The Lifeweaver buffs are nice, but...

He doesn't need more heals.

The self heal is nice for his survivability. But the part of LW's kit that needs buffs & quality of life changes is his utility. We're talking Petal Platform and Life Grip. What Weaver brings to the table that other supports don't is the ability to dynamically reposition his allies (and enemies), especially vertically. It makes him unique compared to other mobility supports, who usually enable speed. ML7 once described a good match with Weaver feeling like you're orchestrating the flow of the game.

Unfortunately, right now his cooldowns are long and situational, meaning a lot of downtime where you just end up healbotting. I want to see some creative solutions that let Weaver use his utility more frequently, without creating a situation where a Weaver on the team means that no one ever dies. I have some ideas.

Petal Platform

Platform's got pretty much constant uptime, meaning you always have the high ground. But it's hard to coordinate around it to get value - unless you're GM you're probably mostly just using platform to make Weaver himself survive longer. Still, platform has the most potential skill expression of all his cooldowns.

1. Recall petal platform (like Sigma's Experimental Barrier) This is a suggestion I saw a few places, but I first saw it mentioned by ReformedRavi (Lifeweaver GOAT, watch his vids). Pressing petal once deploys it, exact same as it works now. Pressing it a second time recalls the petal. Dramatically reduce petal's cooldown, so Weaver can redeploy petal frequently, like Sigma deploys his shield. The catch is if petal gets destroyed it has a longer cooldown, comparable to what it has now. This incentivises the enemy to target platform. While petal is not on the field, its health recharges. Again, like Experimental Barrier. In cases where you want to get multiple allies to high ground before a fight, you can do that more easily. Or when you're trying to set up a play like the whole team jumping over a wall into enemy backlines on Rialto second point, if you mess up your first petal placement you can try again much more quickly. It does give Weaver much more capacity to interrupt enemies. But isn't something proactive what he needs? I'd rather enemy Weaver do unique, clever plays over just healing bigger numbers. He's just as likely to platform Winston shield or Mercy souls to secure a pick as he is to interrupt an Orisa ult and drag the fight out.
2. Petal platform elevator (again, like Sigma's Experimental Barrier) Not what people usually mean when they make theSig shield suggestion. Once petal is deployed and reaches max height as per normal, hold the petal button to rapidly descend the petal. Once it reaches its lowest point, it can be triggered to get the extra height from the jump. It's basically an elevator, and Weaver is the operator. Destroy the petal with the interact button. Same as the first option, this lets Weaver help multiple teammates to high ground between fights without having to wait for platform's long cooldown. It gives Weaver more to do and helps him fine-tune the heights allies need to get to in cases where platform's default height is a little too high. If an ally is on the platform, moving it up and down lets Weaver make his ally harder to hit, and lets snipers find new angles. He wouldn't be able to disrupt enemy plays as frequently as option 1, but he has much more control over the petal.
3. Petal Platform Generator When Weaver initially throws platform, it behaves exactly as it does now. But a dull pink device the same shape as platform remains on the ground: a petal generator. A second or so after petal reaches max height, the generator glows brighter pink. Allies can step on the generator, and it spits out another petal platform, complete with the extra height if they jump at the top. This lets your team coordinate taking the platform together more easily, especially instigating fights. At same time, it doesn't give Weaver any extra capacity to disrupt enemy plays. The generator can be destroyed. The risk with platform is how to allow teams to use it together or more frequently, in a way that doesn't cause too much huddling on the platform to stall a losing fight. Anything that lets allies reuse platform could mean infinitely jumping on and off the platform, which would be annoying to play against. But having an object that can be destroyed means that's not a problem, because there's counterplay.

Life Grip

Life grip is designed to be long-cooldown big save. It's Weaver's equivalent to Rez/Lamp/Suzu. But what's much more interesting than saving allies is repositioning them. The best grips enable deep dives, ult-combos and slingshots, bringing allies to positions they didn't know they needed, and preventing allies from getting booped. We want more of those plays, and less staring at your tank's booty to grip them the second they hit critical health.

