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.
Now let’s talk Nerfs.
These types of buffs would be overwhelming if there were two barrier tanks on the same team. So let’s fix that.
Reinhardt
Barrier Field
When two Barrier Tanks are on the same team, barrier regeneration is reduced.
Regeneration speed temporarily reduced to 125 barrier health per second, down from 200.
Sigma
Experimental Barrier
When two Barrier Tanks are on the same team, barrier regeneration is reduced.
Regeneration speed temporarily reduced to 100 barrier health per second, down from 160.
Orisa
Protective Barrier
When two Barrier Tanks are on the same team, barrier coodown speed is reduced.
Cooldown temporarily increased to 13 seconds, changed from 8 seconds.
Actively counting cooldowns are not changed, until they reset.
Winston
Barrier Projector
When two Barrier Tanks are on the same team, barrier coodown speed is reduced.
Cooldown temporarily increased to 20 seconds, changed from 13 seconds.
Actively counting cooldowns are not changed, until they reset.
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.
The tanks would do so much damage. Even in the 1-3-2 role card rein still couldn’t kill a 200 hp hero in two hits like this. If a winston jumps on you you’re dead, the Sigma combo would be back.
Honestly it would be a very wonky thing to try and deal with. Not intuitive at all with the little to no in game help to try and teach people about the game in OW. I mean heck how many people didn’t even know the payload healed people for years?
I think the best method is sadly to nerf the heck out of shield tank DMG. Let them have a barrier, make it hard to destroy. Their job is to stay alive and protect their team. The trade off is they aren’t very good at killing things. This means having one shield tank is a good idea, having two however would drastically hurt your teams ability to kill things.
I think the best example is Reinhart himself. He has an amazing shield, but he can’t fire/swing while it’s up. It’s a trade off between defense and offense. Making all shield tanks like that in some way is probably the best route. But frankly it’s been almost 4 years, a bit too late to bother trying to actually balance the game.
The fundamental problem is that barrier tanks aren’t interesting enough to DPS players.
You don’t entice Damage players to play Barrier Tank, by buffing up “Holding up a blue rectangle”.
DPS players want to hurt things. So let’s let them do that on Barrier Tanks.
Way I see it, there’s going to need to be something “wonky” to deal with how you buff BarrierTanks without making doublebarrier too strong.
So it might as well be something that’s largely invisible, and not an eyesore.
There are a lot of unusual mechanics in this game, so we might as well use one to fix the #1 problem this game is facing right now.
Especially since, for the half of the playerbase below Platinum, the chances of getting DoubleBarrier are largely reduced.
And for Platinum and above, they can deal with complexity a lot better.
Worst comes to worst, they put some sort of graphic near the barrier HP or barrier cooldown that shows a slowdown debuff is in effect.
I think the game is in a spot where they can start balancing heroes around certain maps rather than making the heroes op or gutting them in a cyclical fashion. Some maps can still kinda work with bunker. Some maps are great for dive. Maybe they should start releasing or redesigning maps with certain playstyles in mind.
I still don’t like the idea of a teammate’s selection directly altering others’ characters, OP. With the disclaimer out of the way: I’d leave out the damage buffs to Sigma and Orisa, at least in a first draft. I can’t speak for Rein and Winston, although my instinct would be to leave Winston out of it altogether until Rein, Orisa and Sigma are sorted.
After the damage revert, I don’t feel as though killing power is lacking as Orisa. Although I haven’t played much as a tank, because my barrier still evaporates after so much as a sneeze. It’s nice to be able to protect the team, you know?
While that trade-off’s probably a good idea, it’s also a reason I don’t like playing as Rein. If Orisa can’t fire from behind her own barrier then it’s also going to feel naff to play, even if it is better for the game, balancing-wise (if Orisa were to get a re-buffed barrier).
I don’t think that ramping up damage is necessarily a draw for players. It’s hard to be certain because 132 was only up for a week (sigh), but both Hog and Zarya seemed popular in that mode despite having their max DPS lowered, even as the novelty wore off. I myself enjoyed playing 132 Sigma and Orisa more, even though they didn’t even get fully reverted to RQ patch status, because of their stronger barriers.
If you want to make Orisa more appealing, I say you should alter her projectile speed and then lower her damage per bullet at such a rate that she has lower overall DPS, but more reliable DPS. Probably lower her clip size, too, and tweak reload speed as needed. I think her gun would be more satisfactory if it felt like it didn’t lag, and if it wasn’t spammy. A gun can carry a character: look at McCree, a guy with only memeroll and Flashbang, yet he’s enormously popular because of his six-shooter.
I think they just overnerfed the barriers a little but the bigger problem is lied in the other tanks utilities as well.
Why picking a small weak bubble or a short time based shield when you can pick powerful shield that blocks almost everything…
I think given the huge queue times in 1-3-2 for the Tank Role, you can see that people like having power in the Tanking role.
If it doesn’t work, oh well. But it doesn’t mean they shouldn’t try to get things to work.
Making the small number of Tank players play more would be kinda small compared to pulling in more DPS players.
I figure with 2 barrier tanks you can offset that a lot. And worst comes to worst, DPS will get a lot less aggro about it, if their queue times are dropped in half.
And for Competitive. I figure Tanks that throw like this, will probably just fall in rank, and eventually you’ll come to a new baseline.