[✅] Minimalist DoubleBarrier fixes

General Discussion
1

I’ve come up with a lot of ideas off how to unseat DoubleBarrier from power, without sabotaging SingleBarrier.

In short, cutting through two barriers at medium or long range is always gonna suck. So the counter to DoubleBarrier needs to be close range.
And here’s some minimalist changes how to get there:

  • Armor - Blocks 20% of damage. Counts towards the 50% damage resistance cap.
  • Mei - Moved to Tank Role. Icewall cooldown reduced back to 10sec.

Yeah that’s all of it. You can stop reading now if you want to, and just reply.

Otherwise let’s expand those details:

Armor:

  • Reduces enemy damage by 20%.
  • This applies to all damage types.
  • This also contributes to the 50% Damage Reduction maximum cap applied to Nanoboost, Fortify, TakeABreather, Ironclad.

Lots of implications here, but basically any damage below 25 per attack gets stronger, and damage above 25 per shot gets weaker. Largely favors close range attacks.

If any hero is too vulnerable from these changes, just adjust their hp/armor ratio, or increase their health.

The damage resistance cap is new, but honestly it’s kinda weird having heroes that can block 75% of incoming damage from close range attacks. I.e. Old-Fortified-Orisa or Nano-Rein.

Mei

  • Role: Moved to a Tank Role
  • Icewall: Cooldown reverted back to 10 seconds, down from 13.

It would prevent Mei from being used as an anti-Dive bodyguard for DoubleBarrier.
It would also prevent Mei/Reaper Rush comps, which were frequently run as DoubleBarrier.
And her Wall is really her biggest Tanking ability, and it was fine for a long long time at 10seconds.

Results

These three changes greatly shift the meta towards closer range fights, instead of mid-range standoff fights behind an excessive amount of barriers.
Which means more Dive comps, and also some speedboosted Deathball comps.
But a lot less DoubleBarrier comps.

And yes, I got a lot more changes in mind than these ones. But it would set the direction of the meta to move past DoubleBarrier.

2 Likes
2

Rein R.I.P.

3

I mean, it’s it really that hard to put a discord on a Rein that uses his Firestrike?

4

Is anything else going to be done to Mei? She would be dumpstered if that was all she got as a Tank. Obviously health buffs, but 400 hp Mei with 10 second wall would still be a waste of a tank slot. You cant really give her armor or more than 400 hp either, because it doesnt make sense for her character design. The other higher health tanks are gigantic characters and Mei is pretty small.

1 Like
5

I figure Mei is controversial, and this would be a good setup for giving her future buffs.

She’s basically unable to get buffs if she stays DPS.

And there’s large overall meta benefits purely from denying her usage in DoubleBarrier and Mei/Reaper.

And in the meantime, Mei players can enjoy those sweet 30sec queue times.

1 Like
6

Fair enough, but at least SOMETHING should be added to her initial kit, knowing Blizzard they would just put her on the to-buff list and never get around to it. Plus Mei players playing her during her initial 10 second wall only state would be pretty much throwing games hard.

7

I mean, I got a way more specific implementation in mind, but I was trying to make this the “minimalist” approach thread.

[✅] Expanded DoubleBarrier fixes

1 Like
8

I think I’ve had this discussion with you before, but a flat 20% damage reduction on armor is just not gonna work. That isn’t and hasn’t been what armor’s intended purpose is to be, which is why armor operates the way it has. One slither of armor above normal HP should not remove that much damage. Armor has always been intended to reduce scratch damage from sustained sources so that a Bastion or Soldier wouldn’t instantly drill through Rein the moment his shield went down, while at the same time not removing a fifth of Widowmaker’s headshot damage or one of Rein’s pins. A flat damage reduction like this would not feel right for a lot of heroes in a lot of interactions, and simply saying “we’d need to change the health-armor ratio of every relevant hero” is underplaying how much work that’d take, and how many non-armor focused interactions also get wrapped up in these HP changes.

I really don’t see how Discord bypassing barriers makes double barrier much weaker. I can’t imagine this changing much other than some Rein interactions and making Discord more obnoxious. If heroes are more at risk of taking 30% extra damage, I can’t help but think that people would just… rely more on barriers to reduce getting hit while Discorded? I don’t see this dampening double barrier at all, it would just increase frustrations towards the ability since being Discorded is a pretty crippling debuff to have thrown at you auto-aimed with no cooldown.

I’ve also got to mention, I don’t think ushering in close-ranged fights is going to hurt double barrier. I mean, when double barrier was at its most meta peak, Reaper and Mei were the go-to DPS picks – the definition close-ranged heroes. There’s more that influences this kind of meta than just the broad range from which damage comes from, I don’t think this can be that strong of a philosophy towards weakening double barrier comps when double barrier comps have proven adaptable to it. More precise changes would need to be made with considerations towards specific hero interactions if you really want double barrier to be “stopped” but, on the other hand, I’m hardpressed to believe double barriers are too outrageous right now, or that the fundamental counters aren’t capable of being made more applicable. I don’t think radical changes are very necessary, though admittedly only the armor change you listed is really that radical.

1 Like
9

Well, you surely aren’t going to defeat DoubleBarrier at medium or long range, so close range it is.
And I think we have moved a bit beyond what armor was intended to do back in 2016.

