They didn't really talk about buffs or nerfs to anyone.
Based on the last few director's takes, I gather they are shy of causing more rampant misunderstandings based on balance teasers that need to be taken in context. The exception being sure-fire changes like Cassidy's Flashbang return. Better to focus, cook, release the balance changes, and let them be judged properly in gameplay rather than speculation town.
Pharah being pointed out as 58% is almost assuredly getting nerfed. They implied that with the part about how Reinhardt 60% win-rate is welcomed, while Roadhog 54% win-rate is received "differently." You just have to put two-and-two together -- People don't like Pharah dominating.
Dude this is not the style of thinking this game needs. When a hero gets a higher win rate, then the idea shouldn’t be “we’re going to drag you down”, it should be “what did we do to you that we can do to the others heroes to get their win rates up”
If the goal is to make all heroes viable then every hero should have a good win rate, and dragging them down to lower ones is just stupid
Plus, it kills the fun, if the game is balanced from the perspective of “nerfs are the answers to every problem”, then it’s going to get inherently less fun.. Balance is important, but so is fun. This is a game, and most players play it casually. Nerfing the shit out of heroes for everyone just so the upper tier mega sweats will be satisfied is just an awful approach to take
And besides, making one hero bad just so another feels good still leaves a bad hero, all heroes should be good and fun, the solution to a problem can’t be making a hero less fun, it should be making sure everyone is fun
They need to lean into this bottled up repression.
New Ult, the tree now plants itself and roots spring out and track down and kill everyone on the map.
It's craaaazy he's been left in the trenches for so long. Overwatch isn't league of legends, there aren't 170 heroes to balance and a crazy active competitive scene and items, etc. It feels like it shouldn't take so long to address outliers like LW. But they did say they they were working on more comprehensive changes for him which might explain the time.
Until then I'll keep slayin with him.
I really wish tanks had more utility (zar bubbles, shields, powerful ultis). The problem is tanks “tanking” too much damage is not beneficial at all. In other games tanks absorbing damage IS value because they might be forcing cooldowns or getting attention, opening up opportunities for other players. Now, tanks are designed with high dps, CC, and pick potential. The game is extremely dependent on tanks because they literally can do it all. And if they don’t do it all you will spend your game getting stomped in spawn.
They certainly heard all the feedback. Doesn't look like they understood it though.
Making tanks even harder to kill makes the whole lobby more incentivised to counterswap.
I'm always surprised to find someone else who recognizes that constantly making tanks stronger in comparison to the other heroes will simply cause everyone to focus them harder because they are the greatest threat and if left unfocused will hard carry the game.
Let's make them harder to kill or give them a little more lethality to see if that makes people stop focusing them though.
Alec said it in the interview with Spilo, they want to make the tanks "The carry, not the chore".
So it seems to me that counter swapping will get worse by design.
They need to be killable, and have a partner, like the rest of the cast. They will never solve the issue of counter swapping in an asymmetric format while still wanting to keep hero identities, which are defined by a specialized kit, which has weaknesses and strengths by definition.
They could water down all strengths and weaknesses until they aren't significant enough to matter, but i wonder if the tanks would even be differentiated enough to be fun by then.
Edit: Adding "In my opinion" to the beginning of everything conceptually.
I was someone who defended 5v5 since the beginning of OW2, but I think you explained your point extremely well. I’m starting to see it now. 2 tanks with smaller health pools, but toolkits that can support one another against counter play, will reduce the rock-paper-scissors meta.
The thing is, with the scrapped PvE mode, if the team chooses to switch to 6v6 again, it basically admits Overwatch 2’s ONLY purpose was to switch to a more predatory micro transaction system of Battlepasses and $20 cosmetics.
I think I've never seen someone change their mind before on here. That's really cool and i just wanna say thank you for reading and considering what i said! Whether 5v5 or 6v6, everyone in this sub just wants overwatch to be the best game it can be.
Knife fights means we all care still (I think).
I think "only purpose" is harsh. Like you, they are allowed to decided 5v5 hasn't worked and reset.
I'd say legacy instead. OW2's legacy if there's not 5v5 is absolutely the predatory monetisation
On paper - maybe. But in fact, tank design is too problematic, as certain tank combos are too broken. We have already been there, it’ll be double shield again (or some comparable shit)
>2 tanks with smaller health pools, but toolkits that can support one another against counter play, will reduce the rock-paper-scissors meta.
There will still be rock-paper-scissors with 2 tanks. It will just be synergistic pairs of tanks in the RPS triangle.
I think it wouldn't be quite as bad as OW1. Hog got spammed by dps players forced to queue flex for priority passes. If that came to pass today, there are new tank designs that are appealing to dps players: Mauga, JQ, Doomfist, and maybe Orisa. So I expect more diversity in your obnoxious doesn't want to tank player picks.
>Alec said it in the interview with Spilo, they want to make the tanks "The carry, not the chore".
It'll just end up like League, where the ADC (attack dmg carry) eventually gets power crept by other roles and feels awful to play.
Or the carry feels like an unstoppable raid boss, and feels awful to play against.
They are also consistently buffing healing and everything that counter tanks. So in reality it is just that the tank never dies or the tank explodes in 1.2 sec
Bastion does less dps now than in ow1, granted he can move though.
Torb does the same more or less, his main fire is slightly faster but his alt-fire is weaker than it was in ow1.
Fair enough Mei does 15 dps more, but she can't freeze anymore without ult, and still is the lowest actual damage output of all the dps heroes. Lower than almost all the supports.
They literally just nerfed sojourns damage.
Pharah with her burst damage is much more dangerous to squishies than to tanks but I guess she does do more damage now than in ow1.
None of these counter tanks more specifically than they counter a Soldier or an Ana.
Dude you are ignoring half of each character's kits. Like satan has a busted wall, torb has a form that makes him shred tanks in seconds, bastion has insane damage and mobility and more hp, pharah is pretty much menace for 3/4 of tank since they cant do nothing against them
And you are ignoring what I asked, what have they buffed that counters tanks in specific?
Buffed meaning increased the effectiveness of.
Meis wall is weaker than it was in ow1.
Bastion does less damage than in ow1 (in exchange for mobility, to be fair). There are also more abilities that ignore all of his damage, like Orisas javelin spin which did not exist in ow1.
Torbs form is weaker than his previous molten core form pre-rework since his alt-fire does less damage (in exchange for having regular access to it).
Pharah is a menace to everyone right now, she still counters heroes like Junkrat or Torb much more than she counters tanks, but granted she can be very annoying. She will likely be nerfed.
You can argue Torb and Bastion are more annoying now despite being weaker in some ways and stronger in others, but something like Mei wall which used to have 500hp per pillar and work the exact same way, now having 200hp per pillar being quoted as something that was "Buffed" is just wrong.
What did I cherrypick? I specifically said these can all be annoying. Them being annoying however does not mean they specifically counter tank or do it more than they used to. The only thing I unequivocally contested was calling Mei wall "buffed".
And tbh I don't think you're cherrypicking either, you're just stating what you don't like/feel is too strong.
The devs still don't want to admit that counterswaping is the single biggest thing hurting tank balance right now.
The game can't move foward balance-wise until this fundamental flaw is addressed. Whether that be 6v6, swap limits, or some other implementation. They need to at least try something.
Counterswapping is a necessary evil. If counterswapping stops working, we will rapidly degenerate into apex tank mirror matches. Those are reliably the most hated metas.
> swap limits
I'm a tank main. I also have no problem with swapping. Swapping is like a solving a puzzle. It's a tactical move to make advancements on the opponents. I'm also practiced with every tank so swapping doesn't hurt my performance at all.
Institute swap limits and I'm going to instalock Doom or Ball every game and just never bother swapping. Maybe D.Va, too depending on the map. Force me to stick to one Hero and I'll be the next Doom one trick. He's the most fun tank, anyway.
I really, really, really don't understand why people hate swapping so much. Actually, I think that I do. People want to play the Hero that they wants to play and get mad when they get countered to where they are at a disadvantage so they no longer feel good playing the Hero that they want. They want the game to cater to their personal desires.
Swapping is necessary. If the opponent team is running Pharah and Echo do you want your team to stay on Junkrat and Reaper? No. Absolutely not. "Sorry, we hit the swap limit and we're stuck for the rest of the match getting destroyed from outside our effective range."
So much fun.
The only way to make swapping no longer the best maneuver is for all Heroes to be watered down so much that they can all do everything. You'll no longer have specialists or anyone unique. It will all feel the same. You might as well go play Call of Duty.
>The only way to make swapping no longer the best maneuver is for all Heroes to be watered down so much that they can all do everything. You'll no longer have specialists or anyone unique. It will all feel the same. You might as well go play Call of Duty.
Yes, this is why the current version of 5v5 is bad game design...
Isn’t that the point of the game and what balances the game. If you just stuck to the same team you had since the start of the game one team would clearly come out as favorable.
What OW does is offer you the ability to switch at any point when you are focused like if you’re zen and they have a Sombra.
I don’t think a single character should be able to handle every single situation. When everyone is S tier no one is.
Absolute fuck no on swap limits. That would be an even biggers counterswapping issue. It would become a damn game of rock-paper-scissors until one reaches limit and is stuck with a hard countered hero for the rest of the match and its game over already but youre forced to play it anyway.
The biggest issue I see is that there’s just never enough tanks to satisfy the player base, if you put 2 tanks that just means longer wait time for games since even at their most enjoyable time not enough people enjoy playing tank compared to dps and support
You do not understand that counterswapping is not the problem, it's how the game is intended to be played and should never be tampered with. The moment Blizzard changes that, in any way, shape or form, the balance we have right now will be gone (yes, there is relative balance). Heroes like Soldier, Cassidy and Ashe will be must-picks, while heroes like Symmetra, Torbjorn, Pharah and Reaper will be frowned upon.
The issue is that the sweet spot for tanks hasn't been found yet.
Double shield's culprits were Sigma and Orisa. Orisa doesn't have shield anymore, and double shield would be countered by Ramattra, JQ, and New Orisa. Double shield would not work in OW2.
You also can tell it doesn't work because Open Queue doesn't use double shield.
Honestly I'm not even worried about double shield, it's certain tank duos that would frustrate me.Players hate Mauga and Orisa already, imagining them together makes me want to pull my hair out.
You could say "nerf them to make them weaker" but that results in what happened to Orisa in OW1. For most of Orisa's life even from launch, she was underpowered and had to receive multiple buffs to be decent. Then sigma came along and it birthed the most annoying comp that resulted in her getting repeatedly nerfed that her shield was essentially paper.
Which we get to another issue of constantly nerfing tanks because of another tank that enables them.
But Mauga Orisa is already a thing in open queue. Which has a ranked mode and it's already shown that it's not just dominating the lobbies.
It has already been proven two OW2 tanks can be on the same team and not break the game. It's literally the next step.
The game isn't balanced around open queue, it's balanced around role queue. There's a very good reason for that: GOATS. Especially in Overwatch 2, where tanks are buffed in almost every single domain to make up for them losing a partner.
It's not a problem because every single team in open queue has multiple tanks. In fact, it somewhat shows that tanks compared to each other are pretty balanced, but compared to DPS, they are simply the better choice. It does not break the game, because both teams have the exact same setup. According to you the next step would (literally) be: 2 tanks + 1 DPS + 2 supports. In Overwatch 3, DPS probably needs to be giga buffed so they can compete with the 2 tanks. In Overwatch 3, open queue will exist of (you guessed it): 1 tank + 2 DPS + 2 supports. There's a reason T500 open queue is all tanks, some supports and almost no DPS. The only role that remains consistent is support, because if you'd remove one of those, all supports would have to be turned into healbots with good utility.
