I agree, I probably should have included that specifically when I was talking about why tank can be "stressful" to play. I'm sure getting blamed for losses is major reason beginners shy away from the role, which is unfortunate, but I suppose that's the state of the gaming community. Always looking to blame someone else.
Imagine making a role designed to absorb damage, launching a second game where you remove an entire player from that role, and wonder why the one player left doesn't enjoy being shot at.
@@Casual314Actually supports got the survivability of the second tank. The only tank, just absorbed the damage of the second tank. Yes tanks have more hp than ow1 but due to DMG creep(and missing someone to share the damage with) they feel less tanky and shields and barriers are actually smaller.
Every match its just "shoot the tank" they focus the tank till they die. If ur healers cant keep up or ur dps cant get elims then ur just a glorified meat shield the whole match. I've literally had games where the WHOLE enemy team would follow me, like did not engage in combat until they saw me 😂, oh and lets not forget they ALMIGHTY bastion pick if u do manage to do well. 😂
As someone who played Overwatch 1, the tank role used to be a blast to play. It was fun to synergize with your other tank, the off-tank role was the most fun role in the game by a country mile.
Quit playing during OW2 beta because I couldn't do backline Hammond anymore. Saw the writing on the wall of what was to come and I'm honestly surprised it's taken this long for the pot to bubble over on how Blizzard deleted and entire playstyle making tank stale.
I really loved off tank because it was your job to deny dps off angles and flanks, peel for your backline, and peel for you main tank. It was very versatile and rewarding to play.
I used to love playing as a more offensive Reinhardt when i had a more defensive tank or sig when we had something like a dva and old orisa in the frontline as a nuance against the enemy team and the tank keeping a eye on the rest now i just hate doing it cause one mistake is a loss
You said everything I’ve been thinking the last month or so in just the first minutes. I thought it was just me! I constantly get tank when choosing all roles and it’s made the game so much less fun lately because I feel “forced” to play tank or suffer longer queues. Nice video!
Glad you enjoyed the video and found it relatable. The disproportionate queue times are definitely an issue that I hope finds a solution in the near future.
I think the main issue with tank right now is that the role changed fundamentally going into OW2, but the heroes themselves were not really given the kind of comprehensive overhauls they needed to account for that. With no off-tank, a great deal of a tank's survivability actually lies with their supports, not within their own kits. Often times any kind of aggressive or "fun" playstyle demands more resources from your team than it's really worth. It's also why you see heroes like Orisa and Sigma rise to the top in high level play recently, because they have kits with many overlapping sustain tools that allow them to actually keep themselves alive without a hard pocket or having to just disengage completely and put out zero pressure (like Winston for example.) This also means that nerfing supports (which I think is needed) would also be severely detrimental to tanks because they rely on supports so much. I think step one is to rework tank's health and damage numbers. If we want tanks to be space creators, lets give them the tools to do so. Significantly buff tank's defensive tools/hp pools/etc. across the board while nerfing the upper extremes of their damage dealing. Give tanks more ability to sustain themselves so they are less reliant on supports, and in turn you can nerf support healing so that DPS feel better able to actually take duals and secure kills on squishies. That way you also move away from healbot playstyles and force supports to have a more active playstyle and get proactive value out of abilities.
Orisa and Sigma need their sustain nerfed. These two will always be top tier because they have multiple damage mitigation abilities and good cc and damage with powerful ults. Their designs are just SO BAD.
@@commentbot9510 If you nerf their sustain, you just end up with every tank being terrible. I usually don't advocate for trying to buff your way out of problems, but I think reworking tanks to have more sustain in their own kits is a better solution. Nerfing the two tanks that can actually survive doesn't make tank better to play
Your suggestions make tank and dps fun at the cost of supports having any impact or fun. Doing what you said just shifts the problem to a new role. And I think it’s a good indicator that this game will never be balanced. There will always be the odd role out that nobody wants to play because it feels ineffective and like you’re just a punching bag. I genuinely think people have a fundamental misunderstanding of the damage role. They are not duelists. They don’t exist to take 1v1s. They exist to output damage and take opportunities to secure kills their team helped to make. People cry about “I can’t get a kill anymore playing DPS” but it’s because they’re trying to kill a pocketed DPS in a 2v1 almost every time. They’re not SUPPOSED to get that kill in that situation. This is a big complaint about Mercy when she’s literally just doing what she was designed to do, which is enable whomever she’s pocketing. 2 players putting themselves together should give an advantage and a single dps shouldn’t think they deserve to get a kill against that without putting the same amount of resources into getting the kill. The team is supposed to help the DPS to even the odds. This is a team shooter above all else. If one team is playing as a team and the other is playing as five separate players, then the team playing together deserves to win. Back in OW1, DPS could get away with flanking and just playing alone but now the game has shifted far away from that. Even the new Sombra rework forces her to kind of play with the team now because of translocator changes. She can’t just go off on her anymore and tends to attack with the team now. Even Tracer does this more often now. Genji is useless because he was never changed to adapt to this shift and needs a total rework to be a team player.
Totally agree that it is not an issue of 6v6 or 5v5. Even if you change to 4v4 the situation will end up the same. It's a good suggestion but that would mean that all heroes will end up being similar. Tanks are just slightly beefier dps and support are dps that can heal. And it will end up that it really doesn't matter who you pick. Essentially, the devs have to decide if they want OW be a game about dps and aim or about counterpicks and teamwork.
A looooong time ago, when they first implemented role queue, they added an arcade mode that disabled role lock. It let people play the game just like they could pre-role queue. They ended up regretting this, however, cause so many people started playing that 24/7 that it actually affected the normal game's numbers. So while I do think it would be popular, I also think they won't make it out or fear of it being TOO popular.
personally I’d like a change to 6v6 and minor changes to healers like cooldowns changes and to make sure tanks aren’t op maybe a slight hp nerf so that healers don’t full pocket dmg players and need to focus on their tanks to win the fight
I played OW1 shortly after it's release and had played consistently up until OW2. I usually played tank and while it had its pain points throughout the metas of OW1 I played it consistently, only until OW2 have I resented touching the tank role so much, and have started to just que dps and support. I'm not going to say 6v6 is more or less balanced, but from my own experience I can attest that tank was certainly more FUN (although it still had it's own problems then, but still nowhere as awful as the tank experience is now) in 6v6 with a duo tank. Yes you had rock paper scissors with team comps, but you could at least get away with playing the tank you WANTED because your other tank chose a character that helped support that pick.
It's because this game had a lot of problems with balance and game design that were made worse with every character addition, reaching its peak with early Brig. The devs back then were entirely incompetent, and failed to test anything before adding to the game. By the time it was realized how bad the game had gotten when OW was practically dead, it was full of so much bloat the issues that would have been fairly easy for them to fix early on through balance patches and the like now defined the game and they didn't want to commit to a difficult rework of much of the character roster and many of the game mechanics. So instead they just removed one of the tanks, switched it to a 5v5, which did remedy the issue for a while. But now all those same issues are back because that decision was a bandaid, and made the game worse in the long run.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. They should’ve split the tank role main tank/off tank so you couldn’t stack shields or just have two extra dps with bigger hp bars. All they did was temporarily fix tanks issue by removing one of them, but now some supports can just focus you and you’re dead. Zen can just orb you every fight and you’re cooked, Ana can nade you while ur cds are down while being able to sleep you. The problem isn’t the state of supports, or the high dps roster, it’s the fact that we only have one tank now. Hog, Ball and Doom can’t even play the game vs a good Ana or Sombra, Ramattra is 90% of the time blocking, Rein doesn’t have a shield, Sigma has always been solid ngl but he’s not “good” persay, Orisa is literally just a bully and sits on cds all game, Junker is just a 3rd dps and Zarya is also pretty solid ngl, but once again feels more like DPS than a tank.
As a (former) tank main, once my friends all stopped playing and I was left with randoms this video is essentially what happened. People couldn't capitalize on the space I created, people scapegoated/flamed me constantly, and the role just... started sucking to play as. The nature of the support role AND the 5 v 5 thing doesn't help either. Having 2 tanks allowed you to synergize with each other and even cover weaknesses, like putting a poke tank with a brawler or a brawler with a dive tank. So as a result of everything with OW2, I quit the game entirely. I like your content though so I'll watch it, but OW will never have a place in my lineup of games ever again. It's going to my personal gaming graveyard to be buried right next to Leage of Legends.
The amount of times I will be holding the entire enemy team on the obj for a full 45 seconds while my supports watch and my dps fuck around and do nothing and then I die and they all rush in after I die, is ridiculous.
I absolutely loved playing tank in ow1. I was a zarya sigma player. I had so much joy enabling my Reinhardt buddy Camden as zarya. Watching him go in and just decimate was so awesome. And if he fell the pressure that fell on me was immense, but the joy of overcoming the odds was unmatched. But ow2 changed. All the pressure was put on me constantly, and when I'd win a team fight it didn't feel joyus it felt more like checking off a list. I lost the companion ship of my tank and now it just doesn't feel nice playing tank anymore. I lost my duo and now anytime I mess up or die Its at the forefront of everyones mind and I get flamed for it. This game is more toxic than it has ever been and tank is lost. Idek what they could do anymore besides go back to 6v6
How do you lose the companionship of your tank if it's that big of a deal just play open queue that's how me and my friends still play goats team comps
@@mrdhong2143 because the game in fundamentally different in open queue. Tanks lose a good chunk of health making them less tanky then they were in ow1. And our randoms tend to not play characters we need. Such as a support or another DPS. And again, in 5v5 someone is going to lose someone. 2 tanks? Then maybe only 1 DPS 2 healers and vice versa. It's not a viable solution to the problem.
@@apollyon3331 at least I'm giving suggestions and not just fucking crying about my heroes being nerfed I do fine as a tank in open queue so I don't understand what your problem is they literally change these characters all the time either git gud or git gone 😂
holy you're right on everything! I play tank and probably the worst things are the fact that if you make even a single mistake you lose the fight and the fact that if you lose everyone just blames it on you! I was playing a game recently and we lost because their dps were stronger then ours and then after we lost they just write tank diff and insult me, while I don't really mind toxic players it gets frustrating after a while.
2-2-2 is the superior format. I've played OW1 for years, so I can compare 5v5 to 6v6 very well. Team cohesion is less consistent in 5v5 because you have 1 less player to make space for the rest of the team, and so the reason for 1-sided matches in 5v5 is not the matchmaker, it's because with only 1 tank per team, if the enemy DPS & Supports happen to play around their 1 tank better than your team, you'll lose hard; there is so much less wiggle room for your positioning in 5v5. But also, counter-swapping is a much more prevalent issue in 5v5, meaning 1-sided matches will happen more due to your tank not constantly swapping when the enemy counter-swap.
The main issue with 5v5 is that all tanks except for JQ and doom were made around having two tanks. Tanks could cover each other. Make up for each others weaknesses. Ball for example is at the bottom because he's an attention tank. But he can't get picks because of the lifeweaver suzu combo
I love playing tank, but it can get overwhelming sometimes. Either we're losing because I'm not getting enough healing or the enemy dps are better than my dps or we're just getting tank diff'd because my team is too spread out leaving me to get jumped and get solo'd by enemy widows or get 2v1. It's really stressful because a good tank is only as good as the team behind them
@@sh1rom1suIve played countless games against great teams with horrible tanks. Your tank and their skill really does determine the outcome of the match. Because the tank in Ow2 is your main key to pushing successfully. You can flank as damage all you want and try to peel as a dps healer but the actual role that gets the game moving is the Tanks. They're the frontline and can also be the flanker too. There have been some rare occasions where a team still somehow wins even with a bad tank. But that's only if the other team is kinda braindead lol
@@sh1rom1suThe tank has to play with respect to their team. Other players tend to ignore their team because they don't HAVE to respect their teammates position. What OP said is true, it puts the onus of the match on the shoulders of the team as a whole. Players hiding behind walls during the upswing of a fight (tank initiates) WILL result in the tank dying or fleeing and the fight petering out. The tank can't move their own team into position, the individuals have to learn their place with respect to the tank. That means embracing filling roles, not filling arbitrary stat quotas.
@@Rippersauc3 Yes because a smurf dps who oneshots the entire lobby can't carry games if their tank is bad. Every role is impactful and can carry games, sadly the ways you carry games on tank is not fun you will win but hate your life
6v6 may had it's bad things, but nothing that couldn't be fixed with a little bit of balancing, meanwhile 5v5 makes tanks feel like a never ending rock paper scissors game, OW2 might be more "frenetic" but at least (in my opinion) OW1 was more about the tactic (that let players play what they wanted (me included, as a former main tank)) than conterpicking all the time or spamming the current meta (I know double shield was popular and bad too, but for sure it wasn't as oppressive as what happens nowadays (stomp or get stomped)). Now I mainly play as healer (the second role I kinda mained back then) and DPS sometimes, because playing as a tank (which I enjoyed a lot back then) feels boring for me nowadays. Good video covering the current situation of tanks!
I was doing a lot of matches with friends earlier today in quick play, and offered to play Tank while they alternated between DPS and Support. While playing Ramatra, Junker Queen, Roadhog, and Reinhardt, I would have occasionally games where the entire enemy team would be incredibly oppressive with Mcree hinder, Orissa or Sigma javelin/rocks, getting hacked, discorded, slept or anti'd, and Mei slowing/freezing or walling me off and or having my shield up only for it to go down much faster than I had anticipated. Getting victories and being in the fights wasn't always so bad itself, but closing the gap or having 5 people focus fire you down is quite frankly miserable. I couldn't help but think of that one clip from back in the day in Overwatch 1 with Reinhardt being stunned, booped, Doomfist punched, and tossed around like a rag doll repeatedly for a minute straight.
and while still surviving all that somehow with your team being like why is our tank not doing anything well it's probably because the doomfist and Sombra just love putting me into this wall over here and if there a mei it's just the devil coming to shove their icicle into my rear
In most ranks, the rest of the team doesn't actually view the tank player as the leader. They know that if the tank does, the fight ends quickly after. But they don't actually respect the person playing tank and make sure to go with them. People are very set in their ways and how THEY play the game. Even if the tank player doesn't make a mistake, their actions differing from another player's expectation will be viewed as a mistake.