1. Life Grip cancel If Weaver presses life grip a second time during the grip animation, the ally is dropped where they are. Rather than repositioning allies to where Weaver stands, they can move anywhere between where they were and where Weaver is now. Certain ults and movement abilities already let allies exit grip early. It's an interesting and pretty underutilised part of his kit. Why not let Weaver do it too, and give every ally more dynamic positioning options? Your Reaper can TP into the back, pick off enemy Ana, then Weaver can pull him, cancel grip and drop him from the sky to ult right in the middle of the enemy team. That just sounds like Apil Fool's patch-tier fun. The only risk is that he would make it easier to grief allies by dropping them in pits etc. But that's already possible if the Weaver really wants to, and I've had it happen to me a total of zero times. I think most Weavers just want to actually win and play the game, same as everyone else.
2. Life Grip ally trigger When you grip an ally, they are not immediately pulled and they are not invulnerable. They simply glow pink. There is a window (2s) where either Weaver can press grip a second time, or the ally can press interact, at which point the ally will be pulled to Weaver. If Weaver is cc'd or either the ally or Weaver are killed in the meantime, the ability is lost and Grip still has full cooldown. This gives life grip some counterplay. TBH this is more or less the April Fool's Symm TP change, but it makes a lot more sense for Weaver. Allies would have more agency about when exactly they will be pulled. The cost is it now takes a double-tap when Weavers needs to pull an ally immediately to save them.
3. Dynamic cooldown If an ally is gripped with more than half health, grip does no healing and the cooldown is 15 seconds instead of 19. Dynamic cooldowns are one of the best and most underutilised tools in the balance's team toolbox. Queen's axe, Genji's dash and now Ball's hook were all inspired balance choices. Grip should be the same. It has a long cooldown because if you pocket someone and wait till the last moment to grip, you can guarantee a prevented death. But that play is more boring/less skillful than saving a booped ally who was at almost full health, or pulling your Zen into a sneaky highground spot during a teamfight, or using grip to creatively combo with ultimates like Cass's, Reaper's, Orisa's or Mauga's. I.e. the move is balanced around the boring stuff because that's more consistent value than the fun stuff. So how do you incentivise the funstuff? You give it a different cooldown! If an ally has more than half health, grip isn't really denying a death - unless they were booped, in which case saving them requires more proactive positioning by Weaver, and is something unique to him anyways, so that play should be encouraged. A situationally lower cooldown means you're free to make proactive and creative repositioning plays.
4. Life Grip deployables Self-explanatory. Gives Weaver more options for big brain plays. Anything that reduces his downtime between playmaking is good. Picture: your Bap whiffs his lamp placement for Dva Bomb. Weaver grips it to a better position and saves your team. Grip an ally Symm exit portal into a better position for her, allowing the team to TP around corners, "through" walls, or simply farther than normal. Or you could TP half your team to one side of the enemy, grip the TP to the other side for the rest of the team, and pincer the enemy team in between. Ally Illari dies on defense, your team is pushed back out her pylon's range, and you are struggling to keep everyone alive on your own. Pull the pylon with you for extra healing as you fallback. Not only do you save your team, you save your Illari's pylon being destroyed by the enemy push, and therefore save her from a longer cooldown. Torb has his turret off-angling, but the enemy team has pushed onto point and your team has died. It's just Weaver duelling the remaining enemy DPS. Grip Torb's turret into the fight with you and hold the point.

Tree of Life

Giving tree overhealth was a creative solution to make a very reactive ult more proactive. Tree would be fine if some changes like the above were made to Weaver's kit but as it stands, unfortunately tree is boring compared to how unique petal and grip are, and frankly compared to most support Ults too.

1. New Passive - Shorter cooldowns during tree Weaver's CDs are fun and creative. The main problem is that they have too much downtime, and if you flub them (which is easy) the cooldowns are very punishing. On the other hand, if you shorten the cooldown too much, it's too much defensive power. Solution: new passive - "Full Bloom". Petal Platform and Life Grip have reduced cooldowns, while in radius of Tree of Life. Cutting both by 7 seconds (for example) would give platform a CD of 5 seconds and grip a CD of 12 seconds. Tree's duration is 15 seconds. This gives Weaver access to 3-4 platforms over the duration of his Ult, as well as potentially two grips if he times it well. It also gives him another incentive to deploy tree - let's say an ally gets booped but you have 5 seconds left on grip's cooldown. Pop your tree, refresh your CD & grip your teammate. He'd feel powerful, but just for small windows throughout the match.
2. Once-off Teamwide Cooldown Refresh When tree is set out, everyone gets a once-off reduction in timer for any cooldown - let's say by 5 seconds. Maybe your Tracer is in trouble, and you see she's used recall already. Plant tree, and she gets it 5 seconds faster, and recall to save herself if needed. The difference from point 1 is that this would apply to the whole team, and would apply just once, when tree is initially deployed. It would be more situational but it would reward the higher skill ceiling Weavers who are tracking their allies' CDs. It would also combo really well with Fox, and Weaver needs more comps he can fit into.
3. Teamwide Rejuvenating Dash While within radius of the tree, every hero without a double jump gets Weaver's dash as a double jump for tree's duration. Weaver is all about repositioning. It feels great to combo the extra height from a petal platform jump with Weaver's dash in midair. Imagine the playmaking potential if, for a few seconds, every ally could do that. It lets Weaver enable his team to reposition themselves for a few seconds, rather than him positioning them. Tree has a 15 second duration and dash has a 5 second cooldown, so every ally would get 2-3 dashes. It would give Weaver far more value in brawl and dive comps. Besides, the whole team zipping around just sounds fun.

tl;dr Lifeweaver is sick, he has so much potential and I want him to be viable