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.
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.
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
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.
What do you call “decent firepower”? Orisa has potentially ~130 DPS while Mercy has ~100 DPS, Lucio ~85 DPS. (Numbers off the top of my head so probably not entirely accurate.)
Orisa could get more fire power (like 12 damage per shot) and her barrier to 700 or 800 HP, even if you increase it’s CD to 12 secs, because her barrier is stationary enough already.
Now Sigma that needs careful changes, his barrier is not stationary, so maybe increase his “fire power”, but reduce his fire rate while barrier is up, but that’s a maybe.
Like seriously… people who like off tanks… like off tanks. People who like DPS… like DPS. Why on earth would they swap to picking Barrier Tanks even if the Barrier Tanks become a bit more DPS’y?
Here’s a novel concept… make changes to the Barrier Tanks so that the people who do/did like them cease to hate playing as them. Instead of… y’know giving them buffs that their current mains won’t care about and nerfs that their current mains will hate, which is what you are advocating for.
Alienating any part of your player base sounds like a really bad plan.