Really high effort thread, you are a true passionate i love to see those ^^
I still don’t get the idea of these changes. Currently, double shield actually takes skill because both shields are weak, so the value the tanks bring is not just place shield and AFK, rather it comes from strong MOBA abilities, namely halt. This is why we don’t see double shield until masters+, it takes coordination to get value out of it. As soon as you buff these tanks’ shields you will see a huge amount of double shield in low ranks because that place shield and afk playstyle will get value especially when both teams aren’t coordinated enough to execute correct pathing to close the distance between them and the bunker.
Just before double shield we had a deathball meta with Rein DVA, the reason it was better was because it could just run over double shield. Double shield is still a terrible composition at close range when compared to dive or brawl even if the tanks have good sustain abilities. These changes to double shield may not change anything if the bunker can still spam out brawl comps before they actually get close, which is a product of high damage in the game. It won’t take a whole rework of the tank category to change this, give one buff to Lucio speed and deathball will probably be meta. But the more we make tanks shield bots, the worse it is for low ranks where shields provide more value than any other resource in the game and the less interactive playing tank is.
Well, you’re not wrong, low ranks may cheese it out with big barriers and ranged spam.
But I think most skill tiers have figured out the whole Speedboost 2 Tanks into close range gimmick.
But the majority of games would probably end up being SingleBarrier games.
And even two offtanks would stand a strong chance at wrecking doublebarrier of they can get into close range.
Might even see some Bastion usage, for the purpose of melting barriers.
Pharah and Junkrat would also clean house
Sigma/Rein deathball isn’t much of an improvement.
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I mean majority of games already are single barrier. The only issue with double barrier is not the fact that the shields stack, A rein shield is literally more HP than both a sigma and orisa shield, its that orisa and sigma are just bloated tanks, emphasis on sigma.
I would suggest a different path to all this, tanks with shields cannot also have utility. So by having two shield tanks, yes you negate a lot of damage but you also lose out on the utility of an off tank. For example, if you nerfed halt and buffed orisa shield or something it would probably kill double shield all together, remember, double shield is not enabled by shields but by both good shielding and even better utility. But by doing this you are taking the only fun part of Orisa’s kit and destroying it. You could go the other way with sigma, nerf or all together remove his shield and move him to a much more traditional off tank, which of course would have to be in line with the other off tanks.
Dive sees playtime in OWL and GM, brawl throughout low ranks, double shield dominates in probably masters+. The utility of sigma and orisa is the problem, which is why they can find high amounts of value with good coordination.
I agree and if anything this shows how bloated sigma’s kit is. His shield probably isn’t even very important in this comp yet his ability to output damage, have the best tank ultimate, a matrix and a stun makes his value comparable to a DVA or Zayra. That’s the real issue here.
About Sigma, the changes proposed by OP would reduce his utility:
-Accretion would no longer stun, just knockback.
-Grasp would not offer self shield hp, but recharges the barrier hp.
Although he would still output damage, have a barrier and that ult.
But he would have more of a clear easier to exploit weakness, that what’s clearly missing for Sigma right now.
I get that but the premise of the changes is not about reducing the utility of the characters and makes meaningless changes that make double shield stronger at lower ranks and don’t actually affect why they are strong at high ranks. So the removal of slow on halt, and those changes to sigma are examples of what I am talking about, but the premise of the OP isn’t.
Sorry, I still don’t get why you say the OP promise would not work. Could you elaborate?
Even Fortify and Orisa’s armor would be nerfed against close ranged heroes with these changes.
These tanks would still have barriers, would still spam, but with easier to exploit weaknesses that is accessing them in close range, either with mobility or with a single moving barrier to get close.
I wanna understand what you’re thinking about why this wouldn’t work.
you just blanket buffed almost all tanks.
You want tanks to be weak in close range but you remove sigma’s self damage
You want less barriers but you buffed all of them.
Honestly it feels like you are missing what makes tank powerful
The idea is that anchor tanks like Orisa and Sigma should be weak at close range; they need to be good at poking and bad at brawling. My argument is that they are. In close range brawl runs over double shield and dive does too. It only took a few minor changes to change the meta from deathball with Rein DVA to double shield, its not like it is significantly better than the alternative. The issue is that damage is too high and speed boost isn’t what is used to be, making brawl comps overall just lose out to double shield comps. Double shield already has a weakness at close ranges, which is why at low ranks it is rarely played because the coordination to get it to work is greater than a Rein just walking forward with his team behind him and running the bunker over.
Thats another issue I have, double shield is not strong because its shields are, its because sigma and orisa’s utility and poke capabilities are better than any other tank. The free value from placing a shield down and afk’ing behind it was what made double shield strong in low ranks, with shields nerfed the value is now shifted more to getting value from halts and other pieces of utility (hence why its harder to play at low ranks). By buffing shields, it makes this place shield down and afk playstyle of tanks get a lot of value especially at low ranks, and it is not interactive to play or play against. You might inadvertently create a double shield meta for low ranks which isn’t played at high ranks.
