Introduction

League Win Rate Popularity Bronze / Silver 38.3% (48th) 26.8% Gold / Platinum 48.3% (47th) 18.9% Diamond / Master 51.1% (59th) 10.1% Overall 46.6% (56th) 16.9%

Base Kit Changes

Version Lvl 1 Lvl 4 Lvl 7 Lvl 10 Lvl 13 Lvl 16 Lvl 20 Original (3 HP per tick) 3 4 4 4 5 6 7 Current (2 HP per tick) 2 2 3 3 3 4 4 Proposed (3 HP per tick) 3 4 4 4 5 6 7

Version Lvl 1 Lvl 4 Lvl 7 Lvl 10 Lvl 13 Lvl 16 Lvl 20 Original (8 ticks per second) 24 32 32 32 40 48 56 Current (8 ticks per second) 16 16 24 24 24 32 32 Proposed (6 ticks per second) 18 24 24 24 30 36 42

Version Lvl 1 Lvl 4 Lvl 7 Lvl 10 Lvl 13 Lvl 16 Lvl 20 Original (15 HP per tick) 15 17 19 22 24 28 32 Current (15 HP per tick) 15 17 19 22 24 28 32 Proposed (20 HP per tick) 20 23 26 29 33 37 43

Version Lvl 1 Lvl 4 Lvl 7 Lvl 10 Lvl 13 Lvl 16 Lvl 20 Original (8 ticks per second) 360 408 456 528 576 672 768 Current (8 ticks per second) 360 408 456 528 576 672 768 Proposed (6 ticks per second) 360 414 468 522 594 666 774

Talent Changes

Talent Popularity Win Rate We Move Together 52.4% 47.3% Maximum Tempo 18.4% 45.1% Accelerando 24.5% 46.9% Slip 4.7% 42%

Talent Popularity Win Rate Subwoofer 32.6% 46.4% Off the Wall 3.6% 45.4% Chase the Bass 60.3% 46.7%

Talent Popularity Win Rate Party Mix 77.4% 47% Sonic Amplifier 17.4% 45.1% Boombox 5.2% 44.4%

Talent Popularity Win Rate Sound Barrier 94.2% 46.6% Reverse Amp 5.8% 49.5%

Talent Popularity Win Rate Rejuvenescência 77.6% 52.7% Bring it Together 19.2% 51.5% Up the Frequency 3.2% 52.1%

Version Lvl 16 Lvl 20 Current @ 3500 HP (average Assassin health) 984 total healing

@ 41 per tick 1080 total healing

@ 45 per tick Current @ 5000 HP (average Warrior health) 1104 total healing

@ 46 per tick 1224 total healing

@ 51 per tick Proposed @ 3500 HP (average Assassin health) 936 total healing

@ 52 per tick 1044 total healing

@ 58 per tick Proposed @ 5000 HP (average Warrior health) 1044 total healing

@ 58 per tick 1152 total healing

@ 64 per tick

Version Lvl 16 Lvl 20 Current w/ 0-1 allies (0% bonus healing) 672 total healing

@ 28 per tick 768 total healing

@ 32 per tick Current w/ 2+ allies (45% bonus healing) 960 total healing

@ 40 per tick 1128 total healing

@ 47 per tick Proposed w/ 1 ally (15% bonus healing) 774 total healing

@ 43 per tick 900 total healing

@ 50 per tick Proposed w/ 2 allies (30% bonus healing) 864 total healing

@ 48 per tick 1008 total healing

@ 56 per tick Proposed w/ 3 allies (45% bonus healing) 972 total healing

@ 54 per tick 1134 total healing

@ 63 per tick Proposed w/ 4 allies (60% bonus healing) 1062 total healing

@ 59 per tick 1260 total healing

@ 70 per tick

Conclusion (TL;DR)

