With Echo coming soon to the Damage role, queue times are going to more imbalanced than ever. On the next Experimental Card, we should try 1-3-2 again, but with a slight change. Add a subsection to the Damage role for “Heavy” Damage heroes. Zarya, Roadhog, and D.va will be moved here with no changes to their kits. Your team can choose one Heavy Damage hero maximum. What this essentially does is allow teams to take an off tank without forcing it. You’d have the option to run a standard 2-2-2 comp such as Rein/Zarya or Orisa/Roadhog, but you wouldn’t be able to stack shields, since you’re limited to one shield tank. You could also run a true 1-3-2 comp, like Wrecking Ball with 3 flankers, if desired. I think this change would be healthiest for both queue times and diversity of team comps.
Which DPS player would get the “heady” damage hero? Would that be a seperate queue? Would that really help decrease times (yes, you have a third player in that role, but now you also have the Hog/Zarya/D.Va players in that queue)? What if I want to play those heroes, but someone else takes them, do I just have to play DPS then? (Last one is a bit of a weaker argument, but worth considering).
I think it would be better to reestablish the “offensive” and “defessive” hero categories. Separate the DPS into each spot, different queues for each, and the team gets one of each. May decrease the time for each queue a bit, the two roles are similar enough that if one seems significantly longer the other should be a bit shorter, and also helps prevent things like double sniper (cause as a support, that is by far the lamest thing to support/go against). Though, the question arises; would we just have 6 different queues (main tank, off tank, offensive DPS, defensive DPS, main support, and secondary support)?
Realistically, the current system isn’t perfect, but its the best we got now and 1-3-2 did not work. Maybe they can try 1-3-2 again in the future with more changes, but just moving more heroes to a sub-DPS category sharing the same one queue is most likely not going to be the answer. All this said, its an interesting idea and one I haven’t seen before, so credit is due to creativity in solving our queue time issues.
Which DPS player would get the “heady” damage hero? Would that be a seperate queue?
Whoever locks a Heavy Damage hero first would fill that slot. You’d just enter the normal Damage queue.
Would that really help decrease times (yes, you have a third player in that role, but now you also have the Hog/Zarya/D.Va players in that queue)?
I think some tank players who one-trick D.va, Hog, or Zarya might switch to only queuing for Damage, but most (including myself) would queue for both Tank and Damage.
What if I want to play those heroes, but someone else takes them, do I just have to play DPS then?
If someone else takes D.va, Hog, or Zarya, then you’d have to play DPS. This is about the same situation you’re in now if somebody locks your favorite hero first.
I think it would be better to reestablish the “offensive” and “defessive” hero categories.
Jeff has said that he’d rather not expand the number of roles you have to queue for, so that’s why I avoided that kind of solution (though the end of double sniper does sound enticing).
Realistically, the current system isn’t perfect, but its the best we got now and 1-3-2 did not work.
I believe 1-3-2 didn’t work when they tried it for one main reason: it eliminated the 2-2-2 style of play. You couldn’t pick Rein/Zarya, or Winston/D.va, or Orisa/Roadhog anymore. No one wants to see an Overwatch where those fun tank synergies are removed. If we try 1-3-2 again while preserving the main tank/off tank synergy, I think we’ll see the best version of the game yet.
Thanks for your reply.
I actually like this idea
Another nice aspect of this:
Orisa and Sigma both currently feel like half a hero, since Blizzard has to account for the possibility of double shield.
Once you’ve limited barrier tanks to one, you can make them stronger, which should make them more enjoyable to play as well.
I hope that this would attract players to the Tank queue, but even if it doesn’t, because it’s just not their “flavor of ice cream,” it’s still a noble pursuit to make every role enjoyable to play.
Took me a second to wrap my head around this. But basically what you’re saying is.
1-3-2, but offtanks are commonpool between Tank and Damage. And no more than 2 Tanks per team.
Not quite. If it were that way, you could still get double off tank.
1-3-2, but Zarya, Roadhog, and D.va are moved into the Damage role, in their own section for “Heavy” Damage. (I’m imagining they’re just to the left of Ashe, with a gold box marked HEAVY).
If you queued for Tank, then Reinhardt, Orisa, Sigma, Winston, and Wrecking Ball would be available. If you queued for Damage, then all of the Damage heroes would be available, and one of the three Damage players could pick a Heavy Damage (Zarya, Roadhog, or D.va). Once one Heavy Damage is picked, the other two are locked out for other players on that team.
