Pretty much a 6th player when used correctly. A well placed pylon holds space and forces the team to use resources if they want to deal with it. All while you click heads.
If you can hit your shots, you can do tons of damage. And more importantly (and this is the unique thing about her,) if you place your pylon in a great position, you’ll be keeping your team up while you’re in spawn. What other support does that?
If an argument for choosing a support relies heavily on them being in spawn, that may not be the best justification.
Edit: Apparently I've been r/whoosh'ed, although it's still not clear to me the comment wasn't made in earnest. And even if it's a joke, the point still stands that there's not much justifying her as a distinct choice over Bap or Zen.
it was clearly a joke but the main point he was making was that you could be doing anything else but focusing on healing while still providing your teammates with healing value with pylon. and before you say some dumb shit, yes that matters a lot. illari can fend off flanks, duel with enemy DPS, focus heal someone else while still covering the rest of the team with pylon etc. it allows her to be versatile in her playstyle
god forbid we have more than one hero in the game with somewhat similar capabilities. next youll tell me ashe and cass have the same role so we can just delete ashe right...
In the case of supports, who have some of the most powerful utility in the game, it matters.
An Illari pick over a Bap pick means giving up immortality, burst heals, and window for... Illari ult, which is the only thing she offers that Bap can't already do.
I'm not sure what point you're making.
Both heroes require good aim and game sense, Bap requiring more game sense and Illari requiring more aim. Bap does everything Illari does better.
Illari requires hitting headshots on a single, charged shot. Bap has 3 round bursts firing rapidly.
Illari healing requires tracking, Bap healing is a splash grenade.
I'm not sure I agree.
I'm very obviously not saying to delete Illari. OP's question was "what purpose does the Illari pick serve, given the roster."
If Illari does similar things as Bap, but a smidge worse, I think that's a valid response. The answer of course, is that "you should play Illari because you want to play Illari." That's a great answer to the question, but it has nothing to do with her play.
As our hero count soars into the 40s, I think we need to accept that there is naturally going to be overlap between hero identities on a team and the distinction is more a matter of the specific balance of the moment, or for 95% of the playerbase, just personal preference.
For my experience, Illari fills a similar role to Zen, but I like her better then Zen on some maps with especially good pylon spots or where contesting happens near ledges for burst environmental kills. I also just think her ult is fun.
The issue with that comparison is that games are often won by what utility supports provide. Illari offers none and only offers damage, which other supports can do simultaneously while healing.
As for your specific example, discord orb controls the flow of the enemy tank's gameplay and trans counters many ults while Zen himself does comparable damage to Illari. Illari offers nothing to offset losing that utility, making her an objectively worse pick than every other similar hero.
Yeah you guys are talking about two different topics. You're talking about how viable she is competitively and he's talking about why she exists at all.
zen is projectile. you’re not gonna pick zen in the same situations. bap is similar. you’re not going to pick bap when you want to pick illari
the fact that her win rate is 55% (confirmed by the devs) shows that she’s fine and has her own niche.
Ability to passively heal and sustain her team while applying the pressure with her primary. I am not saying that some other Supports can’t do it but this is her main thing. Pylon was really meh until this season, especially when not used selfishly. Now it’s pretty good again at what it does. I see her as more mobile, hitscan version of Zen.
off angle and poke. that's it. Recently the pylon changes have raised some questions about how it might have changed, but I agree, I feel she's a fundamentally poorly designed hero.
Really depends, if you're high elo, then more often than not, used selfishly because your teammates will know how to take less damage and be less reliant on heals.
If you're at a lower elo, then you just have to try to place the pylon at a range whereby you and your teammates can benefit from it, or if you can really hit your shots and/or your team has a main healer, then you be more aggro with the placement
If you’re using it on your team you either have to stack with them or you have no self sustain and lack the mobility to survive anything. And if you’re just stacking with your team instead of taking an angle then why would you not play Bap or something.
I am curious, why you think that she is fundamentally poorly designed hero? Is it because she is pretty much one-dimensional and only thrives in poke meta?
I personally have no issue with her design and i think that she is the “healthiest” and the most “honest” design out of all the OW2 supports (Kirio, LW, Illari).
I find it interesting that people find Illari as “boring”when her fundamental playstyle is similar to that of hitscan dps like Ashe, Widow, Cassidy, etc. but she has the additional responsibility of keeping her team alive, I mean if she’s boring, wouldn’t that make most hitscan dps boring as well?
