Lucio exists as a support whose function is to provide powerful auras for his allies. With peeling capabilities and huge shield, having a Lucio on your team is always a boon. In this guide, I hope to give you more insight on his ability usage and teach a thing or two about his favorable matchups.

Passive - Wall Ride

Lucio's passive allows him to hold jump when against a structure in order to ride along it. With only having 200 health, this is a key component in Lucio's survivability. This allows Lucio to wall ride so long as he can maintain the same wall or find a new wall to start the passive. With the way the rest of Lucio's kit works, it should be of high interest to use the passive as much as possible. This will grant you more survivability as you'll have greater mobility making it harder for the enemy to hit you. The essence of Lucio’s functionality is based upon his auras and knockbacks. This allows your attention to be focused on your positioning, your enemies, and your teammates.

The capabilities of this passive are extremely high. To be able to navigate and position through jumps and wall rides is very powerful and is something I would suggest sitting in a custom game for. Playing a custom game alone allows you to solely focus on what you specifically want to improve on (in this case, Lucio's passive). It may seem boring and not worthwhile as you may think that you can do this whilst playing the game. Which is true, you can. But my approach is to already be as proficient as I can be before attempting it in a competitive setting where there's so many other things to focus on. The idea is to make it natural, as he is currently the only champion with an ability such as this.

 LMB - Sonic Projectiles

• 20 Ammo
• 4 Projectiles per Cast
• 16 Damage per Pellet
• 1.25 second reload

This is an auto attack which fires four bullets per cast. It shares the ammunition as his RMB so reload and bullet management is something to be aware of. With the bullets coming out as a slow sequence as four, it makes difficult to rely on this as a consistent means of damage. However, it can act as filler damage when you need to not save ammo for a specific RMB. So when trying to melt a Reinhardt shield or to add damage within a Zarya ultimate, don't be reluctant to use it.

 RMB - Soundwave

• 20 Ammo (Shared with LMB)
• 25 Damage
• 4 second cooldown

This spell is a cone shaped knock back which is used to peel allies from threats or to push an enemy into a poor position. To reinforce what was said about the LMB, it does use shared ammunition so it is worth being aware of how much ammunition you have. Each time you use your RMB, it costs 4 ammo. However, if you were to use this when you have 1-3 ammo, it still allows you to do so; it just forces you to reload. The usage of this is generally in a defensive stance. There's the potential to knock a charging Reinhardt away from the team granted that you are in the correct position and time the knock back correctly.

 L-Shift - Cross Fade

• 1.5 second cooldown
• Heal aura gives 12.5hp/s (Health per Second)
• Speed aura gives a 30% movement speed increase
• Auras only apply if allies are in LoS

Here comes the interesting part, Lucio's Cross Fade. This is key reason why Lucio is picked right now and why he's so powerful. The ability has two modes: a 30% speed boost and a persistent heal of 12.5 per second. The knowing of when to use each mode comes from experience and knowledge. Knowing when to engage with the speed boost depends on your ally's position, the enemy's position and knowing which abilities are up or not. There’s the knowing to not be in speed mode when caught in a Zarya ultimate. There’s abusing the increased healing when Ana E is in effect. There’s little need to be in heal mode when Zenyatta is using his Ultimate. There are many scenarios of knowing when to use one over the other which comes with game sense. Generally, you want to be in speed mode. It allows your team to move faster meaning they’re harder to hit thus not needing as much healing in the first place. 12.5hp/s is a lot on 6 people but it is rather small when compared to any other single target heal. It’s rare to be in a situation where every single ally needs healing in which a single target healer couldn’t do the same job better. In competitive, it’s custom to have at least 2 support characters just due the nature of their kits. They’re very powerful and all complement each other.

The minutia that exists within in the ability derives from how the effects are applied to the ally. They persist for one second at a time and is based on a LoS (Line of Sight) function. This means that if an ally where to break LoS, such as to go behind a wall. They still have the buff for one second. This can allow for some unique scenarios in which you can have both auras applied on some allies since during the time they’re LoS, you can switch to the other mode and then regain sight of them, meaning they’d effectively have both auras on them for that brief period. This has greater functionality when combined with your E.

 E - Amp It Up!