In most ranks, the tank also doesn’t view themselves as the leader so you wind up with timid tanks that won’t do anything while the other tank that has a pair will actually make plays lol
maybe im a masochist but i do enjoy the fact that i have to actively keep track of what abilities the enemies have and what can be a threat to me or what can nullify my attacks. I love playing doomfist and i always have to be careful with many abilities, especially orisa's and ana's imo. but it makes me feel really satisfied when i remember to wait or bait out their cc/anti cc abilities since i can just destroy them afterwards. i dont consider myself a casual player but i dont grind away at comp either, i just like playing the game and learning to become better at it is even more enjoyable.
I agree wholeheartedly. *BUT* there are many things that can be done by the enemy team to disregard your proper play. just treat you like you don't exist and those games feel like shit.
One massive issue with the 5v5 switch is that bliz took an entire playstyle overwatch (off tanking) and just removed it from the game and in doing so removed a ton of awesome combos as well. I used to absolutely LOVE playing dva, i got so good at ult tracking/eating, and peeling, never found something like that in another game. Yes you can technically do that in OW2 but I'm telling you it DOES NOT hit the same. If you peel, there is no frontline, if you frontline there is no peel. Dva specifically is so easy to counter too, sym, mei, zarya, brig, all HARD counters, if you pick dva against me and my team, you'll be useless after one of my teammates gets the chance to swap. 6v6 needs to come back man, really hope they release "Overwatch Legacy" in a few years so i can play the actual game again
I miss playing Winston, he's my favourite tank and lately he's been completely unplayable. The issue is definitely with the supports. Healing numbers are a little bit too high, and they are better at staying alive now, but the main issue is supports having very short cooldowns that are better than most ultimates. You should be able to bait support abilities and then have a window of time where you can make a play as a tank, but that currently isn't possible. Beat and transcendence used to be important ultimates but now the newer heroes bring stuff like suzu and immortality.
Seperate comment for different topic. 5v5 vs 6v6 feels worse for tanks in O2. In fact it is absolutely abusmal. In O1 having 2 tanks meant that you could cycle which tank was taking the brunt of the damage and which is being healed/respawns. In addition, 2 tanks meant that one could hold main while the other could lead a flank. One of the problems 2 tank had is that when Brig came out, a "bubble" of sorts burst because there were too many sustainable heroes spread across too many roles. Goats meta(if i recall correctly) was so aggriegous because Brig could act as a 3rd tank with some of the best healing and sustain in the game. Stack that together with the lack of accutely strict effective balancing being done, resulting in many heroes performing far too efficiently and the game became stuck in as set of about 3 main metas that dragged on into an extended stagnation of content and change. O2's primary problem with Tanks is that the devs haven't properly been buffing/debuffing any character and basically just applied board wide dmg ups to everyone. This effectively means that tanks die too fast to perform the role of tank at all, as well as everyone else dieng so quickly that if the tank backs off for 2 seconds the rest of the team falls apart like dominoes. 2 tank was designed to mitigate both of those issues before they were even issues. In addition O2 has many problems on the front of balancing because certain support heroes are better dps than the dps should be. This is a massive problem because it's eerily similar as to the problem that they had with Brig in O1. For context, Brig on release could 1v1 Reinhart and win every time without using abilities by out healing his damage. In addition her aoe zones for her passive heal and rally were absolutely massive. Having characters in one role be so much better at other roles than characters in that other role is a massive problem and it's a massive contributor as to why O1 failed. Imagine if they made a Tank or DPS that out healed the Supports for the whole game? That hero would immedietly dominate the meta because people just wouldn't die, especially with new heroes locked in the battlepasses. It's a problem that Blizzard has yet to gather the courage to fix.
This whole video was so well said and concise. While tanks are feeling unfun right now, the sad thing is DPS and supports that aren't busted rn like Lucio or feel unfun or unimpactful too. I think nerfing supports would be a great start, they can just do too much rn. Kiriko for example can heal, is amazing in 1v1's, can kill you from across the map like Hanzo, and has arguably the best mobility tool in the game being able to teleport through walls. She can do all of this on a dime, she can switch between them at any moment, which makes playing tank and non-busted dps feel like a cooldown forcing simulator.
@@daikio420probably to give her more impact besides heal botting and cleanse, which are impactful but hey it’s not a support if it can’t 1v1 most of the roster
@@LuXury00001high damage supports are the worst. I get them being able to do some damage is fine but they tend to break things just by nature of their role. If you’re doing all these support things, why tf are you also able to outduel characters whose entire role is to duel? Zenyatta and Kiriko are the worst two about this. At least Zen doesn’t have mobility but Discord is so overtuned in a 5v5 setting that even getting the drop on him isn’t enough sometimes lmao
Well guys.. it’s simple. It could’ve been a RUclips short . The issue is when your team sucks and the other team is smart enough to counter…. Welll the match is basically over. My gf who isn’t much of a gamer when she plays with me she eventually asked why do I type GG after certain situations and I just explained that when you play certain roles and have certain knowledge of the game it’s pretty easy to make the discernment that your teammates just aren’t gonna play their roles correctly or provide efficient support . So ultimately … you quite literally as a tank end up basically being stuck in a losing situation . There will be matches where as a Moira I’ll have 30 plus kills and the most healing on my team…. And we still lose because often DPS players for whatever reason don’t want to counter pick or focus the squishies. In so many matches I have seen everyone just shooting up the tank Without killing at least 1 of the healers and/ or literally doing nothing to stop flankers or snipers lol or anyone with an “anti” heal or “damage over time “ effect like the new sombra move or fire from dynamite . So those guys again just get hall passes to destroy your team’s tank . Or the dps or whoever No problema
I definitely think that the format change to 5v5 is the biggest offender in the "tank is unfun" problem. The loss of the the synergy element, where you covered for the other tank's weaknesses (especially prevalent in the original tanks) makes the game very frustrating most of the time. The other problems, however, are more balancing related. The first issue is power creep and I don't just mean healing. Damage in general feels really high and is very hard to deal with. As a former tank player, I feel like it's incredibly difficult to take space without losing 90% of your HP pool, even when you're not really making a mistake. Even when I play support, sometimes the tank is just taking too much pressure, or unwittingly over-extends, not necessarily because they're bad, but because they're simply trying to make a play. The other issue related to balancing is the team's approach to tank balance of turbo-buffing one or two tanks every season to define the meta. It creates a situation where many of the other tanks become significantly less viable, so if the buffed tanks aren't in your roster of tanks you play, you're basically screwed. You can't be good at every single hero, unless you're a streamer plays for 12+ hours a day, and even then, you'll have picks you're inherently better at. It's incredibly frustrating and it's why I don't tank/flex queue anymore.
@@aolson1111 Support and tank had similar (withing 60sec) queue times as each other in OW1. In the end, support had shorter queue times (right before closing). Tanks got shafted, but the switch to 5v5 made it worse. Then OW2 powercrept supports to hell so queue times got longer. I'm not saying tank was unpopular, but it was def more fun with 2 tanks, and this is coming from a support main. Nerf us and make tanks OP again. At least DbD support was kinda fun
@@aolson1111 Who's pretending anything? You think my balance argument doesn't apply to the end of OW1 as well? It's a year later and we've come full circle *because the team doesn't know how to balance this game*. The difference now is that tank was fun before for the people who really wanted to play it and now it's just miserable period.
Yeah power creep is a big thing, heroes do more and more damage and the supports heal more and more as a result. Where we get to this point where if you can't quickly burst or straight up one shot an enemy hero, the support will just bring em back to full.
6v6 I cannot say it was better or worse both modes are unique. But what I can say is, rein zarya bubble dance or rein winston, or sigma hog (yes hog was fun in 6v6) , winston Dva ect. The tabk combos made it so fun nothing was more satisfying then a perfect tank synergy the Teamwork requierd from all 6 members of the team is what made 6v6 fun. What makes 5v5 fun is the solo pop off moments that arguably all roles get to experience depending on match ups.
The switch to 5v5 ruined the tank experience for a lot of tank players. My duo-tank partner stopped playing tank all together and is now solely DPS. I still play tank on occasion but it's gone from my highest ranked role to my lowest because I still can't figure out how to consistently make an impact. Probably because I'm aggressive and solo-tanking requires more patience than I prefer to play with. If I wanted to be patient in gaming I'd go play chess.
5 v 5 was supposed to solve this queue problem situation we had going on towards the end of OW1 but I knew it was going to require "perfect" matchmaking or else it was always going to feel like a one sided battle which will never be fun for the one Tank that is getting completely rolled. I only started on May of 2021 so there are a ton of things I missed but I personally think they could of originally just heavily nerfed barriers ONLY when two barrier tanks are used together to help reduce the heavy reliance people tended to have on using combos like Orissa/Sigma (OW1 style) just to stay alive instead of actually improving.
How would that work, though? What if your other tank dies and swaps to orisa, does your sigma shield suddenly lose half its health? And it's not just double barriers that's the issue, it's tank synergies that are generally way stronger than anything else in the game and forced mirror matchups.
No, the thing they needed to do was nerf both Fortify & Kinetic Grasp so that Orisa + Sigma is weak to being rushed or dived. The devs never understood this. We see in the big barrier nerf patch on December 10, 2019, that they nerfed Orisa & Sigma's barrier and buffed Fortify & Kinetic Grasp, making counter-play from rush and dive comps even harder.
I think the issue is 5v5. Most players when told of the new format argued thatthesolo tank would have too much on their shoulders. They would be blamed for any mistake. This allowed for the hitscan meta to really take off. Many dps were allowed to free reign because there wasn't a second tank to peel. Most hitscan plus genji could just shoot past the tank. Widow had few counters because she wouldn't have anyone but maybe genji diving her. If the solo tank dives her the teamis unpretected. Ow2 launch had the speed passive on dps. Get a kill be faster for a second. Orisa was a throw pick because people learned to ignore her to kill her team. You have all these movement abilities on tanks that seriously cant move because of the team they have. This wasn't a problem with two tanks because one was usually with the team. They literally removed the double shield issue because orisa had hers removed. Sigmas shield is weak and rein gets nothing for standing there. Bastion is moveable and benefits better with zarya and life. There was litte reason as to why to go to 5v5 at this point its laugable. Zen and mercy weren't an issue in 6v6 because there was a second tank to eat the damage. Hack was usually blocked by any trickle of damage (dva) or bubbled away (zarya). Sombra wasn't an issue till invis hack. Widow and hanzo were dived. Honestly every annoying hero wasnt as bad till they removed a tank.
In Overwatch 1 the Tank role had most of the same list of frustrations and issues when playing as "Main Tank" (i.e. the one being shot at primarily, Rein, Orisa, Winston mostly). There was less scissors/paper/rock counter-picking than OW2, but there was still the general stalemate between you and the opposition's Main Tank waiting for the battle to resolve one way or the other, and what felt like a lack of agency on the role, as you could often only achieve anything with the assistance of the "Off Tank" (through Zarya's Bubble, Dva's Matrix, Hog's Hook, or Sigma's shield rotation) otherwise you would die almost immediately once people focused on you. When they cut down to only having one Tank they forced all of the "Off Tank" players to experience the same frustrations as "Main Tank" players did back in 6v6. That's where a lot of the new complaining is coming from. The solution is (in theory) to simultaneously increase Tank agency and decrease Tank influence, which isn't really possible within the Tank/Damage/Support role system as those are directly tied to each other within the Tank role. ------------------------------------------------ Something they could do however, would be to move Mei into the Tank role (or remove her wall), so that you don't have to play into 1.75 tanks when she's in your matches. Because that's beyond tiring.
for me it's just the characters themselves, their counters and their usage on certain maps. I really enjoy winston but every game they just go orisa, bastion and reaper or the map isn't the best for winston. I can usually adapt and play around it but my impact shrinks significantly making me want to switch and honestly the only other tank I enjoy is dva but I don't wanna play her sometimes. I feel like we just need more heroes in the category tbh.
I just miss 2 tanks…. Rein/zarya was literally one of my favorite things in all of games… and then it was just gone. Some tanks were originally designed to be able to counter certain things within a two tank dynamic and now it just causes chaos.
Former tank main through my whole ow1 career since launch, I feel the issue with tank is how cooldowns affect the tank equally as it would dps and support except for sleep. If offensive cooldowns that affect tanks like discord, nade, hack magnetic nade canceling your only movement cooldown, if tanks need to draw out cooldowns then they shouldn’t have to deal with the full damage, cc that a dps or support would receive, just by doing that a tank would have more agency to go in and not have to worry about being a quarter health everytime they try to do a play. And then there’s suzu which effectively counters over half of the tank ults.
That's a good point, they already give tanks some resistance against Sleep, maybe some resistance against CC and debuffs in general might be a good change.
My friend who was a tank main all the way from 2017-2023 dropped tank during the last 3 seasons. Hes gone on to play mostly dps now due to him literally hating playing tank now. Man is a rein play at heart and literally just gets curbstomped by brain dead orisas…
All tanks need a flat damage reduction passive instead of cc passive. I'm thinking 15% possibly (yes this will effect orisa too and make her damage reduction ability weaker to give her the same current amount when active)
In my experience playing both 1 & 2 is that having that extra tank makes a huge difference. Your burden is shared with another person, supports dont have to be super buffed to keep you alive and the more people are on a team, the more a mistake can be shared (Something I've always hoped for is to have a 12v12 and 8v8 as an arcade mode). Another solution I've heard is to give everyone a weaker support passive and then lower the supports healing output. Like you were saying, one of the most annoying things is being on the verge of killing an overextended squishy and using all your cooldowns and their health stays the same or goes up. This would also relieve the healbotting playstyle on the supports end to make their role more fun as well. Plus the genji low on health just would be a little patient get their own healing lol Great vid!