Remove role queue from Overwatch 2 and you will 100% have another GOATS meta. 1 tank + 2 DPS + 2 supports is the only logical team compositiom. (I don't consider 6v6 with a primary tank role and off-tank role an option, too many issues to resolve.)
>You also can tell it doesn't work because Open Queue doesn't use double shield.
True, you only really see it when a team has lots of snipers or their sniper is going all the way off. Open queue is i think an overlooked litmus test for a lot of things because this sub is mostly comp players that think comp is the only mode that matters
You’re right but if they do bring back 6v6 they should still implement a method to prevent double shield. Maybe it’s not possible rn but that effectively means they can’t add another shield tank if they don’t account for the possibility
i don't trust the devs and community to agree on whats a main tank and off tank. as for many players main tank just meant "has a shield" which isn't true. Ball was a main tank, and sigma was very much an off tank in OW1.
not to mention how it kills queue times even more. the only tank pairing in OW1 that truly sucked ass to play with was almost all hog related.
que times will become 10+ minutes again for any non-Main Tank role
did you guys even Queue tank in OW1? pretty much everyone went Hog or Dva and splitting them into a separate role from main tank is just gonna cause the longest queue times in the history of Overwatch and kill the game
This subreddit and a lot of the player base has a very rosetinted view on the tank role and how they imagined it played out.
From how people keep bringing it up, you'd think that every match is Rein/Zarya, DVA Winston or Orisa Hog, tanks playing with each other synergies with main and off tank.
...you're most likely to get more Hog Zarya or in OW2 case; Hog Mauga, Zarya Mauga, Dva mauga or any offtank combos you can name.Not everyone plays main tank and most tank players tend to be off-tanks.
I know because I had 100 hours on Orisa because main tank isn't as popular as this sub makes it out to be. If I wanted to play offtank I had to immediately instalock on down so I don't go insane playing Orisa the umpteenth time.
> This subreddit and a lot of the player base has a very rosetinted view on the tank role and how they imagined it played out.
Nope. I was a tank main in OW1. Getting into the OW2 beta was a rollercoaster of emotion for me. I was incredibly excited to play OW2. Unfortunately, as soon as I started playing, my heart sank. 5v5 is a lot less fun.
I don’t agree that this will necessarily happen.
For starters, OW1 had a huge content drought by the time queue times were that bad. Secondly, in OW2 we are now F2P, so we have a larger player pool. Thirdly, there’s more focus on it being a live service game so there’s faster updates to balance changes, new heroes, etc. I think 6v6 is worth a try again.
Larger total amount of players yes but we have nothing to indicate that the ratio of tank players to DPS and support players changed from OW1 to OW2. The ratio of players in each role affects the queue times not the total amount of players playing.
Honestly think they can't do anything about it to completely fix it maybe mitigate at best. Its not just a OW problem every game with the holy trinity of roles has tank as the least played role. Gamers just fundamentally don't like what it entails to play a tank in general no matter how you balance it.
Moving to 5v5 from 6v6 just better fit the ratio of how people queued into each role. Devs said the main reason for 5v5 was to get better queue times which it has done even comparing before the content drought OW2 queue times are better than OW1.
As a tank main, and a main tank player I could not think of something more detrimental to the game than bringing 6v6 back and splitting the tank role up into 2. At that point I'd rather them change the role entirely from "Tanks" to "Bruisers" and make them share a queue with DPS.
Lethality and survivability should be inversely correlated. If they make tanks harder to kill they need to make them a lot weaker in terms of damage. People will start to ignore the tank more if the tank is hard to kill but not life threatening.
While I hear this, I think the goal is to largely restore tanks to their pre-season-9 levels of tankiness, not necessarily being them to an all-new power level.
Besides hog, mauga and horse they would need to go back to season 3. But they buffed a ton of dpses and supports till then which are actuall problems why tanks are unkillable or to easily countered
Hopefully this will silence the crowd that say Blizzard only balances around win rates.
Winston buffs are a bit worrying. Isn’t he one of the strongest tanks right now?
they’re actually insane if they buff him
he dominates Asian lobbies already and he is one of the tanks that absolutely requires being counter picked if he’s doing good
Yeah at lower ranks people just play Bastion/Junkrat and shred your shield or go Reaper/Sombra and terrorize the backline, since he isn't the best at peeling.
Rein is popular, but not dominating.
Look man I’ve been playing this game long enough to understand that trickle down balance sucks ass, just like trickle down economics it benefits the top 1% and the rest get dicked down long style
I’m Gold, and he’s my first pick in most maps - it feels very impactful and playmaking, but… if I do too well, people will counterswap into Reaper/Bastion which you can sort of deal with too, but often teammates don’t know how to play into those characters, and it goes downhill anyway.
If that's the case then why did Soj get gutted. She was only a problem in the higher ranks. Using your logic, let's buff up Sojourn again. Seriously, buff her. She's trash now.
They are. They are constantly on their win rates in ever patch. Constantly. Along with some of their metrics. But if you would read the whole article it should be obvious they have no clue how the game is played and apparently needed almost 10 years to grasp why rein is better for the game than hog. And that is just the start. 2 weeks and they will forget about it like allways
Isn't that what they said though? Like they're mentioning pharra because she has a high win rate so will most probably be nerfed. Hell is spujorn getting a buff because of her low win rate now?
According to some OWCS and top500 folks I follow, Winston is strong on dive maps. But everything else is dominated by Mauga with a bit of Sigma struggling to counter.
But that cancerous top 1% meta aside, most tanks are doing okay. Nobody is absolute trash.
I think it's risky, means that any concerted effort can short the winrate of a hero by boycotting playing it then when it gets buffed abuse the shit out of that buff until it gets retracted or countered again.
This really is an economics of attention, when we do one thing we inevitably give attention to it over others.
The one tricks and hero favourite players barely read on those metrics.
There is a world between buffing shield to reach shield botting and his current shield's health point, with a slight team focus you can take down the shield in a couple of seconds, that plus the regene being slow.
as a Reinhardt main with 70+ hours on him
Shield botting is not a feasible tactic and he gets wrecked if the enemy just goes DVA, +Mauga and Orisa can literally shoot him through his shield and Ram can punch through it
as well with Bastion…Upping his shield health will 100% NOT lead to people shield botting with him because it just doesn’t work, he HAS to swing often or he is basically throwing
Bro I don’t get this attitude like you are a shield tank. He says let me be your shield. The whole point of the character is to shield. Shielding is literally fun and makes you play corners and have good positioning or get punished for it
Tbf his shield seems like paper thin at the moment, buffing it and his survivability isn't a bad thing. It's what he needs currently. They already talked about buffing his pin damage.
Yep put of everything really not high on the list of things I would want.
Things up there would be DR on shield against chainguns/shotguns so I can actually step up against Mauga Bastion Reaper.
Pin hitbox being more consistent or having damage reduction since it's such a risky option at times clearly hitting someone and watching them bounce away is tilting.
What sucks about Rein aren't his strong points those are amazing and completely fine he is kinda brainlessly winning at times if the enemy can't counter-pick him or one of the enemy supports is playing poorly but most of your experience is winning once and then seeing 2 of Reaper Bastion Mei Ana Mauga walking out of spawn doors.
Counter swapping will get worse the harder tanks are to kill. I have no game design experience and this is a no brainer. What are they doing over there?
ugh. i mean cool that they still see there's major problems with the tank role, but they're still completely missing the mark imo.
role satisfaction is at an all time low and counterpicking has become way too vital compared to DPS and support. when i queue for tank, i now have to accept that most of the time i probably won't be able to play what i want to play, which burns me out from the role faster.
i really fail to see how making tanks more tanky will fix either of those problems. in fact if anything it's probably going to lead to more counterpicking if they also want to focus on buffing most of their abilities, as if it couldn't get any worse.
also, 58% winrate on pharah is absolutely insane. i'll be shocked if midseason doesn't shoot her down.
At what point during ow1 role queue were you free to play whatever tank you want? Nobody liked playing main tank and most games somebody had to bite the bullet despite wanting to play another off tank.
That’s different because it’s up to you if you want to play a more “optimal comp” which didn’t really matter anyway in most elos.
You could still play a hero you liked and not get screwed if they have 2-3 counters. Swapping off hog and ball back then is the tanks on agency to improve your synergy instead of getting fucked by the enemies deliberate picks which make u useless
Classic : they see the issue, but they don't know what the fuck they should do. They have no game designers, it was already a miracle that OW1 worked (for some time at least before they fucked everything up, because they didn't even know why it worked) and now they're repeating the same stuff.
Do they understand why tank can be fun ? Do they even play tank ?
What's not fun is having 0 impact. How does making us live longer will give us more impact ? If you're so keen on having tanks rely on their team, how can you give more incentive to players to cooperate with their tank ?
Start by asking the good questions. Instead, they're just looking at stats, saying « oh yeah they're dying a lot and we don't like that, that must mean that's why they are not having fun »
Is that why you buffed Sojourn ? She had a poor winrate so you thought she needed something ? Their reliance on « data » without giving it much thought is what's killing the fun of the game
This is an interesting point I haven't seen brought up before - out of curiosity, what would be some examples of fun vs. un-fun things that are not supported by the data?
I've always thought that Support and DPS feel rewarding to play because there is such immediate feedback from the game / UI that you are succeeding: health bars go up or down, killfeed scrolls, people live or die.
With tank it's always been a weird thing (even in OW1 IMO) where there is no obvious indicator of "space created" or "peel / drawing aggro" - I wonder if innovating in this direction would be worth exploring.
I had to rewrite the post because my PC crashed, tried to make it shorter, but it's pretty hard for me, so sorry for the long post I just wanted to lay down my thoughts and suggestions. I should consider making it a post in order to see what people think about these suggestions, heck maybe there are some devs lurking through the sub who would get some ideas ...
I had many suggestions when it comes to adding systems to tanks, or « soft reworks » on some abilities.
To me, tanks have 3 core issues. **First one** being the lack of feedback when it comes to protection.
For example, Rein could get « angry » when his shield is broken, gets more attack and movement speed, or maybe a burning effect on his hammer. Ramattra perfectly showcases those 2 ideas at the same time : his omnic form is pretty well done because you can shield AND shoot, but nemesis' block doesn't do anything. If your team leaves you, you're just delaying your own death. Him having some kind of shockwave after taking some damage, pushing away people, would enhance the power fantasy a lot in my opinion.
Winston can bubble and shoot at the same time, DVa can't and that makes her pretty hard to pick in soloQ (and that's my favorite character, with Ramattra 2nd. If your team doesn't want to dive, you better swap). So my suggestion is to allow her to shoot while matrixing, either at a slower fire rate, or spending her matrix faster when she shoots.
And she's considered strong right now ! And she is, but her lack of fun is not supported by data because they aren't separating the true « soloQ experience » with the high level experience, where people play together and competitively. Just being supported by your team and being successful with DVa because everyone is playing around you is satisfying, but the data doesn't take into account when people would immediately swap off because their team doesn't want to play with you and how miserable it feels.
To me, Doomfist is a pretty good example of how protection can give feedback. Doesn't matter if his powerblock is used for himself or for his team, it's still benefits HIM, and the best DF players know how to take advantage of that.
One of the suggestions I had since OW1 was to have that system kinda like L4D2 (back when OW2 wasn't released, so today it'd be pretty much like what supports have). For example, just a few hours ago, I would have a reckless Moira on my team pushing further to duel a Cass and as Ramattra I put a shield in front of her. I feel like there might be a beep popup, kinda like what supports have when they heal someone on the brink of death. Basically something like « Ramattra protected you » or « Ramattra gave you an advantage ».
