1-1-2-2 Experiment (Long)

General Discussion
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The 1-3-2 Experiment was pretty interesting, but 1-3-2 has a lot of issues I think are going to be impractical to solve. For the next Experiment, I’d like to see some incarnation of the fairly common suggestion of having split queues for tanks and off-tanks. Ie, 1-1-2-2.

I don’t know that you actually need four queues for this. You can probably just stick to three and have the new role be filled by either the Tank queue (2-2-2) or Damage queue (1-3-2). Just let the players sort out who plays what.

My suggestion is to do something akin to the HotS role rework and add a new role that combines the off-tanks and utility-dps into a single “Support” role. So, 1-1-2-2 would be Tank, Support, Damage and Healer. Then balance these heroes against each other by making the off-tanks a little more damagey and the utility-dps a little more tanky/supportive.

Example Role Rework

The new roster could look like this:

  • Tank: Orisa, Rein, Sigma, Winston, Hammond
  • Support: D.va, Hog, Zarya, Mei, Sombra, Sym
  • Healer: Ana, Bap, Brig, Lucio, Mercy, Moira, Zen
  • Damage: Everyone Else

I see a lot of upside to this:

  • It synchronizes the queue system with how the game has evolved to be played. There’s a lot to be said for not fighting against 3 years of design and player culture.
  • It preserves the important Tank synergies, which people enjoy playing with.
  • It allows some of the Tank buffs from 1-3-2 to be kept, because Tanks can be buffed around the idea of having a single main Tank paired with a less-tanky Support buddy.
  • It removes the possibility for double barriers, making barrier Tank balance easier.
  • It consolidates a lot of annoying kits into a single role, which helps mitigate things like CC stacking.
  • It might give new life to some of the low pick rate Damage heroes.

The big downside is figuring out how to manage the extra role. An entire extra queue will surely increase queue times. But, there’s probably way to do this without adding another queue. Just make one of the queues Tank/Support or Damage/Support and let the team sort out who plays what. The UI will be a little clunkier as a consequence, but I think that’s a small price to pay compared to the alternatives (long Damage queues or 1-3-2).

Example Hero Reworks

The idea behind the new Support role would be to re-focus these heroes on damage and utility, with durability somewhere between the Tank and Damage heroes (200 - 400 hp). They would all be supports in the traditional sense; ie, damage dealers with 1-2 non-selfish abilities. For the most part, I think you can do this with minor changes focused on:

  • Improving the damage and utility of off-tanks at the cost of durability.
  • Improving the self-sufficiency/durability and utility of utility-dps.
  • Buffing the tanky aspects of Tanks to somewhere between live and the 1-3-2 Experiment.
  • Adding some minor self-sufficiency improvements to the Healers to offset the extra damage added to the Support role.

Tank Reworks

Rein

  • HP adjusted to 200 health + 300 armor (still 500 total). (Kept from 1-3-2 Experiment.)
  • Barrier Field regeneration rate increased from 200 to 250 per second. (Kept from 1-3-2 Experiment.)

Orisa

  • Protective Barrier cooldown reduced from 10 seconds to 8 seconds. Barrier health increased to 900. (Kept from 1-3-2 Experiment.)

Winston

  • HP increased to 600 (400 health + 200 armor). (Kept from 1-3-2 Experiment.)
  • Barrier Projector cooldown reduced from 13 seconds to 10 seconds. (Kept from 1-3-2 Experiment.)

Sigma

  • HP increased to 500 (200 health + 300 shield).
  • Experimental Barrier regeneration rate increased from 120 to 200 per second. Barrier health increased from 900 to 1200. (Kept from 1-3-2 Experiment.)

Hammond

  • Adaptive Shield now grants allies within 12 m a +100 hp shield that lasts 3 seconds.
    Comment: Similar idea to the Zarya multi-bubble from the 1-3-2 Experiment.

Support Reworks

Zarya

  • HP decreased to 300 (100 health + 200 shield).
  • Particle Barrier duration increased to 3 sec. Particle Barrier cooldown lowered from 10 to 8 sec. (Kept from 1-3-2 Experiment.)
  • Projected Barrier duration increased to 3 sec. (Kept from 1-3-2 Experiment.)
    Comment: The idea is to shift passive durability (hp) into cooldowns, improve her support utility, and make it easier for her build charge and deal more damage.

D.va

  • HP decreased to 400 (200 health + 200 armor).
  • Primary fire falloff range increased from 10 m to 13 m.
  • Defense Matrix duration increased from 2 sec to 3 sec.
  • Primary fire movement penalty reduced from 50% to 30%. (Kept from 1-3-2 Experiment.)
    Comment: The idea is to improve her damage output (via falloff) and exchange some durability for mobility (movement penalty) and support utility (Defense Matrix), without making her suffer too much for having a large hitbox.