The changes are missing the point, Orisa and Sigma provide the shielding of a main tank and the utility of an off tank. Sigma especially is just fundamentally designed poorly. Ideally, a main tank can create space, hold ground, absorb cooldowns and damage whilst an off tank has unique abilities to help provide utility, like a stun, halt, matrix, etc. We have a main tank (Orisa) with the best ability in the game (halt). That sort of ability should really be on an off tank or it should not be as strong as it is in its current state. We have a tank (Sigma) with the best shield in the game, a stun, a matrix that provides extra health, and the best damage in the tank category. Why would you ever need an off tank, if the utility provided by two main tanks is so high. This is why we saw a lot of Rein Sigma over Rein DVA, because the utility of sigma is enough to rival even that of DVA.
Unfortunately, this lends itself to main tanks feeling unrewarding to play, if they can’t provide solid utility they become shield bots effectively. However, I think there is a balance somewhere, if you look at Rein he is a pretty one dimensional character but he does feel rewarding to play at least sometimes. That should be the baseline for main tanks, a decent shield or form of protection, not too much utility but some playmaking potential (charge and shatter) and some fun parts of their kit. And off tanks should have more utility, no shield and if you keep the level of interactivity they currently I think they would be in a good state.
I don’t really get the appeal of these changes. I was a tank player exclusively but have now switched to DPS. The thing that makes OW boring in too many games are barriers. Of course, double barrier specifically. You feel like you spend the whole game shooting them, especially with Rein+Sig. It is soooo tedious. Yes you can try to flank or get off angles but with 2 movable barriers this becomes difficult so you end up shooting barriers no matter what you do.
Your suggestions seem to be to buff barriers. I would propose leaving Sig and Orisa barriers as they are and nerfing Rein down to 1400 or even 1200 and making his barrier smaller. Not a tiny barrier but a size that does not completely fill chokes as it does now.
Zarya is fine where she is and currently has the highest survivability of any tank (although it can be map dependent - but certainly of any off-tank). Buffing the other tanks, specifically Dva, Hog and Winston up to her survivability state would be a good starting place.
But as is always pointed out, the sheer volume of damage in the game is just too high. Some team comps are horrible to play against because of the volume of damage they output even when you have shields. Some heroes, like Junk and Pharah, do far too much damage for the effort/risk required (junk more so than pharah as he spams chokes from behind cover).
If they won’t sort the damage and go with increasing barrier HP like you are suggesting I don’t think it will improve the game at all. It may make tanking more fun but overall the game will suffer. I don’t agree with your suggestion this would lead to less leavers due to the changes than the queue times. I think the higher survivabilty of all tanks would lead to lots of DPS leaving.
Ok, what I understood from your reply was what you said about making barrier tanks more of shield bots, because if you nerf what they provide, what’s left for them? It would be just nerfs overall, not a power-shift.
I could say more, but I’m at work, sorry, let me get a spare time to type more later.
I think people are wrong if they think the solution to dealing with DoubleBarrier is to just shoot the barriers.
You’re never going to have enough time to do that, unless your team is also running DoubleBarrier.
If you look at the Doom/Reaper or Mei/Reaper metas those were all about walking past the barriers.
Really it doesn’t matter how strong the barriers are, if you walk past them.
That said, the stronger barriers allows for SingleBarrier to be useful, with 3-4 Tanks to pick from, instead of just Reinhardt.
And you have to replace DoubleBarrier with something, not just make it weaker.
The simple answer is that Rein should never be weak in close range; I don’t even know how you’d play a Reinhardt that can’t participate, or struggles to participate, in close range matches considering he already gets blown away by Mcree, Reaper, Bastion, Pharah, Sombra, Hanzo, Genji, Ashe, Symmetra, and so on.
I’ve said this before, but you really don’t seem to understand the point of tanks.
I’m going to ask you one simple question: How do you expect to play Reinhardt at close range if you have worse defenses? Which, even though you give him more damage resistance and shields, he’ll still have worse defenses up close because that’s how his character works.
Now, I’m expecting you to say “did you even read my post”, but you might not like the answer to that question:
Yes. I did.
I’ll focus on Reinhardt, since that’s who I play.
If Reinhardt is a tank that’s made to get his team to close range fights, what happens after he completed that goal? He’s weak to close range fights, so he’d be pushing his team to his weakness?
Are you expecting his team to cover for his weakness? Because that’s not going to happen (at least, not in any mode that isn’t comp).
Are you expecting his bigger shield to somehow protect him in close range? What happens when the enemy moves past it? He’s weak to close range engagements, so that would mean every close range fight is slanted against him. Not much of a tank, huh?