Glad you enjoyed the video. A "big team" Overwatch mode would be very interesting, but you definitely need to make a new map specifically for that, and well... the devs haven't been so great lately with any content that isn't skins. Rip PvE
Being the only tank sucks, if you die the fight is over 99% of the time unless you got a cracked dps. I think the only fix is just adding the second tank back and tweaking some abilities of the tanks. The only other option is nerfing a bunch of support abilities and people are gonna riot if they do that
I don't think nerfing would really do anything. Either two things will happen. If you nerf support healing, characters die too easily. If you buff healing, then it would take forever to get a kill. I like how the healing is now. Yeah, it can be annoying to wittle down the enemy tanks hp to 1, and then in an instant, it's back to full or close, but that's why there are cool downs, so right after they are back to full, you can just wittle them back down again and ultimately get the kill. My issue mostly is with matchmaking. Why is my team a bunch of solos who aren't in vc going up against a team that has a 2 stack and 3 stack? The 2 stack being a dps and support main, so you know that dps is goated and staying alive and the 3 stack are probably in vc in strategizing with eachother. Meanwhile, me and 1 other person are in vc complaining that our team isn't in vc and getting absolutely stomped the entire game in Competitive.
Also I should’ve waited to comment because I want to say more in relation to what you said about tanky roles being considered the most boring typical, and I agree. I very rarely ever play a guardian in smite because even having a buttload of cc, being able to decide fights/the flow of fights may be interesting to some people, but it really pains me having to let kills slip away because I simply don’t do enough meaningful damage, in smite and overwatch
Played since 2017 and tank main since 2018 here- Yeah, it's mostly because of the switch to 1/2/2. In the scenario you described where the enemy DPS was alone and vulnerable, with a second tank, you'd be able to safely chase that kill, with the knowledge that your other tank can keep your team alive in the meantime. Having a second tank meant you had options for how to play your hero. As Rein, you can always play sort of passive with your shield, throwing firestrikes to build shatter, keeping enemies away with your hammer. But then, if you have a Zarya, you can start getting much more aggressive with a bubble. With a Hog, you can focus less on killing squishies and more on keeping your team safe. With a Ball, you could capitalize on their chaos to chase down low health supports. With Orisa, you could play together to keep an area completely locked down. Having a second tank also meant you didn't have to be the center of attention when it comes to hate and criticism, from either team. You could put the attention on yourself easily if you wanted to, shot-calling and leading the charge, but you certainly didn't need to, because that role could be put on anyone because tank heroes were just as strong as any other heroes, or even distributed across your whole role or team. Another thing that was nice with 2 tanks was that tanks didn't need to be a wall of health bars on top of health bars. They had vulnerabilities that could be exploited if the enemy team played their cards right, which made it more fun to play as a tank as much as it made it fun to play against one. I miss Overwatch 1, and I really miss 2/2/2.
I feel like one major thing that is missing is the power fantasy of being tanky. I love playing tanks because I love to feel powerful, like I can take a lot of hits and if I play well I get to live a lot of damage. But in Overwatch the teams "tankiness" really all comes from your supports. There are very few moments where I as a tank get to feel like I played well and therefore got to soak a lot of damage. This is sort of why I like Sigma the most because kinetic grasp and projected shield have the most opportunities for me to make a play that results in actually mitigated damage.
Tanks definitely have plenty of synergy with other team members that cover their weaknesses. But in 6v6 this wasn't an issue at all since that's generally what the off-tank role was. I'm one of the only people that liked 6v6 I guess. Playing tank was so much fun in 6v6 before CC took over the game.
Dunno if its just in europe. But for me i would 10 times rather play tank as my fill. But i get support 99% of the time if i choose all roles. I honestly like playing tank, cause if i have good supports, it just feels so good being the raid boss of the team. But it also feels like shit, when the supports are 20 kilometeres behind healing the dps window and hanzo, which have less than half the damage of the tank, where their team has a sombra, reaper and counter tank. Honestly i also like the countering, mostly because i can play 4 tanks Well enough to counter the enemy. And i really like the stall ability of tanks like sigma.
It seems like the tank role is reserved for an IGL of the group, especially for a 5-stacks since you need your team to do their job so you have to lead and ping who/where to go. I think this is also one of the reasons why tank is not fun to play for solo queuers, since you have to be in control of your team to obey what you need them to do. I've had games go one-sided wins as tank because I called out what is supposed to be done instead of relying on my dps/supp to play based on intuition. Very hard role to play
Thanks for the kind words, they are very encouraging. I wish I got the chance to play OW1 as well, but I think one benefit to starting in OW2 is that I don't have all the bad memories that other creators talk about 😆
This is so true. In overwatch 1 I used to have fun just playing the game regardless of winning or losing. Overwatch 2 I only feel like I can have fun when I’m winning and top fragging and then I know that’s not fun for the enemy to be run over by their enemy tank (me). It’s just a lose lose now.
I’m really surprised this is a smaller channel. I would have thought this guy was really successful based on this video. Wishing you the best @Casual keep putting out the great content
ive only been playing OW2 for a few months now and i while I do play all 3 roles frequently, I primarily play Tank. This video PERFECTLY illustrates my experience so far
I'm a lifelong ow player since season 2, in my opinion, it's a combination of the last 2 factors, supports powercreep and the fundamentals of 5v5 The bunker comps in 6v6 were caused even back then by support powercreep But because the frontlines were more apparent they got the blame (also with their problems, sigma was way too strong) But right now we didn't solve the support problem, and we also added a new one making the tank matchups more predictable and flat I strongly believe the solutions are needing down AoE heals, save CDs such as immortality Field or Cleanse With the rising problem that the support playerbase would complain about it
I’m a tank main and seriously struggle to rank up but anytime I play DPS or healing I completely outplay the enemy team, it’s absolutely heartbreaking because I don’t want to play anything else but tank and it makes me wonder WTH my DPS and healing is doing when I don’t play those roles since they’re so damn easy lmao 😭
If they are keeping 5v5 I think a better idea is to buff the tank passive like all things have reduced affect like damage or half time of any cc or negative effects like discord orb and anti heal to make the tank less effective to these very abusable and powerful abilities
I've been having this feeling with Overwatch 2 ever since the beta I see a lot of players, left and right, talking about how the game is much better and all, stuff that I actually do agree, but then.. Why is it that the game feels so boring now?? It feels like an incomplete overwatch experience, it always felt like something is missing, and I believe it definetly has something to do with the tank changes mainly
Very respectable take. I for the most part agreed with everything and while you didn't offer a solution it's difficult to offer one with the hole blizzard has dug themselves into with this role.
As a tank main it saddens me that no matter my stats whether I have more elims/damage than the enemy tank or my dps or both I STILL get blamed for the loss and someone would say"tank diff" LOL so frustrating
Tank is definitely not in a good place right now. I would like to see the healing on support maybe tuned first before doing any reworks. But if it turns out that doesn't help then perhaps adding a different tank passive might help? We could also borrow from rammatra's ability to transform as a solution. I think the way he gets to turn into a strong form for a bit feels good. If every tank had a sort of bezerker passive where they have extra damage and health, maybe increase in size too for a limited time might help. I understand the change from 2 tanks to 1 due to balancing issues, it was getting out of hand adding more tanks to OW1 and the way the game flows now is better but tank does feel terrible...
High key getting KarQ vibes,from the way Casual talks to diving into explanations. Excellent video. There’s some takes I don’t necessarily agree with, but overall you were pretty spot on
Personally, my lack of fun of playing tank comes from the fact that we no longer have 6v6 very heavily, as my friend and I loved to dick around and play dumbass tank options while the other one was actually able to compensate for the fault of the other one’s goofiness. It’s not like that anymore, and when we did play serious, we made it to masters tank. I have some enjoyment playing characters like Ram and JQ, but I miss having more options and honestly just more targets to shoot at, like playing zarya rein, orisa hog, sigma rein, all of which weren’t insanely op so long as you weren’t like dogshit awful. Idk man. Maybe one day tank will feel better for the majority of the player base
As an ex-tank player who mainly plays dps and support, it’s so fun playing heroes that counter the 1 tank that is on the enemy team and melting them. Then switching to another counter once they switch
I literally love playing Tank, it’s so fun, the only reason I don’t play it is because of Orisa making all the fun characters harder, which it is a nice challenge but it’s annoying for every game to be like that.
@@racmanov You seem to have misread my comment. I don't lose to Orisa, i destroy her even with characters like Hog, what i'm saying is that it's annoying i have to use more skill than i have to just because Orisa exists, not to mention Orisa is still the easiest tank and if lower ranks were smarter they would climb faster because the only 3 viable options against an Orisa who knows how to cycle cooldowns are Sigma, Zarya, and Dva, and nobody knows how to play ANY of those but Zarya and that's hardly in the lower ranks.
And before you say, yes i play 2 of her counters, Sigma and Dva, Sigma is my best tank and i love Dva, but i don't wanna play them every game i want to play other tanks, that's my problem with Tank right now, since Orisa is hard meta you can't really play most of the funner tanks, not that i don't find Dva or Sigma fun but i know if i just play those 2 i'd get bored quickly so i have variety, i play literally every tank besides Zarya, Orisa, and Ball.
Towards the end of OW1 I started to main Ball. I practiced like crazy and got good with him because he is easily the most fun to play. Now I barely even think about playing him because he just wasn't made for 5v5. I'm a support main now and tbh I really miss playing him frequently
If only there was something like, ummm, I dunno, like an off-tank or something. Blizzard has cannibalized its own game and if Overwatch 2 is still around in a year, it's going to be what the majority of the community has always wanted, a 4v4 with Damage only roles, making it like every other competitive shooter.
Personally I feel like it's not the "tank role" or the "6v6 vs 5v5" factors themselves, it's more the fact that the older tanks in the game were MADE FOR 6v6 then forced into a 5v5 setting. The newer or reworked tanks are more like "generalized tanks with a gimmick" rather than full on "dive tank", "main tank", etc. Tank is like the main role in which I feel forced to need to learn every single one just so I can keep counter-playing, but at the same time staying as one tank the whole match to play the same way match after match just cuz I also like winning is boring as hell. I played OW1 a little and significantly preferred tank back then, while maining tank in another 5v5 FPS (Paladins) at the time. In OW2 I basically never actively choose to play tank, it's just to fill, which sucks to me personally cuz this is only game in which I'm almost fully a DMG main despite liking tank/support overall more. OW2 DMG is extremely enjoyable, the others...not so much. You have to do so much and as a very very casual gamer it's not very rewarding. It's very hard to pull off decent plays or saves, and I often feel more helpless without my team than when I'm playing support, and I'm not super bad at the role I don't think. Some tanks, like W.Ball, are also infuriating to play without a full team with comms which makes me feel like they strictly belong in 6v6 as off-tanks cuz it's so easy to run off and fail to distract the enemies, and your healers end up having to dive into danger to save your life (bless them, sorry I suck at the hamster Mercy), but they're also the most fun to play cuz I get to go wild with them, and yet it still feels pretty inflexible cuz I have 100 jobs and have to pull them all off in ONE SPECIFIC WAY that this particular tank is played. If I don't already know the methods, my only hopes are to switch to Orisa for the 6th tank game in a row, pray my team can carry me, or that the enemy team sucks more than I do. Makes trying to learn new characters for the role so...uncomfortable. I like playing tanks, I really do. Just...not in this game.
As someone who mained off tank they feel so terrible to play now, as there is no way to do what your heroes are literally designed to do (just peel/disrupt). It is difficult to contest the main tanks and so the only thing you can really do is to pray your team is good while you try to do what your hero is good at. Also side note they added doomfist as a tank because they don't know how to balance him as a dps LOL
That's a pretty funny reason to be honest, although I can see why the character design of Doomfist makes him hard to balance as a squishy. He either jumps in and one shots everyone, or get's one-shotted if he's not tanky. I do feel for the off-tank mains who got left behind by 5v5. I kinda wish Blizzard would add 6v6 as an arcade mode so at least there was a way to experience the "original" version of the game.
doomfist does feel slightly better for both sides as a tank due to his larger hitbox (larger than mei even on release) so being a high HP tank is an easy solution. He would still feel better is there was another tank though since his main role is to disrupt the backline. I did play some double tank in open queue with 1 dps and off tank felt more fun again so yeah hope they bring back 6v6 in some way
ive recently picked up DF as a tank and its made the role much move enjoyable, but i'm feeling the gut punch that is counter picking and having to switch off him makes it so not fun. I really do think having a main tank and off tank would make the role feel more fun again but im not too sure how the rest of the game would feel.
The balance of 6v6 is far better than 5v5 and I want to also say supports are gigabuffed because the players who play the role are so morbidly shit that it hurts my soul. no offense to the good supps, supports are meant to be background characters who cannot jail themselves away so easily and rather need to combat the flanker away, as most MOBAs do, supports in this state are so powerful that I even suggest to add another tank and REMOVE a support at this point if they do not wanna tweak numbers. otherwise just bring 6v6 back and let the game take its course in that direction
Played during I think the first and second season of OW2 (first time playing OW in general) and Sigma MADE the game for me, favorite character by far but going from 2 to 1 tank really made tanks not fun. You feel more like a foot soldier rather than their front line defense. Kinda just be in front of everyone, hope they support at least somewhat, then they end up not, you get lasered by the entire enemy team and then you’re blamed for the whole team falling apart. They really do need to bring back 6v6 and jt would probably solve a lot of the issues with tank roles in fact it helps the other ones too, everyone’s talks about how playing support is just DBD (I played Moira it very much was that experience) well bring back second tank and support becomes so much more fun to play. Sucks to see the game go so downhill it was like the only game me and my gf could play cuz my laptop doesn’t run games very well except OW2
The 5v5 format is the problem from my point of view. Disregarding the highest levels of play, the 2nd tank option was merely there to relieve some of that pressure off of the main tank. I know it created problems like Goatz and shit but it honestly was just more fun casually. I don't think Overwatch is a game that who is completely capable of being a top e-sport game efficiently, so the casual route should be taken.
