It’s not only that, though that is an issue, the biggest problem for me is that a tank can still get hard countered by single DPS or support AND yet players aren’t thinking like a team and won’t counterswap to protect their singular tank, something you HAVE to do in OW2.
The only dps swaps people make is hitscan into flying characters. Otherwise people mainly play their mains, counterswap against tanks but never against other DPS or support.
yeah, it’s unfortunately because those are the only skill defining things in this game. You don’t need to counterswap against the tracer genji, if you can just kill their tank first and win the round.
I would be fine with this if Tanks were God-Like in power and effectively equal to double a DPS and support.
But.. tank has worst ults than DPS as a class and support let’s be real and worse cooldowns than Support. Every game is decided by the supports usage of invulnerability abikies
It’s truly counterwatch. Now that I think about it, my support pick is based on enemy tank, ana/zen if they have like hog:doom/ball. Or like LW if vs a sigma since u can lifegrip someone right out of his ult. And my dps tends to be based on countering tank too. Reaper into winston, torb into doom, bastion into rein etc.. sucks but I don’t play to counter any supports or dps typically. Their are outliers like if they have a pesky tracer or genji and I’m on support I’ll go brig or Moira to protect myself but it’s not really me countering them, it’s me defending the backline.
It's because there really isn't a need to counter anyone but tank, and they give you so many tools to do so. Why bother countering the bastion if you can just melt their tank then overpower them?
It's just like that. Had a *great* game with as tank a few weeks back on New junk City. It was actually a Rein v Rein (i used to be a Rein main, but with the current *situation* it's Hard to do so), but they had a bastion unloading into me, so it wasn't a Rein v Rein really, even though i was just betteron rein. Like by a fucking mile. We lost the first two points because of the bastion unloading into me and my team not doing anything against the bastion.
I was playing with friends where we try to keep the blaming to a minimum, but they were like "Yeah can't do shit without *space*." So I told him to switch to bastion and just keep shooting the Rein as soon as he steps out a door, and i bet with him for $5 if it works or not (= making a 3:2 comeback). Easiest $5 in my life, didn't die once from that point
It drives me crazy. All the while supports swear they are the worst off and demand being carried if they can't properly maintain their cooldown cycles.
The only one role position. You can have a soldier with an even KD doing acceptable dmg. Thats fine. You have a tank with an even KD and just normal dmg. "Tank Diff". The way the game goes.
Fair but I am still blaming my team's reinhardt charging across the map and taking 9000 damage. Because I just got done with a game like that. I could not out heal stupidity.
true that there will be games like that, but it will be rare. Not every tank deserve the hate. Sometimes, losing might just be everyone’s problem, sometimes might just problem of teamwork, it’s not always only one single player’s fault
Yup. If you aren't playing out of your fucking mind, A++++, 10/10 level of play its your fault. Like let's say you had a performance of a HIGH B+ or Low A-, well you just lost the game and it's your fault, and your own team is likely letting you know it's your fault.
I regularly have games where people are in voice chat. Wont say a word in regards to "genji behind" or "tank pull back a bit" but as soon as you die they chirp in with insults.
Crazy.
I hate when you're in situations where it's clear the enemy team has built their everything around their tank while your team is two DPS doing their own thing, a DPS Moira and Reddit Lucio.
Then they say "tank diff."
Its crazy how it went from “no one wants to play support, everyone blames supports” in s1 to “no one wants to play tank, everyone blames the tank” lmfao
Also as a default if the team doesn’t know who to blame its automatically the tanks fault for some reason. Like, if my tank overextended once somehow he sold the entire match if I can’t find my fat finger to point at anyone else.
Because Blizzard made big changes since beta/S1. Dps speed passive got removed. Support passive got buffed. Individual supports got buffed. Tracer genji got nerfs. Lifeweaver got more than a dozen buffs. Illari got released in an OP manner. Cass and Mei CC got buffed. Bastion orisa got buffed. The community especially new players were taught in tiktoks how to counter pick tank.
I mean….
I’d like to agree.
But honestly?
I had two healers tonight, all night, that tried to heal/support. One was a Lucio that was pretty awesome on when to use speed boost.
Literally had a zen that didn’t put a healing orb on anybody.
Had dps that did less damage than the both healers and the tank (and obviously the other dps)….and it isn’t like they were a geni getting clutch kills…nope.
Like, I get it. I’m super casual. I’m not great. I’ll peak at silver every time.
But it is obvious there is a need for ranks way lower than bronze 5.
After going through a period of playing dps for a few seasons and coming back to being a tank main, tanks absolutely ruin everything, don’t you know a tanks job is to win the game and never die
can confirm. just yesterday i played on Ilios as different tanks all 3 maps through, i had the most kills, the most mitigation, was the only one who killed enemy healers and captured the point. we lost anyway. damage dealers didnt even have 1/3 of my kills.
i got flamed by the other tank why i even picked that particular tank.
Exactly. And it is just a reminder of how overwatch brings the pedantry out of people. Like I wonder how many people who scapegoat the tanks all the time ever actually queue up as a tank.
I had a game that particularly fits this just the other night. I was doing my best on tank but getting smoked, and the whole team turned blame on me because I wasn’t matching the enemy tank’s numbers. I pointed out that our team had about half of the enemy team’s healing, not to say I had no blame because I know I’m not perfect, but merely to suggest that our team had deeper problems than “tank bad.” They all just doubled down on shitting on me.
And to be fair, I was having a bad game. But I could have done more with sturdier healers actually supporting me. I had to play super tight and defensive because they weren’t healing me, and then I’d die anyway…because they weren’t healing me. I definitely wasn’t overextending. I just wasn’t getting support even when basically on top of them. That’s definitely not all on me even though I acknowledge I wasn’t doing great, either.
Teams can have more than one problem, but whenever it can be simplified to “tank bad,” everyone else embraces that, because it lets them off the hook.
As a solo tank I am supposed to:
* Dive enemy supports
* Kill dps (which counter me)
* Protect my supports
* Play the objective
* Push up past the objective
* Don't push up to far
Just by existing all of the opposing players will target you the moment you enter their sightline. Your teammates will ignore the Ball freely rolling around the map and pretend you don't exist.
If your dps sucks, they blame you. If your supports suck, they blame you. If you win, they don't give you credit. If you lose it's all your fault.
Why would I voluntarily play this role? I was a tank main in OW1 and now play main dps in open queue. I only play role queue to place and then ignore it for the rest of the season. At least in open queue you can occasionally get multi tank comps which are fun.
I think the issue is tank as a role matters FAR to much in OW2. If one tank is even marginally better than the other it creates a huge problem for the other 4 members of the team. A good dps can pick up slack if the other is bad, and a good support can do the same. If the tank isn't on equal footing to the enemy it creates more space for the other 4 people on their team and that's not necessarily something one of the other roles can fix.
If they just blanket buff tanks this disparity gets larger and you end up with a raid boss walking at 5 people. If you make supports weaker dps just roles over the weaker team. If you make dps weaker then nobody dies.
The main ways I could see this being fixed (without adding another tank to balance out responsibilities) is to lower damage and healing for everyone considerably, remove one shots, and slow the game speed down in general so a single missplay from the tank doesn't end up throwing the fight.
The amount of times I'll be peeking corners as Rein, trying to bait out a bastion turret so my team can have time to push up, only for Ana to sprint straight into it like she's immune to bullets...
What is it with ppl hearing bastion go into turret form and think "I'll peek the bastion maybe i can kill him" only to be instantly melted.
Just wait a few seconds out of sight dammit!
Removing double tank was a mistake. It removed any kind of defensive Vs offensive playstyle for the tanks and puts too much pressure on the one tank player
This was one of the biggest changes. Removing Orisa’s shield, and changing bastion from a turret to a mobile tank, and of course taking away a tank changed the playstyle from defense vs offense to offense vs offense. Teams crash into each other and fight, whereas in OW1 there was more of a split of half your team defending and half diving.
>dive enemy kiriko
>takes 8 hours to get her low because suzu
>at 25% hp mercy presses m1 and now she can't die
>reaper teleports next to me
Oh well at least I've used up a lot of their resourc-
>hanzo one shots my teammate across the map, it's now 4v5, gg
This sums up my feelings so much. I fucking loved tanking in OW1 and now I don't touch it unless I can off-tank in open queue.
I'm not much of a DPS player so in role queue I'm 99% relegated to support, which feels awfully limiting.
Right. If no one knows what to do with the space provided, you lose. If your dps can't get a kill, for any reason, you lose. If your supports think they need to be dps because your dps sucks and forget to heal, you lose.
The only way you win a game as a tank is if your skill is so much higher than your opponents you just go insane on em
Its unfun because you get countered by everyone but you can't counter anyone (basically). And because you're alone, getting countered forces you to switch. But there are some persistent players who will immediately counter your switch, so basically it becomes a misery. The tanks themselves are fun to play, but you can't enjoy them when every single time the flies buzz around you with a mega counter.
> "One of the big differences with 5v5 combat is that we’ve tuned a lot of the heroes in the game, and **we’ve made changes to reduce the amount of hard counters that Overwatch has,"** - Aaron Keller
Source - [Why Blizzard believes Overwatch 2’s battle pass won’t break the game](https://www.polygon.com/23353371/overwatch-2-battle-pass-hero-unlocks-balance-switching)
But 5v5 was meant to fix this problem, there's no way you could have foreseen having 1 tank would exacerbate this problem? There's no way.
To be fair they fixed it for the other roles but can't for tank. As a unit, DPS and Support have the ability to fill gaps for each other or lean into a play style advantage. Tanks are alone in their role so they're differences are heightened.
Tank hard counters fucking suck, full agree. It's especially brutal in the metal ranks where people overreacted to unfavorable matchups from teammates before trying to outplay the counter.
I was so close to winning on the third map in Ilios today (Diamond lobby). Was stomping around on DVa, but it was tight percentage-wise as it took some time to get in the rhythm. Last fight, who does the enemy come back as? Zarya, Zen, Sym. I get melted instantly with no chance for counterplay.
Feelsbadman.
I honestly have so much sympathy for D.va mains; she's really the prime example of why the shift to 5v5 comes off as super half baked, imo.
Like, hog is pretty bad, but he at least has some niche uses (providing much needed healing when you're stuck with dps Moira and illari, and farming enviromentals on certain maps), it's not that D.va is outright bad, it's just that...as a solo tank, her design is antithetical to...the entire role?
Maybe I'm just shit at D.va, and I'm probably at least kinda bad at the game overall, but it feels like everything she's supposed to do just leaves her team terminally exposed to...everything, because she's still built for a game where she has a partner to hold the line (in theory, in practice it's hog and he's in narnia on a flank that's going to take longer to execute than there is left on the clock)
As a support, Dva is hard work because she takes sooooo much damage compared to most other tanks, so you’re often going flat out just trying to keep her in her mech. Whenever I have a Dva on my team, I immediately go Ana because no other support can do the burst healing Dva needs to not explode instantly. If you have low throughput supports, there’s not much you can do.
My favorite thing was if the tanks were evenly matched, or if one tank is a little better than the other. There is always someone in the match saying "tank dif" in the chat. Even if the whole team is bad, someone will always get mad and just blame the easy target.
As a support main who switched to mainly tank this season one of the primary insights I have observed is that a lot of supports are mid to trash but still imagine themselves as insanely strong.