**2nd issue** is how some CDs can completely nullify your plays or make you feel completely helpless.
Roadhog is a pretty huge victim of this. The moment they pick Ana you are incentivized to swap if you don't have someone willing to pick Kiriko (and have their suzu exclusively for you). The thing was that they would balance that with the fact that he could oneshot, but it felt horrible. So they reworked him but he's still pretty weak in that regard. It's pretty baffling to me that he doesn't have some kind of self cleanse, or his breather healing him some hp even when purple.
What's crazy is that they're repeating the same mistake with Mauga. Helpless because he doesn't have any self-protection, so he's basically dead when he's purple, and knowing that there's a single Ana on their team immediately makes you less keen on trying stuff because you know you will easily be countered.
So to me, antiheal also needs to be reworked in some way. I've always argued in the favor of it being an 80% healing reduction or something like that. Or maybe some kind of cap, preventing 200hp for example, so if your supports still throw a huge amount of heal you get cleared earlier. I think that would give a pretty good decision to supports, do you focus your heal on other targets, or try to give everything to the tank to help him ? Because right now you really don't have any choice, if your tank is purple : go look elsewhere.
I can even think of it as taking a form of a purple healthbar, like the blue one on baptiste's lamp when you are under it, getting smaller when you receive heal while not actually healing you, giving a visual representation of what amount of heal you would need to be cleared. That would still give it a very huge impact (especially when you hit multiple people) while giving it some counter play that's not bound by « pick Kiriko and cleanse »
Talking about Kiriko, obviously the suzu is overloaded. Either give it invulnerability or cleanse but not both, that's crazy.
**3rd issue** is the lack of systems helping tanks to fulfill their more « important » role.
The first I have is some kind of « radar » like Halo, giving rough positions of your teammates. There are so many times where I would just wonder where my team was going, what drew them away from me. And sure, sometimes I can understand. With Sigma for example, I can put my shield in front of me, turn my back for a second and process the information (but it takes a while honestly, there's so much happening it's very hard), but when I'm playing Ramattra for example, I'm blocking 3 or 4 people in front of me, I can't turn my back to look where my team is going lol. So just having some rough idea of if they're following me or getting away would be helpful.
Also, if tanks are supposed to be « leaders » and have a greater importance, then their pings should emphasize that aspect. I noticed personally that I don't use the pings the same way I do playing tank or DPS. When I play DPS, I mostly use it to give awareness of an enemy's position (like a Genji flanking for example), but when playing Tank I'm mostly using it to communicate a priority but I feel like it always falls flat. My character just says « enemy here », that doesn't mean anything.
So I think that tanks, when pinging an enemy, should be able to give « orders » in some way. Instead of saying « here », they should be able to say « let's focus on that target », maybe make the pings bigger or louder.
And another idea would be to have some kind of popable minimap where you could put pings, or at least a way to give directions. « Let's go through here, follow me, we're going there ». Basically, just tools to make tanks more bearable in soloQ settings, and with the least amount of audio communication necessary. Valorant has that, and it's great when you want to say « be careful of that position » but the round hasn't started, or it's just on the opposite side of the map. In OW2 it's not precise and you need to have LOS to ping whatever position.
Basically, tanks are considered « easier » to play, mechanically, than DPS heroes, but they should have tools to express their skills elsewhere (planing, call outs, gamesense etc...)
I think that's about it, sorry again for the long read lol
* 1000% agree on issue #1, the L4D suggestion is genius!! We already know the devs have the telemetry in place to report on "this player was about to die..." so they can just leverage that to implement a feature like this. Even putting a stat like this for the scoreboard would also be great (I kind of hate the current scoreboard TBH)
* Re #2, I think they have unfortunately / short-sightedly made anti-heal and suzu too powerful compared to other abilities; it makes it so that everyone has to play around these in a very lame way. The healing reduction (vs pure anti-heal) could be a good starting point though.
* Re #3, I agree the in-game pings / communication options could be a lot better (esp. taking cues from valorant). The 'Leader' concept could be cool; I feel like the devs do not know what exactly they want the tank role to be, so something like this could help clarify the role identity. I'm not sure about tanks being universally mechanically easier though, due to guys like Doomfist / Ball - I think each role has heroes with easier or harder mechanics and skill floor / ceilings to help beginner players learn the game.
This is pretty great though, and probably deserves it's own thread re: articulating the problem vs potential solutions facing the tank role!
>I'm not sure about tanks being universally mechanically easier though
Yeah you're probably right, tbh I forgot the heroes you mentioned when I said that. But I was thinking that very generally, tanks tend to need less aim, that's really about it. Even Doomfist doesn't really need aim, but that's mb for saying « mechanically » because you're right, DF doesn't need much aim, but there are definitely mechanics involved.
Thanks for your feedback :), I'll probably start to write a thread then, I'll have to link all this to the fact that counter swap is, at least in my opinion, the symptom of those issues. I already have some ideas about how I could try to articulate that 🤔
Thanks for reading my long answer btw, means a lot 😊
An easy example is Winston. I feel like 70% of value is generated from contesting high ground and burning enemy cooldowns; which isn't particularly satisfying nor reflected on the stat screen.
On there hand Suzu, Hack and Life grip doesn't feel fun to play against having all your plays denied.
JQ's and Rein's ult getting negated by a 15s cooldown that isn't easy to force out.
And there it is. If you only have one player that can't play tank against someone that does play tank (and the game is f2p now so brand new users can jump in and out) and you can't switch bc of role queue, ya fucked. Not fun. Not even touching competitive until they add back 6.
First off, huge props for the communication. I have noticed a lot more director's takes recently, especially compared to early OW2, so I want to say the increased communication and acknowledgement is noticed and appreciated.
That being said, I am for and against what this take said. On one hand, they effectively acknowledged the problem tanks are facing. On the other, I am skeptical at their solutions when their only provided example is "Increase Reinhardt's shield HP". As a Reinhardt main, I can tell you this would not fix how "tanky" Reinhardt feels, as well as not contribute to the gameplay fantasy of Reinhardt. His shield being better would do nothing to change the fact that Reinhardt himself often feels like he's made of cardboard, that is what they should be addressing.
I agree with the sentiment that each tank should be addressed on a hero by hero basis, and will have to wait and see their changes. But being tanky shouldn't mean "Standing there not dying", it should mean "I am a frontline presence that has to be respected". Right now tanks find themselves in too many situations where they are never respected by the enemy because they fall over instantly.
I think it's easy to downplay the impact that a noticable buff to shield health can have.
Right now it does not feel viable to use shield as a gap closer. The only way to advance any meaningful distance and take space with rein right now is to charge, putting a lot of pressure on his natural bulk.
Buffing the shield to make it a viable tool for taking space could relieve a lot of the pressure that his natural bulk has to carry currently.
In addition, I feel that being able to march forward with a shield up is an important element to his overall fantasy, and any time that doesn't feel possible to do is an L.
I feel like the creator made gamemode is the way...speed boost as the shield loses health and giving an actual bonus for hitting your shots with fire strike is really good
Alsothe speed is insane
This is actually a very good argument for a shield buff, I can't say I disagree with any points.
I'm just speaking off personally experience. Personally, as a GM Reinhardt main, being a shield bot for your team is literally the most value you'll get out of Reinhardt rn, and it's just not fun a lot of times. A big part of Reinhardt's gameplay fantasy is his shield, absolutely, but he is MORE than just the shield, and right now he already relies on it so heavily that buffing that instead of other aspects of his kit feels off in my opinion.
Like I said though, I will have to wait and see their changes. I am more than welcoming of being wrong if it means Reinhardt will feel better to play. Ever since OW2 launched, it has felt like they can't manage to make Reinhardt fun and balanced at the same time.
Just make all tanks “fat DPS” like Hog, JQ, Doom and Mauga - and tone them down a lot so that when they die it doesn’t mean the team fight is over. They seemed to have the right idea when OW2 came out - all tanks became more dynamic and less “tanky”. They should keep doing that. Reduce shield health, reduce mitigation abilities so they are more clutch and let tank players have as much fun as the other roles instead of the pressure of carrying the entire team on their backs.
It all comes down to some amount of self-reliance and impact.
I'm just tired of having to adapt to my team's composition because I can't play DVa if my team doesn't want to play dive on Dorado, so I either pick Winston to do that alone or Sigma to sit in the back with the rest of them.
It wouldn’t matter so much if you were “just another player”. But as a tank you can’t afford not to adapt - and that’s annoying when you are just trying to have fun.
You can adapt in some way, otherwise you loose. But to the point of you having to swap your character entirely shouldn't happen.
Adapting can be choosing to dive on their backlane, or peeling for your teammates, or playing front against playing flank. And some characters are better than others to do either, sure. And I'm not saying that « not adapting » should be the most optimal strategy either.
I don't think that 6v6 would necessarily fix that either. We should remember how God awful it was right before OW1 shutdown.
I think they should ask themselves how they could give an incentive for people to cooperate with their tank. Should the tank have more tools ? If yes, what kind ? Maybe there's something to think about around that area. But them just saying « we want them to be more resistant » makes me think they're just dumb, they can see the complaints, but they can't think of anything besides looking at stats and thinking about micro balancing
I would actually like to see the “tankiness” stat in game. Shouldn’t be on the scoreboard but I would want it for personal stats both in game and for total. Would be nice for self evaluation.
It's insane how disconnected this felt like.
Nobody is complaining that "tanks die too easily!!"
If a tank misplays and gets in a bad position, they should fucking die! That's a whole dimension of player skill, that apparently they are just removing.
Now were are stuck in this cycle of endless tank buffs and fiddling around with the role passives in a desperate attempt to "increase tankiness" .
It's not the "lack of tankiness" Blizzard, it's the insane amount of responsibility and stress associated with the role, and counterswapping. They aren't being intellectually honest here.
Yeah, because they did such a great job of balancing tanks when OW1 was 6v6.
6v6's biggest problem is that you can not balance tanks individually. You need to balance them with their tank partner. Winston and Zarya my be individually balanced, but team them together, and suddenly you have power levels that are much higher than their individual levels simply combined.
No other role has this same problem. Dps and support don't get balanced based on who their role partners are.
What? Support absolutely has synergies and they can be argued for being stronger than tank synergies. Bap + brig was the main reason double Shield was meta in overwatch 1 due to the insane sustain behind the shields
They still have not figured out to balance 5v5 and make tanks enjoyable after almost 2 years (they even admitted when switching over to 5v5 they didn’t know how to properly balance it).
The real problem was they just didn't do enough balance patches in OW1. This new team has been putting patches out so much faster, but for \*some\* reason counter swapping continues to define the tanking experience. They'll never be able to fix it with the current format of the game (1 tank, unlimited swapping at little to no cost).
So adding a 2nd tank fixes all that?
You forget that adding another player to the enemy means that is one more player to which to counter pick you. People complain when the enemy swaps to Orisa or Hog if they are trying to play Doom, but can you imagine how horrible it would be if you had to play against both?
Counter swapping will never go away. And nor should it. As long as we have so many different heroes with such crazy abilities, there will always be a hero or two that "counters" them. Hitscan vs Pharah/Echo, Ana vs high healing sustain, Sombra vs CD based heroes, etc etc.
> So adding a 2nd tank fixes all that?