I played a ton of OW1, up to Master, played tournaments and scrims as an Off Tank. I can assure you the tank role was terrible to play, especially Main Tank. For 4 seasons of OW2 tank has been a blast to play. Fun, skillful, rewarding. The best has ever been. The issue is not the tank role as a whole, but the addition of LW, Illiari and the buffs of supports made tank unbearable to play. There are too many ways for supports to not die that leaves tank in terrible positions or state that they will have to be saved by their supports. Tune down the best supports and you will see that the game will be fun again for Tanks.
I think the issue is just having one tank, because in overwatch 1 you had another tank to make up for your tank's weaknesses, but now you don't have a second tank and you still have those weaknesses. If you can find someone to play open queue and do double tank you'll notice how much more fun and strong it feels.
All of characters did not translate very well in 5v5’s balancing. In 6v6, Zen was an okay supp due to his discord and harmony being pretty okay utilities + the fact there was 2 tanks. In 5v5? Just put discord on tank and you win every fight. Widow was the same too but in 5v5 she was dominant in 4 seasons due to her increased value in one shotting supps and DPS. So was sojourn, mercy, and roadhog even if he was a tank. Difference is they gutted roadhog to an absolute monster to a ult charging battery and a none existent tank while the others only got a slap on the wrist. This just throws everything out of proportion because it’s obvious the team doesn’t want to nerf supps so their underpowered, but at the same time look at tank, all their meant for is to just soak in the damage. My only advice is to just add 6v6 back. While it may be harder to balance, it’ll invite more players to play tank again and create way more team comps with different heroes, instead of just one comp that’ll dominate. Side note, as a doomfist player(cringe, i know) if he was still a DPS he would be the WORST hero to play. You would practically punch nothing due to all the get out of jail free abilities and immortality abilities and essentially get no value, worse than the tanks even. Even if you did, we already know the blizzard will nerf him to the ground, making him even more unavailable. And hot take, doomfist wasn’t even that op in 6v6. Yes, he has a one shot, but it’s harder to pull that off due to his brawler play style. You have to risk everything to get one kill by rushing into the enemy team, and even then you might die. As opposed to widowmaker who sits across the map and deletes you. Not to mention he has bugs that fucks with his play style and he gets hard countered by sombra, widow(go figure), mercy, Mei, Cassidy flash bang and roadhog. Say what you will, but I cannot okay DPS doom when there’s a ow2 Cassidy with hindered on a ten second cooldown and 75% dmg reduction.
I feel like one of the biggest problem for tanks is really lack of options. You like to play ranged poke? well as a DPS you can play Widow, Ashe, Hanzo, Pharah, etc., but as a tank you can play Orisa kinda, maybe Sigma? You like to play hyper mobile? you can try Tracer, Genji, Sombra, even Echo on the DPS role. In the tank category you have... Hammond... Like him or die. You like champions with deployables? DPS has Torbjorn, Symmetra, maybe even Mei and Ashe if you are feeling more liberal, but you can also play tank that has well... none.. Rammatra if you are stretching, but if you like deployables just don't play tank. Most playstyles exist on multiple different forms in DPS you like X playstyle but don't like this one hero in that playstyle? You can play the others. Even support has somewhat of this liberty on a lesser extant. But tanks don't have that, you don't like how a champion plays but you like their archetype? too bad, that's all you are getting.
I am a Masters Support player, and have been since OW1. I do honestly think that healing is too high in OW2, though not entirely for the reasons you pointed out, although I do acknowledge that it can get difficult to burn a tank with 2 pockets. No, my reason for thinking that healing is too high has to do with how it affects people's playstyles. I've noticed the most amount of success when people utilize cover and do not rely themselves on healing output. But as soon as healing becomes readily available, people play far more open with less cover usage, typically down main of most maps. This also makes me see a lot of people play many supports wrong, namely Kiriko and Illari. Kiriko is supposed to flank and either pick someone off, help a flanker pick someone off, or distract long enough for your team to capitalize off their distraction. While Illari is meant to poke from off-angles or enable other teammates to do so while she herself is elsewhere. Instead, I mainly see them both heal-bot like mad.
I think a lot of players see Kiriko as the "Suzu machine", hence the heal-bot habits. But you're right, Kiriko is a very strong diver/flanker, and she is very strong if played more like a Reaper rather than a Mercy.
Another way you can tell tank is the least popular role right now (at least at high sr) is by looking at the top500 leaderboard early in the season. Because you need 50 wins to show up, the “current” top 500 players that are shown often go all the way into low gm. On dps and support this only goes to about gm3, but on the tank leaderboard it will show players all the way down to masters.
I really enjoy tank currently. But some heroes like Winston and Reinhardt can be super rough if they have a bastion and ball is difficult to get value. I’m hoping the upcoming support and bastion nerfs improve things.
its one of the reasons i have started to make my own version of overwatch. as someone that makes games and have played many games like this one. i can say there is countless ways to fix or work to fixing or making tank play more fun. i think some of the big problems of overwatch is well values. they do not and can not value things properly. that is why they had to take away so many of the CC. because they can't seem to understand how to value it. there is so many things they can put in to the game to add to the play of it all but they just choose dps heal dps and fat dps instead......
Whilst i agree with the fact that the tank role feels boring to play compared the other roles theres a couple of points i think ur missing. 1. Tanks have overall been the least popular role to play both in ow1 and 2. the popularity has shifted from meta to meta its not really a new phenomenon. 2. Tanks make space, which is kinda abstract and can be hard for unexperienced tank players to grasp which makes tank the role that byfar requires the most game knowledge . 3. Tanks rely on their team more than any other role, they NEED the dps to take the space that they create and they absolutely need their supports to keep them alive, basically if the team isnt good enough to capitalise on the space ur making u dont have an impact expect being a bullet spunge. 4. The only real difference between a tank and any other role is that they have more hp, which naturally makes them cooldown burners and damage soakers, in everygame. Its not an overwatch only problem. Otherwise good video 👍
Thanks for adding your thoughts. I have heard that OW1 also had a popularity problem with tanks, and was one of the reasons they switched to 5v5 in the first place in order to fix the queue times. 100% agree with your points.
IMO as someone who mained tank it allll comes down to cc (again) tank numbers suffered from the insane amount of CC but they only removed half the CC, we might not have flashbang and other CC but we still have brig stun (in ult ofc) sleep dart, discord etc. except now we removed a tank so nothing actually changed because the amount of CC you experienced as a tank is effectively unchanged now that we only have one target for that cc effectively Its so frustrating to watch them identify the problem but make the same mistakes over and over and over again. theres a reason zarya and orisa are usually meta in this game, orisa usually stands on top for her ability to just not die but they are meta/popular for the immunity to CC, orisa with her ability to just not die with fortify, zarya's ability to cleanse anti nade with her bubble etc. I will always be an advocate for 6v6 but if we're keeping 5v5 (and we probably are I doubt the devs are willing to reverse course) we need to at least buff the tank passive to make CC abilities 50% less effective, including things like zen discord. honestly devs kinda balanced themselves into a corner with this one, most of the problems with tank now are inherent to the 5v5 format but because of the 5v5 format tank has declined to a point where some solutions aren't feasible because of the tank population, because of OW2 reputation at this point I'm not even sure if 6v6 could work, the average person only knows OW for its many controversies at this point and wouldn't come back regardless of a 6v6 announcement .
Sad part is. Majority of matches are more determined by the performance of the DPS and Support. They hold more weight. But people will wildly scream “TANK DIFF” when the tank has a better performance then the dps or support. People want to quickly and instantly blame the tank for there own mess ups even though the tank is majority of the time. On the same pace or out preforming the enemy tank. DPS players are the most whiniest Supports are the most privileged Tanks are the most depressed
Another reason that tanks get so verbally abused is because its literally easier to see a tank's mistakes compared to the other roles. I can usually see the tank being out of position on my screen, but I can't see the Ana or Soldier taking bad positions because they might be off to the side or literally behind me. The two tanks are also usually the center of the teamfight so everybody is looking and judging, so after the teamfight is lost, everyone remembers the tank's mistakes even if they were minor mistakes.
I like your style of analysis and videomaking, no over dramatization or constant superlatives or over emphasizing emotional words to seem important. I don't play tank but found the video enjoyable anyway.
In terms of tank in ow1 vs ow2 it was just like the same thing you brought up about the counter picks for support/dps where the other tank could make up for the other tanks counter and even just bad gameplay. Honestly blizzard needs to bring back the experimental card again so we can test out patches instead of them just taking the top 20%ish of players/streamers to somewhat test a patch idea. A potential fix bliz could do for the tank role is change some things with the role passive or just outright all the passives on each tank to try to help the tanks in their weaker points. Another idea could be how healing is dealt to armor/shields. With armor they could reduce the healing based on the damage reduction of the armor(this might honestly be a horrible idea) but either way it'd be nice to see blizzard throw experimental out to get a better feel for how it would be
I think 5v5 is part of it, but for the reasons you explained already. Back when there were two tanks, both of them were still hyper specific, but you could prioritize who deals with what. This is to say, i still think it's a fatal flaw of the tank role to be so focused on specific things rather than being generalized. Tank has never felt better than DPS or even support, and this is probably why.
As someone who has played overarching 1 two tanks let the feeling of getting a cool down advantage feel noticeable and fun playing rein and see that our zarya has a lot more charge and pushing in on the enemy was awesome. Now on 5v5 getting a cool down advantage just doesn't feel good anymore because I just feel like OK I am ahead of the enemy on cooldowns hope my team wins this fight with the one more Firestrike we engage with.
Yeah there can a bit more "hoping" when you're playing the tank role, probably because most enemies are out of your natural effective range, and can disengage from your effective range at will, while you simultaneously aren't able to chase them down.
i was a diamond tank in ow 1, in ow2 my least playtime is the tank role... pretty much play support all day. me personally I want 6v6 back, but that wont happen, so healing needs a nerf in general, that would maybe fix some problems
Hard to say how an across the board healing nerf would affect the game, it would in theory make it easier to get kills on tank, but it would also mean that tanks are less tanky due to less healing.
It seems like to me that we are having the same problem in OW1 with stuns and shields, but instead it's now sustain and immortality/healing. There should be less abilities with zero counter play (suzu, lamp, pull, etc.), and more abilities that give supports agency with trade-offs (sleep, anti nade, speed boost and wall ride).
Don’t you love it when the whole enemy team has anti tank characters ie Ana Zen Bastion Sombra and Orissa
Exactly, and now they dont have to pick and choose which tank to shit on, because there’s only one tank.
Bastion is easier to deal with on tank than Mei.
@@commentbot9510depends who you’re playing
I guess their tank is winning then
It’s your teams job to dive the supports/dps first …….
One part you forgot is that the tank is always the scapegoat whenever you lose a match 😢
I agree, I probably should have included that specifically when I was talking about why tank can be "stressful" to play. I'm sure getting blamed for losses is major reason beginners shy away from the role, which is unfortunate, but I suppose that's the state of the gaming community. Always looking to blame someone else.
mtd
playing tank has broken my mental so bad I've reached a level where idc anymore and my mental is very strong now
@@crongo4284 tank diff
@@khaledm.1476real, now I only play tanks who vanguard
Imagine making a role designed to absorb damage, launching a second game where you remove an entire player from that role, and wonder why the one player left doesn't enjoy being shot at.
That's a good point, the way I think about it is, the tank absorbed the survivability of the second tank, but the Supports got the damage.
@@Casual314Actually supports got the survivability of the second tank. The only tank, just absorbed the damage of the second tank. Yes tanks have more hp than ow1 but due to DMG creep(and missing someone to share the damage with) they feel less tanky and shields and barriers are actually smaller.
Every match its just "shoot the tank" they focus the tank till they die. If ur healers cant keep up or ur dps cant get elims then ur just a glorified meat shield the whole match. I've literally had games where the WHOLE enemy team would follow me, like did not engage in combat until they saw me 😂, oh and lets not forget they ALMIGHTY bastion pick if u do manage to do well. 😂
@@tyreehawkins5403 Shoot the tank! me as a tank peak for 1 sec the whole enemy team ignores my whole team to their right just to B line it to me
@tiga8600 Ikr! 😂 Only thing that will distract them from the tank is a genji ult lol
As someone who played Overwatch 1, the tank role used to be a blast to play. It was fun to synergize with your other tank, the off-tank role was the most fun role in the game by a country mile.
Quit playing during OW2 beta because I couldn't do backline Hammond anymore. Saw the writing on the wall of what was to come and I'm honestly surprised it's taken this long for the pot to bubble over on how Blizzard deleted and entire playstyle making tank stale.
I really loved off tank because it was your job to deny dps off angles and flanks, peel for your backline, and peel for you main tank. It was very versatile and rewarding to play.
RIP rein zarya duos
i agree as a dps player and been gm/top 500 for years off tank was so much fun to play zarya, dva, hog have so many hours on them
I used to love playing as a more offensive Reinhardt when i had a more defensive tank or sig when we had something like a dva and old orisa in the frontline as a nuance against the enemy team and the tank keeping a eye on the rest now i just hate doing it cause one mistake is a loss
You said everything I’ve been thinking the last month or so in just the first minutes. I thought it was just me! I constantly get tank when choosing all roles and it’s made the game so much less fun lately because I feel “forced” to play tank or suffer longer queues. Nice video!