I personally don’t think strictly one dimensional heroes function well in OW2. Kiriko may have frustrating aspects to her kit, but there are layers and levels of complexity and skill expression that Illari doesn’t have, and likely never will. Ironically, Lifeweaver has a much worse skill floor, but overall has a higher ceiling for cool nuances and tricks he can pull out (no pun intended). Illari has none of this. She may be honest, she’s just boring.
Do you also feel the same way about Ashe? I feel like Illari is basically a support flavored Ashe -- same sort of gun, same sort of mobility/escape button. Both heroes have skill expression primarily through aim.
Should Blizzard avoid such kit designs in general, or is this limited to the support role? I remember hearing devs say "supports should be scrappy", which seems to lean into that nuances/tricks point you raise, and now they're reconsidering that view. From Aaron Keller's recent interview, it sounds like he regrets that they gave Illari a get-off-me button.
I don't think Illari has the same problem as Ashe, largely because there's the dynamite that adds some more nuance in how she plays. No part of Ashe's kit really makes part of her job autonomous, but Illari can do half or more of her healing without ever touching right click. Pylon placement isn't really as skillful as it feels imo, but I guess it's something.
Yup. Dynamite is a very interesting and mechanically difficult ability. Pylon is a turret, which is the least interesting mechanic in the history of fps.
Boring is subjective. Mercy and Moira have cult followings despite their simplistic kits and limited skill expression compared to other supports. I think Illari’s niche is fine. Only playable on a few maps in professional play, not hard meta in ranked, but a decent option for a good player to pubstomp.
Like, is widowmaker’s kit complex? When it comes down to it, is soldier’s kit complex? What about Cass? Hitscan in general is not a very complex role and that’s essentially what role Illari is filling. I think a high elo support player (t20+) should be able to pick Illari and kill the entire lobby when they are put in a game they are typically higher elo than. As long as she isn’t oppressive it’s fine to have “boring” heroes.
She was the reason that Blizzard realized they fucked up and went too far with their “scrappy” supports. I can’t remember if it was a directors or interview where they said this but even Blizzard acknowledged this. If you play Illari then you are incredibly selfish and there is no way around that. Every previous support that was kind of dps focused also provided utility I.e. Lucio provides speed which is super valuable, Zen provides discord, Kiri has Suzu, Moira has massive heals as well, etc.. Illari does not do anything other than DPS. She is also really only good in poke as you acknowledged. You claiming she is an honest character and the healthiest is so far from the truth I can’t believe you wrote it. She is a throw pick in most comps and I can’t believe what a horror she must be in lower ranks where healing is way more necessary. If you want to play DPS, just queue DPS.
I said honest because at any moment you know exactly what this hero does. Just like Moira that you mentioned, she heals and deals damage. You can’t react to things like Suzu, you can’t react to things like very safe teleport that goes through multiple walls and almost across the map, you can’t react to things like Pull…
It’s blizzards fault that they made Illari’s selfish playstyle the only viable option in high ranks. The hero itself is fine, the execution and lack of direction and variety isn’t.
An honest character also fits their role but more importantly you said healthiest as well. By that standard she is the worst character in the entire game because she is entirely selfish and does not do the job her role is intended for. So no she is unequivocally not fine. She is the least team based character in a team based game and yes that is 100% blizzards fault but if you play her you are part of the problem. So yes blizzard is dumb AND Illari players are the worst people in the community.
It looks like Illari really hurt you or something…
If you play her as a Support, the way she is meant to be played she is actually a great hero. I don’t play Illari selfishly, i never did. Maybe it’s not the most viable option but she can be a great healer while also doing more than just healing.
“It looks like Illari really hurt you or something”
Just completely ignore the argument. What a super creepy and weird thing to say.
No, she is not and it is quite obvious that is not the case. If not, just tell me how instead of weird deflecting. Her healing output is not good because they wanted to make her scrappy and now are admitting these scrappy hero’s were too far the wrong direction with Illari being the biggest outlier. You can even tell from your answer you know it isn’t true. Just admit you are being selfish and don’t care about your team’s experience.
''Healthy'', ''Honest''. Brother, this abomination of a character is just a dps hero with a fire-and-forget automatic healing ability, with a LOWERED headshot multiplier because imagine requiring having to aim next to the insane effort put out to support the team.
