Advanced tips to help you stand out from the Support crowd.
More than a month on from the release of Overwatch and Lucio is still our favourite Support Hero at MetaBomb – in fact, he’s quite possibly our favourite Hero full stop. He’s versatile, he’s got a huge amount of mobility, and when you’re hot with this Hero you can have an astronomical impact on the shape of the game.
You might already have read our massive Lucio guide, which details everything from mastering his abilities to the strategy behind playing this Hero, but there are a few new clever tricks that have emerged over the last couple of months. In this article, we’ll run you through a few advanced tips that will have your team thinking you’re nothing short of a Support god.
From tinkering with your keybinds to timing the use of your Ultimate correctly, there should be something here that will help everyone take their Lucio game to the next level. If you’ve got your own tips, let us know about them in the comments – we’d love to hear what you’ve been getting up to!
Ready to stand out from the rest of the Support pack? Then read on…
1. Change the control settings to automatically heal your team
If you frequently find yourself running headfirst into a fearsome firefight, it can be easy to panic and forget to switch over to healing. Did you know though that you can actually tweak the controls to ensure that the healing aura is applied by default?
Simply go into Options, then Controls, then click the All Heroes box on the top right. From here, switch to Lucio, then scroll down until you see Hold to Crossfade. If you enable this, you will always provide your healing buff, unless you are holding down the Shift key for a speed boost
– Hit the Next button to learn the two very different ways of using Wall Ride.
2. Take your Wall Ride skills to the next level
It’s amazing how few people make any use of Lucio’s Wall Ride ability whatsoever, but if you’re prepared to master this important ability, then hit up a custom game and start practising the two distinct ways of using this skill.
First of all, you can hold down the Space Bar (or whatever key you have jump bound to) and glide continuously along a surface for a certain amount of time. Jump to a new surface and continue when you need to to keep chaining. Keep in mind, however, that you can’t Wall Ride onto the next wall along if it travels in the same direction as the previous surface.
The second technique allows you to reach great height and simply hop back and forth between surfaces in order to reach otherwise unreachable areas. Use this to gain height advantage while still boosting your teammates’ health meters, or just to get a clearer shot at the enemy.
It takes a while to get used to working Wall Ride into your general gameplay (particularly when there’s a busy firefight going on), but it will increase your survivability by a huge amount. Start by working it into your general navigation of each map and you’ll find that applying it cleverly in specific scenarios soon becomes second nature.
– The next slide explains how to increase the odds of landing a Lucio melee attack successfully.
3. Rebind your melee
Some would recommend rebinding your jump key to your mouse as well, but one thing you should always do as Lucio is have melee bound to one of your additional mouse buttons. Trying to land a V shot in the thick of battle can be tricky under pressure at the best of times, but you’ll find life much easier if you can land your punch with just a click of a button.
– Struggling to keep your team mates alive? Our next tip on managing line of sight might explain why.
4. Keep line of sight with your healing targets
Contrary to popular belief, Lucio cannot provide his healing buff to allies who are not within his line of sight. If there’s a wall between you and your team, your healing aura won’t touch them – this ensures that Lucio remains an active target on the battlefield.
While you’re in the open, keep moving unpredictably while providing your services. Keep an eye on the number that goes up and down in the middle of the screen, as this indicates how many people are being affected by your speed or your healing aura.
If you know your allies are nearby but you’re not reaching them, this is the game’s way of telling you to find line of sight with them fast!
– Our next tip explains why you shouldn’t use Sound Barrier to counter Ultimates
5. Don’t use Sound Barrier to counter enemy Ultimates
Your Ultimate is incredibly powerful, but there’s no need to use it to counter Ultimates triggered by the other team. There’s rarely any need to when you consider your ability to simply turbo charge your speed boost and have your teammates find their own individual paths to safety.
Instead, it’s much better to save Sound Barrier for when there’s a big team brawl (at an objective, for example) and simply need to provide your team with extra protection while they pick off the opposition. It’s an extremely potent way of tilting the odds in your team’s favour.
– Our next advanced tip explains how to use your speed boost more effectively.
6. Use the Crossfade speed boost more efficiently
Crossfade’s a superb ability for getting teammates where they need to be quickly, but there are ways of using it more efficiently.
If you really want to become the best Lucio that you can, it’s important that you develop continual awareness of the killfeed. If you notice that two or more of your teammates have perished since you yourself were sent back to the spawn room, wait for them to come back to life and then travel as a group. It’s well worth the extra wait.
You should not be afraid to disengage the enemy in order to bring a handful of teammates back from the spawn room faster – assuming your active allies aren’t in immediate need of your services, that is! If they’re on a hiding to nothing though and they don’t appreciate the danger they’re in, don’t feel under any obligation to go down with the sinking ship. Overwatch is a team game where it’s difficult to win uneven fights.
Don’t be afraid to pop this ability “selfishly” in order to escape a tricky situation either. The cooldown’s pretty short, and it’s much more important that you live to heal another day!
– Our final tip explains how to save Lucio from environmental doom!
7. Don’t assume you’re dead just because you’ve taken a tumble
Lucio’s Wall Ride ability is actually capable of pulling him back from the brink of any number of disasters in the game. A significant case in point is the well at Ilios. If he’s knocked over the edge, or pulled over it by Roadhog, he can actually bounce off the interior walls of the well in order to hop his way right back out.
You won’t always be able to rescue yourself in this way, but never switch off when things are looking bad. Instead, stay attuned to your surroundings and see if there’s a last-gasp way you can tap a wall and save yourself from what seems like an inevitable death.
– For a more in-depth look at this Hero, make sure you take a look at our massive Lucio guide.