Like support is such a strong role right now where you can do everything from getting kills to making space on the tank. But a lot of players just love to healbot in the back while bitching about their team not winning the match for them.
Tank sucks now.
You get blamed for everything
Your easy to counter
The tank kits worked better when there was two tanks.
Cause either they dive and leave the back line screwed or they stay with the backline and then still gets screwed.
Ramattra is fine because he was designed for 1 tank
Yet junkerqueen feels like she was designed in mind with a second tank
2tanks 2 heals 2 dps was such a better fucking meta and I refuse to play tank until it does come back
For me, it's a combination of 5v5, being shredded near-instantly the moment I put down my shield, CCs, feeling like I have no impact on the game, and the fact that I have to put up with all the toxicity that comes with solo tank.
It's just the fact that there's only one tank. That's it. Every issue with tanking right now can be boiled down to the fact that there's only one tank in a game that was originally designed to have two. The devs tested 5v5 and 7v7 in early beta and found 6v6 was the 'sweet spot'. you can find their words on this in a video somewhere, I think it was one of the ones where Jeff talked about all the hurdles in early dev like when they tried to make a moving capture point but the sightlines required were untenable.
Discord is not a problem as much when there's another tank to take pressure off. There's no rock/paper/scissors game between you and the enemy tank when there are two on each side. You don't have to worry about getting melted almost instantly by two tank busting dps when your cotank can take the heat off you. If you lose, your team won't always pin all the blame solely on you, and if you win, it doesn't feel like you did nothing to contribute to the win because both tanks share equal levels of responsibility. It's not as overwhelming when the enemy team is flanking all over and your supports are screaming for help because the other tank can assist them while you hold the line. With two tanks you aren't expected to respond and counter literally everything the enemy team throws at you.
It's so fucking simple, people who ignore this fact are in some weird form of denial.
Absolutely agree. There is no universe in which Overwatch and 5v5 work. Period. It's never going to change no matter how many "balance" changes they make unless they suck up their pride and revert back to 6v6 like this game is intended to be played.
If you tried out 5v5 and switched which role only had max 1, it would always boil down to "Kill that person, then you've eliminated an entire role from the enemy team"
Most of what they did to make this change to 5v5 actually would have vastly improved 6v6. The main problem the playerbase says they had with 6v6 is double sheild. Eliminating Orisas sheild would have fixed that. Rein is the only other hero with a large, hard to destroy sheild. Even Rein and sigma wouldn't be nearly as bad as pairing Orisa sheild with any of the others. Bringing the tanks back down in power and health, and reverting some of the DPS changes would make everything so much better. Heros like Widow could get their range back, Symmetra could get her DPS back on her lasers and keep her current Sheild gen from hitting sheilds so that sheilds in general still have counters. Supports could also get toned back a bit.
Here's the thing, the ONLY way 5v5 will work without being a glorified game of Rock paper scissors, is if every single tank gets massively reworked so that they all counter eachother better. They basically have to remove all hard counters and create much softer countering between tanks and even DPS.
If we reverted back to 6v6 they'd really only have to adjust individual balances and numbers, maybe tweak a few abilities, which is a hell of alot easier than reworking hard counters out of an entire class, while simultaneously pissing off every tank main who plays because their hero just became more generic. (Personally, I will quit this game forever if they touch a single bolt on Dva as far as reworks go)
I feel like it would take over a year or something to try testing what would work to revert back, you see how they take months to figure out what works when changing a single character or testing different numbers
I agree with your points but blizzard is a disappointing company that would probably believe it’s not worth trying
Well, when OW was in early development, they did. They play tested 5v5, 6v6, and 7v7. 6v6 was the decided upon sweet spot out of those 3 choices. They already knew 5v5 was awkward even when the hero roster was alot thinner, especially when they only had a few tanks that wouldn't have been that hard to balance between each other compared to how many we have today. I can't imagine how thinking a big change to 5v5 would work well well with so many more tanks than they had back
when they tested it with the tanks they had on release.
I've tried to find the source, so take what I just said with a grain of salt. I can't remember where exactly I remember them talking about this, It was either a livestream or a video where Jeff had mentioned it. It's been some years since then, so I'm having a hard time finding it because it wasn't the topic of the video and I absolutely could be wrong or have misinterpreted.
You are absolutely right though, it takes them a long time to figure things out. I just hope they start changing directions before I move on to Paladins.
I don't understand how they thought balancing a solo tank was somehow easier than balancing two.
Like I flat out don't get it. The only problem with double tank was A: double shields (fixable by...just balancing shield health as they've basically done now???), and B: tanks never seeming to die (fixable by reducing overall healing, which is still a problem now btw even with one tank). Those two issues seem way more manageable than having to make yourself into one tank. Almost all of the what would have been "off tanks" suffered considerably, while their always inept balancing decisions have made several tanks unviable under the reign of Orisa. Which would be fixable with *drum roll* a second tank to help mitigate the issue!
Tanks need a Debuff reduction game-wide as part of their Role passive. Every CC/Debuff should affect them in a reduced manner. Exactly like how they made it so Sleep effects tanks for a shorter duration. It makes perfect sense, Tanks are the most affected by Debuffs and they are the easiest to land Debuffs on, so they should also get affected by the less.
If they do that then Tanks automatically will be more fun. Alec Dawson mentioned that they are specifically looking at Discord right now and while that is the 2nd worst Debuff, it's anti-nade that fucks Tanks like nothing else in the game right now. Just making these two abilities affect Tanks less would immensely help tanks. Ultimately they need Debuff Reduction Passive to fix Tanks.
If they do that, with some rebalancing of the Tanks, the Hog rework, and Mauga coming next season we could be looking at the Tank role being entirely fixed in 2 months.
They at least seem very aware about the Tank problem right now so it's only a matter of time before they take some drastic action. If not the S7 patch then probably the mid-season patch, definitely by the S8 patch.
1 gigatank was such an awful idea I don't understand how it got pushed through. Yes, let's have the ENTIRE MATCH revolve around the competency of ONE PLAYER. This is definitely a healthy change for our FPS shooter!
Fucking Blizzard, man.
yeah i find it odd that their solution to “boy we can’t seem to balance tanks at all” was to just make it impossible to balance tanks… but now there’s 1 of them
It creates a revolving door of balance, where a couple tanks dominate each season, until they creep the next busted character into relevance. OW needs to just have some sweeping, and I mean SWEEPING nerfs, across all roles and characters. I can't say exactly what those changes need to be as I play 5v5 a lot less than I invested in 6v6, but the power creep just feels insane, and it did in OW1 as well. Blizz is long overdue for a nerf wave.
It was a good idea before they started designing / buffing all the supports to counterbalance the gigatank.
The Tank was suppose to be scary in OW2. The star role. Supports and DPS alike were to be afraid and feel weak when getting jumped on, or feel like they are enabling the star player when the Tank went in.
Instead we got:
* Bap, still with his 3x effective hp pool, left unnerfed.
* Brig perpetually booping. (Although she's arguably in her best state yet)
* Kiriko giving AOE MARIO STAR INVULNERABILITY on top of the debuff cleanse
* Lifeweaver (although weak at launch) petal platforming away or life gripping your target out
* Illari having her own AoE knockbacks and being able to poke you down from the start of the neutral game without little to no cost to her healing rate
They were suppose to stop designing new versions of Brigitte or Bap. They were suppose to make new Supports have vulnerabilities and let Tanks be the ones who felt OP, thus attracting people to play Tank and solving the queue time issue.
But they have failed in that regard. Likely because "More ppl play Support" profiteering mentality. NO SHIT PPL PLAY MORE SUPPORT IF THEY'RE OVERTUNED.
-big sigh-
*I miss 6v6. Ball dive was breaking double shields before OW2. And double shields meta would have been gone entirely with the Orisa rework...*
That doesn't change the competency factor for the sole tank, where in OW1 it wasn't so bad because you had a second tank. But also;
> "One of the big differences with 5v5 combat is that we’ve tuned a lot of the heroes in the game, and **we’ve made changes to reduce the amount of hard counters that Overwatch has,"** - Aaron Keller
Source - [Why Blizzard believes Overwatch 2’s battle pass won’t break the game](https://www.polygon.com/23353371/overwatch-2-battle-pass-hero-unlocks-balance-switching)
Idk if the devs actually know what they're doing tbh.
Also somehow locking Heroes behind the BP was the right decision- nah forget it. Idek what to say anymore.
Heroes behind battlepass, and not letting players just have access to them naturally, making them grind for a month to unlock them if they miss the battle pass dates... the whole thing was the nail in the coffin for me. This game is never going to get better and Bobby Kotick needs to be fired asap.
I don't think the devs have an incentive to care.
Sure, they say they do, but every action they take tells me they don't. The game will still make money, supposedly, and that's all that matters anymore. They've realized they don't need to make a balanced or fun game to do so because people are either addicted to the game we have now (the number of times I've seen the sentiment "I hate this game but I can't stop playing it" is very crazy), or they just don't have an alternative that scratches the same niche Overwatch does (Paladins is fine but lacks some polish aspects, TF2 has a considerably higher skill floor and most classes require some degree of aim to be effective, minus maybe Pyro but even that gets hard countered by a decent sniper).
It generates money with the least effort possible. The new season rolls around and you'll already have people with the new skins in a week.
>That doesn't change the competency factor for the sole tank
Except if Tanks were in fact stronger, the skill floor would be more forgiving. Right now, newbie tanks have to learn via trial by fire. They make one mistake and can easily get melted or blown apart.
>it wasn't so bad because you had a second tank. But also;
I also agree with this though. I'd prefer just having 2 tanks again. 6v6 was part of what set OW apart from other pvp games. And it was nice having a tank fighting the front with you.
Can they even swap back to 6v6 if they and the players wanted it at this point? Seems like there’s just been too many changes to get out of the grave they’ve dug
Supports are so stupidly overpowered it's crazy. It's at the point that they'll never be balanced because every time Ana gets the tiniest slap on the wrist people have meltdowns. Meanwhile, she has been the strongest character in the game for YEARS.
Ana has no mobility. Thus, the problem of how to protect or assassinate Ana is a solvable problem for both sides on paper.
It is introduction of characters like Bap and Kiriko and even Lifeweaver, not necessarily the abilities themselves but the severe lack of counterplay or mechanical execution required, that Ana can regularly suddenly be immortal and a lot harder to deal with.
* Imagine if Immortality Field / lamp had a 1-deployment phase. So, Bap had to preemptively deploy it instead of holding it til the last second. And at the same time, enemies could literally shot it before it activated (Then they could arguably make lamp last 2+ seconds longer cause he has to throw it out earlier.)
* Why the fuck is Suzu an AoE? And why does it also grant invulnerability that blocks even Doomfist punch and Rein charge?! The selling point of it was the cleanse? (And it launched with a knockback boop too?!) Completely overloaded.
* Imagine if Lifeweaver's life grip was a projectile like Suzu and took AIM to use.
But Ana herself does not make Tank miserable (except Roadhog, Ana's a big double-fuck-you to Hog lol). Her sleep dart requires great precision and her grenade is predictable. Though I am not oblivious to the many nerfs she has gotten, I think there is a great amount of fairness on her kit that makes her fundamentally functional. Unlike the newer supports.
That's my opinion anyway.