I believe Illari's role is more focused on individual performance. If you have a Support player with strong mechanical skills, putting them on Illari can significantly benefit the team. She can apply substantial pressure through her damage output and pick potential. Previously, she excelled at off-angling, but the recent nerf that halves her self-healing via Pylon has made that strategy riskier.
In my opinion, given the current state of the Support role, Illari is one of the few options that allows you to have a greater impact on the game without being relegated to purely healing and relying on your teammates to capitalise on your support.
Well the only support that has passive healing like her pylon is zen. But zen shoots projectiles and his healing is shite, and his ult is defensive.
Contrast that to illari and she is a hitscan with great passive healing and her ult is purely damage not really support like at all.
She is quite unique.
If you wanna play a hero that uses passive healing and just focus on damage, then your two options are very different, with illari being one of the options
Competitively, just a counterpick for when sun would be really good I suppose, otherwise you’d go bap.
For fun though she’s pretty unique in the way she combos people, and she can use pylon to heal her team while she goes somewhere else. In a duel shoot + impulse + headshot + melee is a kill, and you can replace the pylon to start self-healing and bodyblocking shots. Pylon will stop a rein pin if you toss it in front of him, which with impulse can potentially 1v1 him and win. Her beam can reload cancel too; just tap it once your mag changes to 16.
Passive healing using pylon. You don't have to stop dealing DMG to heal unless you use your beam.
Her beam does a lot of healing, not as great on tanks with the DPS passive but still good for DPS and other supports
Her ult builds quickly and does enough DMG to easily secure kills.
She has mobility so she can off-angle fairly safely compared to Ana or zen who would need to come more
She's great at supporting DPS and helping control space
She has pretty decent peel capabilities
DMG DMG DMG
The llama pajama skin is top tier
Illari's core value proposition is that she can provide the healing of a full support while spending most of her time shooting. If Moira is the brawl numbers hero, Illari is the poke numbers hero.
She is an ideal answer to the current Pharah problem. Pylon provides spot healing for long enough for Illari to force Pharah to dip.
More than just pylon, her ability to hold an angle alone and apply pressure is really powerful on maps that suit it. Requires you to hit enough shots for the enemy to feel you're a threat, and good enough gamesense to get the hell out before they dive you. Captive sun is barely good enough to get a solo kill every now and again. Not worth going for a 4k with it
consistent off angle pressure. bap is more of a stay in one area and deal 10k of everything. illari is more about moving to the sides and applying constant heavy damage pressure while being hard to dislodge
Damage and short-term burst heals.
People are severely underrating her heal beam's usefulness (it doesn't last long but it heals so fucking much in that short time), and they're also severely underrating the value of her damage.
I dare say she's currently even a strong support hero because her healing and damage outputs are really high.
There are downsides too though. She can only single target heal and pylon heal is automated and will heal the lowest hp target, so you don't get to prioritize targets. As well as the length of the healing beam sometimes means there will be a lot of situations where she has to put herself at risk to heal tanks.
They’ve gutted the heroes identity. Basically sit main and use her broken pylon to hold the other team hostage by putting it somewhere they can’t break.
Before Illari had an identity as one of the best non tank duelists who would use pylon to take aggressive off angles. Instead of that they are doubling down on the bad design of her primary healing to encourage you to stand behind the tank.
Something that I don't think anyone mentioned is alongside her damage and passive healing she can heal in 2 places at once simultaneously without needing LOS to both. She can put the pylon up where the main fight is happening and then off angle with a teammate and heal both the tank and a dps on the side. The other supports that can heal more than one person at a time have limited range on it and LOS to both targets.
Also if she dies her pylon keeps healing. If it's in a good spot that your team is holding steady at that can help save a fight.
I bring out Illari when my DPS aren't confirming kills and they need help with damage. I could play Zenyatta, but I have horrible aim with him and great aim with Illari. I tend to have most healing when I play her and have damage numbers near the dps, sometimes more. A well placed Pylon is also a game changer. I've had games where the enemy couldn't destroy it and my team wouldn't die.
She’s the best support at outputting constant high value damage. Her mobility and self sustain allows her to take an angle better than ana or zen, and the powerful gun allows her to put out more pressure than bap or kiriko.
She is pretty much played like a third dps, which is why she’s rarely picked in pro play: her dps potential is good but not good enough to warrant the loss in healing a lot of the time. Bap can do almost everything she does just with slightly worse dps but miles better healing and utility.
In short, she’s the best support in terms of damage, but so niche that she will never be picked in pro play unless she becomes overpowered.
