category extremely quickly.
Each one of the Support Heroes in our category tier list assist their teammates in very specific ways, and in pre-made teams you'll want to pick a character that plays into the strengths of an equally specific team build. That's all well and good, but an awful lot of players will end up spending the greater part of their time queuing up with random players. When this happens, and there are limited guaranteed synergies to play into, it can be quite tricky to know which of the four Heroes in this category provide the most generally useful help in battle.
This is where our own round-up of the best Support Hero to play comes in. You should of course keep in mind the usual caveat that you'll always play more efficiently with a Hero you love - rather than one you feel forced to pick by sites like us - and that you should absolutely switch to a "lesser" Hero in order to deal with a specific bottleneck. Still we've ranked all four of the Support Heroes by our own preference, as well as the general wisdom of the crowd that prevails in the current metagame.
Editor's Note: As Season 9 matures we've not seen much movement. Overwatch's latest hero Brigitte isn't available in Competitive play at the moment so that's why she's not featured in our tier list just yet. Otherwise, we've noticed a small resurgence in Mercy's pick rate since her nerf, but Lucio and Moira still remain the most solid picks throughout all ranks. Stay tuned for an update soon!
Support hero rankings - Season 9
Here's a quick look at the standings with links to the relevant guides. Read further on down the page for a discussion of each individual Support Hero.
| Rank | Hero | Guide | Role |
|---|---|---|---|
| 6 | Symmetra | Symmetra guide | Support |
| 5 | Zenyatta | Zenyatta guide | Support |
| 4 | Ana | Ana guide | Support |
| 3 | Mercy | Mercy guide | Support |
| 2 | Moira | Moira guide | Support |
| 1 | Lucio | Lucio guide | Support |
6. Symmetra
There's a lot to love about Symmetra, and a skilled player can make a huge difference to a match when playing this Hero, although she struggles to both stay alive and dish out the pain once she's laid her various gadgets around the battlefield. In a tight team she can be a game-changer, and a recent reworking of the hero has made her an intimidating proposition in combat.
5. Zenyatta
Like Symmetra, Zenyatta has some extremely powerful buffing and debuffing abilities, and his Ultimate ability is incredible for preventing team wipes and keeping the pace of the game moving forwards. Zenyatta has enjoyed a huge surge of popularity in both the casual and competitive play scenes in recent weeks, and shoots up our rankings accordingly. If you've not previously made time to master the monk, now's the time to make amends.
4. Ana
Ana's kit centers around having decent aim and impeccable situational awareness, and she's proven herself to be a formidable healing and fighting force in the competitive scene. She's a generally stronger pick on tightly coordinated teams, but can still also be a very strong addition to a group of players in the random queue as well.
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3. Mercy
Although Mercy requires her teammates to have at least some level of awareness of when they're being healed or buffed in battle, we still find her a great choice of healer. She shares the same sort of versatility as our top pick this month, although in different ways that make her not quite as universally accessible.
2. Moira
Since Moira's release towards the beginning of Season 7 she's certainly had quite the impact and now stands tall as one of the best supports in Overwatch. This is all down to her immense damage dealing potential, as her orbs are capable of chipping away at enemy health bars from afar while she sits back and heals her allies. Lets not forget her Fade ability that allows her to dip in and out of fights with immense speed - we reckon she'll be in the meta for a while.
1. Lucio
While you can swap between the two top spots, Lucio remains our first pick when it comes to playing with just about any team composition, and on any map. He received a major rework in 2017, which buffed the effectiveness of his auras and increased his fire-rate, making him an even stronger all-rounder of a support. His ability to both ferry teammates back into battle quickly and bring them back from the brink of death makes him an exceptionally versatile character for both newcomers and seasoned players.
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