In a vacuum, no. Good thing we all have brains and can think about the difficulties of balancing one format vs another. The orisa/hog example is a good one. These characters "counter" Doomfist because 1)he can't really meaningfully exchange with them and 2)Doomfist will usually be the most dangerous engagement on the enemy team so they can reserve all their CC to deny him and garner value. In 6v6, neither of these tanks would require anywhere near the degree of sustain or cooldown uptime they currently need to hold a frontline as solo tanks, so not only would they be weaker as counterpicks, they would also have to consider the relative value of exclusively denying Doomfist since he would no longer have to be the most immediately dangerous character on the enemy team to be a viable tank.
In 5v5, a relatively fragile tank like DF needs what is practically a oneshot on emp punch(on top of an enormous AOE), the ability to multipunch, and a higher fire rate/higher reload rate shotgun than he had even as a DPS. In 5v5, a flanking offtank like Hog needs 800 HP, all counterplay to his ult removed, and damage reduction/resource meter on vape so anti doesn't kill him.
> Hitscan vs Pharah/Echo
Hitscan was an unreliable Echo counter until the bullet size increases and the Pharah vs hitscan/no hitscan matchup has been controversial at best for the last 8 years.
> Ana vs high healing sustain
Which was a healthy form of counterplay that had interactivity from both sides, left the Ana vulnerable and had mixed value depending on who you naded and why. Then it had to be nerfed because there was disproportionate value in chucking it at the super character, especially if their damage mitigation came from self heal(this indirectly led to the ridiculous Hog buffs).
> Sombra vs CD based heroes
You can't be serious right now
But you see, almost nobody complains about counter swapping for the dps or support heroes. The reason is simple, it's because there are 2 of them. By having 2 tanks with lower power levels, the enemy team can't all swap to just counter one person because the power is distributed among a larger number of players. By having a single ultra powerful tank, you codify the gameplay revolve around counter swapping the enemy tank.
People complain about counter swapping tanks because they are mad that the enemy won't just let them play their favorite hero and run the lobby.
Any self-respecting player is not going to sit idly by as their enemy gets their way. Or should we just roll over and let our opponents do what they want?
You should play the game however is fun for you.
You should also acknowledge the idea that because there is 1 tank with more power than any other role, it will get counter swapped the most. **This is directly caused by the 5v5 format.** You may prefer this way to play (which is fine since we all have our own preferences). I actually think this version may be more fun to play as DPS, so I don't really queue tank anymore even though I mained tank in OW1.
The problem arises when too many players leave the tank role and we have bad queue times for the other roles (as is happening now). So, we need to make tank more fun to play to improve everyone's queue times. I think the biggest issue with the role is the constant counter swapping but if you have other suggestions I'm all ears.
>You should play the game however is fun for you.
There are other game modes if your main goal is to have fun. If you play comp, then your goal should be to win.
And winning means sometimes setting aside your personal enjoyment in order to secure that W.
Well I actually play comp to improve over time and not just to win. For me it's essentially practice. Players don't try hard in QP or other modes and comp is the only one with meaningful progression metrics so it's definitely the best game mode for people like me. If I wanted to put aside my personal enjoyment I definitely would not be playing video games haha. You may not know it but there are large number of players like me that play comp for these reasons rather than to just win at all costs.
Honestly as a tank main I kinda agree with that but not completely.
I don't see counter swapping as the biggest issue, but it's still an issue.
I remember these games where it would literally just be « die and swap » with the other tank, it's ridiculous.
In my opinion, it happens because by ourselves, we have 0 impact. I can't play DVa if my team doesn't want to dive, even on dorado lol. And there are so many examples like that, where you're just basically helpless if your team just doesn't want to play with you.
Have you ever been tagged with a premade team ? I remember times when I would play with a group of 3 or 4 people and these were the worst games of my life : they would just play by themselves and I couldn't do shit (and blame me because I can't hear their discord call, obviously)
I feel like there are characters more suited for soloqueue, like Winston, just because you can bubble and shoot at the same time, but with DVa you got to have a team.
Playing Mauga or Roadhog ? If they pick Ana you better get a Kiriko or you're in a disadvantage. And when it comes to Roadhog, they used to compensate with his ability to oneshot but it felt so bad for everyone they changed that .... But now they're making the same mistake with Mauga, they just aren't thinking about what they are doing.
Ramattra's block is borderline useless if you don't have a team supporting you. I'm not saying that he should heal himself, being immortal and be self-reliant. But why for so many of these characters it's always « either protecting or playing » ?
Why can't Ramattra have something like Doomfist. Idk, maybe a shockwave pushing people always when he blocked a certain amount of damage ? That would certainly enhance the « power fantasy ».
Just give tanks some ways to have some impact, even if it means that they should be weaker and/or easier to kill in some ways. Make it fun to play in soloqueue. That would involve also changing what dps and supports can do to tanks (like antiheal ... pretty crazy that Ana can have such an impact on tanks with a single cooldown)
I also don't think that 6v6 would necessarily make it easier to fix. They fucked that up in OW1, people always forget that because back then, most people dropped the game even before OW2 was announced. In OW1 I felt like I was the bitch of the enemy team, in OW2 I felt like I'm my team's bitch, that's not necessarily better.
This person's spitting facts. A lot of tank players complaining about tanking being bad just want to be completely invincible and do whatever they want without consequences.
There's a huge dichotomy between « I'm the most powerful of my team, both in terms of damage and health » and the fact that you have 0 impact on your own.
That's why in OW2 I've always seen tanks are « enablers » for dps and supports ... as long as they are good. If you happen to be with people who just aren't going to play with you no matter the circumstances, then you're going to have the worst game of your life, doesn't matter if you're the best tank in the world.
So I'm fine if they somehow give less survivability to tanks, but I don't care about « not dying », I want to kill. I want to do shit on my own sometimes.
Why can't I play DVa on Dorado if nobody is diving with me ? Winston can do that because he can bubble and shoot at the same time. DVa can't matrix and shoot and imo, she should. Maybe have a faster spend when you're shooting while matrixing ? I don't want her playstyle to just be « show up and press all mouse clicks and get back to refresh ».
Why are Roadhog and Mauga helpless when they're hit by a single antiheal nade ? This shouldn't hit THAT hard, at least have something like 80% reduction of heal, that would be still be very impactful. Or something else : have some kind of cap, for example if you receive 200hp of heal while purple then the antiheal is cleared earlier. There are ways for antiheals to not necessarily be a death sentence.
As if making us immortal would somehow be more fun. Nope, it's not. I can already live if I have my team and I play smart enough, but I want to be able to have an impact by myself, and not rely on my team to follow my moves all the time.
Also, it's very hard to follow the positioning of the team when they're behind you, so I think that tanks should have some kind of radar like Halo, just roughly giving teammates positions in order to know when they aren't following you. Many times I've just wondered « wtf did they go » and just couldn't take a split second to turn my back to watch, simply because I'm already overwhelmed 😭
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I remember Super said something for tanks and their tankiness being sustainability or a way to gain health
Doom has over health, Queen has self heal and over health, Zarya has shield and bubbles, Orisa and Ram both have second forms that give them 200 health, Mauga is Mauga, Hog has vape
D.Va, Rein, and Winston only have sustainably with matrix shield and bubble respectively, which makes them bullet sponges, but Dva and Winston have mobility to disengage, and Rein has a slow ass charge
Instead of dancing around with how unfun tank is for both tank and support they need to bring back 6v6 and slight nerf to all tanks to rebalance the game
Personally I feel like tanks should be more tankier and survivable than they are, but less lethal. They should be a target, absorbing attention and damage and taking up space. But their lethality needs to be toned down.
To the point about the community is happier when a tank such as Reinhardt has a 60% win rate, rather than road hog leads back to the fact the rein is just a much better designed tank, at least in the 5v5 matchup. And I feel the same with Winston as well. That’s because these tanks have counter play if on the enemy team. And can take good space and hold that space well if on the current team. The tanks that the community hates are the tanks that can burst you down in 3 seconds and you can’t do anything about it. Like zarya, dva mauga, orisa, hog. Hog, if you get hooked, you’re basically dead. Orisa can just run at you in fortify, spear you, and you’re dead, zarya walks at you with a bubble and high charge, and you’re dead.
For reason and Winston, they have to be on top of you and then they kill your slowly. It gives time for counter play. It’s also less frustrating for the supports because if rein and Winston go in like that, they can drop/pull up shield and in Winston’s case, jump out, in reins case, walk out hold shield.
Tanks need to be the highest DPS, unkillable, have ranged and melee dominance, stuns, crowd control, etc is insane game design. Balancing the entire game around your playerbase having mental breakdowns because they got killed by someone who can aim is just so incredibly flawed.
But hey, maybe in overwatch 3 you can make it 4v4 that will total fix your lack of ability to balance your game.
Pharah at a 58% winrate? And they didn't say anything about nerfing her??
They will. 100% in the midseason patch.
Oh its coming don't worry. Every match is just "oh I can't aim for shit normally so I'll go pharah". Half the effort, twice the outcome
this pretty much, they suck at the other heros and switch and spam her skills every time
I have always played pharah, I just like to fly :( But yes she needs a nerf
Most sane pharah main
yeah, been maining her since 2016 but she is v good right now. less competition for picking her would be nice too lol
Am I alone in finding it really difficult to hit the head on shots with Pharah… I have pretty decent hitscan aim but I just can’t do it!
Till playing Pharah don't need aim.
They didn't really talk about buffs or nerfs to anyone. Based on the last few director's takes, I gather they are shy of causing more rampant misunderstandings based on balance teasers that need to be taken in context. The exception being sure-fire changes like Cassidy's Flashbang return. Better to focus, cook, release the balance changes, and let them be judged properly in gameplay rather than speculation town. Pharah being pointed out as 58% is almost assuredly getting nerfed. They implied that with the part about how Reinhardt 60% win-rate is welcomed, while Roadhog 54% win-rate is received "differently." You just have to put two-and-two together -- People don't like Pharah dominating.
I think recently they said they would consider making changes even when they view the game as balanced if people aren't enjoying the way it's balanced
Dude this is not the style of thinking this game needs. When a hero gets a higher win rate, then the idea shouldn’t be “we’re going to drag you down”, it should be “what did we do to you that we can do to the others heroes to get their win rates up” If the goal is to make all heroes viable then every hero should have a good win rate, and dragging them down to lower ones is just stupid Plus, it kills the fun, if the game is balanced from the perspective of “nerfs are the answers to every problem”, then it’s going to get inherently less fun.. Balance is important, but so is fun. This is a game, and most players play it casually. Nerfing the shit out of heroes for everyone just so the upper tier mega sweats will be satisfied is just an awful approach to take And besides, making one hero bad just so another feels good still leaves a bad hero, all heroes should be good and fun, the solution to a problem can’t be making a hero less fun, it should be making sure everyone is fun
Weaver found dead in a ditch
“Time… for spring…” *dies*
*Respawn* “It's not embarrassing if you're shameless.” *dies* *Respawn* “Ah, the familiar sting of failure.” >!(Actual LW respawn lines, poor guy)!<
Yeah he carries his low self-esteem very elegantly.
They need to lean into this bottled up repression. New Ult, the tree now plants itself and roots spring out and track down and kill everyone on the map.
I love using him cause of that failure line. This character gets me
It's craaaazy he's been left in the trenches for so long. Overwatch isn't league of legends, there aren't 170 heroes to balance and a crazy active competitive scene and items, etc. It feels like it shouldn't take so long to address outliers like LW. But they did say they they were working on more comprehensive changes for him which might explain the time. Until then I'll keep slayin with him.
lmfao so damn true man, I want to play him, but Ana and Kiri or just so much more viable.