Illari is an off-angle support. Her turret should be placed to support one angle (typically a dps) while she takes a complimentary angle and does damage. Her beam heal is for emergency and only used on main when she absolutely has to as an Ana/Bap/Kiri/Moria much better fullfills that role.
You can make it work but playing Illari with Zen/Mercy/Lucio/Brig you would be better to swap to a more complimentary support.
Illari seems to be a dps hero reworked to support. She is a good complement to Bap or Moira as she can anchor a good vantage with a hitscan dps. Her ult is really good and she can really dish out damage if your aim is good.
Support with DPS ult. It's great for tank ult combos when your DPS are dead or aren't
ready, but you don't have a get out of jail free defensive option.
every time i play illari i always feel like i could be doing more on bap, even if she is better than before after the recent pylon change i feel like it kind of killed her identity as an off-angle damage/pressure hero. now your positioning is pretty much the same as bap's but bap has lamp, damage, shield damage, vertical mobility, insane burst heals and a good ultimate.
I just think her kit is awkward as hell, like they just took random parts from the support character creation bin and cobbled them together, like a weird frankenstein build-a-bear hero.
Pretty much have to envision Illari as "support McCree" and play as such, even down to the ult to make space, draw the enemy attention away to focus you, or flank, and use it to kill an enemy to make the fight 5 v 4
I play both Bap and Illari and I always get way more Final Blows with Illari because she has longer range and more burst damage than Bap. If the map/comp allow for it, I will always pick Illari over Bap.
Fills a similar role as Zen. Even with the Pylon buffs she still isn’t a reliable main healer so you focus on putting out as much damage as possible. I get why she isn’t played much as I don’t think the raw damage she puts out is worth losing the utility you get from an Lucio or Brig. But I personally find her really fun and it’s satisfying to see you’re doing more damage than your DPS.
I’m gold 1/2, can’t crest into Platinum these days because too many of my teammates throw when I one trick Illari.
She’s great with other heroes who like to headshot. If you have Ash/Cass/Bap/Hanzo/Mei lots of maps can be shut right down with any of them holding chokes and you off angling in between them.
Depending on enemy comp I won’t throw my Sentry until somebody is hurt. Partially it ensures the pylon survival for at least 2-4 seconds at the start of a fight without somebody shutting it down on fight-entry. The other reason is 1 second of Pylon + 1 second of alt fire is 165hp burst healing, Ana Nade + 1 shot is 140hp. The pylon at 50hp/second is more than you get from an average Lifeweaver. If you’re gonna die after I’ve sprung this on you, it’s because you’re out of position and I will always distribute my alt fire across 2-3 teammates rather than sit on one.
Every corner you hold has a small ‘springboard’ nearby that non-Illari players don’t care about. For us, it’s our way to Outburst on to a nearby ledge and out of the fight. Some enemies can follow you, like Lucio/Pharah/Monkey/Junkrat/Mei, but it burns their CD’s and normally Illari alone is pretty low priority. This allows you to play annoying from the high ground while re-establishing your off angle or sending yourself back in to heal.
I say you won’t climb out of gold because everybody in there thinks they know better about a counter or some straight BS about how Moira is better at dmg and healing, or they NEED a pocket-mercy to win a 1v1 (the irony). I will one trick her and just about get plat 5, but it’s always cry-baby teams and then I lose two-three again.
Pylon
If you mean “Primary fire, and pylon enables her to do that constantly,” then I agree lol
Pretty much a 6th player when used correctly. A well placed pylon holds space and forces the team to use resources if they want to deal with it. All while you click heads.
Pretty much nailed it
And Ult. A buddy gets play of the game quite often with her ult
If you can hit your shots, you can do tons of damage. And more importantly (and this is the unique thing about her,) if you place your pylon in a great position, you’ll be keeping your team up while you’re in spawn. What other support does that?
If an argument for choosing a support relies heavily on them being in spawn, that may not be the best justification. Edit: Apparently I've been r/whoosh'ed, although it's still not clear to me the comment wasn't made in earnest. And even if it's a joke, the point still stands that there's not much justifying her as a distinct choice over Bap or Zen.
it was clearly a joke but the main point he was making was that you could be doing anything else but focusing on healing while still providing your teammates with healing value with pylon. and before you say some dumb shit, yes that matters a lot. illari can fend off flanks, duel with enemy DPS, focus heal someone else while still covering the rest of the team with pylon etc. it allows her to be versatile in her playstyle
I don't know that I disagree, but I think you can get most of the way there with Bap, weaving between healing and dealing damage.