Glad you enjoyed the video and found it relatable. The disproportionate queue times are definitely an issue that I hope finds a solution in the near future.
I think the main issue with tank right now is that the role changed fundamentally going into OW2, but the heroes themselves were not really given the kind of comprehensive overhauls they needed to account for that. With no off-tank, a great deal of a tank's survivability actually lies with their supports, not within their own kits. Often times any kind of aggressive or "fun" playstyle demands more resources from your team than it's really worth. It's also why you see heroes like Orisa and Sigma rise to the top in high level play recently, because they have kits with many overlapping sustain tools that allow them to actually keep themselves alive without a hard pocket or having to just disengage completely and put out zero pressure (like Winston for example.) This also means that nerfing supports (which I think is needed) would also be severely detrimental to tanks because they rely on supports so much.
I think step one is to rework tank's health and damage numbers. If we want tanks to be space creators, lets give them the tools to do so. Significantly buff tank's defensive tools/hp pools/etc. across the board while nerfing the upper extremes of their damage dealing. Give tanks more ability to sustain themselves so they are less reliant on supports, and in turn you can nerf support healing so that DPS feel better able to actually take duals and secure kills on squishies. That way you also move away from healbot playstyles and force supports to have a more active playstyle and get proactive value out of abilities.
Orisa and Sigma need their sustain nerfed. These two will always be top tier because they have multiple damage mitigation abilities and good cc and damage with powerful ults. Their designs are just SO BAD.
@@commentbot9510 If you nerf their sustain, you just end up with every tank being terrible. I usually don't advocate for trying to buff your way out of problems, but I think reworking tanks to have more sustain in their own kits is a better solution. Nerfing the two tanks that can actually survive doesn't make tank better to play
Your suggestions make tank and dps fun at the cost of supports having any impact or fun. Doing what you said just shifts the problem to a new role. And I think it’s a good indicator that this game will never be balanced. There will always be the odd role out that nobody wants to play because it feels ineffective and like you’re just a punching bag.
I genuinely think people have a fundamental misunderstanding of the damage role. They are not duelists. They don’t exist to take 1v1s. They exist to output damage and take opportunities to secure kills their team helped to make. People cry about “I can’t get a kill anymore playing DPS” but it’s because they’re trying to kill a pocketed DPS in a 2v1 almost every time. They’re not SUPPOSED to get that kill in that situation. This is a big complaint about Mercy when she’s literally just doing what she was designed to do, which is enable whomever she’s pocketing. 2 players putting themselves together should give an advantage and a single dps shouldn’t think they deserve to get a kill against that without putting the same amount of resources into getting the kill.
The team is supposed to help the DPS to even the odds. This is a team shooter above all else. If one team is playing as a team and the other is playing as five separate players, then the team playing together deserves to win. Back in OW1, DPS could get away with flanking and just playing alone but now the game has shifted far away from that. Even the new Sombra rework forces her to kind of play with the team now because of translocator changes. She can’t just go off on her anymore and tends to attack with the team now. Even Tracer does this more often now. Genji is useless because he was never changed to adapt to this shift and needs a total rework to be a team player.
Totally agree that it is not an issue of 6v6 or 5v5. Even if you change to 4v4 the situation will end up the same. It's a good suggestion but that would mean that all heroes will end up being similar. Tanks are just slightly beefier dps and support are dps that can heal. And it will end up that it really doesn't matter who you pick. Essentially, the devs have to decide if they want OW be a game about dps and aim or about counterpicks and teamwork.
i just want them to put 6v6 in arcade. lobbies can already support 6 players on each team so why not?
Yeah honestly as a player who missed out on OW1, I would love to see a 6v6 mode so I can experience the good and bad of 6v6.
It’s like destiny 2, it’s a admission of defeat that it was a stupid fucking idea to do in the first place
Because them doing that would be admitting that they were wrong to move the game to 5v5. Blizzard is too stuck up to do that.
A looooong time ago, when they first implemented role queue, they added an arcade mode that disabled role lock. It let people play the game just like they could pre-role queue.
They ended up regretting this, however, cause so many people started playing that 24/7 that it actually affected the normal game's numbers.
So while I do think it would be popular, I also think they won't make it out or fear of it being TOO popular.
@@uncertaintitle4116but now all of the arcade modes have open roles. So eventually they did do it. There’s also the no limits mode
personally I’d like a change to 6v6 and minor changes to healers
like cooldowns changes
and to make sure tanks aren’t op maybe a slight hp nerf so that healers don’t full pocket dmg players and need to focus on their tanks to win the fight
Like ow1
I played OW1 shortly after it's release and had played consistently up until OW2. I usually played tank and while it had its pain points throughout the metas of OW1 I played it consistently, only until OW2 have I resented touching the tank role so much, and have started to just que dps and support. I'm not going to say 6v6 is more or less balanced, but from my own experience I can attest that tank was certainly more FUN (although it still had it's own problems then, but still nowhere as awful as the tank experience is now) in 6v6 with a duo tank.
Yes you had rock paper scissors with team comps, but you could at least get away with playing the tank you WANTED because your other tank chose a character that helped support that pick.
It's because this game had a lot of problems with balance and game design that were made worse with every character addition, reaching its peak with early Brig. The devs back then were entirely incompetent, and failed to test anything before adding to the game. By the time it was realized how bad the game had gotten when OW was practically dead, it was full of so much bloat the issues that would have been fairly easy for them to fix early on through balance patches and the like now defined the game and they didn't want to commit to a difficult rework of much of the character roster and many of the game mechanics. So instead they just removed one of the tanks, switched it to a 5v5, which did remedy the issue for a while. But now all those same issues are back because that decision was a bandaid, and made the game worse in the long run.
Well said
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. They should’ve split the tank role main tank/off tank so you couldn’t stack shields or just have two extra dps with bigger hp bars. All they did was temporarily fix tanks issue by removing one of them, but now some supports can just focus you and you’re dead. Zen can just orb you every fight and you’re cooked, Ana can nade you while ur cds are down while being able to sleep you.
The problem isn’t the state of supports, or the high dps roster, it’s the fact that we only have one tank now. Hog, Ball and Doom can’t even play the game vs a good Ana or Sombra, Ramattra is 90% of the time blocking, Rein doesn’t have a shield, Sigma has always been solid ngl but he’s not “good” persay, Orisa is literally just a bully and sits on cds all game, Junker is just a 3rd dps and Zarya is also pretty solid ngl, but once again feels more like DPS than a tank.
@IMBAIT they should do that with support and dmg technically, as their is flank and dmg and healer and support
Amazing video, from a former ow1 rein main. I miss my tank partner😢
Thanks for the kind words, I never played OW1, but balance aside, I'm sure duoing with another tank was a fun experience.
Bro same my brother was my zarya and he literally lost all intereste in the game because we couldn't figth side by side anymore
@@krogymania4946 the rein and zarya dou was something special, especially on kings row:)
Former diva, Winston, and zarya main. I hate playing tank now
I just miss being able to play Rein at all. Half of the semi-playable tanks counter him now :(
As a (former) tank main, once my friends all stopped playing and I was left with randoms this video is essentially what happened. People couldn't capitalize on the space I created, people scapegoated/flamed me constantly, and the role just... started sucking to play as. The nature of the support role AND the 5 v 5 thing doesn't help either. Having 2 tanks allowed you to synergize with each other and even cover weaknesses, like putting a poke tank with a brawler or a brawler with a dive tank. So as a result of everything with OW2, I quit the game entirely. I like your content though so I'll watch it, but OW will never have a place in my lineup of games ever again. It's going to my personal gaming graveyard to be buried right next to Leage of Legends.
Same, I moved on to Apex Legends.
The amount of times I will be holding the entire enemy team on the obj for a full 45 seconds while my supports watch and my dps fuck around and do nothing and then I die and they all rush in after I die, is ridiculous.
I absolutely loved playing tank in ow1. I was a zarya sigma player. I had so much joy enabling my Reinhardt buddy Camden as zarya. Watching him go in and just decimate was so awesome. And if he fell the pressure that fell on me was immense, but the joy of overcoming the odds was unmatched. But ow2 changed. All the pressure was put on me constantly, and when I'd win a team fight it didn't feel joyus it felt more like checking off a list. I lost the companion ship of my tank and now it just doesn't feel nice playing tank anymore. I lost my duo and now anytime I mess up or die Its at the forefront of everyones mind and I get flamed for it. This game is more toxic than it has ever been and tank is lost. Idek what they could do anymore besides go back to 6v6
REIN/ ZAR WAS THE TRUE G.O.A.T
How do you lose the companionship of your tank if it's that big of a deal just play open queue that's how me and my friends still play goats team comps
@@mrdhong2143 because the game in fundamentally different in open queue. Tanks lose a good chunk of health making them less tanky then they were in ow1. And our randoms tend to not play characters we need. Such as a support or another DPS. And again, in 5v5 someone is going to lose someone. 2 tanks? Then maybe only 1 DPS 2 healers and vice versa. It's not a viable solution to the problem.
@@mrdhong2143 same tho it'll never be quite the same
@@apollyon3331 at least I'm giving suggestions and not just fucking crying about my heroes being nerfed I do fine as a tank in open queue so I don't understand what your problem is they literally change these characters all the time either git gud or git gone 😂
holy you're right on everything!
I play tank and probably the worst things are the fact that if you make even a single mistake you lose the fight and the fact that if you lose everyone just blames it on you!
I was playing a game recently and we lost because their dps were stronger then ours and then after we lost they just write tank diff and insult me, while I don't really mind toxic players it gets frustrating after a while.
2-2-2 is the superior format. I've played OW1 for years, so I can compare 5v5 to 6v6 very well. Team cohesion is less consistent in 5v5 because you have 1 less player to make space for the rest of the team, and so the reason for 1-sided matches in 5v5 is not the matchmaker, it's because with only 1 tank per team, if the enemy DPS & Supports happen to play around their 1 tank better than your team, you'll lose hard; there is so much less wiggle room for your positioning in 5v5.
But also, counter-swapping is a much more prevalent issue in 5v5, meaning 1-sided matches will happen more due to your tank not constantly swapping when the enemy counter-swap.
The main issue with 5v5 is that all tanks except for JQ and doom were made around having two tanks. Tanks could cover each other. Make up for each others weaknesses. Ball for example is at the bottom because he's an attention tank. But he can't get picks because of the lifeweaver suzu combo
I love playing tank, but it can get overwhelming sometimes. Either we're losing because I'm not getting enough healing or the enemy dps are better than my dps or we're just getting tank diff'd because my team is too spread out leaving me to get jumped and get solo'd by enemy widows or get 2v1. It's really stressful because a good tank is only as good as the team behind them
soo, its never because u played bad or their tank was better than you, always your teams fault
@@sh1rom1suThe thing is, as a tank, you have to play perfectly because any mistake will kill you and your team which makes it unfun
@@sh1rom1suIve played countless games against great teams with horrible tanks. Your tank and their skill really does determine the outcome of the match. Because the tank in Ow2 is your main key to pushing successfully. You can flank as damage all you want and try to peel as a dps healer but the actual role that gets the game moving is the Tanks. They're the frontline and can also be the flanker too. There have been some rare occasions where a team still somehow wins even with a bad tank. But that's only if the other team is kinda braindead lol
@@sh1rom1suThe tank has to play with respect to their team. Other players tend to ignore their team because they don't HAVE to respect their teammates position. What OP said is true, it puts the onus of the match on the shoulders of the team as a whole. Players hiding behind walls during the upswing of a fight (tank initiates) WILL result in the tank dying or fleeing and the fight petering out. The tank can't move their own team into position, the individuals have to learn their place with respect to the tank. That means embracing filling roles, not filling arbitrary stat quotas.
@@Rippersauc3 Yes because a smurf dps who oneshots the entire lobby can't carry games if their tank is bad. Every role is impactful and can carry games, sadly the ways you carry games on tank is not fun you will win but hate your life
This dude is good. I hope all the great things for him.
Thanks for the kind words
6v6 may had it's bad things, but nothing that couldn't be fixed with a little bit of balancing, meanwhile 5v5 makes tanks feel like a never ending rock paper scissors game, OW2 might be more "frenetic" but at least (in my opinion) OW1 was more about the tactic (that let players play what they wanted (me included, as a former main tank)) than conterpicking all the time or spamming the current meta (I know double shield was popular and bad too, but for sure it wasn't as oppressive as what happens nowadays (stomp or get stomped)). Now I mainly play as healer (the second role I kinda mained back then) and DPS sometimes, because playing as a tank (which I enjoyed a lot back then) feels boring for me nowadays.
Good video covering the current situation of tanks!
I was doing a lot of matches with friends earlier today in quick play, and offered to play Tank while they alternated between DPS and Support. While playing Ramatra, Junker Queen, Roadhog, and Reinhardt, I would have occasionally games where the entire enemy team would be incredibly oppressive with Mcree hinder, Orissa or Sigma javelin/rocks, getting hacked, discorded, slept or anti'd, and Mei slowing/freezing or walling me off and or having my shield up only for it to go down much faster than I had anticipated. Getting victories and being in the fights wasn't always so bad itself, but closing the gap or having 5 people focus fire you down is quite frankly miserable. I couldn't help but think of that one clip from back in the day in Overwatch 1 with Reinhardt being stunned, booped, Doomfist punched, and tossed around like a rag doll repeatedly for a minute straight.
and while still surviving all that somehow with your team being like why is our tank not doing anything well it's probably because the doomfist and Sombra just love putting me into this wall over here and if there a mei it's just the devil coming to shove their icicle into my rear
In most ranks, the rest of the team doesn't actually view the tank player as the leader. They know that if the tank does, the fight ends quickly after. But they don't actually respect the person playing tank and make sure to go with them. People are very set in their ways and how THEY play the game. Even if the tank player doesn't make a mistake, their actions differing from another player's expectation will be viewed as a mistake.