Beyond that, Reinhardt is already debatably weak to close range fights. He dies astonishingly fast when the enemy is taking advantage of his huge hitbox/critbox. So what you suggests would be making him even weaker to close range fights? For what?
More health and defenses that the enemy will break through? As Rein, the last thing you want to do is rely on your shield in close range engagements because the enemy with both walk through and around it.
Ok, I’ll confess that I’ve been holding this last part of my argument back because its funny to me
Are you actually suggesting trying to make Fire Strike a close range tool? Because, if so, that’ll never happen unless you fundamentally change firestrike into a new move.
Fire strike, by nature, is a move that you need to either wait until the enemy is grouped up, or lead the shot to make it matter. It can work in close range, but increasing the speed isn’t going to matter. Especially with its cooldown.
Fire strike will not work as a projectile that Reinhardt can rely mainly on in a close range fight. But you admit you want to make him weak to close range fights, so maybe that checks out.
In the end, your changes accomplish one thing: Thicker shields and more of Reinhardt holding his shield while being even worse at close range. That doesn’t sound good to me, but what to I know about the character I mainly play. Maybe people on the forums will like shooting at a barrier more often, who knows.
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I’m saying that increased projectile speed isn’t useful at close range.
The whole idea is that you should be relying on an OffTank or some other teammate to peel for you.
And if that’s not enough, maybe increase his hammer damage up to 85.
Which sounds like your trying to make it a close range tool. I already said how that’s just not going to work unless you completely change FS.
…No?
I’m saying that instead of FireStrike:
Projectile speed : 25 meters per second
They buff it to
Projectile speed : 30 meters per second
By getting Peels from his offtank, damage dealers, and healers.
Or not allowing enemies to get within range of literally shoving a shotgun through his barrier.
The whole idea is that having 2 AnchorTanks should have a fundamental weakness, that’s fixed by having an offtank.
I.e. Rein Zarya, would lean more heavily on the Zarya to enable the Rein
That said, even if Rein gets weaker at close range, he’d still be better than other AnchorTanks. And there would be no alternative AnchorTank that is stronger.
Might mean Winston gives him more competition, but Winston should have been doing that years ago.
Also gives more room for DoubleOffTank to function.
In general though, if it means a moderate reduction in Reinhardt pickrate, that’s probably healthy for the game. Given how he’s got such a massive pickrate.
He could lose a Third of his pickrate and still be fine.
So again, From your post what I understood was: These new barrier Tanks (Sigma and Orisa) provide some other utilities else than their barriers and that’s what makes them better than using off-tanks. Their utilities else should be nerfed, but then what else is left for them? They become barrier bots. That seems too drastic. Winston can have a barrier and attack at the same time and you don’t see people complaining that much about it.
OP is trying to nerf their utilities while keeping their ranged attacks. Isn’t that enough to make them more close to the level of decision making Winston has? Isn’t it making them rely more on off-tanks for utilities, so they can survive in a close range fight at least?
I agree that Sigma is too flexible and applicable, I like to say that he a tank with hard to exploit weaknesses because he has way less trade offs to offer value than the other tanks, but that’s the thing, he needs more trade offs and he needs some vulnerability more easy to exploit.
If you can’t anti nade roadhog he becomes invincible. It’s the only counterplay take a breather has.
Glad to see you still trying to astroturf this though. Mei/doomfist as tanks are my. Most despised forum memes.
I don’t think you understand what I mean when I say utility. Utility is an ability or part of a character’s kit that can be used to get some sort of value. The higher the value is the better the utility is. Hence why I wouldn’t consider Winston shooting and shielding as amazing utility whereas halt is possibly the best utility in the game. Utility is what makes comps good at high ranks; halt is the only reason Orisa is played and that combined with the utility that sigma brings is what makes double shield effective. It has nothing to do with the actual shields. And as we know, double shield is only played at higher ranks, therefore, it is the problem of the utility not the shields or survivability.
The premise of the OP is to make shields stronger, increase ranged poke and reduce survivability. Basically make them worse at close range. However, they already are terrible at close range when compared to dive or brawl so these nerfs are only reinforcing that form of counterplay. If the divers get stopped by cc or the brawlers get spammed out before they get close to the bunker then what has really changed here. If double shield was strong at low ranks I would argue this is probably a good change, but remember its not. Orisa’s halt, sigma’s rock and matrix, both tank’s damage capabilities and ultimates get a lot of value when you play them well. If you want double shield to not be meta now, or ever again, there needs to be some incentive to actually play an off tank. Which means the utility of an off tank should be greater than a main tank. It doesn’t mean main tanks can’t have any utility, they just need to have less than off tanks. Like rein for example, he can carry games with his ultimate and charge but he doesn’t provide the team utility that you need an off tank for, hence why DVA and Sigma are played with him a lot in OWL.