I genuinely think that Ana is like 50% of the pain I experience as tank. Like I have to pretty much be non-stop conscious about her because she's able to take me out of a fight with a single ability. Anti is stupid to deal with when your entire job is to make space. Like it was designed around there being like six active shields with a very slim chance to hit but since OW2 it's an essentially guaranteed ability to take someone out of a fight for a bit.
I think the fact that we mostly have Orissa, Zarya and Ram metas is mostly because any other tank can be pretty easily taken out by Ana. She's dominating the flow of the game but because she's so popular no one ever talks about it.
ana is really strong when played by good players. mainly because she can position herself pretty far and if she gets dived one of her other supports can just help her escape(life weaver pull, suzu, brig boop, speed boost, baps shift/lamp). shes practically invincible when played around competent players. just look at WC comps and you’ll see
It was never a good idea really, id argue now that they actually kind of buffed supports, they should also buff dps back again and the roles are pretty balanced across the board.
Kiriko and Illari are easily the worst offenders. Illari is just a DPS who can heal, and presents the constant problem of focus turret-illari kills you, focus illari-turret heals her and she kills you. She outdamages and outranges actual DPS heroes and has a built-in 'get off me' move just in case she actually makes a mistake. Her kit is insanely safe and easy to use,
but Kiriko is even worse because *you can still attack while invulnerable.* You can't even be *displaced.* It's complete and utter horseshit. I genuinely cannot believe they thought it was a good idea. Ever had to go against these bitches in Deathmatch? Elimination even? Free win machines. It is *so* obnoxious.
Honestly, Ana Bap and Brig is where I want supports to be. Brig has clear strengths but a streamlined playstyle that, as the enemy, is easy to abuse and play around. Baptiste has really impactful abilities but has to really think about when to use them, is a super tactical character, and has actual counterplay.
I *wish* the rest of the support roster was as well thought out as these 3. And Lucio is alright too, I guess. I actually main these 3 as support and i'd be 100% okay with them getting nerfed somehow if it means Illari and Kiriko get brought down to code.
I've actually been a huge support of 'make antiheal a percentage and not 100%' since it was added to the game. Illari and Kiriko is what we get with unchecked creep. I mean Illari's entire kit is whack, but holy shit, I genuinely believe Suzu Bomb is the worst thing ever added to this game flat-out. It's literally the star example of 'how bad' things have gotten in the balancing department.
As a dps main, I have started despising Illari too. She's the most braindead hero in the game currently. Plop down your healing turret out of enemy los and then just go full dps with no drawback to your healing. She even has a fucking hitscan weapon to back her up even more in this. All the other supports have to sacrifice most of their healing if they go dps, or they can do both but in return do little healing (zen/lucio), but of course Illari can just throw down her braindead autoaim healing turret and afterwards become a full blown dps.
It got pushed through because tanks had the worst queue times. Rather than improve the experience they figured if they cut the requirement in half it would fix things. They weren’t technically wrong from a timer perspective.
Particularly when they originally said when they made OW1 that not wanting all the pressure to be on one player was the reason they went with two tanks in the first place.
Nah. This is a perception thing. Tanks don't get diffed that often, stats are just massively skewed in favor of the winning tank. On a bad team? you get run over and look like youre feeding. On a good team? you farm stats just from being the first point of engagement.
sleep dart, anti, immortality field, suzu, life grip, petal platform, discord orb. pretty much support utility that either melts you or negates every big play you try and make.
I think the issue is that these abilities FEEL far worse than they really are. Getting a nade out as a tank is a good think in most situations, especially if it's only being used on you, but it FEELS quite bad.
The issue is that most abilities can shut you down pretty efficiently. If you eat an anti as JQ or Hog it's back into hiding with you and if you're fighting Sombra or Cassidy as Doom or Ball then good luck surviving.
I think that's where the core issues for the current tank misery lies. Tanks are supposed to act as a constant presence in an engagement to generate space and pressure but also have to face abilities that practically completely shut them down in their intended way of play. It's weird to have heroes designed around sustainability through movement or healing who can have their gimmick completely shut down.
Which means that finally the best way to play tank is to switch between the last three heroes that can be countered the least. And because Blizzard also loves buffing these for some reason, queuing tank means "enjoying" endless Zarya / Orisa swaps unless you wanna force a pick.
I've been GM since like Season 13 or 14 in OW1 and I don't mind all the damage in the game like others are pointing out (Discord, Bastion, etc) because I can play slow and play around it, but like another commenter on here said, all the bullshit they keep putting in the game to deny plays just makes the role unrewarding to play. Supports shouldn't be defenseless but they also shouldn't have an answer to every engage you make, even when you commit with ults, it's just bad game design.
Like how is Winston ever going to be viable in this game when every support has a dash, cleanse or escape ability? Even Zen which was an easy match up now has a kick to get free value when you dive him. Moira has a fade during ult when you could easily punish her ult. If the only answer to that is by buffing him, then that's just bad game design. Their design philosophy barely made sense in OW1, but it just makes no sense at all in this game. They design heroes without taking into account how a ***hero feels to play against***. All they care about is how ***the hero feels to play.***
It's actually funny how in the Sombra rework blog, they said they changed TP because it was a "get out of jail" ability, yet heroes like Kiriko are completely fine when they have TP. There is just zero design philosophy behind the direction of the game currently. I have played this game long enough to know that Overwatch devs don't ever recognize and walk back their mistakes, so I'm not optimistic about the future of the game.
Yea. I think the experiment has been interesting but the results are clear, every role should have a second player so the pressure/blame is evenly distributed.
Unless you have a ball, of course, then it's all their fault.
5v5 is why. Tanks have so much pressure now. They need to protect their team while diving the enemy, while countering the other tank. Not to mention half the characters in the role are useless against any comp with a zen. Not having a second tank is a lot of pain.
You have to do more than everyone else in the team since there is only one tank now, you're not allowed to fuck up or your team lose the team fight, you have to be aware of the enemy team ultimates that's apply to all roles but as a tank there is more pression since you have to protect your team and keep them alive, you also have to take all the enemy cooldown up your butt so your team can play the game, make space, you can't relax even after winning a team fight, yea main problem is that you have too much responsibility.
As a Rein main what makes it unfun is I have to track 15 different abilities that can undo or interrupt my shatter, hope I land that shatter close enough to actually follow up on enemies, and then hope I don't get blown up like a balloon after landing a shatter. Even when I try to think, oh, maybe I'll play defensively and shatter the nano blade? Yeah fucking right. If he doesn't jump over the shatter he's just gonna survive the stun and get away with his life anyway. It just sucks
Discord, sleep, hindered, anti, multiple means of slow, the fact that support is just easily the most powerful role. Tank isn’t fun because it’s passive now. Tank was fun in earlier seasons when you got to actually do shit. I shouldn’t be spending 80% of my time in nemesis mode blocking but I have to or I pop like a balloon. The numbers for damage and healing are just too high and there’s too much CC
This was supposed to be the null sector season and Ramattra has been dead in the water and painful to play. When it’s good and neither team have the tank-busters? It’s really fun, win or lose. When either team has then? It’s boring win or lose
Edit: also basically every newer support has a ‘get out of jail free’ card. Kiriko Suzu and Weaver pull are the main two that come to mind. It’s not a huge deal since those can be played around but it adds to the annoyance
> Tank was fun in earlier seasons when you got to actually do shit.
based. Its been good at times since launch but supports are just overtuned and the current best way to deal with it is to bust the tank with bastion, CC, and all the other nonsense.
Agreed, I feel like a puppet as a tank most of the time in higher ELO, my job is to just get bullied and take the CC and hope that my team takes advantage of the cooldowns being spent or trades when I die.
Incredibly unfun.
My fix for this is removing hard CC and slows from the damage role. Remove hindered entirely. Make support cc and ‘get out of jail’ tools less valuable or have slightly longer cooldowns, and lower the damage and healing numbers across the board a bit
That would just make dive characters OP as hell. CC is needed, sadly. I’d just suggest having most CC abilities affect tanks less, like how Sleep works.
Piss shouldn’t cleanse. Yeah it’s annoying when you get anti’d, but piss still gives you notable damage reduction in spite of that, and if you **really** can’t deal with the enemy Ana, ask for a Kiriko.
One of the main benefits of Hog is you get to near completely heal yourself every few seconds.
No hero should be able to completely obliterate a tank on a cooldown
Supports are indeed too strong. As a tank I’m afraid to push any support. No matter how good I make a play, I will die :/
They have multiple escape and there is two of them 🥲 now there is an automatic healing turret too.
You aren’t a playmaker any more. Your job is to just not die and take up space. Almost all the ultimates can be negated by a support cool down (cleanse). As a support main supports are way to strong. Tanks need to have a passive that makes them less susceptible to CC. Like it takes longer for it have an effect or has less of an effect. Actually screw it get Rid of CC all together.
Oh yeah I know of one;
> "One of the big differences with 5v5 combat is that we’ve tuned a lot of the heroes in the game, and **we’ve made changes to reduce the amount of hard counters that Overwatch has,"** - Aaron Keller
Source - [Why Blizzard believes Overwatch 2’s battle pass won’t break the game](https://www.polygon.com/23353371/overwatch-2-battle-pass-hero-unlocks-balance-switching)
It's just lies at this point.
Ana was annoying but bearable when there were two tanks because she had to keep the both of them in check and be mindful of her ressources and cooldowns.
Now she can just dump her abilities on the sole enemy tank and not have to worry about another coming to dive her and keeping her in check.
The bastion and orisa buffs a few months ago were stealth tank nerfs. The CC buffs for Cass and Mei were stealth tank nerfs. The introduction of Illari and Lifeweaver(after all the dozen buffs) were stealth tank nerfs. Illari puts out a lot of damage and easy healing. As tank you work hard and long to almost secure a kill and then they're saved by pull, suzu or immort. It's way too easy to hit all the CC abilities on enemy tank, including sleeps and nades.
You get the idea, tanks have been getting steal nerfs continuously. Only Orisa and Zarya are viable, they have CC immunity with fortify or bubbles.
I think the dismal state of tank can be summed up in two words: zero agency
The amount of ridiculous abilities and get out of jail free cards in the game has reached critical mass and the window for punishing or play making on tank is now so small that it doesn't really exist.
Even starting in mid-high plat everyone knows how to make your life miserable and they are happy to swap heroes to do it. It only gets more insufferable as you climb from there. I think the mid diamond average support queue time of 8+ mins while tank is <1 min says a lot.
And to top it off mfers with no brains and no hands now get to select orisa and think they're good at the role
I posted this in the competitive overwatch subreddit because they discuss this stuff a little better than over here but it really only boils down to 2 things when you condense what everyone talks about...
The number 1 issue is that it is way too hard to make plays as a tank. I think it got worse because it is now very easy for support heroes to make plays and since those plays are about denying elims it feels exponentially worse on the tank than it does in DPS because the tank has a bit more responsibilities than a DPS (i.e. peeling and being in the front line).
The number 2 issue is that it is difficult to transition from being in the front line to peeling for your team and vice versa. During that transition, the tank player is at their most vulnerable. And since you are such a big target, that is when you usually get hit by the sleeps, hacks, nades, slows, and so on. They need to figure out a way to make it easier for tanks to reposition.
Those are the main issues as simply as I can put them.
Zarya. I can deal with Orisa but when Zarya appears (which is more than half of matches) it suddently becomes a really annoying game because Zarya's bubbles are among the most annoying things about this game and Zarya meta is something no sane person wants.
