looking at my champ stats on guru is pretty funny. i pretty much only play soul collector with 1 load-out

Loadout is:

Fade to Black 2

Blood Pact 5

Dark Whisper 2

Spirit Leech 1

Revenant 5

Then in game usually goes like this:

Beginning - nimble1 + (chronos, nimble2, damage reduction, or even cauterize)

then as the game goes on, i just fill in whichever of those 4 seem to be holding me back as I play, but it is almost always those 4 in a serious match. sometimes i take morale boost if i am doing better than my teammates to give them more backup, and sometimes i take kill to heal or life rip if we are demolishing enemy and need to speed up the win to get to next game sooner

this same load-out works well for me if i am solo supporting 1 or 2 FLs or co-supporting 1 or 2 FLs, also works for a little flanking and amd adds a lot to a push because you can sustain closer to the front. Seris' "heal over time" trait is often considered a liability, but i try to use it to my advantage. best bet is to wait until i know a teammate is about to grab all the attention, start healing them right as they start taking damage and then use the diversion to hit as many enemies as possible. the fact that my weapon shots go through enemies with no damage drop-off makes this strategy of hit and heal pretty effective as long as i don't get too much attention before i can make some distance. basically its all about being enough of a pain in the ♥♥♥ to keep the enemy from focusing on one teammate too much. having 3100 health means i can rescue teammates by healing them as i jump in front of them and take some damage that might have otherwise killed them, allowing them to get away while that same heal keeps my health up, then i jump behind them as i start sweeping attack and heal them again as the enemy recovers from it. basically just cycle the damage between the 2 of us while healing us both. doing this can get predictable, you have to pick your rescues wisely, but it makes a big difference just to pull it off once in a while to score the objective when you would otherwise be forced to regroup for defense. then there's the fact that most of the time a team has 2 flanks, they will try to attack me at once, and they never consider that i might try to line them up and do as much damage as possible to both of them so at least if i die, so will both of them, and probably a teammate will turn and smack them both with me. that works out a lot more often than it should. solo flanks often find they waste more of their own time than they do mine even when they are smart enough to wait until i am already hurt. it also means when i am against 2 tanks, i can flank the 2 tanks and often hit them both with cauterize behind their shields, forcing them to turn and often even retreat, and leaving their support very vulnerable and very busy healing at the same time. this dramatically reduces the amount of damage output for a few seconds and can score a good number of soul charges. supports with low self healing find this very hard to deal with. my weapons piercing is also nice against FLs who try to protect Ying and io deployables. of course it doesn't go through shields or deployables, but that is less of an issue now with the latest re-balancing. pretty much just nimble, caut, chronos. then i have to choose between morale boost, damage reduction or kill to heal. people say kill to heal is bad, but for my sustained long heal, it works really well since i can start a heal, then duck behind the wall and that 3 extra seconds to register an assist from a teammate to heal me and get me back in the fight. this is my basic strategy going into every fight, i developed it in quick-play over the years (Seris turn 3 YO soon!!) and now i am fine tuning it in ranked. I am a little surprised how well its working, but it seems to be pretty meta breaking as a lot of my kills come from flanks and DPS who seem to assume they will be able to kill me without even trying to get first strike. I know my rank isnt super high and i may need to make adjustments soon, but so far, the majority of players seem to have a hard time adjusting to a support that plays like mid-tank, is free to flank at whim and can occasionally area deny and once in a while, when the enemy forgets not to cluster up, i can score some nasty multi kills. im learning new levels of seris' ability to play any role every game. some of my gold 1 games, even against tough opponents, i managed several double and triple kills. depends on my teammates followthrough vs mine with just the right timing. im not saying this play style will be a new meta any time soon, but i def wouldnt be surprised by it. maybe platinum rank will show me that my setup is no good and im only succeeding from personal skill, i am excited to find out as ive never put much effort into ranked before. i will say i have made some insane damage numbers and kills when i have a second support on my team, with 1 or 2 tanks. because of seris' slow attack projectiles, its not hard for people to get out of harms way at the very last second, so i am extremely vulnerable when i do decide to follow through on a kill, its a huge gamble every time and everyone knows it. thats why extra health, self healing and ammo regen matters, so there are no missed opportinities. i love when people say "seris ammo regen is dumb, her reload is short" well yes, its dumb when you are typical style support, but when you are aggressive with a character that gets only a few slim shots at following through, those moments matter a lot, just like those area deny/pushback moments, and losing them to reloading actually has a huge affect on holding the line and staying alive from forcing the enemy FL to hold a bad spot to keeping the enemy flanks from having easy openings. i have experimented with speeding up escape cast time rather than HP buff card or ammo regen, but its just not as good. as long as meta babies stay super predictabe like they are, there is no need to have this and only 1/100 times is it functional to make that sacrifice, and so far i havent seen a pattern for predicting those 1/100 times before the game starts. until then, just that 1 loadout 99.99% of the time.

funny thing is, i almost never see good soul collector out there because they are too busy not healing ever, making the 3/4 of a champ, or they play SC like mortal reach and dont abuse the hell out of the health and damage buffs to cycle damage. most of them just play a super generic mortal reach which means all you have to do is force bad healing angles on them and, since they mostly all focus several escape buffs, just hit them often enough to force them to hit escape which means they wil A) actually escape and not heal for a bit, which is neat or B) come out of escape and be super vulnerable for 10-14 seconds while they have low mobility, low damage and low health. its especially funny how few of them take heal>self heal with mortal reach as they get 33% more out of it than a soul collector. hopefully i can keep ranking up and maybe see something new, but so far all of gold rank is just like quick play, ignoring the infinite versatility to try and focus on 1 aspect of seris, and she is just not that kind of champ, she demands more than that or you may as well pick a specialist champ. im not saying she has the highest skill ceiling or functionality, but considering how many meta-bound players are out there who cant imagine anything outside their bubble, she has the potential to be pretty devastating, to the point that once in a while, ive had entire teams walk right past my teammates over and over again to try and kill me first, but of course, if you look at my loadout again with that in mind, i am ready for that as well. sometimes it works and they kill me, but i make sure yto leave them in the worst possible place surrounded by my teammates when i die. its never not fun doing what i do, and for me, thats reason enough to keep doing it.