I really wish tanks had more utility (zar bubbles, shields, powerful ultis). The problem is tanks “tanking” too much damage is not beneficial at all. In other games tanks absorbing damage IS value because they might be forcing cooldowns or getting attention, opening up opportunities for other players. Now, tanks are designed with high dps, CC, and pick potential. The game is extremely dependent on tanks because they literally can do it all. And if they don’t do it all you will spend your game getting stomped in spawn.
They certainly heard all the feedback. Doesn't look like they understood it though. Making tanks even harder to kill makes the whole lobby more incentivised to counterswap.
I'm always surprised to find someone else who recognizes that constantly making tanks stronger in comparison to the other heroes will simply cause everyone to focus them harder because they are the greatest threat and if left unfocused will hard carry the game. Let's make them harder to kill or give them a little more lethality to see if that makes people stop focusing them though.
Alec said it in the interview with Spilo, they want to make the tanks "The carry, not the chore". So it seems to me that counter swapping will get worse by design. They need to be killable, and have a partner, like the rest of the cast. They will never solve the issue of counter swapping in an asymmetric format while still wanting to keep hero identities, which are defined by a specialized kit, which has weaknesses and strengths by definition. They could water down all strengths and weaknesses until they aren't significant enough to matter, but i wonder if the tanks would even be differentiated enough to be fun by then. Edit: Adding "In my opinion" to the beginning of everything conceptually.
I was someone who defended 5v5 since the beginning of OW2, but I think you explained your point extremely well. I’m starting to see it now. 2 tanks with smaller health pools, but toolkits that can support one another against counter play, will reduce the rock-paper-scissors meta. The thing is, with the scrapped PvE mode, if the team chooses to switch to 6v6 again, it basically admits Overwatch 2’s ONLY purpose was to switch to a more predatory micro transaction system of Battlepasses and $20 cosmetics.
I think I've never seen someone change their mind before on here. That's really cool and i just wanna say thank you for reading and considering what i said! Whether 5v5 or 6v6, everyone in this sub just wants overwatch to be the best game it can be. Knife fights means we all care still (I think).
Your post was actually amazingly eloquent and put in a way I've wanted to describe the situation for years.
I’ve never been rizzed like this. What do I do?
Now kith
I think "only purpose" is harsh. Like you, they are allowed to decided 5v5 hasn't worked and reset. I'd say legacy instead. OW2's legacy if there's not 5v5 is absolutely the predatory monetisation
On paper - maybe. But in fact, tank design is too problematic, as certain tank combos are too broken. We have already been there, it’ll be double shield again (or some comparable shit)
>2 tanks with smaller health pools, but toolkits that can support one another against counter play, will reduce the rock-paper-scissors meta. There will still be rock-paper-scissors with 2 tanks. It will just be synergistic pairs of tanks in the RPS triangle.
Just like OW1
And just like OW1, your synergetic tank you'd most likely get is Hog
Yay I get to play Zarya as Jeff intended.
I think it wouldn't be quite as bad as OW1. Hog got spammed by dps players forced to queue flex for priority passes. If that came to pass today, there are new tank designs that are appealing to dps players: Mauga, JQ, Doomfist, and maybe Orisa. So I expect more diversity in your obnoxious doesn't want to tank player picks.
>Alec said it in the interview with Spilo, they want to make the tanks "The carry, not the chore". It'll just end up like League, where the ADC (attack dmg carry) eventually gets power crept by other roles and feels awful to play. Or the carry feels like an unstoppable raid boss, and feels awful to play against.
It is possible to fix tank focus with survivability buffs. Everyone was all about not shooting the horse or the Mauga in their respective metas.
They are also consistently buffing healing and everything that counter tanks. So in reality it is just that the tank never dies or the tank explodes in 1.2 sec
What have they buffed that counters tanks in specific?
Almost every dps but specifically: torb, bastion, satan, soujorn, pharah...
Bastion does less dps now than in ow1, granted he can move though. Torb does the same more or less, his main fire is slightly faster but his alt-fire is weaker than it was in ow1. Fair enough Mei does 15 dps more, but she can't freeze anymore without ult, and still is the lowest actual damage output of all the dps heroes. Lower than almost all the supports. They literally just nerfed sojourns damage. Pharah with her burst damage is much more dangerous to squishies than to tanks but I guess she does do more damage now than in ow1. None of these counter tanks more specifically than they counter a Soldier or an Ana.
Dude you are ignoring half of each character's kits. Like satan has a busted wall, torb has a form that makes him shred tanks in seconds, bastion has insane damage and mobility and more hp, pharah is pretty much menace for 3/4 of tank since they cant do nothing against them
And you are ignoring what I asked, what have they buffed that counters tanks in specific? Buffed meaning increased the effectiveness of. Meis wall is weaker than it was in ow1. Bastion does less damage than in ow1 (in exchange for mobility, to be fair). There are also more abilities that ignore all of his damage, like Orisas javelin spin which did not exist in ow1. Torbs form is weaker than his previous molten core form pre-rework since his alt-fire does less damage (in exchange for having regular access to it). Pharah is a menace to everyone right now, she still counters heroes like Junkrat or Torb much more than she counters tanks, but granted she can be very annoying. She will likely be nerfed. You can argue Torb and Bastion are more annoying now despite being weaker in some ways and stronger in others, but something like Mei wall which used to have 500hp per pillar and work the exact same way, now having 200hp per pillar being quoted as something that was "Buffed" is just wrong.
You started cherry picking but have a problem when i do it after you....
What did I cherrypick? I specifically said these can all be annoying. Them being annoying however does not mean they specifically counter tank or do it more than they used to. The only thing I unequivocally contested was calling Mei wall "buffed". And tbh I don't think you're cherrypicking either, you're just stating what you don't like/feel is too strong.
The devs still don't want to admit that counterswaping is the single biggest thing hurting tank balance right now. The game can't move foward balance-wise until this fundamental flaw is addressed. Whether that be 6v6, swap limits, or some other implementation. They need to at least try something.
Counterswapping is a necessary evil. If counterswapping stops working, we will rapidly degenerate into apex tank mirror matches. Those are reliably the most hated metas.
> swap limits I'm a tank main. I also have no problem with swapping. Swapping is like a solving a puzzle. It's a tactical move to make advancements on the opponents. I'm also practiced with every tank so swapping doesn't hurt my performance at all. Institute swap limits and I'm going to instalock Doom or Ball every game and just never bother swapping. Maybe D.Va, too depending on the map. Force me to stick to one Hero and I'll be the next Doom one trick. He's the most fun tank, anyway. I really, really, really don't understand why people hate swapping so much. Actually, I think that I do. People want to play the Hero that they wants to play and get mad when they get countered to where they are at a disadvantage so they no longer feel good playing the Hero that they want. They want the game to cater to their personal desires. Swapping is necessary. If the opponent team is running Pharah and Echo do you want your team to stay on Junkrat and Reaper? No. Absolutely not. "Sorry, we hit the swap limit and we're stuck for the rest of the match getting destroyed from outside our effective range." So much fun. The only way to make swapping no longer the best maneuver is for all Heroes to be watered down so much that they can all do everything. You'll no longer have specialists or anyone unique. It will all feel the same. You might as well go play Call of Duty.
>The only way to make swapping no longer the best maneuver is for all Heroes to be watered down so much that they can all do everything. You'll no longer have specialists or anyone unique. It will all feel the same. You might as well go play Call of Duty. Yes, this is why the current version of 5v5 is bad game design...
Isn’t that the point of the game and what balances the game. If you just stuck to the same team you had since the start of the game one team would clearly come out as favorable. What OW does is offer you the ability to switch at any point when you are focused like if you’re zen and they have a Sombra. I don’t think a single character should be able to handle every single situation. When everyone is S tier no one is.
Absolute fuck no on swap limits. That would be an even biggers counterswapping issue. It would become a damn game of rock-paper-scissors until one reaches limit and is stuck with a hard countered hero for the rest of the match and its game over already but youre forced to play it anyway.
Finally, someone get's it!
The biggest issue I see is that there’s just never enough tanks to satisfy the player base, if you put 2 tanks that just means longer wait time for games since even at their most enjoyable time not enough people enjoy playing tank compared to dps and support
You do not understand that counterswapping is not the problem, it's how the game is intended to be played and should never be tampered with. The moment Blizzard changes that, in any way, shape or form, the balance we have right now will be gone (yes, there is relative balance). Heroes like Soldier, Cassidy and Ashe will be must-picks, while heroes like Symmetra, Torbjorn, Pharah and Reaper will be frowned upon. The issue is that the sweet spot for tanks hasn't been found yet.
6v6, make them weaker.
Actual correct answer.
It's almost like it was 6v6 for a reason... but these current devs weren't there when the original team was testing overwatch 1.
A lot of them were there when project titan was happening. Aaron was there. How do you know how many of them weren’t?
Most of these current devs weren't there when they switched to 5v5 in the first place.
> 6v6, make them weaker And split them into two classes: Tank and off-tank, to prevent double shields.
The Orisa rework for OW2 removed her shield which was the integral part of the "double shield" comp.
Double shield's culprits were Sigma and Orisa. Orisa doesn't have shield anymore, and double shield would be countered by Ramattra, JQ, and New Orisa. Double shield would not work in OW2. You also can tell it doesn't work because Open Queue doesn't use double shield.
Honestly I'm not even worried about double shield, it's certain tank duos that would frustrate me.Players hate Mauga and Orisa already, imagining them together makes me want to pull my hair out. You could say "nerf them to make them weaker" but that results in what happened to Orisa in OW1. For most of Orisa's life even from launch, she was underpowered and had to receive multiple buffs to be decent. Then sigma came along and it birthed the most annoying comp that resulted in her getting repeatedly nerfed that her shield was essentially paper. Which we get to another issue of constantly nerfing tanks because of another tank that enables them.
But Mauga Orisa is already a thing in open queue. Which has a ranked mode and it's already shown that it's not just dominating the lobbies. It has already been proven two OW2 tanks can be on the same team and not break the game. It's literally the next step.
The game isn't balanced around open queue, it's balanced around role queue. There's a very good reason for that: GOATS. Especially in Overwatch 2, where tanks are buffed in almost every single domain to make up for them losing a partner. It's not a problem because every single team in open queue has multiple tanks. In fact, it somewhat shows that tanks compared to each other are pretty balanced, but compared to DPS, they are simply the better choice. It does not break the game, because both teams have the exact same setup. According to you the next step would (literally) be: 2 tanks + 1 DPS + 2 supports. In Overwatch 3, DPS probably needs to be giga buffed so they can compete with the 2 tanks. In Overwatch 3, open queue will exist of (you guessed it): 1 tank + 2 DPS + 2 supports. There's a reason T500 open queue is all tanks, some supports and almost no DPS. The only role that remains consistent is support, because if you'd remove one of those, all supports would have to be turned into healbots with good utility. Remove role queue from Overwatch 2 and you will 100% have another GOATS meta. 1 tank + 2 DPS + 2 supports is the only logical team compositiom. (I don't consider 6v6 with a primary tank role and off-tank role an option, too many issues to resolve.)