Roadhog

  • HP decreased to 400.
  • Hitbox size reduced slightly.
  • Scrap Gun ammo increased from 6 to 8.
  • Take a Breather leaves behind a cloud that heals allies for 25 hp/sec and grants 25% damage resistance. (Kept from 1-3-2 Experiment.)
    Comment: Straight buffs to damage (ammo) and team utility by keeping the popular breather buff, which will also help compensate for reduced HP.

Mei

  • HP adjusted to 200 health + 50 armor (still 250 total).

Symmetra

  • HP increased to 250 (100 health + 150 shield).
  • Photon Projector (secondary fire) max damage reduced from 140 to 120. Projectile speed increased from 25 m/sec to 30 m/sec.
  • Teleporter removed.
  • New Ability: Grant an ally (left-click) or yourself (right-click) a temporary +100 shield hp buff. The target regenerates shield hp equal to 30% of the damage they deal while active. Lasts 5 seconds. (Same concept as Tassadar’s shield in HotS. Animated as a shield generator drone to keep the builder vibe.)
    Comment: Bringing Sym back to her support roots is a common community request and the Teleporter has proven difficult to balance given the degree of inconsistency in the rest of Sym’s kit. Therefore, the teleporter was removed to make room for a more consistent support ability.

Sombra

  • Stealth is not interrupted by damage during casting or for the first 1 sec after entering Stealth (1.8 sec total breakage immunity).
  • Regenerates 10 hp/sec while Stealth is active.
  • Can hack health packs without breaking Stealth.
  • Can hack health packs hacked by enemies (claiming them).
  • Translocator is now modal. After deployed, clicking once works as is currently does. Holding the button for 1.5 seconds (channeling it) will open a rift that allies can teleport through as well. Rift lasts 5 seconds. Rift imposes a 15 sec cooldown on Translocator. (Basically, move Symmetra’s teleporter to Sombra.)
  • Opportunist (passive) removed.
    Comment: The idea is to improve the amount of utility Sombra provides to the team by making health packs easier to hack and giving her a variant of Sym’s teleporter. The changes are also targeted at reducing the amount of downtime in her play style so she can spend more time with/near her team, by reducing the need to teleport to a health back (passive healing during Stealth) and letting her use Stealth for mid-fight repositioning (1.8 sec of initial breakage immunity for Stealth).

Damage Reworks

Soldier 76

  • Biotic Field removed. Replaced with a self-heal ability (Stim Pack!) providing the same amount of healing (40 hp/sec over 5 sec).
  • New Passive Ability: Can see enemies through walls that are within 20 m.
    Comment: The idea is to give Soldier utility more appropriate to a Damage hero (wall hacks), while removing some redundancy with Baptiste and the reworked Roadhog (Take a Breather cloud).

Healer Reworks

Brigitte

  • Rocket Flail (primary attack) range increased from 6 m to 8 m.
  • Barrier Shield health increased from 200 to 300.
  • Shield Bash range increased from 7 m to 10 m. Stun duration reduced from 0.75 sec to 0.5 sec.
  • Repair Pack cooldown reduced from 6 sec to 5 sec.
  • Inspire ally healing reduced from 130 hp to 100 hp (self healing unchanged).
    Comment: Brig currently suffers from a mild anti-combo between Repair Pack and Inspire due to differing positioning requirements, as well as niche gameplay and limited self-sufficiency. As players seem to like the new Repair Pack, these changes are designed to improve that aspect of her kit by enabling longer range positioning, improving her survivability (range and barrier changes), rebalancing her CC, and reducing the raw healing power of Inspire in favor of more consistent uptime.

Zenyatta

  • New Ability (crouch): Phase out. Take no damage and deal no damage for 1 sec. 8 sec cooldown.
    Comment: Players generally seem to think Zen is fine, but his kit hasn’t really kept pace with the changes in the game’s design because of the extra utility in new Healer kits. Plus, he’s completely left out of the cooldown trading game. The 1-3-2 Experiment highlighted this particularly well. As such, this change gives him a small boost to survivability against flankers.

Conclusion

I commend you for making it this far! :slight_smile:

There’s surely a lot of different ways to approach the 1-1-2-2 idea. You could do bruisers instead of supports (eg, Doom and Reaper), do larger reworks to bring in heroes like Torb, have support/off-tanks be an optional role in Damage, etc.

Regardless of how you spin it, I’d like to see some incarnation of 1-1-2-2 as an Experiment card.

2 Likes
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Yea sure restrict it even more so that you have to do even less proper balance … why not 1-1-1-1-1-1 ?? Tank/OffTank/DPS/Tank-Buster/Heal/Off-Heal ? Or better yet make the game pick for us depending on what the other side chooses ? Disable all “countered” heroes so that ppl cannot even make what is perceived as bad decision anymore.

