Real talk: it made me a much better healer once I learned that the DPS need more healing attention than the tank, and that if it’s a dive tank, I’ve got more leeway to let them come to me. Now, if I see “Critical!” on my Cass and Dva, I’m going to heal Cass first and trust that you’re making space where you’re at. So you’re dead on and I see you.

We all got a lot to learn, but I think teams do better when we’re all trying to understand what our teammates are doing, rather than assuming everyone’s just an idiot or a coward lol

Honestly, that’s a valid critique and I’ll examine my setup and see if I can improve it. You’ve genuinely made me rethink whether I can improve my communication!

That said, I didn’t talk about it in the post cause it’s meant to be entertaining, but yeah pings are my go to by default. If I can ping the Sombra in my ass or the Pharah who’s coming for it, that’s preferable. Personally, I only resort to “Fall back!” in that case if it’s happened repeatedly.

But also, there are only so many reliable ways to communicate with pings. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried to ping an enemy only for Mercy to say “I’m going to resurrect them!” at my teammate’s corpse nearby. Bitch, no I am not and don’t you tell them that! Fall back reliably says what it says, which is part of why I chose to make it a primary keybind for me.

As for “Come to me for healing!” that one is finnicky because there’s no way to create a shortcut directly to that line. You can only use “I need healing!” while looking at an ally who is already at critical health. If they’re above half health and I hit it, it just says that I need healing, and that’s confusing for the other support. I’ve had plenty of instances where the other support stops healing one of our teammates to check on me because they heard that line and instinctively respond, only for that teammate to die in that second they took their eyes off them. (Or I guess eye, in Ana’s case.)

That said, it’s helpful if I know that’s more clear to other people! I can put that back in rotation and see if that works better. I usually rely on a combination of enemy pings, group up, and fall back (in that order) but I haven’t had “Come to me for healing” in the primary rotation since they changed how contextual pings worked a while back, so I’ll give it a shot and see if it’s more helpful again!

I use that occasionally too, but I default to fall back because a lot of the time, I’m not trying to communicate that I’m offering healing if they decide they want it. I’m trying to communicate that where they’re at is either putting their teammates (often me but just as often everyone else) in danger, or that, due to factors they can’t see behind them, it’s not safe to push in farther.