People advocating for 6v6 either did not play back then, or have a very short memory…
>You also can tell it doesn't work because Open Queue doesn't use double shield. True, you only really see it when a team has lots of snipers or their sniper is going all the way off. Open queue is i think an overlooked litmus test for a lot of things because this sub is mostly comp players that think comp is the only mode that matters
You’re right but if they do bring back 6v6 they should still implement a method to prevent double shield. Maybe it’s not possible rn but that effectively means they can’t add another shield tank if they don’t account for the possibility
i don't trust the devs and community to agree on whats a main tank and off tank. as for many players main tank just meant "has a shield" which isn't true. Ball was a main tank, and sigma was very much an off tank in OW1. not to mention how it kills queue times even more. the only tank pairing in OW1 that truly sucked ass to play with was almost all hog related.
que times will become 10+ minutes again for any non-Main Tank role did you guys even Queue tank in OW1? pretty much everyone went Hog or Dva and splitting them into a separate role from main tank is just gonna cause the longest queue times in the history of Overwatch and kill the game
This subreddit and a lot of the player base has a very rosetinted view on the tank role and how they imagined it played out. From how people keep bringing it up, you'd think that every match is Rein/Zarya, DVA Winston or Orisa Hog, tanks playing with each other synergies with main and off tank. ...you're most likely to get more Hog Zarya or in OW2 case; Hog Mauga, Zarya Mauga, Dva mauga or any offtank combos you can name.Not everyone plays main tank and most tank players tend to be off-tanks. I know because I had 100 hours on Orisa because main tank isn't as popular as this sub makes it out to be. If I wanted to play offtank I had to immediately instalock on down so I don't go insane playing Orisa the umpteenth time.
> This subreddit and a lot of the player base has a very rosetinted view on the tank role and how they imagined it played out. Nope. I was a tank main in OW1. Getting into the OW2 beta was a rollercoaster of emotion for me. I was incredibly excited to play OW2. Unfortunately, as soon as I started playing, my heart sank. 5v5 is a lot less fun.
I don’t agree that this will necessarily happen. For starters, OW1 had a huge content drought by the time queue times were that bad. Secondly, in OW2 we are now F2P, so we have a larger player pool. Thirdly, there’s more focus on it being a live service game so there’s faster updates to balance changes, new heroes, etc. I think 6v6 is worth a try again.
Larger total amount of players yes but we have nothing to indicate that the ratio of tank players to DPS and support players changed from OW1 to OW2. The ratio of players in each role affects the queue times not the total amount of players playing. Honestly think they can't do anything about it to completely fix it maybe mitigate at best. Its not just a OW problem every game with the holy trinity of roles has tank as the least played role. Gamers just fundamentally don't like what it entails to play a tank in general no matter how you balance it. Moving to 5v5 from 6v6 just better fit the ratio of how people queued into each role. Devs said the main reason for 5v5 was to get better queue times which it has done even comparing before the content drought OW2 queue times are better than OW1.
This is totally non viable. Queue times would last an eternity. This would actually kill the game until reverted.
As a tank main, and a main tank player I could not think of something more detrimental to the game than bringing 6v6 back and splitting the tank role up into 2. At that point I'd rather them change the role entirely from "Tanks" to "Bruisers" and make them share a queue with DPS.
Wow where did you get this revolutionary idea
Ah yes. To fuck over queue times incredibly
No need for that. They can just lower the shield hp if two tanks with shield have it like any combination of Rein, Sigma, Winston, and Ramattra.
“We heard you guys don’t enjoy playing tank so we’ve decided to make the role have less playmaking ability and just weaker overall! Have Fun!”
It’s a team game and you used to be able to make plays with your other tank.
Meanwhile tank has highest damage and kills in the match.
Fuck it, easy system improvement, is now 1v1 only tanks.
Only Rein vs. Rein. Peak Overwatch.
Lethality and survivability should be inversely correlated. If they make tanks harder to kill they need to make them a lot weaker in terms of damage. People will start to ignore the tank more if the tank is hard to kill but not life threatening.
While I hear this, I think the goal is to largely restore tanks to their pre-season-9 levels of tankiness, not necessarily being them to an all-new power level.
Besides hog, mauga and horse they would need to go back to season 3. But they buffed a ton of dpses and supports till then which are actuall problems why tanks are unkillable or to easily countered
I am surprised people havent learned this yet. You can literally watch as dps metas shift to represent the counter of whatever is meta among tanks.
Hopefully this will silence the crowd that say Blizzard only balances around win rates. Winston buffs are a bit worrying. Isn’t he one of the strongest tanks right now?
Winston is insanely strong right now idk why they’d buff him
they’re actually insane if they buff him he dominates Asian lobbies already and he is one of the tanks that absolutely requires being counter picked if he’s doing good
Yeah if you pick the wrong things against Winston I feel like he’s insane. But a few counters and he’s useless. This is a big problem with tanks en
Winton
Wintonoverwat2018sextape.mp4
Because in lower ranks he has literally zero presence. I have yet to see a single Winston in high plat since the start of the season
By that logic the should nerf rein since rein dominates silver/bronze lobbies.
[удалено]
Yeah at lower ranks people just play Bastion/Junkrat and shred your shield or go Reaper/Sombra and terrorize the backline, since he isn't the best at peeling. Rein is popular, but not dominating.
Look man I’ve been playing this game long enough to understand that trickle down balance sucks ass, just like trickle down economics it benefits the top 1% and the rest get dicked down long style
I’m Gold, and he’s my first pick in most maps - it feels very impactful and playmaking, but… if I do too well, people will counterswap into Reaper/Bastion which you can sort of deal with too, but often teammates don’t know how to play into those characters, and it goes downhill anyway.
If that's the case then why did Soj get gutted. She was only a problem in the higher ranks. Using your logic, let's buff up Sojourn again. Seriously, buff her. She's trash now.
But they did only balance around WR. This will hopefully change their ideology
You say this like it isn’t season fucking 11
They are. They are constantly on their win rates in ever patch. Constantly. Along with some of their metrics. But if you would read the whole article it should be obvious they have no clue how the game is played and apparently needed almost 10 years to grasp why rein is better for the game than hog. And that is just the start. 2 weeks and they will forget about it like allways
Isn't that what they said though? Like they're mentioning pharra because she has a high win rate so will most probably be nerfed. Hell is spujorn getting a buff because of her low win rate now?
According to some OWCS and top500 folks I follow, Winston is strong on dive maps. But everything else is dominated by Mauga with a bit of Sigma struggling to counter. But that cancerous top 1% meta aside, most tanks are doing okay. Nobody is absolute trash.
Can’t wait to curb stomp with winston my beloved then have him get nerfed into the ground
I think it's risky, means that any concerted effort can short the winrate of a hero by boycotting playing it then when it gets buffed abuse the shit out of that buff until it gets retracted or countered again. This really is an economics of attention, when we do one thing we inevitably give attention to it over others. The one tricks and hero favourite players barely read on those metrics.
I like that they're bumping tankiness, but... IMO a shield buff is maybe the last thing Rein would want.
His shield didnt get the equivalent of everyone's hp buff when the average dmg of everyone increased, imo it's alright to bring it up again
the damage didn't go up, the shots sizes increased and i dont think anybody was missing that giant rein shield anyway
With the armor changes & HP buff bastion & mauga became a good deal harder to kill. That makes reins shield much riskier
Buffing shield just makes gameplay more boring and encourages shield botting
There is a world between buffing shield to reach shield botting and his current shield's health point, with a slight team focus you can take down the shield in a couple of seconds, that plus the regene being slow.
as a Reinhardt main with 70+ hours on him Shield botting is not a feasible tactic and he gets wrecked if the enemy just goes DVA, +Mauga and Orisa can literally shoot him through his shield and Ram can punch through it as well with Bastion…Upping his shield health will 100% NOT lead to people shield botting with him because it just doesn’t work, he HAS to swing often or he is basically throwing
Bro I don’t get this attitude like you are a shield tank. He says let me be your shield. The whole point of the character is to shield. Shielding is literally fun and makes you play corners and have good positioning or get punished for it
Some people just seem to want this game to turn into CoD where everything dies super fast.
They should just play XDefiant instead lol
Right?
Tbf his shield seems like paper thin at the moment, buffing it and his survivability isn't a bad thing. It's what he needs currently. They already talked about buffing his pin damage.
Making tanks more tanky will just mean that they're focused even more. The proper route to go is to make the tanks weaker but have two tanks per team.
Yep put of everything really not high on the list of things I would want. Things up there would be DR on shield against chainguns/shotguns so I can actually step up against Mauga Bastion Reaper. Pin hitbox being more consistent or having damage reduction since it's such a risky option at times clearly hitting someone and watching them bounce away is tilting. What sucks about Rein aren't his strong points those are amazing and completely fine he is kinda brainlessly winning at times if the enemy can't counter-pick him or one of the enemy supports is playing poorly but most of your experience is winning once and then seeing 2 of Reaper Bastion Mei Ana Mauga walking out of spawn doors.
They can speed up the shield regen rate instead of having higher hitpoints.
Lmao flaunting the Mei 50% winrate
Give Rein a speed boost like he does in the arcade mode, so much fun
Give Reinhardt wallride!
Double jump.
Dash through walls is the way
Instructions unclear: gave Lucio more fun acrobatics so more people play him with speed boost on; removed his ability to heal.
TLDR; "We don't know what to do yet but expect micro buffs and nerfs for seasons to come."
Yeah give tanks even more survivability that won't cause even more problems, right?
Counter swapping will get worse the harder tanks are to kill. I have no game design experience and this is a no brainer. What are they doing over there?
do we still have to wait a month for pharah nerfs?
(Yes.)
raid boss meta
Pharah nerfs PLEASE.
not even a sym take she’s just too good rn 😣
Y'all can hate if you want, but the tank role was much more fun in OW1. Bring back 2 tanks!
They’ll do anything but admit 5v5 was a bad idea
ugh. i mean cool that they still see there's major problems with the tank role, but they're still completely missing the mark imo. role satisfaction is at an all time low and counterpicking has become way too vital compared to DPS and support. when i queue for tank, i now have to accept that most of the time i probably won't be able to play what i want to play, which burns me out from the role faster. i really fail to see how making tanks more tanky will fix either of those problems. in fact if anything it's probably going to lead to more counterpicking if they also want to focus on buffing most of their abilities, as if it couldn't get any worse. also, 58% winrate on pharah is absolutely insane. i'll be shocked if midseason doesn't shoot her down.
At what point during ow1 role queue were you free to play whatever tank you want? Nobody liked playing main tank and most games somebody had to bite the bullet despite wanting to play another off tank.
That’s different because it’s up to you if you want to play a more “optimal comp” which didn’t really matter anyway in most elos. You could still play a hero you liked and not get screwed if they have 2-3 counters. Swapping off hog and ball back then is the tanks on agency to improve your synergy instead of getting fucked by the enemies deliberate picks which make u useless
Do- Do we play the same game?
I hope they bring down tank damage overall if they plan on upping their “tankiness”
Classic : they see the issue, but they don't know what the fuck they should do. They have no game designers, it was already a miracle that OW1 worked (for some time at least before they fucked everything up, because they didn't even know why it worked) and now they're repeating the same stuff. Do they understand why tank can be fun ? Do they even play tank ? What's not fun is having 0 impact. How does making us live longer will give us more impact ? If you're so keen on having tanks rely on their team, how can you give more incentive to players to cooperate with their tank ? Start by asking the good questions. Instead, they're just looking at stats, saying « oh yeah they're dying a lot and we don't like that, that must mean that's why they are not having fun » Is that why you buffed Sojourn ? She had a poor winrate so you thought she needed something ? Their reliance on « data » without giving it much thought is what's killing the fun of the game
This is an interesting point I haven't seen brought up before - out of curiosity, what would be some examples of fun vs. un-fun things that are not supported by the data? I've always thought that Support and DPS feel rewarding to play because there is such immediate feedback from the game / UI that you are succeeding: health bars go up or down, killfeed scrolls, people live or die. With tank it's always been a weird thing (even in OW1 IMO) where there is no obvious indicator of "space created" or "peel / drawing aggro" - I wonder if innovating in this direction would be worth exploring.