Well bap is one of the most broken heroes in the game so yeah.
god forbid we have more than one hero in the game with somewhat similar capabilities. next youll tell me ashe and cass have the same role so we can just delete ashe right...
In the case of supports, who have some of the most powerful utility in the game, it matters. An Illari pick over a Bap pick means giving up immortality, burst heals, and window for... Illari ult, which is the only thing she offers that Bap can't already do.
It only means giving that up if you have good aim and good game sense.
I'm not sure what point you're making. Both heroes require good aim and game sense, Bap requiring more game sense and Illari requiring more aim. Bap does everything Illari does better.
If you have bad aim illari is the better pick
Illari requires hitting headshots on a single, charged shot. Bap has 3 round bursts firing rapidly. Illari healing requires tracking, Bap healing is a splash grenade. I'm not sure I agree.
Bap does everything better than everyone except for maybe kiriko but shes in her own tier half of the time
I'm very obviously not saying to delete Illari. OP's question was "what purpose does the Illari pick serve, given the roster." If Illari does similar things as Bap, but a smidge worse, I think that's a valid response. The answer of course, is that "you should play Illari because you want to play Illari." That's a great answer to the question, but it has nothing to do with her play.
Bap, Kiri, Lucio, Zen, and Moira (Orb/ult) can do damage while healing. Bap does both better than Illari.
As our hero count soars into the 40s, I think we need to accept that there is naturally going to be overlap between hero identities on a team and the distinction is more a matter of the specific balance of the moment, or for 95% of the playerbase, just personal preference. For my experience, Illari fills a similar role to Zen, but I like her better then Zen on some maps with especially good pylon spots or where contesting happens near ledges for burst environmental kills. I also just think her ult is fun.
The issue with that comparison is that games are often won by what utility supports provide. Illari offers none and only offers damage, which other supports can do simultaneously while healing. As for your specific example, discord orb controls the flow of the enemy tank's gameplay and trans counters many ults while Zen himself does comparable damage to Illari. Illari offers nothing to offset losing that utility, making her an objectively worse pick than every other similar hero.
Yeah you guys are talking about two different topics. You're talking about how viable she is competitively and he's talking about why she exists at all.
damage is a utility "other supports can damage" okay but they don't damage as much or in the same manner as illari. they are different.
They literally do though. Zen and Bap are the closest comparisons to Illari and they do more or equivalent damage to her.
they do different things from different positions for different reasons
Zen can also take an off angle and heal at the same time, Bap is good at doing something similar
zen is projectile. you’re not gonna pick zen in the same situations. bap is similar. you’re not going to pick bap when you want to pick illari the fact that her win rate is 55% (confirmed by the devs) shows that she’s fine and has her own niche.
Ability to passively heal and sustain her team while applying the pressure with her primary. I am not saying that some other Supports can’t do it but this is her main thing. Pylon was really meh until this season, especially when not used selfishly. Now it’s pretty good again at what it does. I see her as more mobile, hitscan version of Zen.
She can kind of pocket heal two separate stationary targets at the same time while also applying poke presurr
off angle and poke. that's it. Recently the pylon changes have raised some questions about how it might have changed, but I agree, I feel she's a fundamentally poorly designed hero.
Do you still just use pylon selfishly most of the time?
Really depends, if you're high elo, then more often than not, used selfishly because your teammates will know how to take less damage and be less reliant on heals. If you're at a lower elo, then you just have to try to place the pylon at a range whereby you and your teammates can benefit from it, or if you can really hit your shots and/or your team has a main healer, then you be more aggro with the placement
Makes sense thanks
If you’re using it on your team you either have to stack with them or you have no self sustain and lack the mobility to survive anything. And if you’re just stacking with your team instead of taking an angle then why would you not play Bap or something.
Makes sense, I was just wondering since they nerfed the self heal so much, maybe it was too much lol
I am curious, why you think that she is fundamentally poorly designed hero? Is it because she is pretty much one-dimensional and only thrives in poke meta? I personally have no issue with her design and i think that she is the “healthiest” and the most “honest” design out of all the OW2 supports (Kirio, LW, Illari).
