I do not specifically talk about Reaper - though he is by definition uncounterable by tanks. You need your DPS to take care of him. This adds to tank queue times immensely, you may admit it or not ā¦ that is a fact.
However, it is not only Reaper. OW philosophy was that there have to be abilities to ācounterā tanks. That is why for example Storm Arrow exists in this form and why Sym can leech off shields. Itās a kind of specialization vs a whole role. A philosophy that needs to be abandoned in a 222 game.
Considering the changes on PTR, I think theyāre paying attention to peopleās concerns and the state of tanking. I would recommend wait and see till this goes live and how much it changes things.
II donāt even think a strike is necessary. Iāve been playing to get the LEGO bastion skin, and itās been pretty awful. The MM is regularly matching me against people who are clearly new players - with less than 50 levels. The skill difference is staggering. And if the tank leaves a match, apparently they donāt get a replacement quickly.
Itās pretty much a tank strike as is. I have to admit, I though 2-2-2 would fix tanking, but instead it has exasperated how horrible tanking is due to blizzards stupid balance decisions. Despite having shields and the most survivability, I never once felt in control of the match. Especially not with Mei and reaper creeping about every match.
100% agree. One of the problems with āyou need your DPS to take care of himā is that DPS also struggle to deal enough damage as long as heās shooting the tank - and thatās because instant percentage-based life steal is OP.
If you look to ARPG games you will regularly find that life āleechā mechanics require a whole bunch of restrictions or they will break the balance of the game. Hell, Blizzardās own Diablo 3 completely removed life steal from the game because it proved to be too problematic for balance. Path of Exileās āVaal Pactā keystone (instant life leech) broke that game too until it was reworked to not be instant. Now PoE handles life leech in a more complicated way that involves maximum life recovery rates, separate leech instances, etc. Reaperās life steal needs this same kind of treatment.
Percentage-based anything in FPS games can quickly get out of hand when you get above the 25-30% range as it can begin invalidating the actions of opposing players simply by existing - and thatās what players hate. In TF2, when they added the āCharginā Targeā shield it initially had 65% explosion resistance, so a 100-damage rocket was doing only 35 damage instead; itās now at 30%.
tbf, orisa didnāt get any major buffs that made her meta and she was meta pre 222 despite what some people will say.
she became meta because every other option was banned or gutted. reinhardt/deathball shifted out of the meta because his synergies were nerfed (zarya, brig, lucio, dva etc) and 222 was implemented which is honestly the most brutal nerf you could give deathball as a whole over any stat change.
dive shifted out of the meta because winston/dva (nerfs to most dive characters didnāt help.) couldnāt keep up with the dps power creep that was caused by trying to stop goats via damage character buffs.
Im gonna assume this all went down on PC as there was 0 change on console. Good on you for rallying players for a good cause though, next time I would try extending your outreach, post to twitter, asking Overwatch instagram pages to advertise for you, possibly reaching out to you tubers, get the word spread as far as possible to really show the power Overwatch players have! Good job though!
I want to take a moment to get away from the negativity and appreciate what has been done so far. Blizz is not oblivious.
Things are improving, a bit slower than I had hoped but better late than never. Honestly the current patch should have been the 2-2-2 day 1 patch, imagine if that were the case. I suspect the upcoming dev update to be about hotfix straight to live balance that shall speed things up quite a lot (btw anyone noticed the latest PTR went live without downloading a patch? )
But back to what we already got:
Tanks hardest counters have been nerfed: Meiās primary is less oppressive and her nerfs enable Ball, Dva quite a lot. The armor revert, Grasp, Reinās speed, DM and booster buffs are all Reaper indirect nerfs, he was hit hard by the shield revamp patch and now nerfed as well.
CC is going down: Since 2-2-2 we had multiple Flux nerfs, specifically to its CC, Bash, Halt and Meiās nerfs, plus Steadfast makes you feel like an immovable siege unit and thatās nice. Jeff himself said at BlizzCon we had CC creep, and it seems they are doing something about it. Slow and steady wins the race.
Tank synergies have increased: The shield revamp was great in this aspect. You can play any tank combo that isnāt 2 off tanks now and not be throwing. Go for Zarya/Orisa, Rein/Dva may be meta, Rein/Orisa is being scrimmed in contenders, that would be literally impossible before. We are no longer locked down by the combos of yore (halt/hook, rein/zarya, dive). Letās be realistic here, the most popular tanks are Dva and Rein, and Rein can be played with literally any tank pair and Dva with any MT pair. I hope they donāt overstay their welcome, as no hero should, but Jeff is on the case with the āfaster balancing talkā.
Now Iām gonna talk about the problems again because Iām not used to positivity and I fear it may give me an ulcer.
Orisaās revamp, in hindsight, was not a good idea. As it turns out the power of double shield wasnāt really the shields, and Fortify is now nerfed from its pre-revamp state, so is the shield, Halt and Orisaās damage. We could perhaps re-shuffle her power back on the shield, maybe bring the CD back to 8 second with 700 HP shield?
Reaperās hard countering problem has been adjusted, however his design is problematic still. He is shoved to the Sombra waiting room for now, but I doubt heāll be balanced (not good, not bad) without harsh changes to his design. We canāt have hard category counters in a category locked game.
CC. Yes we had reductions but CC still excessive. Youāre walking the good path, so we need to keep going, do not stop reducing CC for now. I think the game desperately needs a global CC mechanic to keep things in check, like diminishing returns, weight values, something like that, otherwise itās gonna be exponentially harder to get CC in a good spot gameplay-wise.
So many changes in so little time may have been a problem. The tank roster flipped 180Āŗ in just 4 months. Those were good changes overall and they worked well to improve not just balance but tanking itself. Thatās a positive thing, keep it coming. However, the amount of changes is such I think players are in growing pains, literally a third of the support/tank roster was hit with severe changes in just 4 months. If youāre a dedicated player in those roles it feels like no one knows where itās going and that thereās no point in specialize. Perhaps tone down the tank/sup adjustments for now and treat the problematic DPS like Sym, Torb, Sombra, Bastion, etc to some revamps. Once again the tank revamps were mostly good and I appreciate the faster and more gutsy changes, but we need time with them before jumping to the next thing.
Thereās still only 8 tanks and 7 supports. Can we afford to wait for new heroes until Overwatch 2 gets here?
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