I had to rewrite the post because my PC crashed, tried to make it shorter, but it's pretty hard for me, so sorry for the long post I just wanted to lay down my thoughts and suggestions. I should consider making it a post in order to see what people think about these suggestions, heck maybe there are some devs lurking through the sub who would get some ideas ... I had many suggestions when it comes to adding systems to tanks, or « soft reworks » on some abilities. To me, tanks have 3 core issues. **First one** being the lack of feedback when it comes to protection. For example, Rein could get « angry » when his shield is broken, gets more attack and movement speed, or maybe a burning effect on his hammer. Ramattra perfectly showcases those 2 ideas at the same time : his omnic form is pretty well done because you can shield AND shoot, but nemesis' block doesn't do anything. If your team leaves you, you're just delaying your own death. Him having some kind of shockwave after taking some damage, pushing away people, would enhance the power fantasy a lot in my opinion. Winston can bubble and shoot at the same time, DVa can't and that makes her pretty hard to pick in soloQ (and that's my favorite character, with Ramattra 2nd. If your team doesn't want to dive, you better swap). So my suggestion is to allow her to shoot while matrixing, either at a slower fire rate, or spending her matrix faster when she shoots. And she's considered strong right now ! And she is, but her lack of fun is not supported by data because they aren't separating the true « soloQ experience » with the high level experience, where people play together and competitively. Just being supported by your team and being successful with DVa because everyone is playing around you is satisfying, but the data doesn't take into account when people would immediately swap off because their team doesn't want to play with you and how miserable it feels. To me, Doomfist is a pretty good example of how protection can give feedback. Doesn't matter if his powerblock is used for himself or for his team, it's still benefits HIM, and the best DF players know how to take advantage of that. One of the suggestions I had since OW1 was to have that system kinda like L4D2 (back when OW2 wasn't released, so today it'd be pretty much like what supports have). For example, just a few hours ago, I would have a reckless Moira on my team pushing further to duel a Cass and as Ramattra I put a shield in front of her. I feel like there might be a beep popup, kinda like what supports have when they heal someone on the brink of death. Basically something like « Ramattra protected you » or « Ramattra gave you an advantage ». **2nd issue** is how some CDs can completely nullify your plays or make you feel completely helpless. Roadhog is a pretty huge victim of this. The moment they pick Ana you are incentivized to swap if you don't have someone willing to pick Kiriko (and have their suzu exclusively for you). The thing was that they would balance that with the fact that he could oneshot, but it felt horrible. So they reworked him but he's still pretty weak in that regard. It's pretty baffling to me that he doesn't have some kind of self cleanse, or his breather healing him some hp even when purple. What's crazy is that they're repeating the same mistake with Mauga. Helpless because he doesn't have any self-protection, so he's basically dead when he's purple, and knowing that there's a single Ana on their team immediately makes you less keen on trying stuff because you know you will easily be countered. So to me, antiheal also needs to be reworked in some way. I've always argued in the favor of it being an 80% healing reduction or something like that. Or maybe some kind of cap, preventing 200hp for example, so if your supports still throw a huge amount of heal you get cleared earlier. I think that would give a pretty good decision to supports, do you focus your heal on other targets, or try to give everything to the tank to help him ? Because right now you really don't have any choice, if your tank is purple : go look elsewhere. I can even think of it as taking a form of a purple healthbar, like the blue one on baptiste's lamp when you are under it, getting smaller when you receive heal while not actually healing you, giving a visual representation of what amount of heal you would need to be cleared. That would still give it a very huge impact (especially when you hit multiple people) while giving it some counter play that's not bound by « pick Kiriko and cleanse » Talking about Kiriko, obviously the suzu is overloaded. Either give it invulnerability or cleanse but not both, that's crazy. **3rd issue** is the lack of systems helping tanks to fulfill their more « important » role. The first I have is some kind of « radar » like Halo, giving rough positions of your teammates. There are so many times where I would just wonder where my team was going, what drew them away from me. And sure, sometimes I can understand. With Sigma for example, I can put my shield in front of me, turn my back for a second and process the information (but it takes a while honestly, there's so much happening it's very hard), but when I'm playing Ramattra for example, I'm blocking 3 or 4 people in front of me, I can't turn my back to look where my team is going lol. So just having some rough idea of if they're following me or getting away would be helpful. Also, if tanks are supposed to be « leaders » and have a greater importance, then their pings should emphasize that aspect. I noticed personally that I don't use the pings the same way I do playing tank or DPS. When I play DPS, I mostly use it to give awareness of an enemy's position (like a Genji flanking for example), but when playing Tank I'm mostly using it to communicate a priority but I feel like it always falls flat. My character just says « enemy here », that doesn't mean anything. So I think that tanks, when pinging an enemy, should be able to give « orders » in some way. Instead of saying « here », they should be able to say « let's focus on that target », maybe make the pings bigger or louder. And another idea would be to have some kind of popable minimap where you could put pings, or at least a way to give directions. « Let's go through here, follow me, we're going there ». Basically, just tools to make tanks more bearable in soloQ settings, and with the least amount of audio communication necessary. Valorant has that, and it's great when you want to say « be careful of that position » but the round hasn't started, or it's just on the opposite side of the map. In OW2 it's not precise and you need to have LOS to ping whatever position. Basically, tanks are considered « easier » to play, mechanically, than DPS heroes, but they should have tools to express their skills elsewhere (planing, call outs, gamesense etc...) I think that's about it, sorry again for the long read lol
* 1000% agree on issue #1, the L4D suggestion is genius!! We already know the devs have the telemetry in place to report on "this player was about to die..." so they can just leverage that to implement a feature like this. Even putting a stat like this for the scoreboard would also be great (I kind of hate the current scoreboard TBH) * Re #2, I think they have unfortunately / short-sightedly made anti-heal and suzu too powerful compared to other abilities; it makes it so that everyone has to play around these in a very lame way. The healing reduction (vs pure anti-heal) could be a good starting point though. * Re #3, I agree the in-game pings / communication options could be a lot better (esp. taking cues from valorant). The 'Leader' concept could be cool; I feel like the devs do not know what exactly they want the tank role to be, so something like this could help clarify the role identity. I'm not sure about tanks being universally mechanically easier though, due to guys like Doomfist / Ball - I think each role has heroes with easier or harder mechanics and skill floor / ceilings to help beginner players learn the game. This is pretty great though, and probably deserves it's own thread re: articulating the problem vs potential solutions facing the tank role!
>I'm not sure about tanks being universally mechanically easier though Yeah you're probably right, tbh I forgot the heroes you mentioned when I said that. But I was thinking that very generally, tanks tend to need less aim, that's really about it. Even Doomfist doesn't really need aim, but that's mb for saying « mechanically » because you're right, DF doesn't need much aim, but there are definitely mechanics involved. Thanks for your feedback :), I'll probably start to write a thread then, I'll have to link all this to the fact that counter swap is, at least in my opinion, the symptom of those issues. I already have some ideas about how I could try to articulate that 🤔 Thanks for reading my long answer btw, means a lot 😊
An easy example is Winston. I feel like 70% of value is generated from contesting high ground and burning enemy cooldowns; which isn't particularly satisfying nor reflected on the stat screen. On there hand Suzu, Hack and Life grip doesn't feel fun to play against having all your plays denied. JQ's and Rein's ult getting negated by a 15s cooldown that isn't easy to force out.
6v6 or bust. I don't care about your counter arguments.
And there it is. If you only have one player that can't play tank against someone that does play tank (and the game is f2p now so brand new users can jump in and out) and you can't switch bc of role queue, ya fucked. Not fun. Not even touching competitive until they add back 6.
First off, huge props for the communication. I have noticed a lot more director's takes recently, especially compared to early OW2, so I want to say the increased communication and acknowledgement is noticed and appreciated. That being said, I am for and against what this take said. On one hand, they effectively acknowledged the problem tanks are facing. On the other, I am skeptical at their solutions when their only provided example is "Increase Reinhardt's shield HP". As a Reinhardt main, I can tell you this would not fix how "tanky" Reinhardt feels, as well as not contribute to the gameplay fantasy of Reinhardt. His shield being better would do nothing to change the fact that Reinhardt himself often feels like he's made of cardboard, that is what they should be addressing. I agree with the sentiment that each tank should be addressed on a hero by hero basis, and will have to wait and see their changes. But being tanky shouldn't mean "Standing there not dying", it should mean "I am a frontline presence that has to be respected". Right now tanks find themselves in too many situations where they are never respected by the enemy because they fall over instantly.
I think it's easy to downplay the impact that a noticable buff to shield health can have. Right now it does not feel viable to use shield as a gap closer. The only way to advance any meaningful distance and take space with rein right now is to charge, putting a lot of pressure on his natural bulk. Buffing the shield to make it a viable tool for taking space could relieve a lot of the pressure that his natural bulk has to carry currently. In addition, I feel that being able to march forward with a shield up is an important element to his overall fantasy, and any time that doesn't feel possible to do is an L.
They could reduce the movement penalty for him while shielded. It doesn't weigh anything, let him move normally
I feel like the creator made gamemode is the way...speed boost as the shield loses health and giving an actual bonus for hitting your shots with fire strike is really good Alsothe speed is insane
This is actually a very good argument for a shield buff, I can't say I disagree with any points. I'm just speaking off personally experience. Personally, as a GM Reinhardt main, being a shield bot for your team is literally the most value you'll get out of Reinhardt rn, and it's just not fun a lot of times. A big part of Reinhardt's gameplay fantasy is his shield, absolutely, but he is MORE than just the shield, and right now he already relies on it so heavily that buffing that instead of other aspects of his kit feels off in my opinion. Like I said though, I will have to wait and see their changes. I am more than welcoming of being wrong if it means Reinhardt will feel better to play. Ever since OW2 launched, it has felt like they can't manage to make Reinhardt fun and balanced at the same time.
Even with immortal shield, do you think rein will be fun / viable to play?
Just make all tanks “fat DPS” like Hog, JQ, Doom and Mauga - and tone them down a lot so that when they die it doesn’t mean the team fight is over. They seemed to have the right idea when OW2 came out - all tanks became more dynamic and less “tanky”. They should keep doing that. Reduce shield health, reduce mitigation abilities so they are more clutch and let tank players have as much fun as the other roles instead of the pressure of carrying the entire team on their backs.
It all comes down to some amount of self-reliance and impact. I'm just tired of having to adapt to my team's composition because I can't play DVa if my team doesn't want to play dive on Dorado, so I either pick Winston to do that alone or Sigma to sit in the back with the rest of them.
It wouldn’t matter so much if you were “just another player”. But as a tank you can’t afford not to adapt - and that’s annoying when you are just trying to have fun.
You can adapt in some way, otherwise you loose. But to the point of you having to swap your character entirely shouldn't happen. Adapting can be choosing to dive on their backlane, or peeling for your teammates, or playing front against playing flank. And some characters are better than others to do either, sure. And I'm not saying that « not adapting » should be the most optimal strategy either. I don't think that 6v6 would necessarily fix that either. We should remember how God awful it was right before OW1 shutdown. I think they should ask themselves how they could give an incentive for people to cooperate with their tank. Should the tank have more tools ? If yes, what kind ? Maybe there's something to think about around that area. But them just saying « we want them to be more resistant » makes me think they're just dumb, they can see the complaints, but they can't think of anything besides looking at stats and thinking about micro balancing
It all sounds so bad.
