for eddie

A GUIDE FOR EDDIE ON HOW TO PLAY EFFECTIVE SUPPORT (MERCY / LUCIO)
I'm only doing this because i love you, eddie.

POSITIONING
This is the key to playing support. The question you ask yourself before making a lot of decisions in this game is pretty simple: will I die if I do that? Many times, I've seen supports (mostly Lucio or Zen players) who will be leading the charge in team fights, or peak a choke and taking a lot of damage. Taking damage means you will have to fall back to a health pack or even worse you get caught out and you die. Good teams will have a caller that will call when players are overextended (ie far enough away from their team where they become a free pick) and the more you go against coordinated teams the more important positioning becomes.
Your positioning decisions come down to a few things:

*How many people on your team are dead? If you have just lost 1 or 2 players who were out of position, it might be a good idea to have an escape route and start thinking about leaving the fight and stay alive. You charge when you heal, and the more ULTS you accumulate over the game the more beneficial you will be for your team. If your team has just picked up a couple of kills, maybe its the time to get more aggressive. But only if the people who protect you are close and can ensure that you don't give up the advantage!!

*How close to ULTS are the other team? This is a hard skill to develope over time, but after playing OW for a hot second its fairly reasonable to tell who has ults and who doesn't. Lets say a Zarya just barrelled in and got 2 finishing kills and is glowing like a christmas tree. You should know this person is probably very close to their ULT, and will be looking to use it soon. Distance yourself and use  the heal beam length to avoid getting caught by the ULT. Even if your team gets caught in the ULT, you can either break it down to nullify it or just rez your team once they all die. Suddenly, you're a god. You can reasonably measure the amount of time has passed before ULTS have been used to figure this out too. Its a lot to keep track of, but as long as you have a general idea of how far along the other team is with their ULTS you should be able to put yourself in a relatively safe place and not get wasted before you can be effective.

*Where are my teammates positioned? This is something you can't really control. I've known a lot of medics who are very particular about where their teammates play and get really bitchy with people who are out of position or overextended. In OW, Lucio is given a lot of room to work with, but it makes it really hard when you have teammates that just go off on their own and break line of sight. However, his versatility makes him a top tier healer and the ability to heal more than one person (especially when people are taking the damage from the same source) is super crucial. Mercy can also be incredibly mobile, but is limited to one target at a time and has to be a certain distance from the target. The beam length is super long and should be taken advantage of. Essentially, in OW pretty much every healer relies in some degree on line of sight. If you can see most of your teammates you should be fine.

SURVIVABILITY

Mercy and Lucio are seen as main healers because they have the most efficient healing abilities and they have movement mechanics that allow them to live longer. The speed boost + wall riding can make you nearly impossible to hit for a good amount of time to find safety. The ability to stay in the air as Mercy and fly around the map gives you the chance to find a good spot to heal your team or escape a bad situation. Using these abilities often and at the right times will mean you stay alive longer.
But just constantly moving isn't going to be the only thing that keeps you alive. Knowing if there is someone behind you and just looking around in general (ie not looking at whatever your heal target is looking at because thats his problem) is going to be really beneficial. Keeping your head on a swivel and constantly checking flanks to make sure some pesky Reaper or Tracer isn't coming behind you to get a key pick is imperative. Knowing where the Snipers are gives you a good idea of where to be so you don't get 1 shotted. You can't expect people to not hit their shots. Eventually they will.

Inevitably, you will come down to fighting and its important to have a buddy that can either protect you in some way (Reinhardt, Zarya, DVA) or kill the thing that wants to kill you (McCree, Soldier 76, Bastion). Turns out, all of those characters will benefit by being around you and they totally should be. But having a dedicated person to protecting the supports is super important and you should try to establish who your "pocket" is going to be to deal with situations when you need help staying alive.

HEAL ORDER AND PRIORITIES

Most of the meta around OW right now is to keep your tanks alive. They represent area control and power. They are there to soak up all the damage and be annoying as hell to the other team. However, this doesn't mean that you should be ONLY HEALING YOUR TANKS. You should only be healing people actively taking damage, and even then only those that don't have healing abilities themselves. When you have many people taking damage at once, its important to call out who you are healing so your teammates can get to safety. Its also really helpful to have a group up bind so your teammates know where to go quickly.
But you have to make the hard decision of choosing who to heal sometimes. Overextending to save someone just so they can die is bad. That goes with the first part of the guide. Staying with a teammate who is clearly losing a fight and then both of you dying is bad. But sometimes its absolutely crucial to keep certain people alive to make the push successful. Normally, when playing Mercy I will fly in to heal whoever is ulting it they are vulnerable (ie Pharah, McCree, Reaper etc). If they are able to get kills because you healed them, it becomes worth it even if you die. But even then, most of the time nobody is going to be looking at the healers in this situation: They will almost always been trying to kill the guy performing the ult.