I think the best solution is remove all heroes except Soldier. There, perfect balance.

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I like the concept but I can’t really see it being a healthy thing for the game in terms of queue times and dividing the player base more.

Also I’m definitely bias here but 3 of my top 5 characters you’ve changed a lot and I don’t agree with many of the changes.
I think brigitte is in a good spot right now, she’s more difficult to get value off so actually does well for skilled players.
Symmetra- I can see where you’re coming from but I absolutely love teleporter on symmetra and removing it would ruin me, I would much rather remove the turrets for your ability, or would rather have a weaker shield generator similar to your idea replace the turrets instead.
As for sombra, she’s struggling so much right now as a dps and I understand why you would move her here. Personally I would decrease hack to 3 seconds 6 second cooldown and have it be able to heal allies for 40HP for 3 seconds with some other changed and move her to support. I really like your idea of the stealth decloaking and HP restoration change. I think the hack/stealth changes are a bit obnoxious and like I said I would like teleporter to be kept on symmetra. Also opportunist should have been extended to allies in 10m not removed…

Other changes are ok, some pretty solid changes for tanks.

Yeah, i’m probably bias. I see where you’re coming from but I think many of these changes could be adjusted slightly and be implemented in 222, no need for an extra role.

1 Like
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Honestly, all we really need the queue system for is to get a comp that contains the following:
(1) One shield tank
(2) Two healers

Everything else should be up for grabs. I’d be fine with just moving Roadhog and Hammond to damage (with zarya keeping multi barrier); I really can’t see these two being main tanks. I think we should have the freedom to interchange an off tank with a DPS depending on the situation (especially since we have characters like Reaper and Mei that demolish off-tanks). I feel like no queues gave us too much freedom (and too much forcing people into roles they don’t want to play) while 2-2-2 was too restrictive (being forced to play two tanks vs reaper/mei is not fun).

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Sym
I can see where you’re coming from on Sym. My main concern was that if you’re going to put Sym in direct competition for a slot with heroes like Zarya, D.va and Mei, then she needs a pretty powerful support ability that provides consistent value to justify picking her over Zarya’s bubble, D.va’s Defense Matrix and Mei’s wall. (Being able to give Tracer the HP and lifesteal of Reaper would do just that.)

Sym could certainly keep the Teleporter and still fit all the criteria for a Support. I just personally think the turrets are more core to her concept and the Teleporter is the most unreliable part of her kit, so that’s what I chose to sacrifice. But, I can imagine a version of Support Sym with a buffed Teleporter (faster deploy speed, attached shield generator, better cooldown mechanic, etc), no turrets, and a ranged stun (eg, like Dekker’s stun ball from Paragon).

Sombra
I only really scrapped Opportunist because of the cascade of changes made in other heroes. Her kit seemed rather bloated after all the suggestions. Plus, I have this thing about giving Soldier a vision ability, because I think adding more utility to him is better than this damage creep thing they keep doing with him.

But, keeping and buffing Opportunist to be more of a team buff would also be a cool way to give Sombra more support utility.

Brig
Well, she’s a messy conversation. The changes I suggested aren’t actually what I would personally prefer. I’m one of those people who strongly dislike the rework. But, I’m trying to think of ways to keep the parts of her kit that those who do like the rework enjoy, while ameliorating some of the frustrating aspects of her new design that many of us despise.

So, it’s a mixed bag on this one. I think they need to do something to make her less polarizing and improve her pick rate. She’s actually not half-bad in the 1-3-2 Experiment (Zarya multi-bubble FTW), so I do think a little extra range might be enough of a fix to get her to work in more diverse comps.

Yeah, that’s part of the point with my 1-1-2-2 suggestion. It’s intended to be a middle ground between 2-2-2 and 1-3-2. Making the off-tanks more dps-like makes it easier to pull some current Damage heroes into the off-tank role and have them all balanced similarly. Effectively expanding the size of the off-tank roster, and, hopefully, getting more Damage players to queue for off-tank (Support).

With Tank/Support/Damage/Healer roles they could setup the queues basically as you describe. Have it be 1-3-2 Tank/Flex/Healer. Those who queued for Flex can setup the team as either 3 Damage or 2 Damage + 1 Support, as they prefer. Encouraging 2-2-2, but permitting 1-3-2, while restricting teams to 1 barrier Tank and maintaining the 2 Healer requirement.

Support would be limited to 1 per team just to avoid the nightmare meta of triple off-tank comps. They could also do the same sort of thing with the existing 2-2-2 queue (Guardian/Damage/Healer). Not sure which would be better.

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