In most ranks, the tank also doesn’t view themselves as the leader so you wind up with timid tanks that won’t do anything while the other tank that has a pair will actually make plays lol
I'm mostly a healer main but I play damage too, in ow1 I also played tank you just described perfectly why I stopped playing tank in ow2.0 thank you
maybe im a masochist but i do enjoy the fact that i have to actively keep track of what abilities the enemies have and what can be a threat to me or what can nullify my attacks. I love playing doomfist and i always have to be careful with many abilities, especially orisa's and ana's imo. but it makes me feel really satisfied when i remember to wait or bait out their cc/anti cc abilities since i can just destroy them afterwards. i dont consider myself a casual player but i dont grind away at comp either, i just like playing the game and learning to become better at it is even more enjoyable.
I agree wholeheartedly.
*BUT*
there are many things that can be done by the enemy team to disregard your proper play. just treat you like you don't exist and those games feel like shit.
Tank also doesn't feel like a tank anymore. If the support isn't constantly pocketing you it's possible to literally lose all your health in a second
One massive issue with the 5v5 switch is that bliz took an entire playstyle overwatch (off tanking) and just removed it from the game and in doing so removed a ton of awesome combos as well. I used to absolutely LOVE playing dva, i got so good at ult tracking/eating, and peeling, never found something like that in another game. Yes you can technically do that in OW2 but I'm telling you it DOES NOT hit the same. If you peel, there is no frontline, if you frontline there is no peel. Dva specifically is so easy to counter too, sym, mei, zarya, brig, all HARD counters, if you pick dva against me and my team, you'll be useless after one of my teammates gets the chance to swap. 6v6 needs to come back man, really hope they release "Overwatch Legacy" in a few years so i can play the actual game again
I miss playing Winston, he's my favourite tank and lately he's been completely unplayable.
The issue is definitely with the supports. Healing numbers are a little bit too high, and they are better at staying alive now, but the main issue is supports having very short cooldowns that are better than most ultimates. You should be able to bait support abilities and then have a window of time where you can make a play as a tank, but that currently isn't possible. Beat and transcendence used to be important ultimates but now the newer heroes bring stuff like suzu and immortality.
Seperate comment for different topic.
5v5 vs 6v6 feels worse for tanks in O2. In fact it is absolutely abusmal. In O1 having 2 tanks meant that you could cycle which tank was taking the brunt of the damage and which is being healed/respawns. In addition, 2 tanks meant that one could hold main while the other could lead a flank.
One of the problems 2 tank had is that when Brig came out, a "bubble" of sorts burst because there were too many sustainable heroes spread across too many roles. Goats meta(if i recall correctly) was so aggriegous because Brig could act as a 3rd tank with some of the best healing and sustain in the game. Stack that together with the lack of accutely strict effective balancing being done, resulting in many heroes performing far too efficiently and the game became stuck in as set of about 3 main metas that dragged on into an extended stagnation of content and change.
O2's primary problem with Tanks is that the devs haven't properly been buffing/debuffing any character and basically just applied board wide dmg ups to everyone. This effectively means that tanks die too fast to perform the role of tank at all, as well as everyone else dieng so quickly that if the tank backs off for 2 seconds the rest of the team falls apart like dominoes. 2 tank was designed to mitigate both of those issues before they were even issues. In addition O2 has many problems on the front of balancing because certain support heroes are better dps than the dps should be. This is a massive problem because it's eerily similar as to the problem that they had with Brig in O1. For context, Brig on release could 1v1 Reinhart and win every time without using abilities by out healing his damage. In addition her aoe zones for her passive heal and rally were absolutely massive. Having characters in one role be so much better at other roles than characters in that other role is a massive problem and it's a massive contributor as to why O1 failed. Imagine if they made a Tank or DPS that out healed the Supports for the whole game? That hero would immedietly dominate the meta because people just wouldn't die, especially with new heroes locked in the battlepasses. It's a problem that Blizzard has yet to gather the courage to fix.
This whole video was so well said and concise. While tanks are feeling unfun right now, the sad thing is DPS and supports that aren't busted rn like Lucio or feel unfun or unimpactful too. I think nerfing supports would be a great start, they can just do too much rn.
Kiriko for example can heal, is amazing in 1v1's, can kill you from across the map like Hanzo, and has arguably the best mobility tool in the game being able to teleport through walls. She can do all of this on a dime, she can switch between them at any moment, which makes playing tank and non-busted dps feel like a cooldown forcing simulator.
I don’t understand why she has a dmg multiplier higher than most DPS. 3x to 2.5x on headshot. Just make it 1.5, she isn’t a DPS.
@@daikio420probably to give her more impact besides heal botting and cleanse, which are impactful but hey it’s not a support if it can’t 1v1 most of the roster
@@LuXury00001high damage supports are the worst. I get them being able to do some damage is fine but they tend to break things just by nature of their role. If you’re doing all these support things, why tf are you also able to outduel characters whose entire role is to duel? Zenyatta and Kiriko are the worst two about this. At least Zen doesn’t have mobility but Discord is so overtuned in a 5v5 setting that even getting the drop on him isn’t enough sometimes lmao
Well guys.. it’s simple. It could’ve been a RUclips short . The issue is when your team sucks and the other team is smart enough to counter…. Welll the match is basically over. My gf who isn’t much of a gamer when she plays with me she eventually asked why do I type GG after certain situations and I just explained that when you play certain roles and have certain knowledge of the game it’s pretty easy to make the discernment that your teammates just aren’t gonna play their roles correctly or provide efficient support . So ultimately … you quite literally as a tank end up basically being stuck in a losing situation .
There will be matches where as a Moira I’ll have 30 plus kills and the most healing on my team…. And we still lose because often DPS players for whatever reason don’t want to counter pick or focus the squishies. In so many matches I have seen everyone just shooting up the tank Without killing at least 1 of the healers and/ or literally doing nothing to stop flankers or snipers lol or anyone with an “anti” heal or “damage over time “ effect like the new sombra move or fire from dynamite . So those guys again just get hall passes to destroy your team’s tank . Or the dps or whoever No problema
I definitely think that the format change to 5v5 is the biggest offender in the "tank is unfun" problem. The loss of the the synergy element, where you covered for the other tank's weaknesses (especially prevalent in the original tanks) makes the game very frustrating most of the time.
The other problems, however, are more balancing related. The first issue is power creep and I don't just mean healing. Damage in general feels really high and is very hard to deal with. As a former tank player, I feel like it's incredibly difficult to take space without losing 90% of your HP pool, even when you're not really making a mistake. Even when I play support, sometimes the tank is just taking too much pressure, or unwittingly over-extends, not necessarily because they're bad, but because they're simply trying to make a play.
The other issue related to balancing is the team's approach to tank balance of turbo-buffing one or two tanks every season to define the meta. It creates a situation where many of the other tanks become significantly less viable, so if the buffed tanks aren't in your roster of tanks you play, you're basically screwed. You can't be good at every single hero, unless you're a streamer plays for 12+ hours a day, and even then, you'll have picks you're inherently better at. It's incredibly frustrating and it's why I don't tank/flex queue anymore.
🍪
you understand😢
Why are you pretending that tank wasn't absurdly unpopular in OW1?
@@aolson1111 Support and tank had similar (withing 60sec) queue times as each other in OW1. In the end, support had shorter queue times (right before closing). Tanks got shafted, but the switch to 5v5 made it worse. Then OW2 powercrept supports to hell so queue times got longer. I'm not saying tank was unpopular, but it was def more fun with 2 tanks, and this is coming from a support main. Nerf us and make tanks OP again. At least DbD support was kinda fun
@@aolson1111 Who's pretending anything? You think my balance argument doesn't apply to the end of OW1 as well? It's a year later and we've come full circle *because the team doesn't know how to balance this game*. The difference now is that tank was fun before for the people who really wanted to play it and now it's just miserable period.
Yeah power creep is a big thing, heroes do more and more damage and the supports heal more and more as a result. Where we get to this point where if you can't quickly burst or straight up one shot an enemy hero, the support will just bring em back to full.
I keep saying this; 5V5 was going to make this too competitive and I F-ING CALLED IT ON WHAT WAS GOING TO HAPPEN, Supports GET BUFFED!
6v6 I cannot say it was better or worse both modes are unique. But what I can say is, rein zarya bubble dance or rein winston, or sigma hog (yes hog was fun in 6v6)
, winston Dva ect. The tabk combos made it so fun nothing was more satisfying then a perfect tank synergy the Teamwork requierd from all 6 members of the team is what made 6v6 fun. What makes 5v5 fun is the solo pop off moments that arguably all roles get to experience depending on match ups.
The switch to 5v5 ruined the tank experience for a lot of tank players. My duo-tank partner stopped playing tank all together and is now solely DPS. I still play tank on occasion but it's gone from my highest ranked role to my lowest because I still can't figure out how to consistently make an impact. Probably because I'm aggressive and solo-tanking requires more patience than I prefer to play with. If I wanted to be patient in gaming I'd go play chess.
5 v 5 was supposed to solve this queue problem situation we had going on towards the end of OW1 but I knew it was going to require "perfect" matchmaking or else it was always going to feel like a one sided battle which will never be fun for the one Tank that is getting completely rolled. I only started on May of 2021 so there are a ton of things I missed but I personally think they could of originally just heavily nerfed barriers ONLY when two barrier tanks are used together to help reduce the heavy reliance people tended to have on using combos like Orissa/Sigma (OW1 style) just to stay alive instead of actually improving.
How would that work, though? What if your other tank dies and swaps to orisa, does your sigma shield suddenly lose half its health? And it's not just double barriers that's the issue, it's tank synergies that are generally way stronger than anything else in the game and forced mirror matchups.
They couldve just done the orisa rework in ow1
@@SecretlyStarscream reduce shield health and lower hp like in open queue
No, the thing they needed to do was nerf both Fortify & Kinetic Grasp so that Orisa + Sigma is weak to being rushed or dived. The devs never understood this. We see in the big barrier nerf patch on December 10, 2019, that they nerfed Orisa & Sigma's barrier and buffed Fortify & Kinetic Grasp, making counter-play from rush and dive comps even harder.
I think the issue is 5v5. Most players when told of the new format argued thatthesolo tank would have too much on their shoulders. They would be blamed for any mistake. This allowed for the hitscan meta to really take off. Many dps were allowed to free reign because there wasn't a second tank to peel. Most hitscan plus genji could just shoot past the tank. Widow had few counters because she wouldn't have anyone but maybe genji diving her. If the solo tank dives her the teamis unpretected. Ow2 launch had the speed passive on dps. Get a kill be faster for a second. Orisa was a throw pick because people learned to ignore her to kill her team. You have all these movement abilities on tanks that seriously cant move because of the team they have. This wasn't a problem with two tanks because one was usually with the team. They literally removed the double shield issue because orisa had hers removed. Sigmas shield is weak and rein gets nothing for standing there. Bastion is moveable and benefits better with zarya and life. There was litte reason as to why to go to 5v5 at this point its laugable. Zen and mercy weren't an issue in 6v6 because there was a second tank to eat the damage. Hack was usually blocked by any trickle of damage (dva) or bubbled away (zarya). Sombra wasn't an issue till invis hack. Widow and hanzo were dived. Honestly every annoying hero wasnt as bad till they removed a tank.
In Overwatch 1 the Tank role had most of the same list of frustrations and issues when playing as "Main Tank" (i.e. the one being shot at primarily, Rein, Orisa, Winston mostly). There was less scissors/paper/rock counter-picking than OW2, but there was still the general stalemate between you and the opposition's Main Tank waiting for the battle to resolve one way or the other, and what felt like a lack of agency on the role, as you could often only achieve anything with the assistance of the "Off Tank" (through Zarya's Bubble, Dva's Matrix, Hog's Hook, or Sigma's shield rotation) otherwise you would die almost immediately once people focused on you.
When they cut down to only having one Tank they forced all of the "Off Tank" players to experience the same frustrations as "Main Tank" players did back in 6v6. That's where a lot of the new complaining is coming from.
The solution is (in theory) to simultaneously increase Tank agency and decrease Tank influence, which isn't really possible within the Tank/Damage/Support role system as those are directly tied to each other within the Tank role.
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Something they could do however, would be to move Mei into the Tank role (or remove her wall), so that you don't have to play into 1.75 tanks when she's in your matches. Because that's beyond tiring.
for me it's just the characters themselves, their counters and their usage on certain maps. I really enjoy winston but every game they just go orisa, bastion and reaper or the map isn't the best for winston. I can usually adapt and play around it but my impact shrinks significantly making me want to switch and honestly the only other tank I enjoy is dva but I don't wanna play her sometimes. I feel like we just need more heroes in the category tbh.
I just miss 2 tanks…. Rein/zarya was literally one of my favorite things in all of games… and then it was just gone. Some tanks were originally designed to be able to counter certain things within a two tank dynamic and now it just causes chaos.
I've never played OW2 but was a long-time OW player from the open beta. Good video man! Very cool.
I miss having a second tank. I miss my buddy, my backup. Now I’m all alone 😢
Former tank main through my whole ow1 career since launch, I feel the issue with tank is how cooldowns affect the tank equally as it would dps and support except for sleep. If offensive cooldowns that affect tanks like discord, nade, hack magnetic nade canceling your only movement cooldown, if tanks need to draw out cooldowns then they shouldn’t have to deal with the full damage, cc that a dps or support would receive, just by doing that a tank would have more agency to go in and not have to worry about being a quarter health everytime they try to do a play. And then there’s suzu which effectively counters over half of the tank ults.