K, gotcha then, cause I like the idea I just said 
I’ll probably post it when I get off work.
The only thing I h8 about this idea is the solo shield tank.
Unless they get some sort of buff solo shield tanking will be horrible if they decide not to run off tank.
Barrier tanks would need some sort of compensation.
I think they should see similar buffs to the last Experimental Card. Reinhardt and Winston got more armor, and all of the shield tanks saw barrier buffs. Once you don’t have to worry about double shield coming back, you’re free to buff those tanks quite a bit.
I like the suggestion in the other thread better.
Split tank into main tank and bruisser.
The game will look for 1-1-2-2 mirros whenever there is enough main tanks available. Otherwise it will put you in a 0-2-2-2 mirror aka dubble offtank mirror.
I think there should be a distinction between main tank and bruiser, but I don’t think that’s the best way to go about it.
Jeff has said in the past that adding more queues hurts queue times rather than helping them.
Having two game modes that play completely differently can be jarring for the Damage and Support players who are thrown into them.
On top of all that, I find that double off tank just isn’t good Overwatch, and I’d like to see less of it, not more.
the problem with 132 is who would ever pick a offtank as main tank? You saw what they did to Zarya to make her somewhere viable, and was pretty fun ngl. But some cases like wrecking ball HAVE to become a DPS. I think if has some sort of SHIELDS is a tank. other then that can be this “Heavy” Class, maybe even put Doomfist, Reaper, Mei and Bastion in this new role. I think by dividing the DPSs with the most used would allow more diverse matchups and team comps.
Wrecking Ball is definitely the enigma here. His finest hour was when he was played as the solo tank in 1-3-2 comps in the Overwatch League and beat GOATS to win the Stage 3 playoffs. However, it would be tough to replicate that success in your standard QP or Competitive game. I think a lot of players would complain about having Wrecking Ball as their only tank. I’ll admit that he’s difficult to place.
Zarya… you put zarya as heavy damage lol.
The issue is that almost noone wants to play a barrier tank but you are forced to if you queue for tank or your team will get super toxic and you will most likley get stomed unless the other team is playing 2x offtanks aswell.
If you split up the tank role to force a main tank in evory game the queues would get much worse than they already are.
But im pretty sure if you allowed 0-2-2-2 mirrors the queue times would be better.
I agree that 1-1-2-2 is singnificantly better Overwatch than 0-2-2-2 mirrors but you know what is worse than a 0-2-2-2 mirror? 1-1-2-2 stomping a 0-2-2-2 where evory one in the 0-2-2-2 is mad. Like what we have atm.
She’s the best example of this. She’s designed to support a tank (and other teammates) with bubbles and deal heavy damage in a limited range. She’s not designed to tank by herself.
The 1-1-2-2 variant I would prefer to see is Tank, Support (off-tank + control dps), Damage, and Healer:
It’s a pretty similar idea though. You can pool the queues into either 2-2-2 or 1-3-2 and you basically end up with the same situation we have now in the Tank queue, where someone locking off-tank forces you to pick a barrier tank. It’d be more explicit, and require a UI change, but no worse than how Tank picks current work.
Though, I’m not convinced 4 queues would actually be that bad. Sure, it’s absolutely true that 4 queues will make for longer matchmaking searches than 3 queues. But, that’s something they could reduce by removing role-specific MMR, which are 3 extra hidden buckets. So, plus 1 bucket for 1-1-2-2, but minus 2 buckets by just having a single MMR.
I think they could get it to work.
I actually love this idea. I would play that Support role all the time. I’d love to see a Workshop mode like that, but I don’t think there’s a way to change the Hero Select at the moment.
I just think it’s unlikely to happen, since Jeff already talked about not wanting to add more buckets, and role-specific MMR being generally well-received. On top of that, it involves reworks to several heroes, which tend to make players upset as well.
That’s why I went with something much more conservative, which doesn’t change any heroes, only changes the way we queue to play them, so that you get a main tank in every game, and get an off tank whenever one of three Damage players is willing to do it. It seems to me the most benefit for the least change.
I really do think your 1-1-2-2 sounds awesome though. If they put it on Experimental, I’d be hype.
Than just lock the game to 1 main tank and 1 off tank.