Similar to the previous thread.
Except this one just blocks DoubleBarrier as an option.
One Barrier Tank per team:
As soon as one player on your team chooses a Barrier Tank, then Rein/Sigma/Orisa/Winston are greyed out and not selectable hero choices for the other teammate Tank player.
Altertnatively:
One Anchor Tank per team
As soon as one player on your team chooses an Anchor Tank, then Rein/Sigma/Orisa are greyed out and not selectable hero choices for the other teammate Tank player.
The whole point of this idea is to increase “realistic” tanking variety choices. So it would help to remove the bans, so that players can experience having all 4 barrier tanks as viable solobarrier options.
As well as all of the offtank combinations that pair with those barriertanks.
_
Overwatch is in a crisis where Barrier Tanks aren’t as desirable to play as they need to be.
One of the most direct ways to make a hero more desirable to play, is buffs.
So let’s buff Barrier Tanks.
Reinhardt
Rocket Hammer
Damage increased to 90, up from 75.
Sigma
Experimental Barrier
Barrier health increased to 1500, up from 900.
Hyper-Spheres
Direct Hit damage increased to 65, up from 55.
Orisa
Protective Barrier
Barrier health increased to 900, up from 600.
Fusion Driver
Damage increased to 13, up from 11.
Winston
Jump Pack
Cooldown reduced to 5sec, down from 6sec.
Landing damage increased to a maximum of 65 damage, up from 50.
Minimum landing damage increased to 30 damage, up from 1.
Reinhardt / Sigma / Orisa / Winston
Ultimate charge cost requirements would be increased proportional to the amount of increased damage they typically deal out.
This would require some playtesting to figure out what that looks like.
And there you have it. Strong incentive to play Barrier Tanks.
Without making it so that DoubleBarrier is too oppressive and reduces the gameplay of attacking the enemy team by too much.
Oh yeah, and one more thing:
Passive for all Tanks
Takes 50% less effect/duration from Knockback, Slows, Stuns, Freezes, Sleeps, Earthshatter
“Grapple” attacks like Chain Hook and Charge are excluded from this effect.
A lot of players hate crowd control. So giving them an option to avoid dealing with it as much as a Tank, would be a way to push players towards playing Tank more.
Its a shame that you have to suggest an ENTIRE TYPE OF TANK be locked down just so tanks can get the buffs they deserve.
No. Overwatch needs to be examined as a whole. Clearly these shield tanks are being creating because Overwatch should be a slower paced game. A more tactical FPS/Moba hybrid instead of “GUN GUN GUN, KILL KILL KILL”. However, Blizzard keeps going on about how OW should be faster paced while creating heroes that slow the game down as a whole.
So which is it? Because it clearly can’t be both. Personally, I think it should be more tactical and slower because if I want a FPS game with rapid deaths and extremely fast gunplay, I’ll go to Cod (with a smile).
Here’s something else that could work:
Two barriers are in front of you, you need to plan for ways to get past it or lose. The issue is that they refuse to buff characters that counter shields, so breaking the shields is tedious and stupid. They also refuse to buff non shield tanks to make them as important as the tanks with shields, so you have entire tanks that just don’t work.
I believe a good step would be starting with buffs to certain characters instead of knee jerk nerfs to the entire tank roster.
Stop. just stop.
Breaking up the already small Tank roster is not a good option.
One person clicks a hero and now 1/2 the roster is no longer available because you can’t handle double barrier when they are made of paper.
No barrier, one barrier or double barrier are all valid and should stay valid.
I’m kinda for this in some way tbh. I watched the most recent episode of “Plat chat” and they talked about something like it as well. We avoid double shields and we can buff MTs as well.
How about 1 sniper or histcan hero per match thereby making the DPS role less desirable for players.
Then when someone picks say Widow 1/2 the DPS roster disappears as options for the other DPS player.
Well the benefit of this idea over a lot of the other’s I’ve mentioned is that it.
Doesn’t change hero balance midgame.
People rarely want to play doublebarrier anyways unless the meta demands it.
So this wouldn’t really conflict with how people pick tanks, even though it is restricting choices somewhat.
It’s very easy to explain, and very obvious to the players. If needed have a tooltip on the hero select screen explaining it. Similar to that “Not enough Tanks” popup.
This. I wish the OP would stop suggesting things that break up the tank category based on kit design from either how people pick heroes or how the heroes function based on what other heroes are picked in the same category.
It’s unintuitive, creates unnecessary complications, and doesn’t take the big picture view of the game’s scope in mind.
The way I see it, there’s pretty much 3 options, in a “big picture” sense:
Limit barrier tanks to 1 per team
Neutralize the benefit of 2 barrier tanks
The game dies
What’s your preference?
Also I specifically made this thread because this is remarkably uncomplicated.
There’s no mechanics changes. And you have the potential to pick all the heroes in a match. Explaining “Why are these heroes greyed out” is as easy as a 1 sentence tooltip on the hero select screen.
And chances are if you already have a teammate on barrier tank, the other Tank player would naturally not pick a barrier tank anyways 90% of the time.
The way I see it, Tank balance for the sake of making Tank players happy is secondary.
The primary goal here is to pull in otherwise DPS players into the Tank role.
And a lot of barrier tanking to a vast majority of players means “almost always Reinhardt”.
Take half the DPS roster and call them “Main DPS”
So :
Echo
Mei
Widowmaker
Hanzo
Doomfist
Tracer
Soldier
Reaper
Then the other 1/2 of the roster is off DPS and you can only have one of each.
It’s the same as you are suggesting to butcher the tank hero suggestion is it not ?
Plus it will make DPS less desirable and make more play tank and support.
Well, people do it anyway. Very few times will people be okay with double off tank. Half my games people just acts stupid and does whatever. But I know it’s do-able. Even VSing double barrier with double off tanks. No one wants to accept alternatives. So it’s just easier to further lock configurations to allow buffing.