That's a good point, they already give tanks some resistance against Sleep, maybe some resistance against CC and debuffs in general might be a good change.
My friend who was a tank main all the way from 2017-2023 dropped tank during the last 3 seasons. Hes gone on to play mostly dps now due to him literally hating playing tank now. Man is a rein play at heart and literally just gets curbstomped by brain dead orisas…
Oof being a Rein main is rough in 2023, I feel for him
All tanks need a flat damage reduction passive instead of cc passive. I'm thinking 15% possibly (yes this will effect orisa too and make her damage reduction ability weaker to give her the same current amount when active)
In my experience playing both 1 & 2 is that having that extra tank makes a huge difference. Your burden is shared with another person, supports dont have to be super buffed to keep you alive and the more people are on a team, the more a mistake can be shared (Something I've always hoped for is to have a 12v12 and 8v8 as an arcade mode).
Another solution I've heard is to give everyone a weaker support passive and then lower the supports healing output. Like you were saying, one of the most annoying things is being on the verge of killing an overextended squishy and using all your cooldowns and their health stays the same or goes up. This would also relieve the healbotting playstyle on the supports end to make their role more fun as well. Plus the genji low on health just would be a little patient get their own healing lol
Great vid!
Glad you enjoyed the video. A "big team" Overwatch mode would be very interesting, but you definitely need to make a new map specifically for that, and well... the devs haven't been so great lately with any content that isn't skins. Rip PvE
Being the only tank sucks, if you die the fight is over 99% of the time unless you got a cracked dps. I think the only fix is just adding the second tank back and tweaking some abilities of the tanks. The only other option is nerfing a bunch of support abilities and people are gonna riot if they do that
Soooo.... they're nerfing all the supports lol
@@stumbling_ lol welp I guess people are gonna riot
I don't think nerfing would really do anything. Either two things will happen. If you nerf support healing, characters die too easily. If you buff healing, then it would take forever to get a kill. I like how the healing is now. Yeah, it can be annoying to wittle down the enemy tanks hp to 1, and then in an instant, it's back to full or close, but that's why there are cool downs, so right after they are back to full, you can just wittle them back down again and ultimately get the kill. My issue mostly is with matchmaking. Why is my team a bunch of solos who aren't in vc going up against a team that has a 2 stack and 3 stack? The 2 stack being a dps and support main, so you know that dps is goated and staying alive and the 3 stack are probably in vc in strategizing with eachother. Meanwhile, me and 1 other person are in vc complaining that our team isn't in vc and getting absolutely stomped the entire game in Competitive.
Also I should’ve waited to comment because I want to say more in relation to what you said about tanky roles being considered the most boring typical, and I agree. I very rarely ever play a guardian in smite because even having a buttload of cc, being able to decide fights/the flow of fights may be interesting to some people, but it really pains me having to let kills slip away because I simply don’t do enough meaningful damage, in smite and overwatch
Played since 2017 and tank main since 2018 here-
Yeah, it's mostly because of the switch to 1/2/2. In the scenario you described where the enemy DPS was alone and vulnerable, with a second tank, you'd be able to safely chase that kill, with the knowledge that your other tank can keep your team alive in the meantime.
Having a second tank meant you had options for how to play your hero. As Rein, you can always play sort of passive with your shield, throwing firestrikes to build shatter, keeping enemies away with your hammer. But then, if you have a Zarya, you can start getting much more aggressive with a bubble. With a Hog, you can focus less on killing squishies and more on keeping your team safe. With a Ball, you could capitalize on their chaos to chase down low health supports. With Orisa, you could play together to keep an area completely locked down.
Having a second tank also meant you didn't have to be the center of attention when it comes to hate and criticism, from either team. You could put the attention on yourself easily if you wanted to, shot-calling and leading the charge, but you certainly didn't need to, because that role could be put on anyone because tank heroes were just as strong as any other heroes, or even distributed across your whole role or team.
Another thing that was nice with 2 tanks was that tanks didn't need to be a wall of health bars on top of health bars. They had vulnerabilities that could be exploited if the enemy team played their cards right, which made it more fun to play as a tank as much as it made it fun to play against one.
I miss Overwatch 1, and I really miss 2/2/2.
I feel like one major thing that is missing is the power fantasy of being tanky. I love playing tanks because I love to feel powerful, like I can take a lot of hits and if I play well I get to live a lot of damage. But in Overwatch the teams "tankiness" really all comes from your supports. There are very few moments where I as a tank get to feel like I played well and therefore got to soak a lot of damage. This is sort of why I like Sigma the most because kinetic grasp and projected shield have the most opportunities for me to make a play that results in actually mitigated damage.
Tanks definitely have plenty of synergy with other team members that cover their weaknesses. But in 6v6 this wasn't an issue at all since that's generally what the off-tank role was. I'm one of the only people that liked 6v6 I guess. Playing tank was so much fun in 6v6 before CC took over the game.
Dunno if its just in europe. But for me i would 10 times rather play tank as my fill. But i get support 99% of the time if i choose all roles. I honestly like playing tank, cause if i have good supports, it just feels so good being the raid boss of the team. But it also feels like shit, when the supports are 20 kilometeres behind healing the dps window and hanzo, which have less than half the damage of the tank, where their team has a sombra, reaper and counter tank. Honestly i also like the countering, mostly because i can play 4 tanks Well enough to counter the enemy. And i really like the stall ability of tanks like sigma.
i’ve never noticed that when in turret mode bastion actually drops the shell casings
It seems like the tank role is reserved for an IGL of the group, especially for a 5-stacks since you need your team to do their job so you have to lead and ping who/where to go. I think this is also one of the reasons why tank is not fun to play for solo queuers, since you have to be in control of your team to obey what you need them to do. I've had games go one-sided wins as tank because I called out what is supposed to be done instead of relying on my dps/supp to play based on intuition. Very hard role to play
Under Rated my guy you should have more views and congrats on making GM from a fellow OW2 player that unfortunately did not play OW1.
Thanks for the kind words, they are very encouraging. I wish I got the chance to play OW1 as well, but I think one benefit to starting in OW2 is that I don't have all the bad memories that other creators talk about 😆
This is so true. In overwatch 1 I used to have fun just playing the game regardless of winning or losing. Overwatch 2 I only feel like I can have fun when I’m winning and top fragging and then I know that’s not fun for the enemy to be run over by their enemy tank (me). It’s just a lose lose now.
I’m really surprised this is a smaller channel. I would have thought this guy was really successful based on this video. Wishing you the best @Casual keep putting out the great content
ive only been playing OW2 for a few months now and i while I do play all 3 roles frequently, I primarily play Tank. This video PERFECTLY illustrates my experience so far
I'm a lifelong ow player since season 2, in my opinion, it's a combination of the last 2 factors, supports powercreep and the fundamentals of 5v5
The bunker comps in 6v6 were caused even back then by support powercreep
But because the frontlines were more apparent they got the blame (also with their problems, sigma was way too strong)
But right now we didn't solve the support problem, and we also added a new one making the tank matchups more predictable and flat
I strongly believe the solutions are needing down AoE heals, save CDs such as immortality Field or Cleanse
With the rising problem that the support playerbase would complain about it
Bunker was fun and then also fun to break apart
I’m a tank main and seriously struggle to rank up but anytime I play DPS or healing I completely outplay the enemy team, it’s absolutely heartbreaking because I don’t want to play anything else but tank and it makes me wonder WTH my DPS and healing is doing when I don’t play those roles since they’re so damn easy lmao 😭
If they are keeping 5v5 I think a better idea is to buff the tank passive like all things have reduced affect like damage or half time of any cc or negative effects like discord orb and anti heal to make the tank less effective to these very abusable and powerful abilities
I've been having this feeling with Overwatch 2 ever since the beta
I see a lot of players, left and right, talking about how the game is much better and all, stuff that I actually do agree, but then.. Why is it that the game feels so boring now?? It feels like an incomplete overwatch experience, it always felt like something is missing, and I believe it definetly has something to do with the tank changes mainly
Very respectable take. I for the most part agreed with everything and while you didn't offer a solution it's difficult to offer one with the hole blizzard has dug themselves into with this role.
As a tank main it saddens me that no matter my stats whether I have more elims/damage than the enemy tank or my dps or both I STILL get blamed for the loss and someone would say"tank diff" LOL so frustrating
Yep. A frequent one for sure. Very frustrating.
Tank is definitely not in a good place right now. I would like to see the healing on support maybe tuned first before doing any reworks. But if it turns out that doesn't help then perhaps adding a different tank passive might help? We could also borrow from rammatra's ability to transform as a solution. I think the way he gets to turn into a strong form for a bit feels good. If every tank had a sort of bezerker passive where they have extra damage and health, maybe increase in size too for a limited time might help. I understand the change from 2 tanks to 1 due to balancing issues, it was getting out of hand adding more tanks to OW1 and the way the game flows now is better but tank does feel terrible...
High key getting KarQ vibes,from the way Casual talks to diving into explanations. Excellent video. There’s some takes I don’t necessarily agree with, but overall you were pretty spot on
KarQ is goated, I'm truly humbled you think the quality is comparable. Glad you enjoyed the video.
Personally, my lack of fun of playing tank comes from the fact that we no longer have 6v6 very heavily, as my friend and I loved to dick around and play dumbass tank options while the other one was actually able to compensate for the fault of the other one’s goofiness. It’s not like that anymore, and when we did play serious, we made it to masters tank. I have some enjoyment playing characters like Ram and JQ, but I miss having more options and honestly just more targets to shoot at, like playing zarya rein, orisa hog, sigma rein, all of which weren’t insanely op so long as you weren’t like dogshit awful.
Idk man. Maybe one day tank will feel better for the majority of the player base
It might be my low rank, but I still love tank in OW2. I feel powerful and impactful.
As an ex-tank player who mainly plays dps and support, it’s so fun playing heroes that counter the 1 tank that is on the enemy team and melting them. Then switching to another counter once they switch
I literally love playing Tank, it’s so fun, the only reason I don’t play it is because of Orisa making all the fun characters harder, which it is a nice challenge but it’s annoying for every game to be like that.
If you are countered by orisa as any tank it is skill diff. Every tabk can be outplayed
@@racmanov You seem to have misread my comment. I don't lose to Orisa, i destroy her even with characters like Hog, what i'm saying is that it's annoying i have to use more skill than i have to just because Orisa exists, not to mention Orisa is still the easiest tank and if lower ranks were smarter they would climb faster because the only 3 viable options against an Orisa who knows how to cycle cooldowns are Sigma, Zarya, and Dva, and nobody knows how to play ANY of those but Zarya and that's hardly in the lower ranks.
And before you say, yes i play 2 of her counters, Sigma and Dva, Sigma is my best tank and i love Dva, but i don't wanna play them every game i want to play other tanks, that's my problem with Tank right now, since Orisa is hard meta you can't really play most of the funner tanks, not that i don't find Dva or Sigma fun but i know if i just play those 2 i'd get bored quickly so i have variety, i play literally every tank besides Zarya, Orisa, and Ball.
@@locosword3985 i played rein vs orisa in masters. No problem
@@racmanov Okay, good for you, you found a shitty tank player who got carried by Orisa.
Towards the end of OW1 I started to main Ball. I practiced like crazy and got good with him because he is easily the most fun to play. Now I barely even think about playing him because he just wasn't made for 5v5. I'm a support main now and tbh I really miss playing him frequently
Bring back 6v6
When I play Winston, and I get a clean dive team fight win, I'll see bastion or a reaper swap almost immediately lol.
The problem is 5v5. No one listened to me when I said this is exactly what would happen because they listened to their gut judgements.
The biggest proponent of 5v5 being the problem is probably Samito. To be honest, he's pretty convincing with his arguments.
If only there was something like, ummm, I dunno, like an off-tank or something.
Blizzard has cannibalized its own game and if Overwatch 2 is still around in a year, it's going to be what the majority of the community has always wanted, a 4v4 with Damage only roles, making it like every other competitive shooter.
Can we all agree 5v5 was a bad idea now? Dude just explained it perfectly.
5v5 was not a bad idea, making it free2play was
@@__________________________6247 how did free2play make tank feel worse...
Personally I feel like it's not the "tank role" or the "6v6 vs 5v5" factors themselves, it's more the fact that the older tanks in the game were MADE FOR 6v6 then forced into a 5v5 setting. The newer or reworked tanks are more like "generalized tanks with a gimmick" rather than full on "dive tank", "main tank", etc. Tank is like the main role in which I feel forced to need to learn every single one just so I can keep counter-playing, but at the same time staying as one tank the whole match to play the same way match after match just cuz I also like winning is boring as hell. I played OW1 a little and significantly preferred tank back then, while maining tank in another 5v5 FPS (Paladins) at the time. In OW2 I basically never actively choose to play tank, it's just to fill, which sucks to me personally cuz this is only game in which I'm almost fully a DMG main despite liking tank/support overall more. OW2 DMG is extremely enjoyable, the others...not so much. You have to do so much and as a very very casual gamer it's not very rewarding. It's very hard to pull off decent plays or saves, and I often feel more helpless without my team than when I'm playing support, and I'm not super bad at the role I don't think. Some tanks, like W.Ball, are also infuriating to play without a full team with comms which makes me feel like they strictly belong in 6v6 as off-tanks cuz it's so easy to run off and fail to distract the enemies, and your healers end up having to dive into danger to save your life (bless them, sorry I suck at the hamster Mercy), but they're also the most fun to play cuz I get to go wild with them, and yet it still feels pretty inflexible cuz I have 100 jobs and have to pull them all off in ONE SPECIFIC WAY that this particular tank is played. If I don't already know the methods, my only hopes are to switch to Orisa for the 6th tank game in a row, pray my team can carry me, or that the enemy team sucks more than I do. Makes trying to learn new characters for the role so...uncomfortable. I like playing tanks, I really do. Just...not in this game.