Hello there! I'm CriticKitten. You may know me from my more popular segment, 7 Days Later, in which I keep track of how heroes are performing after recent balance patches. Here is a link to my most recent edition of that series. However, we're not here today to talk about balance changes that have already happened, but rather balance changes that I think need to happen in the future.The Support role has been a problematic one for a long time now. It has often been dominated by only one or two supports in the "main healer" slot, and a lot of other supports that many players consider "sub-standard". In order to create a healthier in-game meta, I've decided to bring my usual data work and analysis into the debate by focusing on the healers that are currently under-performing, and trying to find ways to get them back into the meta.Fair warning, this blog is more thorough than my typical 7 Days Later blogs, so be prepared to read!I thought we should start this new segment off by discussing one of the newest healers in Heroes of the Storm, and the largest victim of the current Support meta: Lucio.Lucio came into the Nexus with fairly strong sustain healing, and his Sound Barrier made him a welcome favorite in the professional meta at a time when the dreaded "Shield Meta" was taking hold. Lucio rapidly became the top healer in the game, and Blizzard subjected him to multiple nerfs. The most recent, however, was the most devastating, dropping him completely out of contention as a primary healer and sending him tumbling to the bottom of the charts in terms of win rate.Here are his current stats:As you can see, he has been fallen quite far from his lofty heights, and while he certainly needed a bit of a nerf at the time, I think we can all agree that this was too much. So, how can we fix this to bring Lucio back into the meta without returning him to the monster that he was before? After spending some time analyzing how the hero works and crunching numbers in spreadsheets, I believe I've come up with a solution.All data provided in this post was collected from Hotslogs , which is a database of player-submitted games. As usual, keep in mind that my numbers may differ slightly from Hotslogs's "official" figures as the site regularly updates older information as more games are added. Also, please keep in mind that this is merely my own proposal for how the hero could be changed to bring them back into the meta. I do not pretend to be the end-all, be-all opinion on this subject, and I am open to alternatives. If you have any, by all means, suggest away! This is merely meant to be a "springboard" of sorts into a debate about how we can bring more heroes back into the Support meta.As usual, I've created a spreadsheet containing some of the relevant data for this hero, as well as data showing how my proposal would work. Take a look at that here! Also, I've created a rework concept on this site which summarizes the changes here, which is visible here . For a more detailed explanation about what I've changed and why, read on!This part of my proposal is meant to fulfill several key goals:1) Minimalist design, so that the changes could reasonably be completed in a single balance patch rather than requiring a full rework of the character.2) Increase Lucio's base healing without making him as unreasonably strong as he was before, and while having a minimal effect on Amp It Up.In order to fulfill this goal, I adjusted the speed at which Lucio's healing "ticks" go off. Currently, Lucio heals 8 times per second, each of these representing one "tick" of healing (one green number on the game screen). My proposed adjustment is to reduce this figure to 6 "ticks" per second, while buffing the base healing amount of Healing Boost back to its original 3.Here is the healing per tick under this method:And here is the total healing received per second:As you can see, this increases Lucio's base healing in the early and late portions of the game, but not to the same levels as it was when he was first released.This change, of course, merits a change to Amp It Up so that it still ticks at the same rate while providing roughly the same amount of healing. As such, Amp It Up's healing would be increased to 20 under this proposal, with the same reduction in "ticks" per second.Here is the healing per tick under this method:And here is the total healing received over the three second duration of Amp It Up:This allows Amp It Up to use the same tick pattern as Crossfade does, without sacrificing much (or really, any) of its current levels of healing.There are some talent changes to address as well. Lucio's talents are mostly pretty good in terms of their general power, but suffer from a lack of diversity. There are some talents which are clear favorites and for very obvious reasons. Similarly, there are some talents which see almost no real use, and understandably so.We start out at Lvl 1 by removing the "Slip" talent. My reasoning for this is simple: the talent's use is niche at best, and it under-performs by comparison to every other talent in its tier:"Slip" had some interesting niche uses, but ultimately wasn't as strong as any of the other options in its tier, and thus saw very limited use. It is a talent that Lucio can honestly afford to lose at this point, as buffing it will not fix the fact that its use is still much too niche to justify its selection most of the time.My next proposed change is at Lvl 4, with the talent "Off the Wall":This talent is the lowest in its tier, but is not as niche as "Slip", so it can be made more useful with a slight adjustment in power. I would make the talent slightly more powerful, increasing it to 4 seconds of CD reduction instead of 3.Next is Lvl 7, and I'll just go ahead and say it: I