Also half of the supports make playing tank annoying, especially Ana
Support players have been crying and seething for years for just about anything. Asking for a nerf to that role is just asking to be sent to the gulag.
Instead of going 5v5, I would have preferred 7v7. Add another DPS. It would make the support have to focus more on keeping teammates alive so they have less time to DPS. Tanks couldn’t eat damage while getting pocketed as easily like they do now. In theory, it’d reduce DPS Que times too.
I dunno. I miss the 6v6
Relatable. I had a game where the enmy had zen, pharah, mercy, bastion and ram. I couldn't do anything, Rein, jq, winton, and dooms off the charts. Sigma can counter bastion but I cant fight Ram in nemesis, Orisa is good but only for being unkillable. Can't play ball, I played zarya but kept getting deleted. Dva I'll be shot out of the sky before I even kill anyone. But I played zarya for bubble.
At the end my dps said "Tank can you stay alive?"
I was so pissed of that I got of even though it was my second game...
The most obnoxious part of tank.
-Dealing with other Tanks
-Dealing with Hyper Focus when your team is Dead Weight
-The Game not giving Tanks as a role the ability to contend with map or character variety
I hear so much about what every says is annoying about tank, and to me its a short list. Very Few Tanks can contest long range meaningfully if at all its very dependent on your teammate.
Tank tools are absurd, Risa Hog Doom Zarya are all incredibly irritating to contend with in a tank head to head. While Sig Rein Ramm Monkey and DVa are so polarizing to the test of your team that its hard to do your job with them denying your teams value you basically concede to your team that "You got this" and try to outvalue him by harassing their own team back.
And that aspect isnt limited to those characters Doom and Orisa are pheonomonal at single mindedly forcing the entire enemy team around.
Being Hyper Focused as a tank is also common because big target, big responsibilitys but ALSO because the default way OW designs DPS is to give them incredible amounts of damage.
Whats the default response from Bronze to Plat when a Tank is doing decently?
Reaper, Bastion
Pharah Echo
Sombra
And its not just DPS limited, Zen and Ana have been oppressive for Tanks specifically. The excess mobility creep of supports- namely Moira Bap LW and Kiri exasperates it further. Because now you can barely apply pressure to the bulk of the cast.
As a DPS i lose because im not consistent
As a Support i lose because im not consistent
As both these characters circumstances can be shit, my team can be shit but theres always characters in the role that feel like they can get it done, the diversity in the pool to deal with a variety of circumstance. Tanks dont have that but also have a ton of natural pushback.
Every cc is aimed at you now because you don't have another tank. You have to create all of the space though.
Most tanks are unplayable atm because Orisa and Zarya exist. If you try and play anyone into a good Orisa you're probably just gonna lose.
You have to rely heavily on your DPS to kill snipers because you just can't dive them anymore without giving up acres of space.
If I jump into their backline with monkey or dva then there's a Moira fade or a lifeweaver petal or lifeweaver jump or illari jump or sleep or nade or immortality field or lucio boop or brig boop or a cleanse or Kiri just TPs away. Illaris pylon literally outputs healing like another character so I have to destroy that before attempting to kill anyone and in that time I've already lost half of my health.
I honestly don't remember the last time I killed anyone with a rein shatter.
Sigma does well on a few maps but his shield is kinda pathetic and normally on those maps it's just a sig Vs Sig which ends up being which supports make the most mistakes and cost your team the fight.
It doesn't feel like you have any control as tank anymore, you're just at the mercy of your supports.
Speaking of mercy, mercy pocketing DPS is really strong and you just kind of lose to a soujorn/soldier/pharah/ashe pocket.
Also the rock paper scissors of tank is super unfun because you spend the whole game being told to swap hero because they swapped and there's just no skill to tank anymore, you just mitigate damage and wait for either your support or their support to mess up.
OH AND ZEN DISCORD IS ALWAYS ON YOU AND YOU TAKE AN EXTRA 25% DAMAGE WHICH IS REALLY FUN
Tanks worst problem is being too easy to be counterpicked, while being unable to counter or even outplay a lot of things. tbh though i think DPS as a whole is in an even worse spot than tank, theyre just quieter about it.
Because I can't play who I want without being yelled at by 4 angry mobsters even if I know how to play around the other tank. It sucks having to play the rock paper scissors meta until it goes to Zarya
The only tanks I see as fun are dva, ram doom and hog (who feels weak rn after returning from season 1) and half the time I'm counter and have to go zarya or doom which is depressing to play as
The lack of a 2nd tank puts more pressure on me to perform better and if I'm under performing or we cant cap point or dps cant kill it always the tanks fault even if there doing everything right it just sucks the fun out of the game.
Ever since overwatch became a 5v5 99.99% of rank games are roll or be rolled which is unfun, I want the match to end as 4-5 where both sides are good and one side isn't be rolled. It's fun to play an equally fair match where you don't get rolled over for 10 minutes to then search for another match, even after losing the match or drawing it still was a fun and enjoyable match unlike every other match.
It will continue to be unfun as long as 5v5 exists in its current format.
The problem with 5v5 for tanks is, as everyone has noted, the single tank becomes a focal point. In a game where each role was designed to have a very clear purpose in contributing to the win condition it is too easy to fall back on killing the solo tank as a way to tip the balance in your favor. Add to that the counterplay that tanks force against one another and youre basically never given a chance to breath and enjoy the game.
Realistically we will never get 6v6 back (unfortunately) so they could potentially address this issue by splitting the roster back into something like DPS/Defense (or a bulky DPS) that they had in OW1. So role queue becomes 2 support, 1 DPS, 1 Defense, 1 Tank. The "Defense" role here straddles the gap between tank and DPS in terms of health and damage. That gives another focal point and allows for more fluidity in how characters are assigned. I could imagine hog having his health pool nerfed and damage slightly buffed so he fits in defense alongside a Mei or a reworked Doomfist such that you have a "pseudo-tank" to draw some of that attention.
You also may need to tune the healing down across the board since damage may decrease slightly.
A very good tank will not enjoy the game as they are constantly being hit with every CC, anti, the target for ults, discorded, and so on. Flats said it best in a video where he discussed the tank role and how it isn't fun in depth.
To summarize, in OW1, it was a 6v6 so it was 2 of every role which means you aren't taking all the punishment of the abilities but balancing the heroes is harder. Now in OW2 5v5 means it's easier to balance but no longer fun since you are just being punished for playing your role.
As a tank, your supposed to block damage and create space, however cause of the amount of healing, damage and cc from the other roles, it feels like every role can do it better than you, like you can create space, but so could a DPS just pressuring them or flanking, you could stop damage, but supports can just heal it, it's also cause of the amount of healing, you can pump thousands of damage into the enemy, but their gonna be healed too fast for it to matter, it also feels like the whole specialty of having cc and being good at defending against it has been lost throughout overwatch, multiple supports have cc, I'm pretty sure a few DPS have cc, there might be less than I think, and while yes the slight cc reduction is nice, it's not enough considering 1. Being the front person, the one taking kind of the brunt of the damage and cc means that the cc reduction kind of becomes redundant, and 2. We don't have the second tank anymore, so you cant end up getting cc'd and have your other tank help you get out of that situation, that's another thing that makes it miserable, the lack of another tank, in 6v6, tank was so fun cause of the combos, zarya rein, zarya sig, DVA Winston, e.t.c. each of these allowed for a different play style, whereas now each one has one or two play styles. 3. the lack of a good stat for them, DPS have damage, supports have typically healing but mitigated can also be good, and yeah tanks have mitigated, but all that says is that you stood Infront of an enemy, I could get 30k mitigated and done nothing for the team, so it makes people seem worse when their supports have done 10-15k healing and they've done little mitigation, but they've succeeded in helping the team, but are still pushed to the side. 4. This isn't an issue I've seen often, more ones I've seen other people complain about, but still seems pretty genuine, is the lack of recognition you get, if a supports done 15k healing and has like 20 assists or smth, that's a great support and I agree, if a DPS has 15k damage and 30 kills, that's a great DPS, if a tank has 20k mitigation and 20 kills, then that's a meh tank at times, so it feels like your trying the hardest to feel like your making a difference, but no one recognises it.
Personally I gave up when they turned 222 into 122. I LOVED the little bit of extra freedom having a second tank at your side gave you. Especially maining D.Va at the time, I knew I could be annoying and harrass the enemy, fly up to squishies etc cause there was (for example) a Reinhardt staying closer to the team. Ofc I wasn't just over extending, I knew very well when to go in, how far, and when not to. But it was just SO much more fun to me. Now with just 1 tank it's just a whole lot different.
If you win, you did your job. If you lose, you ruined everything. What you do in the match does not matter.
Pretty much, tanks are just the easiest to blame, all pressure, no reward.
yeah, people doesn’t wanna accept their own mistake, and blame it to other, where tank seems to be the most vulnerable
It’s not only that, though that is an issue, the biggest problem for me is that a tank can still get hard countered by single DPS or support AND yet players aren’t thinking like a team and won’t counterswap to protect their singular tank, something you HAVE to do in OW2. The only dps swaps people make is hitscan into flying characters. Otherwise people mainly play their mains, counterswap against tanks but never against other DPS or support.
I've heard it said several times by streamers and I'm starting to think it's true. People only know how to counter tanks and flyers.
yeah, it’s unfortunately because those are the only skill defining things in this game. You don’t need to counterswap against the tracer genji, if you can just kill their tank first and win the round. I would be fine with this if Tanks were God-Like in power and effectively equal to double a DPS and support. But.. tank has worst ults than DPS as a class and support let’s be real and worse cooldowns than Support. Every game is decided by the supports usage of invulnerability abikies
It’s truly counterwatch. Now that I think about it, my support pick is based on enemy tank, ana/zen if they have like hog:doom/ball. Or like LW if vs a sigma since u can lifegrip someone right out of his ult. And my dps tends to be based on countering tank too. Reaper into winston, torb into doom, bastion into rein etc.. sucks but I don’t play to counter any supports or dps typically. Their are outliers like if they have a pesky tracer or genji and I’m on support I’ll go brig or Moira to protect myself but it’s not really me countering them, it’s me defending the backline.
It's because there really isn't a need to counter anyone but tank, and they give you so many tools to do so. Why bother countering the bastion if you can just melt their tank then overpower them?
It's just like that. Had a *great* game with as tank a few weeks back on New junk City. It was actually a Rein v Rein (i used to be a Rein main, but with the current *situation* it's Hard to do so), but they had a bastion unloading into me, so it wasn't a Rein v Rein really, even though i was just betteron rein. Like by a fucking mile. We lost the first two points because of the bastion unloading into me and my team not doing anything against the bastion. I was playing with friends where we try to keep the blaming to a minimum, but they were like "Yeah can't do shit without *space*." So I told him to switch to bastion and just keep shooting the Rein as soon as he steps out a door, and i bet with him for $5 if it works or not (= making a 3:2 comeback). Easiest $5 in my life, didn't die once from that point
It drives me crazy. All the while supports swear they are the worst off and demand being carried if they can't properly maintain their cooldown cycles.
The only one role position. You can have a soldier with an even KD doing acceptable dmg. Thats fine. You have a tank with an even KD and just normal dmg. "Tank Diff". The way the game goes.
