Gonna disagree on this one. Barriers are equally important in lower ranks because positioning and awareness are far worse, as is good healing priority, so people take way more spammage. They’re not as tightly constrained by meta, so you do see more diversity in tanks, but often if you have a barrier-deficient pair going up against a pair with at least one barrier, the barrier pair will win.
WB comps are one of the few exceptions, but it really requires that both your WB and other tank be good. As in, they’re probably relatively better than the rank that you’re in, i.e. smurfing or just climbing in general. I’ve seen crazy off-tank pairings win games–heck, I saw a DVa-Hog combo win a game handily before–but exceptions don’t make the rule.
Probably not actually…
Most ball players throw in my experience, even at diamond level (I’ve even seen GMs do this) they will pile driver into the enemy team and die.
Even if you don’t do this or don’t die (somehow), you are still probably playing poorly, see the thing is you might think you’re doing well but without your protection and your on the other side of the map, the mcree is getting rekt and you wonder why people are dying when you got a pick.
If everyone is on the same page that’s totally viable. Generally speaking, it’s not going to carry you up the ranks. If you’re a great shot caller, Wrecking Ball is a fine MT.
Okay, I see the problem here.
You’re one of those players who play ball, but don’t really look at what your team is doing. So playing ball as a main tank means no shield right? Well if you’ve got say ana mcree they have no protection for them to deal damage, if they dare peek around a corner they’ll get slaughtered by god knows what.
Not necessarily, Ball and Shield is absolutely a fine comp. It’s a double main tank comp, but it’s not a bad one.
And it’s not my job to nanny weak heroes. If you can’t make McCree work without a barrier try playing something more robust. McCree is pretty bad in most ranks anyway.
He can work as either primary or second main tank. Ball Zarya is good. But he can also work in double main tank comps with a barrier tank.
If you don’t have a barrier I would not recommend especially weak/fragile heroes like McCree, Ana, and maybe Zenyatta. But there’s a lot of the roster left.
He can only work as a main tank in OWL, every other rank it’s horrible.
Ball zarya is extremely overrated, Like yeah she can bubble his initiation, but that’s all, so what? For 40 energy, the zarya has no protection, mine grav is terrible and she has no mobility.
But that’s the point, if the hero your playing isn’t some sort of dive hero it’s useless and you’ll feed, therefore every person playing that hero HAS to swap BECAUSE of ball.
It takes a LOT of money to change something like that. Yes, the technology is there, but it needs to be funded. I’m no expert that that is more than changing a few lines of code, it’s making a HUGE change.