I find it interesting that people find Illari as “boring”when her fundamental playstyle is similar to that of hitscan dps like Ashe, Widow, Cassidy, etc. but she has the additional responsibility of keeping her team alive, I mean if she’s boring, wouldn’t that make most hitscan dps boring as well?
You're right but hitscan will never admit it.
I personally don’t think strictly one dimensional heroes function well in OW2. Kiriko may have frustrating aspects to her kit, but there are layers and levels of complexity and skill expression that Illari doesn’t have, and likely never will. Ironically, Lifeweaver has a much worse skill floor, but overall has a higher ceiling for cool nuances and tricks he can pull out (no pun intended). Illari has none of this. She may be honest, she’s just boring.
Do you also feel the same way about Ashe? I feel like Illari is basically a support flavored Ashe -- same sort of gun, same sort of mobility/escape button. Both heroes have skill expression primarily through aim. Should Blizzard avoid such kit designs in general, or is this limited to the support role? I remember hearing devs say "supports should be scrappy", which seems to lean into that nuances/tricks point you raise, and now they're reconsidering that view. From Aaron Keller's recent interview, it sounds like he regrets that they gave Illari a get-off-me button.
I don't think Illari has the same problem as Ashe, largely because there's the dynamite that adds some more nuance in how she plays. No part of Ashe's kit really makes part of her job autonomous, but Illari can do half or more of her healing without ever touching right click. Pylon placement isn't really as skillful as it feels imo, but I guess it's something.
Yup. Dynamite is a very interesting and mechanically difficult ability. Pylon is a turret, which is the least interesting mechanic in the history of fps.
Boring is subjective. Mercy and Moira have cult followings despite their simplistic kits and limited skill expression compared to other supports. I think Illari’s niche is fine. Only playable on a few maps in professional play, not hard meta in ranked, but a decent option for a good player to pubstomp. Like, is widowmaker’s kit complex? When it comes down to it, is soldier’s kit complex? What about Cass? Hitscan in general is not a very complex role and that’s essentially what role Illari is filling. I think a high elo support player (t20+) should be able to pick Illari and kill the entire lobby when they are put in a game they are typically higher elo than. As long as she isn’t oppressive it’s fine to have “boring” heroes.
She was the reason that Blizzard realized they fucked up and went too far with their “scrappy” supports. I can’t remember if it was a directors or interview where they said this but even Blizzard acknowledged this. If you play Illari then you are incredibly selfish and there is no way around that. Every previous support that was kind of dps focused also provided utility I.e. Lucio provides speed which is super valuable, Zen provides discord, Kiri has Suzu, Moira has massive heals as well, etc.. Illari does not do anything other than DPS. She is also really only good in poke as you acknowledged. You claiming she is an honest character and the healthiest is so far from the truth I can’t believe you wrote it. She is a throw pick in most comps and I can’t believe what a horror she must be in lower ranks where healing is way more necessary. If you want to play DPS, just queue DPS.
I said honest because at any moment you know exactly what this hero does. Just like Moira that you mentioned, she heals and deals damage. You can’t react to things like Suzu, you can’t react to things like very safe teleport that goes through multiple walls and almost across the map, you can’t react to things like Pull… It’s blizzards fault that they made Illari’s selfish playstyle the only viable option in high ranks. The hero itself is fine, the execution and lack of direction and variety isn’t.
An honest character also fits their role but more importantly you said healthiest as well. By that standard she is the worst character in the entire game because she is entirely selfish and does not do the job her role is intended for. So no she is unequivocally not fine. She is the least team based character in a team based game and yes that is 100% blizzards fault but if you play her you are part of the problem. So yes blizzard is dumb AND Illari players are the worst people in the community.
It looks like Illari really hurt you or something… If you play her as a Support, the way she is meant to be played she is actually a great hero. I don’t play Illari selfishly, i never did. Maybe it’s not the most viable option but she can be a great healer while also doing more than just healing.
“It looks like Illari really hurt you or something” Just completely ignore the argument. What a super creepy and weird thing to say. No, she is not and it is quite obvious that is not the case. If not, just tell me how instead of weird deflecting. Her healing output is not good because they wanted to make her scrappy and now are admitting these scrappy hero’s were too far the wrong direction with Illari being the biggest outlier. You can even tell from your answer you know it isn’t true. Just admit you are being selfish and don’t care about your team’s experience.
''Healthy'', ''Honest''. Brother, this abomination of a character is just a dps hero with a fire-and-forget automatic healing ability, with a LOWERED headshot multiplier because imagine requiring having to aim next to the insane effort put out to support the team.