Fair but I am still blaming my team's reinhardt charging across the map and taking 9000 damage. Because I just got done with a game like that. I could not out heal stupidity.
true that there will be games like that, but it will be rare. Not every tank deserve the hate. Sometimes, losing might just be everyone’s problem, sometimes might just problem of teamwork, it’s not always only one single player’s fault
Because they changed it to 5v5.
Yup. If you aren't playing out of your fucking mind, A++++, 10/10 level of play its your fault. Like let's say you had a performance of a HIGH B+ or Low A-, well you just lost the game and it's your fault, and your own team is likely letting you know it's your fault.
And worst of all, if you do your tank thing and lose sight of your team for just a second, they melt.
I regularly have games where people are in voice chat. Wont say a word in regards to "genji behind" or "tank pull back a bit" but as soon as you die they chirp in with insults. Crazy.
Then they blame you for not immediately peeling for them.
Honestly, I don't think most players even know what peeling is.
They don't know what it is until they want you to save them.
"Peeling for me not for thee"
if you win, you did your job \*but you could have done it better\*
You can always do better.
Wrong. if you win it was some other player who carried
I hate when you're in situations where it's clear the enemy team has built their everything around their tank while your team is two DPS doing their own thing, a DPS Moira and Reddit Lucio. Then they say "tank diff."
oh god this is spot on.
Its crazy how it went from “no one wants to play support, everyone blames supports” in s1 to “no one wants to play tank, everyone blames the tank” lmfao Also as a default if the team doesn’t know who to blame its automatically the tanks fault for some reason. Like, if my tank overextended once somehow he sold the entire match if I can’t find my fat finger to point at anyone else.
Because Blizzard made big changes since beta/S1. Dps speed passive got removed. Support passive got buffed. Individual supports got buffed. Tracer genji got nerfs. Lifeweaver got more than a dozen buffs. Illari got released in an OP manner. Cass and Mei CC got buffed. Bastion orisa got buffed. The community especially new players were taught in tiktoks how to counter pick tank.
I mean…. I’d like to agree. But honestly? I had two healers tonight, all night, that tried to heal/support. One was a Lucio that was pretty awesome on when to use speed boost. Literally had a zen that didn’t put a healing orb on anybody. Had dps that did less damage than the both healers and the tank (and obviously the other dps)….and it isn’t like they were a geni getting clutch kills…nope. Like, I get it. I’m super casual. I’m not great. I’ll peak at silver every time. But it is obvious there is a need for ranks way lower than bronze 5.
I'm a big fan of using paper products as ranks below bronze. To steal a couple from Flats, cardboard below bronze, napkin below that.
I want you to know this post was the highlight of the night.
🤘
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60% of the time it happens every time.
After going through a period of playing dps for a few seasons and coming back to being a tank main, tanks absolutely ruin everything, don’t you know a tanks job is to win the game and never die
Is that what it is? Damn, dude, here I was thinking my job was feeding the enemy so much that they fall into a food coma.
Damn so it’s like working in IT
can confirm. just yesterday i played on Ilios as different tanks all 3 maps through, i had the most kills, the most mitigation, was the only one who killed enemy healers and captured the point. we lost anyway. damage dealers didnt even have 1/3 of my kills. i got flamed by the other tank why i even picked that particular tank.
Yeah, it's wild. Even tank players hate on tank players.
Exactly. And it is just a reminder of how overwatch brings the pedantry out of people. Like I wonder how many people who scapegoat the tanks all the time ever actually queue up as a tank.
I had a game that particularly fits this just the other night. I was doing my best on tank but getting smoked, and the whole team turned blame on me because I wasn’t matching the enemy tank’s numbers. I pointed out that our team had about half of the enemy team’s healing, not to say I had no blame because I know I’m not perfect, but merely to suggest that our team had deeper problems than “tank bad.” They all just doubled down on shitting on me. And to be fair, I was having a bad game. But I could have done more with sturdier healers actually supporting me. I had to play super tight and defensive because they weren’t healing me, and then I’d die anyway…because they weren’t healing me. I definitely wasn’t overextending. I just wasn’t getting support even when basically on top of them. That’s definitely not all on me even though I acknowledge I wasn’t doing great, either. Teams can have more than one problem, but whenever it can be simplified to “tank bad,” everyone else embraces that, because it lets them off the hook.
I love nothing more in overwatch than going ana and enabling our tabk to go crazy.
As a solo tank I am supposed to: * Dive enemy supports * Kill dps (which counter me) * Protect my supports * Play the objective * Push up past the objective * Don't push up to far Just by existing all of the opposing players will target you the moment you enter their sightline. Your teammates will ignore the Ball freely rolling around the map and pretend you don't exist. If your dps sucks, they blame you. If your supports suck, they blame you. If you win, they don't give you credit. If you lose it's all your fault. Why would I voluntarily play this role? I was a tank main in OW1 and now play main dps in open queue. I only play role queue to place and then ignore it for the rest of the season. At least in open queue you can occasionally get multi tank comps which are fun.
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I think the issue is tank as a role matters FAR to much in OW2. If one tank is even marginally better than the other it creates a huge problem for the other 4 members of the team. A good dps can pick up slack if the other is bad, and a good support can do the same. If the tank isn't on equal footing to the enemy it creates more space for the other 4 people on their team and that's not necessarily something one of the other roles can fix. If they just blanket buff tanks this disparity gets larger and you end up with a raid boss walking at 5 people. If you make supports weaker dps just roles over the weaker team. If you make dps weaker then nobody dies. The main ways I could see this being fixed (without adding another tank to balance out responsibilities) is to lower damage and healing for everyone considerably, remove one shots, and slow the game speed down in general so a single missplay from the tank doesn't end up throwing the fight.
Or we could return to a 6v6. But that's not really an option tbh.
Cutting their losses is always an option.
The amount of times I'll be peeking corners as Rein, trying to bait out a bastion turret so my team can have time to push up, only for Ana to sprint straight into it like she's immune to bullets...
What is it with ppl hearing bastion go into turret form and think "I'll peek the bastion maybe i can kill him" only to be instantly melted. Just wait a few seconds out of sight dammit!
At least peek BEHIND MY SHIELD, but noooo, like the second coming of Leroy Jenkins, off they go to get obliterated.
Removing double tank was a mistake. It removed any kind of defensive Vs offensive playstyle for the tanks and puts too much pressure on the one tank player
This was one of the biggest changes. Removing Orisa’s shield, and changing bastion from a turret to a mobile tank, and of course taking away a tank changed the playstyle from defense vs offense to offense vs offense. Teams crash into each other and fight, whereas in OW1 there was more of a split of half your team defending and half diving.
You wrote the first point wrong its: dive the enemy supports that are unkillable and counter me
>dive enemy kiriko >takes 8 hours to get her low because suzu >at 25% hp mercy presses m1 and now she can't die >reaper teleports next to me Oh well at least I've used up a lot of their resourc- >hanzo one shots my teammate across the map, it's now 4v5, gg
”If you win they don’t give you credit. If you lose it’s all your fault” So true. There’s no winning here.
This sums up my feelings so much. I fucking loved tanking in OW1 and now I don't touch it unless I can off-tank in open queue. I'm not much of a DPS player so in role queue I'm 99% relegated to support, which feels awfully limiting.
You forgot about mind reading and catering to every one off "strategy" or "counter" that randos have in their minds.
Right. If no one knows what to do with the space provided, you lose. If your dps can't get a kill, for any reason, you lose. If your supports think they need to be dps because your dps sucks and forget to heal, you lose. The only way you win a game as a tank is if your skill is so much higher than your opponents you just go insane on em
I started playing in S6 i noticed the dps and support issue straight away its how ive became a Hog main
This is why i endorse tanks, especially if they're getting flamed. might not be much but its something
Its unfun because you get countered by everyone but you can't counter anyone (basically). And because you're alone, getting countered forces you to switch. But there are some persistent players who will immediately counter your switch, so basically it becomes a misery. The tanks themselves are fun to play, but you can't enjoy them when every single time the flies buzz around you with a mega counter.
Or you counter the other tank, who switches to your counter after, and you switch to their counter after….
> "One of the big differences with 5v5 combat is that we’ve tuned a lot of the heroes in the game, and **we’ve made changes to reduce the amount of hard counters that Overwatch has,"** - Aaron Keller Source - [Why Blizzard believes Overwatch 2’s battle pass won’t break the game](https://www.polygon.com/23353371/overwatch-2-battle-pass-hero-unlocks-balance-switching) But 5v5 was meant to fix this problem, there's no way you could have foreseen having 1 tank would exacerbate this problem? There's no way.
To be fair they fixed it for the other roles but can't for tank. As a unit, DPS and Support have the ability to fill gaps for each other or lean into a play style advantage. Tanks are alone in their role so they're differences are heightened. Tank hard counters fucking suck, full agree. It's especially brutal in the metal ranks where people overreacted to unfavorable matchups from teammates before trying to outplay the counter.
I was so close to winning on the third map in Ilios today (Diamond lobby). Was stomping around on DVa, but it was tight percentage-wise as it took some time to get in the rhythm. Last fight, who does the enemy come back as? Zarya, Zen, Sym. I get melted instantly with no chance for counterplay. Feelsbadman.
I really hate getting countered as a tank but especially dva like please lemme play dva :(
I hate getting countered as sigma. Like it hurts my soul when there’s a Moira, zarya, sym. I just wanna be a TANK tank. Let me absorb your bullets!
I feel ya, more so Winston as me when I play Sigma. I can deal with zarya and that, but the goddamn monkey wont stop jumping and bubbling
rightt i main as dva and it’s so upsetting like it used to be so much easier to play as her and do good now i feel like i get no back up from my team
Fellow Dva one trick here. The trio is so painful and just unfun to play against
I honestly have so much sympathy for D.va mains; she's really the prime example of why the shift to 5v5 comes off as super half baked, imo. Like, hog is pretty bad, but he at least has some niche uses (providing much needed healing when you're stuck with dps Moira and illari, and farming enviromentals on certain maps), it's not that D.va is outright bad, it's just that...as a solo tank, her design is antithetical to...the entire role? Maybe I'm just shit at D.va, and I'm probably at least kinda bad at the game overall, but it feels like everything she's supposed to do just leaves her team terminally exposed to...everything, because she's still built for a game where she has a partner to hold the line (in theory, in practice it's hog and he's in narnia on a flank that's going to take longer to execute than there is left on the clock)
[удалено]
As a support, Dva is hard work because she takes sooooo much damage compared to most other tanks, so you’re often going flat out just trying to keep her in her mech. Whenever I have a Dva on my team, I immediately go Ana because no other support can do the burst healing Dva needs to not explode instantly. If you have low throughput supports, there’s not much you can do.
This is the first season of OW2 I played where D.Va just wasn't fun due to all the Zaryas running around.
You weren’t here for season 1? Zayra was by far the strongest tank
Dva's my main and my first gold gun. I don't queue for tank anymore because it's not fun anymore.
> Last fight, who does the enemy come back as? Zarya, Zen, Sym. I get melted instantly with no chance for counterplay Genji mains: First time?
Not to mention everyone always expects the tank to counter swap to take care of whatever problem.
My favorite thing was if the tanks were evenly matched, or if one tank is a little better than the other. There is always someone in the match saying "tank dif" in the chat. Even if the whole team is bad, someone will always get mad and just blame the easy target.
meanwhile you have mercy moira as a rein while the enemy rein has an ana baptiste, your supports will be the first to say tank diff
I always play ana for my reins because I was an ow1rein main and I respect all you crazy mofos still trying to make it work.