• 12 second cooldown
• 3 second duration
• Heal aura gives 40hp/s
• Speed aura gives 70% increased movement speed
• Switching auras does not cancel the speed

This spell empowers the aura you’re currently in. It makes your speed boost go from 30% to 70% and your heal go from 12.5hp/s to 40hp/s. This is what makes Lucio such a prominent hero and is key to almost every team composition. To go from 0% to 70% speed increase is overwhelming. It solves a lot of issues with characters whose main issue is their mobility. Take Reinhardt for example. He has a lot of damage, a lot of survivability but lacks in only having a linear sense of mobility in his L-Shift. Paired with Lucio, he becomes a terrifying threat that the enemy team has to deal with. It helps your team with positioning errors as they can amend them faster with the fact they are moving much faster. This also makes Wall riding easier and can allow you to reach some areas in which the previous 30% or 0% wouldn’t let you before. Its main function is to help your team get in and get out, the ability and game sense to do this is very powerful and sometimes unnoticed if done properly.

There’s also the consideration for the empowered heal. Situations which exist where this is the optimal choice is obviously when most of your allies are low on health and your second healer is unable to keep up with healing. In conjunction with Ana E this becomes a very powerful burst heal which is hard to out damage. This also has application when caught in a Zarya ultimate as there isn’t much need for the speed boost when you’re stationary. When facing a Hanzo ultimate, it’s best to just use the speed aura as it’s easier to get out and reposition, rather than trying to out heal and run out of it at the same time. Knowing when to use one over the other will become instinct after some time on the hero.

 Q - Sound Barrier

• Grants a 500 Shield
• Lasts 6 seconds
• The shield degrades by 100 points every second
• Allies must be within LoS to receive shield

This is either your panic button or your enabler. This provides a 500 shield to all allies within the area. The arbitrary timing of this spell can be quite annoying at times. It’s key to be in the correct position so that you don’t sacrifice your allies failing to use the ability. Such instances exist as a Reinhardt Ultimate. For Zenyatta, it’s easily possible that he can cast his Q as he hears the sound cue from Reinhardt. For Lucio, this isn’t true; you need more time to cast the animation due the length of it. Besides from saving your team from Zarya’s and Reapers, it has the potential to help your team engage. Giving everyone a 500 health increase is enormous, and very difficult to deal with if you’re also engaging on them with a 70% speed increase.

Composition

You can generally have Lucio with and against any group of heroes in the game. This is due to the nature of his kit which allows him to function so fluently with any group. Of course there's going to be situations where he fits better than others. He tends to do better with heroes who can fully utilise the speed boost which he has to offer. These tend to be heroes such as Reaper, Reinhardt and more. These heroes want to get in quick and get out in the same fashion.

Match-ups

Lucio tends to fair well against most heroes but there's a select few that can deny his ability to do his job.

The first is Reinhardt. Reinhardt is known for his ability to win fights with his ultimate alone. This combed with many ultimates can quickly wipe a team without a proper defense. As Lucio, your job is to make sure you're in position to cast your Sound Barrier either before or as he casts his so your team has a boost of defense to survive the attack. However, the reason I say that Reinhardt is a counter is because if you fail to be in the proper positon, you cannot cast your Sound Barrier as you hear his. You must be out of the fire line otherwise he will finish the channel before yours thus denying your job as a support.

Next is Winston. Similar to Reinhardt, he can deny your Sound Barrier with his own Barrier Projector (E). If you're caught inside of Winston's E as you cast your Sound Barrier, the shield will only be applied to you. This is very problematic as your job is to provide a shield to your whole team during a fight, not you alone.

The last is Ana. This exists due to the functionality of her E, Biotic Grenade. If you and your team are caught by Ana's E then half your job as Lucio is denied as she blocks all enemy heals through the duration of the spell. With it lasting 5 seconds, if she times it with your heal aura and Amp It Up, it could be detrimental as it would be denying a potential 1,200 heal (40hp/s on 6 targets is 240hp/s, for 5 seconds this is 1,200).

Communication

In Overwatch, your goal is to function with your team. It's rare that one person can win the whole game by themselves. The winning teams are more often than not those who communicate best, not necessarily the better team. As Lucio, it is far easier to communicate and try to make calls for your team. Your Empowered Speed Aura is essentially a "Go" button and it is your responsibility to call to your team that you have the ability to make any engage easier. The fact that Lucio as a hero is relatively easy to play, it enforces the idea that they should be making the calls for the team due to the nature of his kit. He can call the engages and disengages due to the fact he's controlling the speed of the team.

Tips

Throughout the game, make sure to keep pinging when your Sound Barrier is up. This allows your team to know if they can engage with safety. It also allows them to make sure that if they are lacking defensive spells, they have yours to rely on.

It's useful to try and balance your Speed aura and Heal aura. A good rule of thumb is to have the Speed aura on mostly, and only use the Heal aura when paired with your E.

Always be conscious of how many allies are under influence of your auras to make sure they're being used to their highest potential.

Resources

Lucio Shotcalling - 4000+ SR

Another video of Lucio Shotcalling

Useful Wallrides and Walljumps

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