And Mei/Reaper with DoubleBarrier wouldn’t be possible. Mei in particular was very good at keeping flankers off of DoubleBarrier Tanks, but by moving her to the Tank role, it blocks that.

But even if we’re talking about Reaper/Doomfist. The whole idea was that you needed DPS threats that could ignore the barrier and walk right past it.

10

Why couldn’t we theorize changes to improve medium and long distances versus barriers, exactly? Like, right off the top of my head, what if all attacks on barriers did full base damage, regardless of damage falloff? That’s a much simpler change that plainly improves this exact interaction – maybe not a full solution, but it’s a whole branch of ideas to work with, and I think that’s a lot less drastic to start from than reworking the entire structure and value of armor health.

At least in my opinion, I think the only thing that will make double barrier less desirable is if there was a greater punishment for overly relying on barriers. I’d suggest that barriers need more counterplay specific to them, so that if you do decide to run double barriers, you risk having them be overwhelmed and thus you’d lose out on other tank utility you could be relying on. This would keep other interactions sustained – boosting damage only against barriers won’t mess up damage interactions between heroes themselves – and opens up lots of avenues for exploring how to adjust heroes with this new quality.

Since it’s on topic, my latest brain tumor comes from thinking too hard about boosted damage and how it could effect barriers. For example, if damage boosts were 50% more effective when damaging barriers, then damage boost as a mechanic just got a whole new level of utility, without disrupting other interactions. Barriers would have to look out for a lot more damage, and thus other sources of tanking like damage reduction or dive tanking could see greater value. Mercy in particular would become a sort of anti-barrier support, which to mean sounds right up her alley as a semi-pacifist, since her damage boost would go up to 45% when her target is hitting barriers. Ults like Supercharger and Amp Matrix would also crush barriers; 75% and 150% boosts against barriers respectively, which makes them exceptional at tearing through a fortified defense when you really need to.

But, that’s more of a tangent. At the very least, I think when it comes to the double barrier problem, it’s a weird issue to balance while also considering wider hero interactions. Hence why I think the best way to balance barriers is just add more mechanics to interact with them, giving players more options in how to address them. Discord going through barriers or reworking all armor health, this won’t really effect barriers as much as it does usher in a whole new environment to try and conceptualize altogether.

In the end I think what people dislike most about barriers is that they have to shoot them, and keep shooting them. Barriers play an important part in Overwatch, they definitely should be reliable in the areas they’re meant to be, so I think giving players more dynamic options so that shooting shields is more engaging or feels less like a chore is how barriers actually get fixed into a healthy state. Double barrier should be viable in some places, but it should also have glaring weaknesses to make up for such blunt advantages.

11

Doesn’t work, because it would cut through SingleBarrier like butter, and so you’d still be stuck with DoubleBarrier

12

Man I can already see the discord changes would be too much.

Mercy Damage boost a firestrike, then damage boost a Genji Dash, against discorded target, and it’d be an insane amount of burst damage.

Add in a Genji melee and right click.

Oh well.

I’ll just put it down here.

Zenyatta:

Discord:

  • Can target enemies behind enemy barriers.

Yes they tried this before, during the peak of Dive meta. (March 8th 2017)
Wasn’t a good fit then, because it was a Dive buff. During the peak of Dive meta.

But it would probably be a great fit now, if they are trying to make Dive be the meta, instead of DoubleBarrier.

1 Like
13

If rein use firestrike vs dzen R.I.P.

14

I was leaning more towards Pharahmercy and Ball+discord as Ball can just harass the hitscan trying to take care of pharahmercy while Zen calls out targets for pharahmercy to oneshot. Im going for as little teamplay as possible and maximum braindeadness here. Ball doesnt have to communicate whatsoever, just a “Yo Ball, focus dps only” at the start of the match and the Ball plauer is set for the match. Mercy doesnt have to do much either, just pocket Pharah. The only teamplay required is the Zen calling out discord and Pharah shooting them here.

15

Oh well, I like the armor change aspect.

And it seems a lot more likely now that devs are gonna do something armor now that brig has no armor on her repair pack

1 Like
16

I don’t think that’d be the conclusion necessarily. This only adds a bit of extra, situational damage to barriers that would add up more only in situations where there’s lots of barriers to be shooting. Double barrier comps would get whittled down from afar, where a single barrier comp would have other tank utility – like, say, a Winston to dive whoever is out there shooting the barrier from long distance.

Honestly though it’s hard to say how exactly any of these changes would unfold due to the nature and importance of barriers. If barriers are good, then you’d want a lot of them because they’re so good; if barriers are bad, then you’d want a lot of them because you need that reliance.

17

Oh yeah, the Armor change is actually really good and helpful for new players too.

18

If Mei would get changed, here’s some stuff I would put on her

HP: Increased to 350 with 100 of it being armor (400 is too much for a model size like her)

Secondary Fire: Either Damage Falloff added or damage decreased to 65

Ice Wall: 10 seconds

Cryo: 11 seconds and duration 3 seconds (Healing stays the same so healing per second increases from ~38 to 50)

Blizzard: Reverted to 5 sec and Ult cost decreased by 10%