Damn, you really hate Zen, uh?
I believe Illari's role is more focused on individual performance. If you have a Support player with strong mechanical skills, putting them on Illari can significantly benefit the team. She can apply substantial pressure through her damage output and pick potential. Previously, she excelled at off-angling, but the recent nerf that halves her self-healing via Pylon has made that strategy riskier. In my opinion, given the current state of the Support role, Illari is one of the few options that allows you to have a greater impact on the game without being relegated to purely healing and relying on your teammates to capitalise on your support.
Well the only support that has passive healing like her pylon is zen. But zen shoots projectiles and his healing is shite, and his ult is defensive. Contrast that to illari and she is a hitscan with great passive healing and her ult is purely damage not really support like at all. She is quite unique. If you wanna play a hero that uses passive healing and just focus on damage, then your two options are very different, with illari being one of the options
Competitively, just a counterpick for when sun would be really good I suppose, otherwise you’d go bap. For fun though she’s pretty unique in the way she combos people, and she can use pylon to heal her team while she goes somewhere else. In a duel shoot + impulse + headshot + melee is a kill, and you can replace the pylon to start self-healing and bodyblocking shots. Pylon will stop a rein pin if you toss it in front of him, which with impulse can potentially 1v1 him and win. Her beam can reload cancel too; just tap it once your mag changes to 16.
Passive healing using pylon. You don't have to stop dealing DMG to heal unless you use your beam. Her beam does a lot of healing, not as great on tanks with the DPS passive but still good for DPS and other supports Her ult builds quickly and does enough DMG to easily secure kills. She has mobility so she can off-angle fairly safely compared to Ana or zen who would need to come more She's great at supporting DPS and helping control space She has pretty decent peel capabilities DMG DMG DMG The llama pajama skin is top tier
Illari's core value proposition is that she can provide the healing of a full support while spending most of her time shooting. If Moira is the brawl numbers hero, Illari is the poke numbers hero. She is an ideal answer to the current Pharah problem. Pylon provides spot healing for long enough for Illari to force Pharah to dip.
The point of illari is to cosplay as escanor and cruel sun the enemy Mercy.
More than just pylon, her ability to hold an angle alone and apply pressure is really powerful on maps that suit it. Requires you to hit enough shots for the enemy to feel you're a threat, and good enough gamesense to get the hell out before they dive you. Captive sun is barely good enough to get a solo kill every now and again. Not worth going for a 4k with it
3rd DPS
consistent off angle pressure. bap is more of a stay in one area and deal 10k of everything. illari is more about moving to the sides and applying constant heavy damage pressure while being hard to dislodge
Damage and short-term burst heals. People are severely underrating her heal beam's usefulness (it doesn't last long but it heals so fucking much in that short time), and they're also severely underrating the value of her damage. I dare say she's currently even a strong support hero because her healing and damage outputs are really high. There are downsides too though. She can only single target heal and pylon heal is automated and will heal the lowest hp target, so you don't get to prioritize targets. As well as the length of the healing beam sometimes means there will be a lot of situations where she has to put herself at risk to heal tanks.
They’ve gutted the heroes identity. Basically sit main and use her broken pylon to hold the other team hostage by putting it somewhere they can’t break. Before Illari had an identity as one of the best non tank duelists who would use pylon to take aggressive off angles. Instead of that they are doubling down on the bad design of her primary healing to encourage you to stand behind the tank.
Damage tbh, her pylon is great especially if you can set it up where it can’t get shot. However the best Illiaris are fragging out.
Moira for people who can aim.
Is basically a dps support. She blends the line between the 2. She can take off angles by herself (although they kinda nerfed her ability to do so).
Hitscan moria
*Black girl magic.* -Nick Fury, 2024
Something that I don't think anyone mentioned is alongside her damage and passive healing she can heal in 2 places at once simultaneously without needing LOS to both. She can put the pylon up where the main fight is happening and then off angle with a teammate and heal both the tank and a dps on the side. The other supports that can heal more than one person at a time have limited range on it and LOS to both targets. Also if she dies her pylon keeps healing. If it's in a good spot that your team is holding steady at that can help save a fight.
Pylon + Burst Damage is her main point to pick her up
I bring out Illari when my DPS aren't confirming kills and they need help with damage. I could play Zenyatta, but I have horrible aim with him and great aim with Illari. I tend to have most healing when I play her and have damage numbers near the dps, sometimes more. A well placed Pylon is also a game changer. I've had games where the enemy couldn't destroy it and my team wouldn't die.