I love you.
Ily2, for honor, for glory, for... Are you chicken?
As a support main who switched to mainly tank this season one of the primary insights I have observed is that a lot of supports are mid to trash but still imagine themselves as insanely strong. Like support is such a strong role right now where you can do everything from getting kills to making space on the tank. But a lot of players just love to healbot in the back while bitching about their team not winning the match for them.
It sucks when it’s a soldier with like 6 kills and 10k damage saying it’s tank diff
I swear last time I played Rein I got healed more by the soldier staying right behind my shield than the supports.
I've seen this so many times even when the kills and deaths are like two apart. I mean, I guess that's technically a difference, but come on 🤦🏻
Tank sucks now. You get blamed for everything Your easy to counter The tank kits worked better when there was two tanks. Cause either they dive and leave the back line screwed or they stay with the backline and then still gets screwed. Ramattra is fine because he was designed for 1 tank Yet junkerqueen feels like she was designed in mind with a second tank 2tanks 2 heals 2 dps was such a better fucking meta and I refuse to play tank until it does come back
I end up treating JQ like an oversized DPS.
May I introduce you to the concept of off tanks... No seriously, 5v5 kinda sucks.
For me, it's a combination of 5v5, being shredded near-instantly the moment I put down my shield, CCs, feeling like I have no impact on the game, and the fact that I have to put up with all the toxicity that comes with solo tank.
It's just the fact that there's only one tank. That's it. Every issue with tanking right now can be boiled down to the fact that there's only one tank in a game that was originally designed to have two. The devs tested 5v5 and 7v7 in early beta and found 6v6 was the 'sweet spot'. you can find their words on this in a video somewhere, I think it was one of the ones where Jeff talked about all the hurdles in early dev like when they tried to make a moving capture point but the sightlines required were untenable. Discord is not a problem as much when there's another tank to take pressure off. There's no rock/paper/scissors game between you and the enemy tank when there are two on each side. You don't have to worry about getting melted almost instantly by two tank busting dps when your cotank can take the heat off you. If you lose, your team won't always pin all the blame solely on you, and if you win, it doesn't feel like you did nothing to contribute to the win because both tanks share equal levels of responsibility. It's not as overwhelming when the enemy team is flanking all over and your supports are screaming for help because the other tank can assist them while you hold the line. With two tanks you aren't expected to respond and counter literally everything the enemy team throws at you. It's so fucking simple, people who ignore this fact are in some weird form of denial.
Absolutely agree. There is no universe in which Overwatch and 5v5 work. Period. It's never going to change no matter how many "balance" changes they make unless they suck up their pride and revert back to 6v6 like this game is intended to be played.
If you tried out 5v5 and switched which role only had max 1, it would always boil down to "Kill that person, then you've eliminated an entire role from the enemy team"
Can they even switch to 6v6 at this point, after focusing every part of the game around 5v5? I feel like the grave they dug can’t be gotten out of
Most of what they did to make this change to 5v5 actually would have vastly improved 6v6. The main problem the playerbase says they had with 6v6 is double sheild. Eliminating Orisas sheild would have fixed that. Rein is the only other hero with a large, hard to destroy sheild. Even Rein and sigma wouldn't be nearly as bad as pairing Orisa sheild with any of the others. Bringing the tanks back down in power and health, and reverting some of the DPS changes would make everything so much better. Heros like Widow could get their range back, Symmetra could get her DPS back on her lasers and keep her current Sheild gen from hitting sheilds so that sheilds in general still have counters. Supports could also get toned back a bit. Here's the thing, the ONLY way 5v5 will work without being a glorified game of Rock paper scissors, is if every single tank gets massively reworked so that they all counter eachother better. They basically have to remove all hard counters and create much softer countering between tanks and even DPS. If we reverted back to 6v6 they'd really only have to adjust individual balances and numbers, maybe tweak a few abilities, which is a hell of alot easier than reworking hard counters out of an entire class, while simultaneously pissing off every tank main who plays because their hero just became more generic. (Personally, I will quit this game forever if they touch a single bolt on Dva as far as reworks go)
I feel like it would take over a year or something to try testing what would work to revert back, you see how they take months to figure out what works when changing a single character or testing different numbers I agree with your points but blizzard is a disappointing company that would probably believe it’s not worth trying
Well, when OW was in early development, they did. They play tested 5v5, 6v6, and 7v7. 6v6 was the decided upon sweet spot out of those 3 choices. They already knew 5v5 was awkward even when the hero roster was alot thinner, especially when they only had a few tanks that wouldn't have been that hard to balance between each other compared to how many we have today. I can't imagine how thinking a big change to 5v5 would work well well with so many more tanks than they had back when they tested it with the tanks they had on release. I've tried to find the source, so take what I just said with a grain of salt. I can't remember where exactly I remember them talking about this, It was either a livestream or a video where Jeff had mentioned it. It's been some years since then, so I'm having a hard time finding it because it wasn't the topic of the video and I absolutely could be wrong or have misinterpreted. You are absolutely right though, it takes them a long time to figure things out. I just hope they start changing directions before I move on to Paladins.
I don't understand how they thought balancing a solo tank was somehow easier than balancing two. Like I flat out don't get it. The only problem with double tank was A: double shields (fixable by...just balancing shield health as they've basically done now???), and B: tanks never seeming to die (fixable by reducing overall healing, which is still a problem now btw even with one tank). Those two issues seem way more manageable than having to make yourself into one tank. Almost all of the what would have been "off tanks" suffered considerably, while their always inept balancing decisions have made several tanks unviable under the reign of Orisa. Which would be fixable with *drum roll* a second tank to help mitigate the issue!
Playing Tank right now is miserable
Tanks need a Debuff reduction game-wide as part of their Role passive. Every CC/Debuff should affect them in a reduced manner. Exactly like how they made it so Sleep effects tanks for a shorter duration. It makes perfect sense, Tanks are the most affected by Debuffs and they are the easiest to land Debuffs on, so they should also get affected by the less. If they do that then Tanks automatically will be more fun. Alec Dawson mentioned that they are specifically looking at Discord right now and while that is the 2nd worst Debuff, it's anti-nade that fucks Tanks like nothing else in the game right now. Just making these two abilities affect Tanks less would immensely help tanks. Ultimately they need Debuff Reduction Passive to fix Tanks. If they do that, with some rebalancing of the Tanks, the Hog rework, and Mauga coming next season we could be looking at the Tank role being entirely fixed in 2 months. They at least seem very aware about the Tank problem right now so it's only a matter of time before they take some drastic action. If not the S7 patch then probably the mid-season patch, definitely by the S8 patch.
1 gigatank was such an awful idea I don't understand how it got pushed through. Yes, let's have the ENTIRE MATCH revolve around the competency of ONE PLAYER. This is definitely a healthy change for our FPS shooter! Fucking Blizzard, man.
yeah i find it odd that their solution to “boy we can’t seem to balance tanks at all” was to just make it impossible to balance tanks… but now there’s 1 of them
It creates a revolving door of balance, where a couple tanks dominate each season, until they creep the next busted character into relevance. OW needs to just have some sweeping, and I mean SWEEPING nerfs, across all roles and characters. I can't say exactly what those changes need to be as I play 5v5 a lot less than I invested in 6v6, but the power creep just feels insane, and it did in OW1 as well. Blizz is long overdue for a nerf wave.
It was a good idea before they started designing / buffing all the supports to counterbalance the gigatank. The Tank was suppose to be scary in OW2. The star role. Supports and DPS alike were to be afraid and feel weak when getting jumped on, or feel like they are enabling the star player when the Tank went in. Instead we got: * Bap, still with his 3x effective hp pool, left unnerfed. * Brig perpetually booping. (Although she's arguably in her best state yet) * Kiriko giving AOE MARIO STAR INVULNERABILITY on top of the debuff cleanse * Lifeweaver (although weak at launch) petal platforming away or life gripping your target out * Illari having her own AoE knockbacks and being able to poke you down from the start of the neutral game without little to no cost to her healing rate They were suppose to stop designing new versions of Brigitte or Bap. They were suppose to make new Supports have vulnerabilities and let Tanks be the ones who felt OP, thus attracting people to play Tank and solving the queue time issue. But they have failed in that regard. Likely because "More ppl play Support" profiteering mentality. NO SHIT PPL PLAY MORE SUPPORT IF THEY'RE OVERTUNED. -big sigh- *I miss 6v6. Ball dive was breaking double shields before OW2. And double shields meta would have been gone entirely with the Orisa rework...*
That doesn't change the competency factor for the sole tank, where in OW1 it wasn't so bad because you had a second tank. But also; > "One of the big differences with 5v5 combat is that we’ve tuned a lot of the heroes in the game, and **we’ve made changes to reduce the amount of hard counters that Overwatch has,"** - Aaron Keller Source - [Why Blizzard believes Overwatch 2’s battle pass won’t break the game](https://www.polygon.com/23353371/overwatch-2-battle-pass-hero-unlocks-balance-switching) Idk if the devs actually know what they're doing tbh. Also somehow locking Heroes behind the BP was the right decision- nah forget it. Idek what to say anymore.
Heroes behind battlepass, and not letting players just have access to them naturally, making them grind for a month to unlock them if they miss the battle pass dates... the whole thing was the nail in the coffin for me. This game is never going to get better and Bobby Kotick needs to be fired asap.
I don't think the devs have an incentive to care. Sure, they say they do, but every action they take tells me they don't. The game will still make money, supposedly, and that's all that matters anymore. They've realized they don't need to make a balanced or fun game to do so because people are either addicted to the game we have now (the number of times I've seen the sentiment "I hate this game but I can't stop playing it" is very crazy), or they just don't have an alternative that scratches the same niche Overwatch does (Paladins is fine but lacks some polish aspects, TF2 has a considerably higher skill floor and most classes require some degree of aim to be effective, minus maybe Pyro but even that gets hard countered by a decent sniper). It generates money with the least effort possible. The new season rolls around and you'll already have people with the new skins in a week.
>That doesn't change the competency factor for the sole tank Except if Tanks were in fact stronger, the skill floor would be more forgiving. Right now, newbie tanks have to learn via trial by fire. They make one mistake and can easily get melted or blown apart. >it wasn't so bad because you had a second tank. But also; I also agree with this though. I'd prefer just having 2 tanks again. 6v6 was part of what set OW apart from other pvp games. And it was nice having a tank fighting the front with you.
Can they even swap back to 6v6 if they and the players wanted it at this point? Seems like there’s just been too many changes to get out of the grave they’ve dug
Supports are so stupidly overpowered it's crazy. It's at the point that they'll never be balanced because every time Ana gets the tiniest slap on the wrist people have meltdowns. Meanwhile, she has been the strongest character in the game for YEARS.
Not mention of Ana?