But if you need a "tiered" list of people you should be healing when everyone else is taking damage its this:

Healers - Healing classes have to take care of each other!! Your heal buddy is going to be as much of a target as you are, and keeping them alive means there is someone that is also keeping you alive on your team. When you lose another healer, be prepared to put yourself in a place you can stay safe.

Main Tanks - These are literally the wall between you and the other team. Their presence is what is going to deter the enemy team from just walking in and killing you. Not to mention, pretty much every single tank ULT is a good way to start a fight. Having them alive and charging their ult is very helpful to the whole team.

Alt Tanks - These are the tanks that will die if they are overextended, and should not be risked to really save. Most of the time they have some ability to stay alive or deflect damage and probably won't need your help too much, but if everyone else is good to go you can probably heal them up. I wouldn't just stay on them unless they are literally taking all the damage.
Main DPS - This is going to be the guy playing either beside you or behind you, but should nonetheless be a DPS character that plays around the combo. Getting kills is super important in OW, but I would say area control is a bit more important. Controlling certain areas on the map is going to be what produces the kills. Either way, I will usually just damage boost these guys when i play Mercy, and heal when I'm not doing that. When I play Lucio I just make sure I have this person constantly in my line of sight, and boost them if they start taking damage. This character becomes top priority while they are ulting.

Flex DPS - This is a character that plays on the flanks a lot, and is more or less alone in most fights. You're not going to see this character a lot but when they come limping back from fights its best to just top them off and let them go on their way. They have to go for picks and sneaky attacks and usually dont do well when it comes up to face to face fighting. They will almost always be too far out of your range to heal them. Don't die to keep them alive.
Snipers, Torbjorns, Symmetras - Unless your sniper is going absolutely ham and getting 6 man kill streaks constantly, you are wasting your time. Torbs and Symmetra are about as important as their buildings: they are expendable and they shouldn't expect to be taking up heals from the more essential parts of your team. Let them divert damage and leave them to their own devices. They'll be further back in the fight than even you are.

ULTIMATES

There is a lot of debate when it comes to support ults. I think that honestly, supports should be very mindful of when they are using their ults and there is absolutely a "right decision" every time when using. Mercy should always be in a place to fly in and rez during fights, but the timing is always crucial. If you rez 2 players and then 3 immediately die, you wasted your ult essentially. There is no way unless your teammates are fucking gods that you will win a 3 v 6 situation. Sometimes its better to sit on your heals and see what happens through the course of your fights. I do think that when a main tank or healer dies between big team fights that its pretty acceptable to rez them even if its a single rez. BUT ONLY IF YOURE NOT STILL FIGHTING. Its always a judgement call, and it has everything to do with being mindful of the situation youre currently in. Does a bunch of your downed teammates have ults? Yes? Cool, lets rez em up and let em know to start using. Did your team die in a pile surrounded by the enemy? Yes? Maybbbbbe not a good idea to rez then. Has the enemy used all their ults yet? No? Maybe you should wait a second and see how the fight plays out before doing that 2x rez.

Lucio's ult is a bit easier to read, and can save your team from a lot of other ults. You almost will always pop your ability in response to something that happens in the game. You might pop because your team is all low health, and that ult can give them the edge to winning the fight. Maybe the enemy is using their ult abilities and you want to give your team a good buffer to survive the wave and win the fight after. Maybe you are pushing and your team needs extra health to make the approach and get close enough to do their own ulting. But this ult takes a lot longer to charge than Mercy's for some reason, so be very selective about when you use. Announcing to your team that you are going to ult and telling them to group up is always a good idea, and you should have the appropriate binds ready. I would say 3-4 players (not including yourself) is acceptable to want to pop in most situations. The last thing I will say is this: try not to be the first one to pop. Let the enemy be aggressive, let your teammates be aggressive. Just be there to nullify the enemy and give your team the health buffer to be effective.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

I'm exhausted I dont know what else to say. Theres like a billion little things that you learn just from playing the game, but these are decent guidelines to playing at least these two support classes. Zen and Ana are played very very differently, and have their own skill sets to playing them effectively. I'm going to go eat spam.