It’s not even really an issue of tank variety.
It’s more to do with not being able to do much as a barrier tank if your team is lacking firepower.
Just kind of a “well, guess we lose” with zero capability to do much about it.
Granted I’ll probably just carry this out with Roadhog, but wow this sucks.
The REAL suffer with tanking is knowing you’d probably get way more value for way less effort by standing on the payload as Rein while shielding and waiting until you win
The tank and healer nerfs should increase the lethality of the game. Overwatch can be tricky sometimes, because you can’t always look at one aspect.
A lot of people accuse Widow of being overpowered because she can one shot. That is great lethality, and she’s always had it. What people forget was that her cooldowns used to be insanely long. Lethality isn’t the issue her, it’s the balance of the ease of bringing that lethality to bear vs the sustainability of the healers and tanks to prevent lethal results.
If Soldier’s sprint were to increase in speed, a lot of people would dismiss it as a quality of life buff. But it isn’t. It’s a straight power buff.
Tank and healer sustainability has been nerfed. You don’t have to nerf potential damage to nerf DPS.
I’m thinking more along the lines of nerfing main tank selfpeel/sustain, and make it so they are basically just a strong barrier, some hp, and some decent firepower. Like 30-50% more firepower.
Alternatively maybe the answer is just to disallow duo-quo DPS in Comp.
So you can’t have two chuckleheads hard throwing as easily.
Wut?
Are you trying to make tanking even worse?
Here’s a quick tip. Generally speaking if someone is the sort of person who wants to tank, they’re going all in on the Power Fantasy of being that big tough guy/gal who’s leading the charge and taking lumps that would cripple or kill their squishier teammates and coming out the other side still kicking. They aren’t out there to bonk heads. Making them even less able to do that if their team doesn’t support them will make those people the opposite of happy.
Seriously, prior to her rework I found Brigitte of all people one of the most pleasant to solo tank with in QP. Why? She had self healing and self peeling for days. Even if my team decided they were gonna run 5 DPS I was fine with that because of just how self sufficient Brig was. Thing is though that Brigitte hits about as hard as a wet noodle unless you’re comboing somebody, but I didn’t care because that’s not why I was picking her.
I’m saying the make Barrier Tanking less boring.
Ok, but the thing I quoted specifically mentioned nerfing Main Tank’s self peel and self sustain.
That’s the part I strongly object to. Tanks shouldn’t suddenly become unable to do their jobs if their supports don’t stuff healing into them 24/7.
I’d argue it’s more in line with the differences between mainheal and offheal.
Generally offtanks should have the Peel and Utility.
And Main Tanks should have the barrier, and cability to get the enemy to back up and move away.
Ok… sure that’s fine in theory.
In practice it sucks. I know that Overwatch is a Team Game but no one actually wants to be dependent on their team to actually be able to do their job. It isn’t a tank’s job to deal damage and get kills. It is a tank’s job to defend their team as best they can for as long as they can.
There’s a reason that people frequently call Roadhog a fat DPS. Its because he’s kinda garbage at actually defending his teammates.
To one of your earlier points, sure it sucks if you’re on Reinhardt and you’re defending your team well, you’re occasionally dying but not until a good solid fight has happened… but your opponents aren’t dying. But the thing is… it sucks even worse when you can’t even do your job because you’re dying too fast, or the enemy DF/Ball are hitting you out of position or no one is dealing with the gosh darn Reaper who you simply can’t kill or even force away unless you get lucky with charge.
Tanks are supposed to be and feel tanky. When I quit, there were exactly 2 heroes that actually made me feel like a tank. Wrecking Ball and Brigitte. Sigma hadn’t come out so I have no idea how he feels, but… all the rest of them felt squishy to me and bad to play… then I quit because they made Brigitte feel not even remotely tanky anymore either.
To me that’s a contradiction.
You say you don’t want barrier tanks to be dependant, (on the rest of the team “doing their job”)
But then say barrier tanks should be dependant, (on the rest of the team “doing their job”) kinda defeats that purpose.
And as for Peel and Utility those are higher level synergy capabilities.
So what exactly makes specifically tanking miserable?
The problem you detailed in your OP isn’t a problem that is secluded to tanking
You have to choose between having a barrier and having firepower.
And if your team isn’t contributing enough firepower
and the other tank doesn’t want to go Rein,
you’re kinda SOL.
DPS can’t do their job if tanks are creating space…
I don’t see a particular reason why DPS, OffTanks, MainHealers, and OffHealers should have decent firepower options.
But it’s somehow forbidden to barrier tanks.
It isn’t a contradiction. People are generally Ok with needing help to do things that are obviously not in their job description.
Like when I used to play Mercy… do I care that I’m gonna get terrible damage/elim scores? Nope. Why? It’s not my job. It’s not part of the power fantasy of playing as Mercy. As long as that inability to deal damage doesn’t prevent me from healing my team… I don’t care.
Similarly, when I’m on most tanks, the fact that I’m probably not going to kill very many people and can’t heal my teammates doesn’t bother me. Why? It isn’t my job. What I do have a problem with is one single edge lord in a cloak walking up to me and easily killing me and me being nearly helpless unless one of my teammates helps me out. I’m a freaking tank, the defensive specialist. No one on the enemy team should be able to solo kill me quickly. As the tank, I need enough damage to make the enemy think twice about either trying to overrun me or ignore me and not a single iota more.
Barrier tanks do have firepower…
Not enough to be interesting, it would seem.
How about 18% more firepower:
✅ You know what makes Tanking miserable - #19 by GreyFalcon-11737
No more firepower, that’s never been the issue. Tanks can easily contest DPS for damage
What makes it miserable to me is the amount of damage flying around (literally thanks to echo). Even on Rein, my barrier feels like paper, and face tanking equals instant death unless both supports pocket me
Absolutely more firepower.
Getting more DPS and OffTank players to play Barrier Tanks is perhaps the most important issue in the entire game right now.
As it’s the primary way they can solve queue times. And I don’t think it’s possible to redesign the game in such a way that DoubleOffTank doesn’t become a sniperfest.
And if they don’t fix the queue time issue before OW2, then this entire franchise is dead.
Yeah, Echo is a bit nuts now.
But you gotta admit, if Orisa had more firepower and a decent barrier, you’d at least feel like you could do something against her, instead of angrily holding your barrier in her general direction.