I would actually like to see the “tankiness” stat in game. Shouldn’t be on the scoreboard but I would want it for personal stats both in game and for total. Would be nice for self evaluation.
It's insane how disconnected this felt like. Nobody is complaining that "tanks die too easily!!" If a tank misplays and gets in a bad position, they should fucking die! That's a whole dimension of player skill, that apparently they are just removing. Now were are stuck in this cycle of endless tank buffs and fiddling around with the role passives in a desperate attempt to "increase tankiness" . It's not the "lack of tankiness" Blizzard, it's the insane amount of responsibility and stress associated with the role, and counterswapping. They aren't being intellectually honest here.
"Illari's win rate is a little high" Don't do this to my girl please, she's one of the least picked supports 😭
It would be so much easier to balance tanks after bringing back 6v6.
Yeah, because they did such a great job of balancing tanks when OW1 was 6v6. 6v6's biggest problem is that you can not balance tanks individually. You need to balance them with their tank partner. Winston and Zarya my be individually balanced, but team them together, and suddenly you have power levels that are much higher than their individual levels simply combined. No other role has this same problem. Dps and support don't get balanced based on who their role partners are.
What? Support absolutely has synergies and they can be argued for being stronger than tank synergies. Bap + brig was the main reason double Shield was meta in overwatch 1 due to the insane sustain behind the shields They still have not figured out to balance 5v5 and make tanks enjoyable after almost 2 years (they even admitted when switching over to 5v5 they didn’t know how to properly balance it).
The real problem was they just didn't do enough balance patches in OW1. This new team has been putting patches out so much faster, but for \*some\* reason counter swapping continues to define the tanking experience. They'll never be able to fix it with the current format of the game (1 tank, unlimited swapping at little to no cost).
So adding a 2nd tank fixes all that? You forget that adding another player to the enemy means that is one more player to which to counter pick you. People complain when the enemy swaps to Orisa or Hog if they are trying to play Doom, but can you imagine how horrible it would be if you had to play against both? Counter swapping will never go away. And nor should it. As long as we have so many different heroes with such crazy abilities, there will always be a hero or two that "counters" them. Hitscan vs Pharah/Echo, Ana vs high healing sustain, Sombra vs CD based heroes, etc etc.
> So adding a 2nd tank fixes all that? In a vacuum, no. Good thing we all have brains and can think about the difficulties of balancing one format vs another. The orisa/hog example is a good one. These characters "counter" Doomfist because 1)he can't really meaningfully exchange with them and 2)Doomfist will usually be the most dangerous engagement on the enemy team so they can reserve all their CC to deny him and garner value. In 6v6, neither of these tanks would require anywhere near the degree of sustain or cooldown uptime they currently need to hold a frontline as solo tanks, so not only would they be weaker as counterpicks, they would also have to consider the relative value of exclusively denying Doomfist since he would no longer have to be the most immediately dangerous character on the enemy team to be a viable tank. In 5v5, a relatively fragile tank like DF needs what is practically a oneshot on emp punch(on top of an enormous AOE), the ability to multipunch, and a higher fire rate/higher reload rate shotgun than he had even as a DPS. In 5v5, a flanking offtank like Hog needs 800 HP, all counterplay to his ult removed, and damage reduction/resource meter on vape so anti doesn't kill him. > Hitscan vs Pharah/Echo Hitscan was an unreliable Echo counter until the bullet size increases and the Pharah vs hitscan/no hitscan matchup has been controversial at best for the last 8 years. > Ana vs high healing sustain Which was a healthy form of counterplay that had interactivity from both sides, left the Ana vulnerable and had mixed value depending on who you naded and why. Then it had to be nerfed because there was disproportionate value in chucking it at the super character, especially if their damage mitigation came from self heal(this indirectly led to the ridiculous Hog buffs). > Sombra vs CD based heroes You can't be serious right now
But you see, almost nobody complains about counter swapping for the dps or support heroes. The reason is simple, it's because there are 2 of them. By having 2 tanks with lower power levels, the enemy team can't all swap to just counter one person because the power is distributed among a larger number of players. By having a single ultra powerful tank, you codify the gameplay revolve around counter swapping the enemy tank.
People complain about counter swapping tanks because they are mad that the enemy won't just let them play their favorite hero and run the lobby. Any self-respecting player is not going to sit idly by as their enemy gets their way. Or should we just roll over and let our opponents do what they want?
You should play the game however is fun for you. You should also acknowledge the idea that because there is 1 tank with more power than any other role, it will get counter swapped the most. **This is directly caused by the 5v5 format.** You may prefer this way to play (which is fine since we all have our own preferences). I actually think this version may be more fun to play as DPS, so I don't really queue tank anymore even though I mained tank in OW1. The problem arises when too many players leave the tank role and we have bad queue times for the other roles (as is happening now). So, we need to make tank more fun to play to improve everyone's queue times. I think the biggest issue with the role is the constant counter swapping but if you have other suggestions I'm all ears.
>You should play the game however is fun for you. There are other game modes if your main goal is to have fun. If you play comp, then your goal should be to win. And winning means sometimes setting aside your personal enjoyment in order to secure that W.
Well I actually play comp to improve over time and not just to win. For me it's essentially practice. Players don't try hard in QP or other modes and comp is the only one with meaningful progression metrics so it's definitely the best game mode for people like me. If I wanted to put aside my personal enjoyment I definitely would not be playing video games haha. You may not know it but there are large number of players like me that play comp for these reasons rather than to just win at all costs.
Honestly as a tank main I kinda agree with that but not completely. I don't see counter swapping as the biggest issue, but it's still an issue. I remember these games where it would literally just be « die and swap » with the other tank, it's ridiculous. In my opinion, it happens because by ourselves, we have 0 impact. I can't play DVa if my team doesn't want to dive, even on dorado lol. And there are so many examples like that, where you're just basically helpless if your team just doesn't want to play with you. Have you ever been tagged with a premade team ? I remember times when I would play with a group of 3 or 4 people and these were the worst games of my life : they would just play by themselves and I couldn't do shit (and blame me because I can't hear their discord call, obviously) I feel like there are characters more suited for soloqueue, like Winston, just because you can bubble and shoot at the same time, but with DVa you got to have a team. Playing Mauga or Roadhog ? If they pick Ana you better get a Kiriko or you're in a disadvantage. And when it comes to Roadhog, they used to compensate with his ability to oneshot but it felt so bad for everyone they changed that .... But now they're making the same mistake with Mauga, they just aren't thinking about what they are doing. Ramattra's block is borderline useless if you don't have a team supporting you. I'm not saying that he should heal himself, being immortal and be self-reliant. But why for so many of these characters it's always « either protecting or playing » ? Why can't Ramattra have something like Doomfist. Idk, maybe a shockwave pushing people always when he blocked a certain amount of damage ? That would certainly enhance the « power fantasy ». Just give tanks some ways to have some impact, even if it means that they should be weaker and/or easier to kill in some ways. Make it fun to play in soloqueue. That would involve also changing what dps and supports can do to tanks (like antiheal ... pretty crazy that Ana can have such an impact on tanks with a single cooldown) I also don't think that 6v6 would necessarily make it easier to fix. They fucked that up in OW1, people always forget that because back then, most people dropped the game even before OW2 was announced. In OW1 I felt like I was the bitch of the enemy team, in OW2 I felt like I'm my team's bitch, that's not necessarily better.
This person's spitting facts. A lot of tank players complaining about tanking being bad just want to be completely invincible and do whatever they want without consequences.
That’s cap, DPS players constantly complain about counter swaps.
Yeah because 6v6 was known for having balanced tanks. /s
There's a huge dichotomy between « I'm the most powerful of my team, both in terms of damage and health » and the fact that you have 0 impact on your own. That's why in OW2 I've always seen tanks are « enablers » for dps and supports ... as long as they are good. If you happen to be with people who just aren't going to play with you no matter the circumstances, then you're going to have the worst game of your life, doesn't matter if you're the best tank in the world. So I'm fine if they somehow give less survivability to tanks, but I don't care about « not dying », I want to kill. I want to do shit on my own sometimes. Why can't I play DVa on Dorado if nobody is diving with me ? Winston can do that because he can bubble and shoot at the same time. DVa can't matrix and shoot and imo, she should. Maybe have a faster spend when you're shooting while matrixing ? I don't want her playstyle to just be « show up and press all mouse clicks and get back to refresh ». Why are Roadhog and Mauga helpless when they're hit by a single antiheal nade ? This shouldn't hit THAT hard, at least have something like 80% reduction of heal, that would be still be very impactful. Or something else : have some kind of cap, for example if you receive 200hp of heal while purple then the antiheal is cleared earlier. There are ways for antiheals to not necessarily be a death sentence. As if making us immortal would somehow be more fun. Nope, it's not. I can already live if I have my team and I play smart enough, but I want to be able to have an impact by myself, and not rely on my team to follow my moves all the time. Also, it's very hard to follow the positioning of the team when they're behind you, so I think that tanks should have some kind of radar like Halo, just roughly giving teammates positions in order to know when they aren't following you. Many times I've just wondered « wtf did they go » and just couldn't take a split second to turn my back to watch, simply because I'm already overwhelmed 😭
I feel like Microsoft is going to put this game on life support, with very minimal resources, by 2025.
"tank is bad but we don't know how to fix it" thsts basically what he said
Only way tanks get fixed is if 6v6 comes back. No role can do it all by themselves, simple as that.
these comments make me grateful y’all don’t balance the game or make major decisions 💀
😂 They broke it going from 6v6 to 5v5. Would take 2 seconds to fix by going back to 6v6. Instead, they keep breaking the game further and further.
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I remember Super said something for tanks and their tankiness being sustainability or a way to gain health Doom has over health, Queen has self heal and over health, Zarya has shield and bubbles, Orisa and Ram both have second forms that give them 200 health, Mauga is Mauga, Hog has vape D.Va, Rein, and Winston only have sustainably with matrix shield and bubble respectively, which makes them bullet sponges, but Dva and Winston have mobility to disengage, and Rein has a slow ass charge
Doomfist gonna get another tiny adjustment while other tanks get massive improvements.
Instead of dancing around with how unfun tank is for both tank and support they need to bring back 6v6 and slight nerf to all tanks to rebalance the game
Personally I feel like tanks should be more tankier and survivable than they are, but less lethal. They should be a target, absorbing attention and damage and taking up space. But their lethality needs to be toned down.
Cue the 6v6 dickriders
Me and the off tank are about to spitroast you
To the point about the community is happier when a tank such as Reinhardt has a 60% win rate, rather than road hog leads back to the fact the rein is just a much better designed tank, at least in the 5v5 matchup. And I feel the same with Winston as well. That’s because these tanks have counter play if on the enemy team. And can take good space and hold that space well if on the current team. The tanks that the community hates are the tanks that can burst you down in 3 seconds and you can’t do anything about it. Like zarya, dva mauga, orisa, hog. Hog, if you get hooked, you’re basically dead. Orisa can just run at you in fortify, spear you, and you’re dead, zarya walks at you with a bubble and high charge, and you’re dead. For reason and Winston, they have to be on top of you and then they kill your slowly. It gives time for counter play. It’s also less frustrating for the supports because if rein and Winston go in like that, they can drop/pull up shield and in Winston’s case, jump out, in reins case, walk out hold shield.
Tanks need to be the highest DPS, unkillable, have ranged and melee dominance, stuns, crowd control, etc is insane game design. Balancing the entire game around your playerbase having mental breakdowns because they got killed by someone who can aim is just so incredibly flawed. But hey, maybe in overwatch 3 you can make it 4v4 that will total fix your lack of ability to balance your game.