Overwatch 2 is in serious need of support right now. The role is quite unpopular, and for those who dare to babysit two dive DPS and a tank on the other side of the map, their time in the queue is getting much shorter. I'm mostly in the flex queue, and if I'm lucky I get a non-support role about once every 20 games. In "Overwatch 2," I've grown tired of playing support (open in new tab). Partly because of role fatigue, and partly thanks to the fact that I appreciate it even less than in "Overwatch 1".

Blizzard has long been aware of the issues surrounding the support role (open in new tab). However, in "Overwatch 2," the discrepancy has made queue times much worse, and it seems that the developers are finally paying attention. In executive producer Jared Neuss' developer blog (opens in new tab), he admits that the team needs to make support a more desirable option.

"The move to 5vs5 has resulted in longer queue times than we would like for both tank and damage players. While there is no silver bullet for this problem, the team has plenty of ideas to try for the upcoming season."

These include a focus on the role of support and how Blizzard can "make it more fun and rewarding to play."

According to Neuss, the team is "rebuilding support heroes, updating game systems , and discussing changes to the overall role to improve support quality of life." In the future, there may be some adjustments to the experience rewards of the Battle Pass. Currently, the first game of the day in Support or Flex rewards 500 XP, and every game thereafter rewards 100 XP. This is only 1% of the level and is not an incentive to jump into an undervalued role.

No specific changes have been made yet, but Neuss said that once the team settles on ways to improve the experience, they will feed that information back to players. Increasing incentives for support roles is definitely a good idea. Unless major improvements to the support kit are focused on damage output, I'm not sure how this role would benefit; Blizzard previously mentioned that one tactic was to simply increase support heroes, the least populated role. However, with the introduction of the tank hero Ramatra (opens in new tab) in Season 2, we will have to wait a bit longer for that roster to fill.