Ana has no mobility. Thus, the problem of how to protect or assassinate Ana is a solvable problem for both sides on paper. It is introduction of characters like Bap and Kiriko and even Lifeweaver, not necessarily the abilities themselves but the severe lack of counterplay or mechanical execution required, that Ana can regularly suddenly be immortal and a lot harder to deal with. * Imagine if Immortality Field / lamp had a 1-deployment phase. So, Bap had to preemptively deploy it instead of holding it til the last second. And at the same time, enemies could literally shot it before it activated (Then they could arguably make lamp last 2+ seconds longer cause he has to throw it out earlier.) * Why the fuck is Suzu an AoE? And why does it also grant invulnerability that blocks even Doomfist punch and Rein charge?! The selling point of it was the cleanse? (And it launched with a knockback boop too?!) Completely overloaded. * Imagine if Lifeweaver's life grip was a projectile like Suzu and took AIM to use. But Ana herself does not make Tank miserable (except Roadhog, Ana's a big double-fuck-you to Hog lol). Her sleep dart requires great precision and her grenade is predictable. Though I am not oblivious to the many nerfs she has gotten, I think there is a great amount of fairness on her kit that makes her fundamentally functional. Unlike the newer supports. That's my opinion anyway.
I genuinely think that Ana is like 50% of the pain I experience as tank. Like I have to pretty much be non-stop conscious about her because she's able to take me out of a fight with a single ability. Anti is stupid to deal with when your entire job is to make space. Like it was designed around there being like six active shields with a very slim chance to hit but since OW2 it's an essentially guaranteed ability to take someone out of a fight for a bit. I think the fact that we mostly have Orissa, Zarya and Ram metas is mostly because any other tank can be pretty easily taken out by Ana. She's dominating the flow of the game but because she's so popular no one ever talks about it.
ana is really strong when played by good players. mainly because she can position herself pretty far and if she gets dived one of her other supports can just help her escape(life weaver pull, suzu, brig boop, speed boost, baps shift/lamp). shes practically invincible when played around competent players. just look at WC comps and you’ll see
She is really strong regardless, it takes very little skill to dump your cooldowns on the tank and her healing hitbox is also extremely forgiving
It was never a good idea really, id argue now that they actually kind of buffed supports, they should also buff dps back again and the roles are pretty balanced across the board.
Kiriko and Illari are easily the worst offenders. Illari is just a DPS who can heal, and presents the constant problem of focus turret-illari kills you, focus illari-turret heals her and she kills you. She outdamages and outranges actual DPS heroes and has a built-in 'get off me' move just in case she actually makes a mistake. Her kit is insanely safe and easy to use, but Kiriko is even worse because *you can still attack while invulnerable.* You can't even be *displaced.* It's complete and utter horseshit. I genuinely cannot believe they thought it was a good idea. Ever had to go against these bitches in Deathmatch? Elimination even? Free win machines. It is *so* obnoxious. Honestly, Ana Bap and Brig is where I want supports to be. Brig has clear strengths but a streamlined playstyle that, as the enemy, is easy to abuse and play around. Baptiste has really impactful abilities but has to really think about when to use them, is a super tactical character, and has actual counterplay. I *wish* the rest of the support roster was as well thought out as these 3. And Lucio is alright too, I guess. I actually main these 3 as support and i'd be 100% okay with them getting nerfed somehow if it means Illari and Kiriko get brought down to code. I've actually been a huge support of 'make antiheal a percentage and not 100%' since it was added to the game. Illari and Kiriko is what we get with unchecked creep. I mean Illari's entire kit is whack, but holy shit, I genuinely believe Suzu Bomb is the worst thing ever added to this game flat-out. It's literally the star example of 'how bad' things have gotten in the balancing department.
As a dps main, I have started despising Illari too. She's the most braindead hero in the game currently. Plop down your healing turret out of enemy los and then just go full dps with no drawback to your healing. She even has a fucking hitscan weapon to back her up even more in this. All the other supports have to sacrifice most of their healing if they go dps, or they can do both but in return do little healing (zen/lucio), but of course Illari can just throw down her braindead autoaim healing turret and afterwards become a full blown dps.
It got pushed through because tanks had the worst queue times. Rather than improve the experience they figured if they cut the requirement in half it would fix things. They weren’t technically wrong from a timer perspective.
Particularly when they originally said when they made OW1 that not wanting all the pressure to be on one player was the reason they went with two tanks in the first place.
Couldn't have said it better.
Nah. This is a perception thing. Tanks don't get diffed that often, stats are just massively skewed in favor of the winning tank. On a bad team? you get run over and look like youre feeding. On a good team? you farm stats just from being the first point of engagement.
So true
It's a support meta, tanks are the blame machines but don't control games
Because you have to sweat your balls off every game.
Tank just feels like work not fun.
Missing a second tank lmao
sleep dart, anti, immortality field, suzu, life grip, petal platform, discord orb. pretty much support utility that either melts you or negates every big play you try and make.
I think the issue is that these abilities FEEL far worse than they really are. Getting a nade out as a tank is a good think in most situations, especially if it's only being used on you, but it FEELS quite bad.
The issue is that most abilities can shut you down pretty efficiently. If you eat an anti as JQ or Hog it's back into hiding with you and if you're fighting Sombra or Cassidy as Doom or Ball then good luck surviving. I think that's where the core issues for the current tank misery lies. Tanks are supposed to act as a constant presence in an engagement to generate space and pressure but also have to face abilities that practically completely shut them down in their intended way of play. It's weird to have heroes designed around sustainability through movement or healing who can have their gimmick completely shut down. Which means that finally the best way to play tank is to switch between the last three heroes that can be countered the least. And because Blizzard also loves buffing these for some reason, queuing tank means "enjoying" endless Zarya / Orisa swaps unless you wanna force a pick.
It’s not that the abilities are overly bad but the rate that you get them is
I've been GM since like Season 13 or 14 in OW1 and I don't mind all the damage in the game like others are pointing out (Discord, Bastion, etc) because I can play slow and play around it, but like another commenter on here said, all the bullshit they keep putting in the game to deny plays just makes the role unrewarding to play. Supports shouldn't be defenseless but they also shouldn't have an answer to every engage you make, even when you commit with ults, it's just bad game design. Like how is Winston ever going to be viable in this game when every support has a dash, cleanse or escape ability? Even Zen which was an easy match up now has a kick to get free value when you dive him. Moira has a fade during ult when you could easily punish her ult. If the only answer to that is by buffing him, then that's just bad game design. Their design philosophy barely made sense in OW1, but it just makes no sense at all in this game. They design heroes without taking into account how a ***hero feels to play against***. All they care about is how ***the hero feels to play.*** It's actually funny how in the Sombra rework blog, they said they changed TP because it was a "get out of jail" ability, yet heroes like Kiriko are completely fine when they have TP. There is just zero design philosophy behind the direction of the game currently. I have played this game long enough to know that Overwatch devs don't ever recognize and walk back their mistakes, so I'm not optimistic about the future of the game.
Because there aren't two. I firmly stand by 6v6 being more fun.
5v5. 5v5 is what makes tank unfun.
I miss MT/OT :(
Me too, especially since I am (was) a Dva main.
Yup. It's a pure blame of the one role that's alone and has no partner.
Not only that, 5v5 forces you to play RPS with the lone enemy tank.
Yea. I think the experiment has been interesting but the results are clear, every role should have a second player so the pressure/blame is evenly distributed. Unless you have a ball, of course, then it's all their fault.
That there is only one of them.
5v5 is why. Tanks have so much pressure now. They need to protect their team while diving the enemy, while countering the other tank. Not to mention half the characters in the role are useless against any comp with a zen. Not having a second tank is a lot of pain.
You have to do more than everyone else in the team since there is only one tank now, you're not allowed to fuck up or your team lose the team fight, you have to be aware of the enemy team ultimates that's apply to all roles but as a tank there is more pression since you have to protect your team and keep them alive, you also have to take all the enemy cooldown up your butt so your team can play the game, make space, you can't relax even after winning a team fight, yea main problem is that you have too much responsibility.
As a Rein main what makes it unfun is I have to track 15 different abilities that can undo or interrupt my shatter, hope I land that shatter close enough to actually follow up on enemies, and then hope I don't get blown up like a balloon after landing a shatter. Even when I try to think, oh, maybe I'll play defensively and shatter the nano blade? Yeah fucking right. If he doesn't jump over the shatter he's just gonna survive the stun and get away with his life anyway. It just sucks
GIve him back his 3 second stun.
Discord, sleep, hindered, anti, multiple means of slow, the fact that support is just easily the most powerful role. Tank isn’t fun because it’s passive now. Tank was fun in earlier seasons when you got to actually do shit. I shouldn’t be spending 80% of my time in nemesis mode blocking but I have to or I pop like a balloon. The numbers for damage and healing are just too high and there’s too much CC This was supposed to be the null sector season and Ramattra has been dead in the water and painful to play. When it’s good and neither team have the tank-busters? It’s really fun, win or lose. When either team has then? It’s boring win or lose Edit: also basically every newer support has a ‘get out of jail free’ card. Kiriko Suzu and Weaver pull are the main two that come to mind. It’s not a huge deal since those can be played around but it adds to the annoyance
> Tank was fun in earlier seasons when you got to actually do shit. based. Its been good at times since launch but supports are just overtuned and the current best way to deal with it is to bust the tank with bastion, CC, and all the other nonsense.
Agreed, I feel like a puppet as a tank most of the time in higher ELO, my job is to just get bullied and take the CC and hope that my team takes advantage of the cooldowns being spent or trades when I die. Incredibly unfun.
My fix for this is removing hard CC and slows from the damage role. Remove hindered entirely. Make support cc and ‘get out of jail’ tools less valuable or have slightly longer cooldowns, and lower the damage and healing numbers across the board a bit
That would just make dive characters OP as hell. CC is needed, sadly. I’d just suggest having most CC abilities affect tanks less, like how Sleep works.
All roadhog needs right now is a passive of "Due to Roadhog's impressive size all CC is 40% as effective" and make piss cleanse.
Piss shouldn’t cleanse. Yeah it’s annoying when you get anti’d, but piss still gives you notable damage reduction in spite of that, and if you **really** can’t deal with the enemy Ana, ask for a Kiriko.
One of the main benefits of Hog is you get to near completely heal yourself every few seconds. No hero should be able to completely obliterate a tank on a cooldown
everything
Supports fill the bucket. Damage empty the bucket. You are the bucket.
5vs5 is awful for tanks
Supports being overtunes and DPS either having annoying CCs or embarrassingly high damage abilities that you can't exactly deal with
Supports are indeed too strong. As a tank I’m afraid to push any support. No matter how good I make a play, I will die :/ They have multiple escape and there is two of them 🥲 now there is an automatic healing turret too.
Supports need a flat dps nerf. Healers should not be the best dps in the game.
You aren’t a playmaker any more. Your job is to just not die and take up space. Almost all the ultimates can be negated by a support cool down (cleanse). As a support main supports are way to strong. Tanks need to have a passive that makes them less susceptible to CC. Like it takes longer for it have an effect or has less of an effect. Actually screw it get Rid of CC all together.
Remember when they said that CC would be for the tank role only outside of skillshots like Ana sleep? Those were the days.
Remember when they said alot of shit that wasn't even remotely true.
Oh yeah I know of one; > "One of the big differences with 5v5 combat is that we’ve tuned a lot of the heroes in the game, and **we’ve made changes to reduce the amount of hard counters that Overwatch has,"** - Aaron Keller Source - [Why Blizzard believes Overwatch 2’s battle pass won’t break the game](https://www.polygon.com/23353371/overwatch-2-battle-pass-hero-unlocks-balance-switching) It's just lies at this point.
Ana
Ana was annoying but bearable when there were two tanks because she had to keep the both of them in check and be mindful of her ressources and cooldowns. Now she can just dump her abilities on the sole enemy tank and not have to worry about another coming to dive her and keeping her in check.