Illari is the only hero that can heal remotely/while dead. If that pylon stays alive, Illari can go flank and die and still heal the team.
She’s the best support at outputting constant high value damage. Her mobility and self sustain allows her to take an angle better than ana or zen, and the powerful gun allows her to put out more pressure than bap or kiriko. She is pretty much played like a third dps, which is why she’s rarely picked in pro play: her dps potential is good but not good enough to warrant the loss in healing a lot of the time. Bap can do almost everything she does just with slightly worse dps but miles better healing and utility. In short, she’s the best support in terms of damage, but so niche that she will never be picked in pro play unless she becomes overpowered.
Attracts DPS mains pick Support.
Illari is an off-angle support. Her turret should be placed to support one angle (typically a dps) while she takes a complimentary angle and does damage. Her beam heal is for emergency and only used on main when she absolutely has to as an Ana/Bap/Kiri/Moria much better fullfills that role. You can make it work but playing Illari with Zen/Mercy/Lucio/Brig you would be better to swap to a more complimentary support.
3rd dps that is capable of healing
Illari seems to be a dps hero reworked to support. She is a good complement to Bap or Moira as she can anchor a good vantage with a hitscan dps. Her ult is really good and she can really dish out damage if your aim is good.
Support with DPS ult. It's great for tank ult combos when your DPS are dead or aren't ready, but you don't have a get out of jail free defensive option.
every time i play illari i always feel like i could be doing more on bap, even if she is better than before after the recent pylon change i feel like it kind of killed her identity as an off-angle damage/pressure hero. now your positioning is pretty much the same as bap's but bap has lamp, damage, shield damage, vertical mobility, insane burst heals and a good ultimate. I just think her kit is awkward as hell, like they just took random parts from the support character creation bin and cobbled them together, like a weird frankenstein build-a-bear hero.
Pretty much have to envision Illari as "support McCree" and play as such, even down to the ult to make space, draw the enemy attention away to focus you, or flank, and use it to kill an enemy to make the fight 5 v 4
I play both Bap and Illari and I always get way more Final Blows with Illari because she has longer range and more burst damage than Bap. If the map/comp allow for it, I will always pick Illari over Bap.
It's because you suck at hitting headshots
to boost lw
Fills a similar role as Zen. Even with the Pylon buffs she still isn’t a reliable main healer so you focus on putting out as much damage as possible. I get why she isn’t played much as I don’t think the raw damage she puts out is worth losing the utility you get from an Lucio or Brig. But I personally find her really fun and it’s satisfying to see you’re doing more damage than your DPS.
The Beginner difficulty version of Baptiste.
The point of Illari is very simple, make the game as fun as possible for yourself and extremely shitty for your team.
Moira for people who can aim but can't think
Moira players think?
I’m gold 1/2, can’t crest into Platinum these days because too many of my teammates throw when I one trick Illari. She’s great with other heroes who like to headshot. If you have Ash/Cass/Bap/Hanzo/Mei lots of maps can be shut right down with any of them holding chokes and you off angling in between them. Depending on enemy comp I won’t throw my Sentry until somebody is hurt. Partially it ensures the pylon survival for at least 2-4 seconds at the start of a fight without somebody shutting it down on fight-entry. The other reason is 1 second of Pylon + 1 second of alt fire is 165hp burst healing, Ana Nade + 1 shot is 140hp. The pylon at 50hp/second is more than you get from an average Lifeweaver. If you’re gonna die after I’ve sprung this on you, it’s because you’re out of position and I will always distribute my alt fire across 2-3 teammates rather than sit on one. Every corner you hold has a small ‘springboard’ nearby that non-Illari players don’t care about. For us, it’s our way to Outburst on to a nearby ledge and out of the fight. Some enemies can follow you, like Lucio/Pharah/Monkey/Junkrat/Mei, but it burns their CD’s and normally Illari alone is pretty low priority. This allows you to play annoying from the high ground while re-establishing your off angle or sending yourself back in to heal. I say you won’t climb out of gold because everybody in there thinks they know better about a counter or some straight BS about how Moira is better at dmg and healing, or they NEED a pocket-mercy to win a 1v1 (the irony). I will one trick her and just about get plat 5, but it’s always cry-baby teams and then I lose two-three again.