As someone who mained off tank they feel so terrible to play now, as there is no way to do what your heroes are literally designed to do (just peel/disrupt). It is difficult to contest the main tanks and so the only thing you can really do is to pray your team is good while you try to do what your hero is good at.
Also side note they added doomfist as a tank because they don't know how to balance him as a dps LOL
That's a pretty funny reason to be honest, although I can see why the character design of Doomfist makes him hard to balance as a squishy. He either jumps in and one shots everyone, or get's one-shotted if he's not tanky. I do feel for the off-tank mains who got left behind by 5v5. I kinda wish Blizzard would add 6v6 as an arcade mode so at least there was a way to experience the "original" version of the game.
doomfist does feel slightly better for both sides as a tank due to his larger hitbox (larger than mei even on release) so being a high HP tank is an easy solution. He would still feel better is there was another tank though since his main role is to disrupt the backline.
I did play some double tank in open queue with 1 dps and off tank felt more fun again so yeah hope they bring back 6v6 in some way
ive recently picked up DF as a tank and its made the role much move enjoyable, but i'm feeling the gut punch that is counter picking and having to switch off him makes it so not fun. I really do think having a main tank and off tank would make the role feel more fun again but im not too sure how the rest of the game would feel.
The duo tanks was so good rein zarya , monkey dva .... amazing way to play with your team and less toxicity.
The balance of 6v6 is far better than 5v5 and I want to also say supports are gigabuffed because the players who play the role are so morbidly shit that it hurts my soul.
no offense to the good supps, supports are meant to be background characters who cannot jail themselves away so easily and rather need to combat the flanker away, as most MOBAs do, supports in this state are so powerful that I even suggest to add another tank and REMOVE a support at this point if they do not wanna tweak numbers.
otherwise just bring 6v6 back and let the game take its course in that direction
Played during I think the first and second season of OW2 (first time playing OW in general) and Sigma MADE the game for me, favorite character by far but going from 2 to 1 tank really made tanks not fun. You feel more like a foot soldier rather than their front line defense. Kinda just be in front of everyone, hope they support at least somewhat, then they end up not, you get lasered by the entire enemy team and then you’re blamed for the whole team falling apart. They really do need to bring back 6v6 and jt would probably solve a lot of the issues with tank roles in fact it helps the other ones too, everyone’s talks about how playing support is just DBD (I played Moira it very much was that experience) well bring back second tank and support becomes so much more fun to play. Sucks to see the game go so downhill it was like the only game me and my gf could play cuz my laptop doesn’t run games very well except OW2
The 5v5 format is the problem from my point of view. Disregarding the highest levels of play, the 2nd tank option was merely there to relieve some of that pressure off of the main tank. I know it created problems like Goatz and shit but it honestly was just more fun casually. I don't think Overwatch is a game that who is completely capable of being a top e-sport game efficiently, so the casual route should be taken.
I played a ton of OW1, up to Master, played tournaments and scrims as an Off Tank.
I can assure you the tank role was terrible to play, especially Main Tank.
For 4 seasons of OW2 tank has been a blast to play. Fun, skillful, rewarding. The best has ever been.
The issue is not the tank role as a whole, but the addition of LW, Illiari and the buffs of supports made tank unbearable to play. There are too many ways for supports to not die that leaves tank in terrible positions or state that they will have to be saved by their supports.
Tune down the best supports and you will see that the game will be fun again for Tanks.
I think the issue is just having one tank, because in overwatch 1 you had another tank to make up for your tank's weaknesses, but now you don't have a second tank and you still have those weaknesses. If you can find someone to play open queue and do double tank you'll notice how much more fun and strong it feels.
All of characters did not translate very well in 5v5’s balancing. In 6v6, Zen was an okay supp due to his discord and harmony being pretty okay utilities + the fact there was 2 tanks. In 5v5? Just put discord on tank and you win every fight. Widow was the same too but in 5v5 she was dominant in 4 seasons due to her increased value in one shotting supps and DPS. So was sojourn, mercy, and roadhog even if he was a tank. Difference is they gutted roadhog to an absolute monster to a ult charging battery and a none existent tank while the others only got a slap on the wrist. This just throws everything out of proportion because it’s obvious the team doesn’t want to nerf supps so their underpowered, but at the same time look at tank, all their meant for is to just soak in the damage. My only advice is to just add 6v6 back. While it may be harder to balance, it’ll invite more players to play tank again and create way more team comps with different heroes, instead of just one comp that’ll dominate.
Side note, as a doomfist player(cringe, i know) if he was still a DPS he would be the WORST hero to play. You would practically punch nothing due to all the get out of jail free abilities and immortality abilities and essentially get no value, worse than the tanks even. Even if you did, we already know the blizzard will nerf him to the ground, making him even more unavailable. And hot take, doomfist wasn’t even that op in 6v6. Yes, he has a one shot, but it’s harder to pull that off due to his brawler play style. You have to risk everything to get one kill by rushing into the enemy team, and even then you might die. As opposed to widowmaker who sits across the map and deletes you. Not to mention he has bugs that fucks with his play style and he gets hard countered by sombra, widow(go figure), mercy, Mei, Cassidy flash bang and roadhog. Say what you will, but I cannot okay DPS doom when there’s a ow2 Cassidy with hindered on a ten second cooldown and 75% dmg reduction.
I feel like one of the biggest problem for tanks is really lack of options.
You like to play ranged poke? well as a DPS you can play Widow, Ashe, Hanzo, Pharah, etc., but as a tank you can play Orisa kinda, maybe Sigma?
You like to play hyper mobile? you can try Tracer, Genji, Sombra, even Echo on the DPS role. In the tank category you have... Hammond... Like him or die.
You like champions with deployables? DPS has Torbjorn, Symmetra, maybe even Mei and Ashe if you are feeling more liberal, but you can also play tank that has well... none.. Rammatra if you are stretching, but if you like deployables just don't play tank.
Most playstyles exist on multiple different forms in DPS you like X playstyle but don't like this one hero in that playstyle? You can play the others. Even support has somewhat of this liberty on a lesser extant. But tanks don't have that, you don't like how a champion plays but you like their archetype? too bad, that's all you are getting.
I am a Masters Support player, and have been since OW1. I do honestly think that healing is too high in OW2, though not entirely for the reasons you pointed out, although I do acknowledge that it can get difficult to burn a tank with 2 pockets.
No, my reason for thinking that healing is too high has to do with how it affects people's playstyles. I've noticed the most amount of success when people utilize cover and do not rely themselves on healing output. But as soon as healing becomes readily available, people play far more open with less cover usage, typically down main of most maps. This also makes me see a lot of people play many supports wrong, namely Kiriko and Illari. Kiriko is supposed to flank and either pick someone off, help a flanker pick someone off, or distract long enough for your team to capitalize off their distraction. While Illari is meant to poke from off-angles or enable other teammates to do so while she herself is elsewhere. Instead, I mainly see them both heal-bot like mad.
I think a lot of players see Kiriko as the "Suzu machine", hence the heal-bot habits. But you're right, Kiriko is a very strong diver/flanker, and she is very strong if played more like a Reaper rather than a Mercy.
Another way you can tell tank is the least popular role right now (at least at high sr) is by looking at the top500 leaderboard early in the season. Because you need 50 wins to show up, the “current” top 500 players that are shown often go all the way into low gm. On dps and support this only goes to about gm3, but on the tank leaderboard it will show players all the way down to masters.
I really enjoy tank currently. But some heroes like Winston and Reinhardt can be super rough if they have a bastion and ball is difficult to get value. I’m hoping the upcoming support and bastion nerfs improve things.
its one of the reasons i have started to make my own version of overwatch.
as someone that makes games and have played many games like this one. i can say there is countless ways to fix or work to fixing or making tank play more fun. i think some of the big problems of overwatch is well values. they do not and can not value things properly. that is why they had to take away so many of the CC. because they can't seem to understand how to value it. there is so many things they can put in to the game to add to the play of it all but they just choose dps heal dps and fat dps instead......
Whilst i agree with the fact that the tank role feels boring to play compared the other roles theres a couple of points i think ur missing. 1. Tanks have overall been the least popular role to play both in ow1 and 2. the popularity has shifted from meta to meta its not really a new phenomenon. 2. Tanks make space, which is kinda abstract and can be hard for unexperienced tank players to grasp which makes tank the role that byfar requires the most game knowledge . 3. Tanks rely on their team more than any other role, they NEED the dps to take the space that they create and they absolutely need their supports to keep them alive, basically if the team isnt good enough to capitalise on the space ur making u dont have an impact expect being a bullet spunge. 4. The only real difference between a tank and any other role is that they have more hp, which naturally makes them cooldown burners and damage soakers, in everygame. Its not an overwatch only problem. Otherwise good video 👍
what is bro yapping about🗣🗣💯💯💯💯
Thanks for adding your thoughts. I have heard that OW1 also had a popularity problem with tanks, and was one of the reasons they switched to 5v5 in the first place in order to fix the queue times. 100% agree with your points.
IMO as someone who mained tank it allll comes down to cc (again) tank numbers suffered from the insane amount of CC but they only removed half the CC, we might not have flashbang and other CC but we still have brig stun (in ult ofc) sleep dart, discord etc. except now we removed a tank so nothing actually changed because the amount of CC you experienced as a tank is effectively unchanged now that we only have one target for that cc effectively
Its so frustrating to watch them identify the problem but make the same mistakes over and over and over again. theres a reason zarya and orisa are usually meta in this game, orisa usually stands on top for her ability to just not die but they are meta/popular for the immunity to CC, orisa with her ability to just not die with fortify, zarya's ability to cleanse anti nade with her bubble etc.
I will always be an advocate for 6v6 but if we're keeping 5v5 (and we probably are I doubt the devs are willing to reverse course) we need to at least buff the tank passive to make CC abilities 50% less effective, including things like zen discord.
honestly devs kinda balanced themselves into a corner with this one, most of the problems with tank now are inherent to the 5v5 format but because of the 5v5 format tank has declined to a point where some solutions aren't feasible because of the tank population, because of OW2 reputation at this point I'm not even sure if 6v6 could work, the average person only knows OW for its many controversies at this point and wouldn't come back regardless of a 6v6 announcement .
Sad part is. Majority of matches are more determined by the performance of the DPS and Support. They hold more weight.
But people will wildly scream “TANK DIFF” when the tank has a better performance then the dps or support. People want to quickly and instantly blame the tank for there own mess ups even though the tank is majority of the time. On the same pace or out preforming the enemy tank.
DPS players are the most whiniest
Supports are the most privileged
Tanks are the most depressed
Another reason that tanks get so verbally abused is because its literally easier to see a tank's mistakes compared to the other roles. I can usually see the tank being out of position on my screen, but I can't see the Ana or Soldier taking bad positions because they might be off to the side or literally behind me. The two tanks are also usually the center of the teamfight so everybody is looking and judging, so after the teamfight is lost, everyone remembers the tank's mistakes even if they were minor mistakes.
Just discovered your videos the other day and I must say that your vids do make a lot of sense to me.
Answer 1: too much CC (somehow)
Answer 2: too much healing
Fix these two and we good.
I like your style of analysis and videomaking, no over dramatization or constant superlatives or over emphasizing emotional words to seem important. I don't play tank but found the video enjoyable anyway.
Wow, thanks for the kind words, I'm glad you enjoy the style
In terms of tank in ow1 vs ow2 it was just like the same thing you brought up about the counter picks for support/dps where the other tank could make up for the other tanks counter and even just bad gameplay. Honestly blizzard needs to bring back the experimental card again so we can test out patches instead of them just taking the top 20%ish of players/streamers to somewhat test a patch idea. A potential fix bliz could do for the tank role is change some things with the role passive or just outright all the passives on each tank to try to help the tanks in their weaker points. Another idea could be how healing is dealt to armor/shields. With armor they could reduce the healing based on the damage reduction of the armor(this might honestly be a horrible idea) but either way it'd be nice to see blizzard throw experimental out to get a better feel for how it would be
I think 5v5 is part of it, but for the reasons you explained already. Back when there were two tanks, both of them were still hyper specific, but you could prioritize who deals with what. This is to say, i still think it's a fatal flaw of the tank role to be so focused on specific things rather than being generalized. Tank has never felt better than DPS or even support, and this is probably why.
As someone who has played overarching 1 two tanks let the feeling of getting a cool down advantage feel noticeable and fun playing rein and see that our zarya has a lot more charge and pushing in on the enemy was awesome. Now on 5v5 getting a cool down advantage just doesn't feel good anymore because I just feel like OK I am ahead of the enemy on cooldowns hope my team wins this fight with the one more Firestrike we engage with.
Yeah there can a bit more "hoping" when you're playing the tank role, probably because most enemies are out of your natural effective range, and can disengage from your effective range at will, while you simultaneously aren't able to chase them down.
i was a diamond tank in ow 1, in ow2 my least playtime is the tank role... pretty much play support all day. me personally I want 6v6 back, but that wont happen, so healing needs a nerf in general, that would maybe fix some problems
Hard to say how an across the board healing nerf would affect the game, it would in theory make it easier to get kills on tank, but it would also mean that tanks are less tanky due to less healing.
Tank was 100% way more fun to play in OW1, so I strongly believe that the issue lies in the 5p team change
It seems like to me that we are having the same problem in OW1 with stuns and shields, but instead it's now sustain and immortality/healing. There should be less abilities with zero counter play (suzu, lamp, pull, etc.), and more abilities that give supports agency with trade-offs (sleep, anti nade, speed boost and wall ride).
What is lamp?
@@Murrayor Baptiste's Immortality Field.