We have not seen any love for Brightwing since the recent major rework of support heroes. Today we saw a match that shows she is still ready to perform.
If you are a newer player, you might not know who Brightwing is. But if you have been following competitive HotS for a while now, you know that this little Faerie Dragon was the best support for a long time. Her global presence through her Z (Phase Shift), along with her top notch CC (Polymorph), made her more versatile than the other support heroes. And her trait (Soothing Mist) gave solid passive healing when picking the right talents. This all made her the most popular support by far, and the second most popular hero in general for a long time.
This list is based on competitive matches that were run during the period between Kael'thas and The Butcher being released to the game, 12th of May until 30th of June.
But this all changed with the patch of 21 July, which changed a lot for all of the supports in the game. Brightwing in particular received major nerfs, in both her passive healing and her selection of talents. And so, from one day to the other, we no longer saw Brightwing in competitive play.
But today during the broadcast of the ESL EU Summer Major League, in the first match between Team Liquid and Team Kinguin, Team Liquid was forced into picking Brightwing. Team Kinguin banned out Uther and Rehgar, while picking Malfurion and Lili for themselves. This made TL pick Brightwing as their last hero, deciding that Brightwing was still a better solo support than Tassadar or Tyrande.
The match can be found by following this link.
During the entire game on Garden of Terror, we see Brightwing moving across the map through Phase Shift. Brightwing's clutch healing is responsible for a series of close escapes. If you would like to play Brightwing the way GrandPkt from Team Liquid played him in this game; his build is made up of these talents: Unfurling Spray, Manic Pixie, Phase Shield, Blink Heal, Shield Dust, Critterize, Double Wyrmhole.
It should be noted that Brightwing comes off as a better hero in this game for several reasons.
- The composition of Team Liquid has very tanky heroes with two warriors, an Abathur and an Illidan that can take a beating while also doing enough damage on its own. This means that Brightwing’s healing is not as important as with other compositions, while her Crowd Control can really make a difference.
- Because of the additional experience soaking because of Abathur, Team Liquid has a solid experience lead throughout the game. This means that Team Kinguin is already disadvantaged during teamfights and as such has to play safer than they would like. Because of this, Brightwing is never in big danger and can therefore keep providing heals to her team through Soothing Mist and Blink heal.
- We are talking about Team Liquid here, arguably the best European team at this point. Their mechanical play makes up for any shortcomings that Brightwing might have.
Another character that deserves special mention in that game is Abathur’s Monstrosity. From the start of its summoning until the end of the game, the Monstrosity is seen stacking up damage and zoning out Team Kinguin. The next patch, that is planned to release early next week, will even include a buff to summoned creatures like the Monstrosity. Perhaps Brightwing/Monstrosity will be our new dynamic duo.
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