think "Party Mix" needs a nerf. Here's why:As this table shows, "Party Mix" is not only the most popular talent by leaps and bounds, it is also the highest performing talent in its tier. Typically, a higher rate of use should be reflected in a lower overall win rate, due to the number of less-skilled players using it....and yet, "Party Mix" is easily outperforming other choices. My proposal would be to nerf the final range increase to 15% instead of 20%. This ultimately forces Lucio to play a bit more carefully to get his healing in.My proposal has no changes for Lvl 10. This may seem odd, given that "Sound Barrier" is significantly more popular, but here is my rationale:"Sound Barrier" performs more poorly overall in terms of win rate, which is precisely what you'd expect to see when a talent is being selected significantly more often. This suggests that "Reverse Amp" may not be all that weak, but rather is simply more niche in its use. So I don't want to change it when it may not be necessary.The only other talent tier in which I have changes is at Lvl 16, and this is likely to be the tier that is the most controversial. So I'll open with the stats:As you can see, "Rejuvenescência" is in the same boat as "Party Mix": highest popularity and also the highest win rate, although it's not as bad as "Party Mix" was. To that end, I think it should be nerfed, but only by a minimal amount: down to 2.5% of max health per second, rather than 3%.This produces the following results (with more detailed results in my spreadsheet):This leads to a nerf of roughly 6-8% of the talent's total healing power, which is a fairly small reduction in power that I feel is adequately compensated with the buffs to his baseline healing. As such, this talent will probably trend slightly downwards, but should still be a very strong choice.But this is not the only change I'd like to make in this tier. I also wanted to address the healing potential of "Bring it Together". This talent currently provides a 45% increase in healing when Lucio has 2 or more allies in range of Crossfade at the time of Amp It Up's activation. This is a strong boost, but ultimately yields nothing if Lucio isn't grouped with at least two other members of his team, and provides no additional benefit if you group up more members beyond that. My proposal is to adjust it so that Lucio's Healing Boost (when Amp It Up is activated) heals for 15% more for each ally in range of Crossfade (so 15% for 1 ally, 30% for 2, and so on). My goal with this change was to make the talent's healing weaker when only grouped with 2 allies, but ultimately stronger when grouped with more. And as you can see from the results below, this goal has been achieved:This change makes it so that "Bring it Together" can actually beat "Rejuvenescência" when your team is grouped together around Lucio....but it has the very obvious drawback of clustering your team together, which means you're at greater risk of taking significant AoE damage. This change to "Bring it Together" would encourage players to pick this talent instead of "Rejuvenescência" when running with a less tanky composition (read: single tank comps) with a back line that plays close together. It also makes this talent more useful in tight corridors or when grouped for specific reasons (like a Sanctification drop). I think this change does a good job of splitting the difference between the pros and cons of grouping together, and when combined with the nerf to "Party Mix", should encourage some more diverse forms of play in the late game.Lucio is currently a non-meta healer that could be brought back into meta play rather easily with a few adjustments to his talents and base kit. I suggested increasing his base healing with Crossfade to 3, but reducing the number of healing "ticks" from 8 to 6, which increases his base healing but doesn't make him quite as strong as he was on release. Amp It Up can be buffed to 20 HP per tick in order to compensate for this change to his healing rate without increasing or decreasing its power by any significant amount.In addition, I suggested small changes to Lvls 1 and 4 by removing "Slip" as a talent choice, and buffing "off the Wall" to have better CD reduction on Soundwave when used with Wall Ride. At Lvl 7, I suggested reducing the range reward of Party Mix to 15% to encourage more thoughtful positioning on the part of Lucio players, and because of its synergy with my changes at Lvl 16. At that tier, I suggested reducing "Rejuvenescência" to 2.5% of maximum health per second (down from 3%), which yields a rather small overall reduction in the talent's strength. I also suggested changing the function of "Bring it Together" to grant 15% additional healing to Amp It Up for each ally near Lucio when it is activated. This makes the talent weaker with only 2 allies (its original function) but stronger with 3, and even stronger still when your entire team groups around you. The talent then has clear pros and cons: its overall healing can significantly surpass "Rejuvenescência" in certain situations, but it also forces tighter grouping of your team, which can make you vulnerable to AoE attacks.I feel that these changes could be reasonably completed in a single balance patch without forcing a more thorough rework of the hero's kit, and that these changes would bring Lucio back into the game's meta as a strong sustain healer with an even stronger late-game performance.Do you agree? Disagree? Do you feel there are other changes I should have made? Or do you feel that I made too many? Let me know in the comments section below. I look forward to having an active discussion about how Blizzard can start to repair the Support role and give us a greater range of choices in the current meta!