The bastion and orisa buffs a few months ago were stealth tank nerfs. The CC buffs for Cass and Mei were stealth tank nerfs. The introduction of Illari and Lifeweaver(after all the dozen buffs) were stealth tank nerfs. Illari puts out a lot of damage and easy healing. As tank you work hard and long to almost secure a kill and then they're saved by pull, suzu or immort. It's way too easy to hit all the CC abilities on enemy tank, including sleeps and nades. You get the idea, tanks have been getting steal nerfs continuously. Only Orisa and Zarya are viable, they have CC immunity with fortify or bubbles.
You forgot how they took the two turret heroes, fucked the turrets, then made both insane tank busters.
5v5
Tanks aren't tanky enough. Just give them all like 1000 hp they should be able to sponge more damage.
Let's have our tank buddy back to help sponging that damage instead 💪
I think the dismal state of tank can be summed up in two words: zero agency The amount of ridiculous abilities and get out of jail free cards in the game has reached critical mass and the window for punishing or play making on tank is now so small that it doesn't really exist. Even starting in mid-high plat everyone knows how to make your life miserable and they are happy to swap heroes to do it. It only gets more insufferable as you climb from there. I think the mid diamond average support queue time of 8+ mins while tank is <1 min says a lot. And to top it off mfers with no brains and no hands now get to select orisa and think they're good at the role
Kiriko, Lifeweaver, healing pylon. They deny so many plays...
I enjoy tank. The only reason I don't play tank as much is because I like sniping.
I posted this in the competitive overwatch subreddit because they discuss this stuff a little better than over here but it really only boils down to 2 things when you condense what everyone talks about... The number 1 issue is that it is way too hard to make plays as a tank. I think it got worse because it is now very easy for support heroes to make plays and since those plays are about denying elims it feels exponentially worse on the tank than it does in DPS because the tank has a bit more responsibilities than a DPS (i.e. peeling and being in the front line). The number 2 issue is that it is difficult to transition from being in the front line to peeling for your team and vice versa. During that transition, the tank player is at their most vulnerable. And since you are such a big target, that is when you usually get hit by the sleeps, hacks, nades, slows, and so on. They need to figure out a way to make it easier for tanks to reposition. Those are the main issues as simply as I can put them.
Zarya. I can deal with Orisa but when Zarya appears (which is more than half of matches) it suddently becomes a really annoying game because Zarya's bubbles are among the most annoying things about this game and Zarya meta is something no sane person wants. Also half of the supports make playing tank annoying, especially Ana
Overpowered supports
Support players have been crying and seething for years for just about anything. Asking for a nerf to that role is just asking to be sent to the gulag.
5v5
as 5v5, tank is alone in the frontline, meanwhile dps/healers are chillin on the back
5v5
5v5 is the problem
Instead of going 5v5, I would have preferred 7v7. Add another DPS. It would make the support have to focus more on keeping teammates alive so they have less time to DPS. Tanks couldn’t eat damage while getting pocketed as easily like they do now. In theory, it’d reduce DPS Que times too. I dunno. I miss the 6v6
You basically are the overworked and underpaid staff in a game.
Relatable. I had a game where the enmy had zen, pharah, mercy, bastion and ram. I couldn't do anything, Rein, jq, winton, and dooms off the charts. Sigma can counter bastion but I cant fight Ram in nemesis, Orisa is good but only for being unkillable. Can't play ball, I played zarya but kept getting deleted. Dva I'll be shot out of the sky before I even kill anyone. But I played zarya for bubble. At the end my dps said "Tank can you stay alive?" I was so pissed of that I got of even though it was my second game...
The anxiety of knowing my teammates are judging my every move
The most obnoxious part of tank. -Dealing with other Tanks -Dealing with Hyper Focus when your team is Dead Weight -The Game not giving Tanks as a role the ability to contend with map or character variety I hear so much about what every says is annoying about tank, and to me its a short list. Very Few Tanks can contest long range meaningfully if at all its very dependent on your teammate. Tank tools are absurd, Risa Hog Doom Zarya are all incredibly irritating to contend with in a tank head to head. While Sig Rein Ramm Monkey and DVa are so polarizing to the test of your team that its hard to do your job with them denying your teams value you basically concede to your team that "You got this" and try to outvalue him by harassing their own team back. And that aspect isnt limited to those characters Doom and Orisa are pheonomonal at single mindedly forcing the entire enemy team around. Being Hyper Focused as a tank is also common because big target, big responsibilitys but ALSO because the default way OW designs DPS is to give them incredible amounts of damage. Whats the default response from Bronze to Plat when a Tank is doing decently? Reaper, Bastion Pharah Echo Sombra And its not just DPS limited, Zen and Ana have been oppressive for Tanks specifically. The excess mobility creep of supports- namely Moira Bap LW and Kiri exasperates it further. Because now you can barely apply pressure to the bulk of the cast. As a DPS i lose because im not consistent As a Support i lose because im not consistent As both these characters circumstances can be shit, my team can be shit but theres always characters in the role that feel like they can get it done, the diversity in the pool to deal with a variety of circumstance. Tanks dont have that but also have a ton of natural pushback.
Every cc is aimed at you now because you don't have another tank. You have to create all of the space though. Most tanks are unplayable atm because Orisa and Zarya exist. If you try and play anyone into a good Orisa you're probably just gonna lose. You have to rely heavily on your DPS to kill snipers because you just can't dive them anymore without giving up acres of space. If I jump into their backline with monkey or dva then there's a Moira fade or a lifeweaver petal or lifeweaver jump or illari jump or sleep or nade or immortality field or lucio boop or brig boop or a cleanse or Kiri just TPs away. Illaris pylon literally outputs healing like another character so I have to destroy that before attempting to kill anyone and in that time I've already lost half of my health. I honestly don't remember the last time I killed anyone with a rein shatter. Sigma does well on a few maps but his shield is kinda pathetic and normally on those maps it's just a sig Vs Sig which ends up being which supports make the most mistakes and cost your team the fight. It doesn't feel like you have any control as tank anymore, you're just at the mercy of your supports. Speaking of mercy, mercy pocketing DPS is really strong and you just kind of lose to a soujorn/soldier/pharah/ashe pocket. Also the rock paper scissors of tank is super unfun because you spend the whole game being told to swap hero because they swapped and there's just no skill to tank anymore, you just mitigate damage and wait for either your support or their support to mess up. OH AND ZEN DISCORD IS ALWAYS ON YOU AND YOU TAKE AN EXTRA 25% DAMAGE WHICH IS REALLY FUN
Tanks worst problem is being too easy to be counterpicked, while being unable to counter or even outplay a lot of things. tbh though i think DPS as a whole is in an even worse spot than tank, theyre just quieter about it.
Because I can't play who I want without being yelled at by 4 angry mobsters even if I know how to play around the other tank. It sucks having to play the rock paper scissors meta until it goes to Zarya The only tanks I see as fun are dva, ram doom and hog (who feels weak rn after returning from season 1) and half the time I'm counter and have to go zarya or doom which is depressing to play as The lack of a 2nd tank puts more pressure on me to perform better and if I'm under performing or we cant cap point or dps cant kill it always the tanks fault even if there doing everything right it just sucks the fun out of the game. Ever since overwatch became a 5v5 99.99% of rank games are roll or be rolled which is unfun, I want the match to end as 4-5 where both sides are good and one side isn't be rolled. It's fun to play an equally fair match where you don't get rolled over for 10 minutes to then search for another match, even after losing the match or drawing it still was a fun and enjoyable match unlike every other match.
It will continue to be unfun as long as 5v5 exists in its current format. The problem with 5v5 for tanks is, as everyone has noted, the single tank becomes a focal point. In a game where each role was designed to have a very clear purpose in contributing to the win condition it is too easy to fall back on killing the solo tank as a way to tip the balance in your favor. Add to that the counterplay that tanks force against one another and youre basically never given a chance to breath and enjoy the game. Realistically we will never get 6v6 back (unfortunately) so they could potentially address this issue by splitting the roster back into something like DPS/Defense (or a bulky DPS) that they had in OW1. So role queue becomes 2 support, 1 DPS, 1 Defense, 1 Tank. The "Defense" role here straddles the gap between tank and DPS in terms of health and damage. That gives another focal point and allows for more fluidity in how characters are assigned. I could imagine hog having his health pool nerfed and damage slightly buffed so he fits in defense alongside a Mei or a reworked Doomfist such that you have a "pseudo-tank" to draw some of that attention. You also may need to tune the healing down across the board since damage may decrease slightly.
A very good tank will not enjoy the game as they are constantly being hit with every CC, anti, the target for ults, discorded, and so on. Flats said it best in a video where he discussed the tank role and how it isn't fun in depth. To summarize, in OW1, it was a 6v6 so it was 2 of every role which means you aren't taking all the punishment of the abilities but balancing the heroes is harder. Now in OW2 5v5 means it's easier to balance but no longer fun since you are just being punished for playing your role.
As a tank, your supposed to block damage and create space, however cause of the amount of healing, damage and cc from the other roles, it feels like every role can do it better than you, like you can create space, but so could a DPS just pressuring them or flanking, you could stop damage, but supports can just heal it, it's also cause of the amount of healing, you can pump thousands of damage into the enemy, but their gonna be healed too fast for it to matter, it also feels like the whole specialty of having cc and being good at defending against it has been lost throughout overwatch, multiple supports have cc, I'm pretty sure a few DPS have cc, there might be less than I think, and while yes the slight cc reduction is nice, it's not enough considering 1. Being the front person, the one taking kind of the brunt of the damage and cc means that the cc reduction kind of becomes redundant, and 2. We don't have the second tank anymore, so you cant end up getting cc'd and have your other tank help you get out of that situation, that's another thing that makes it miserable, the lack of another tank, in 6v6, tank was so fun cause of the combos, zarya rein, zarya sig, DVA Winston, e.t.c. each of these allowed for a different play style, whereas now each one has one or two play styles. 3. the lack of a good stat for them, DPS have damage, supports have typically healing but mitigated can also be good, and yeah tanks have mitigated, but all that says is that you stood Infront of an enemy, I could get 30k mitigated and done nothing for the team, so it makes people seem worse when their supports have done 10-15k healing and they've done little mitigation, but they've succeeded in helping the team, but are still pushed to the side. 4. This isn't an issue I've seen often, more ones I've seen other people complain about, but still seems pretty genuine, is the lack of recognition you get, if a supports done 15k healing and has like 20 assists or smth, that's a great support and I agree, if a DPS has 15k damage and 30 kills, that's a great DPS, if a tank has 20k mitigation and 20 kills, then that's a meh tank at times, so it feels like your trying the hardest to feel like your making a difference, but no one recognises it.
Not having another tank to potentially be able to work off of probably makes it super frustrating being the leader of a potentially wack teammates.
Personally I gave up when they turned 222 into 122. I LOVED the little bit of extra freedom having a second tank at your side gave you. Especially maining D.Va at the time, I knew I could be annoying and harrass the enemy, fly up to squishies etc cause there was (for example) a Reinhardt staying closer to the team. Ofc I wasn't just over extending, I knew very well when to go in, how far, and when not to. But it was just SO much more fun to me. Now with just 1 tank it's just a whole lot different.
You don't get to play the game. Everything you do, all of your effort, can not only be countered, it can be countered *effortlessly.*
All CC goes right on you.
Support op