A large part of the problem right now in Overwatch is:
Queue times are long because there’s not enough Tanks.
A lot of DPS players would gladly go Tank, if it was an offtank, but they feel like they’d get a lot of negative social complaints if you ended up with two offtanks.
Part of the reason barrier tank isn’t interesting enough is that it’s basically “Reinhardt or nothing” for a vast majority of the ladder.
Simultaneously, you also have the problem of:
A. Having 1 barrier tank is almost mandatory for winning at above average skill tiers.
B. Too many barrier tanks is problematic. So they can’t be really strong when you have two of them.
C. The current balance for barrier tanks, basically means “Reinhardt or nothing”.
Here’s a solution to fix those two issues.
When you have two Barrier Tanks:
Reinhardt: 200 ShieldHP/sec regen after 2 seconds having it down.
Sigma: 120 ShieldHP/sec regen after 2 seconds having it down.
Orisa: 10sec Barrier cooldown.
Winston 13sec Barrier cooldown.
The above stats are exactly as it is now.
When you have one Barrier Tank:
Reinhardt: 200 ShieldHP/sec regen after 2 seconds having it down.
Sigma: 210 ShieldHP/sec regen after 1 second having it down.
Orisa: 6sec Barrier cooldown.
Winston 10sec Barrier cooldown.
When only one barrier tank is present. Non-Reinhardt Tanks are buffed to be as good as solo-barrier Reinhardt. (Numbers could use a bit of playtesting).
When you have zero barrier tanks
Brigitte: 400 ShieldHP/sec regen after 2 seconds having it down, up from 100.
Extra bonus, that gives Healers the ability to do something about having two tanks that refuse to play a barrier tank.
Overall, the goal is to make it so that “Barrier Tanks” doesn’t mean “Only a Reinhardt”. With the other barrier tanks being relegated to offtanks or not used at all.
Note, Reith thought up the guidelines on how to implement this balance change.
Interesting, but how would this be implemented in such a way that cooldowns can dynamically be adjusted in real time? I assume large banners would alert relevant players about changes to their stats and cooldowns, but would there be a grace period once a second Barrier tank is switched in or out?
Seems awkward to immediately jump from 6s to 10s without warning in the middle of a fight bc your other tank swapped to Barrier too in order to resist hitscans.
They could take a couple approaches to the cooldowns changes. They could adjust it in real time.
Or make it so that it only switches between one or the other after the cooldown has refreshed.
Once again, this is a terrible idea, I feel. It’s an active punishment for playing the heroes people want to play, and if this switch is done in the middle of a team fight, instantly disadvantages the tank actively alive and protecting their team when the idea was to bring out something with more defense.
Honestly, just the thought of having a mechanic that actively messes with my barrier health/cooldowns just because another team mate chose a shield tank/Brigitte is a little anxiety inducing. Like, imagine if you have a deranker or someone trying to throw in the tank spot, or just somebody who’s really bad as main tank?
Might as well be. It’s the only thing the forums suggest: make barriers go back to being OP but only if you have 1 of them. AKA they want Brigitte-style raid boss overpowered stats.
I don’t like it. It seems like a great way to get Sigma, Orisa, and Winston players to start flaming Rein players, and each other. Imagine you pick Sigma, and then your fellow tank picks another barrier. Even worse, imagine they swapped from an off-tank to a barrier tank. It’d be hard not to see that as that player nerfing you mid-game.
What we have to do is break down why barrier tanks are being played so much to begin with. Is it a problem of off tanks not doing enough damage, or having enough utility? If two tanks are essentially the same, except one has a barrier and the other doesn’t, then it’s a no brainer that you pick the one with the barrier. Why wouldn’t you want an extra tool at your disposal? If this is the case, we should buff the off-tanks until they’re more attractive in certain respects.
Or are barriers necessary in reaction to the current state of the game? I’d argue yes on this point. Burst damage currently punishes players very harshly for simply existing in the enemy’s LoS. At the moment, barriers are the most reliable counterplay. We should either tweak burst damage heroes a bit to cut down on how frequently they can one-shot enemies, or we should buff the heroes who are stronger against double barrier comps.
It just seems weird to me to consider the barriers themselves to be the problem. Almost all of them have seen an HP reduction recently, and 2-2-2 placed a hard cap on how many barriers you could run. You’d expect those changes to decrease the effectiveness of barrier heavy comps, not increase it.
the reason there arent more tank players is because you get countered so hard and theres nothing you can do about it.
blizzard gave the support class free counters that are easier to play than flankers. but tanks counters are all of the easiest DPS and none of the tanks counter mei. Well, Orisa did; its the only reason she was meta. But they murdered her.
because blizzard only cares about mercy mains. And mei is one of the mercy main heroes. So she is destined to be broken. Just like all of the other mercy main heroes have been broken for years.
Either way people will always complain. I once posted a thread about making Zarya get 3 bubbles to get her closer to a Main Tank, most of the answers disliked the idea.
I personally would like to see the burst frequency to be reduced, but that’s a major job into lots of changes for OW, I doubt Devs are gonna take this path, making a lot of DPS players complaining why their heroes are getting nerfed and stuff.
What? No way, they nerfed her to 50 hps, they nerfed her Rez and they don’t care to revert despite all of the feedback and how can you say they only care for her players? Sorry, I don’t see logic in this argument.
How did you get "blizzard only cares about mercy mains " from the entire history of notoriously ignoring the fan base then proceeding with nerfing her for both her problems and othe characters problem?
Maybe the problem is that in a game about swapping to counter comps/characters blizzard left 2 roles out of the equation and is now playing catchup. Tanks do need answers to hard counters but blizzard seems slow at acknowledging the problem.
