Although I agree with you on supports and them need something for this new meta,
tanks were starting to become unpopular near the end of Overwatch’s lifecycle, bumped up slightly in Overwatch 2, and is slowly starting to drift even further in popularity again.
The fact tank role is still 2nd liked with needing only one person to play the role speaks for its draining numbers. Come January or when the support role as a whole feels better to play (If it does), tank is going to be the next role talked about in feeling lackluster. Arguably, for what it is and the majority of their kits while being a solo player is going to be brought up. It’s already been talked about and it’s going to be more noticeable.
My man is speaking truth out here. 5v5 was a braindead GIMMICK out the gate.
I am hard-pressed to defend Overwatch 2 as an honest successor. It is THAT awful.
Right, but two tanks benefits all roles, and one tank only temporarily benefits queue times. It is never going to be perfect, but as is the whole damn building is on fire.
People are also tiring of the tank role because of the immense amount of pressure of being the one and only tank!
If you hate 5v5, Widow is the root cause. Double shield was created because of her, and instead of nerfing her they made double sheld impossible to run. Typical Blizzard balancing, nerfing the symptom and never the cause.
Overwatch 1 near the end of it’s cycle didn’t really have a problem suffering from an issue of over-durability. It had problems and bad metas usually were about radicalized lack of durability or over durability, sure.
Though, the main reason this was the case was because there was too much focus on trying to round out durability and not enough in giving versatile power for DPS and Support to deal with durability. Instead of creating more means of getting around shields and higher HP pools, a lot of the times patches were focused on adjusting HP Pools, Armor Stat, and introducing heroes which didn’t really help the equation.
Take Symmetra who was originally a support and developed more into an anti-shield DPS defensive-ish hero. Though, there was trouble tweaking her numbers and her viability either was too OP or not good at all and this was mostly because she was the only one designed to deal with a concept. Besides Junkrat and Sym, who has kits that make them really tank busters anymore?
That concept has become even less since they now have to consider a 5v5 format. and that’s not even going into details about what the tank role now currently means in what they do.
It isn’t one or two heroes throwing off every game of ow2. I agree kiriko and widow should be closely examined and changed but the experience itself is fundamentally weird in 5v5 and it is having global ramifications in-game across the roles.
I’d wager the content drought is what affected the game more than anything. The forums were not alight with fire like they are now and have been since ow2’s launch.
Exactly, which was mainly an issue of CC and/or meta purpose.
Shield was also an answer to oppressive oneshot/poke as well as CC or other means which the game was starting to become loaded with. Mei was exceptional in the health with this.
Which is why the spectrum was linear. If it wasn’t shield meta, it was the rest. Hog, Zarya, and Ball were really good because their designs were being really durable without the necessity of needing shields and this meta would also bleed into the DPS and Support roles.
Maybe 5v5 was the right fix for this, but I worry that a fundamental core of how Overwatch works has been broken and tanks will either need more versatility or to lose their space of counter culture to not lose even more popularity in the near future.
Maybe, but people who played tank had a problem with two things:
Not playing the game
Being designated to doing one “thing”.
Which was kind of the thing about role. That one designated thing is what made them a simplistic niche when being either a main tank or off tank. Because what they had to protect or “control” against. CC was an interesting shake up to add more interest, sure, but other games show that the less stuff you have to worry about than the less tools you require/use to deal against it.
Theoretically, if tanks only had to worry about damage, that’d be just shields.
As for equivalency, no. I don’t believe roles are equal and that’d be nonsensical. This is just more of a concern for the future. A prediction. We will see and maybe I’m super wrong. I just have a feeling the next problem is going to be that tanks losing their usefulness and becoming less fun and the only reason they have legs at the moment is narrow tank meta and the unpopular support role.
I guess let’s just focus on the current problem and, down the line, we can talk about it when and if it becomes relevant.
As of now, you’re right, support is a majorly suffering role and it isn’t whether support is strong or weak but that it isn’t fun to play for a majority of people.
I think just them having a more active role in combat whether it be more offensive or defensive means would be more appealing to the tank and DPS roles in general. Tank and DPS are fun for those people because you are always actively putting pressure on the enemy.
Support struggles because they are the opposite with supplying survivability to themselves and their team while staying out of line of fire.
Whatever change it is, the tools given to supports that doesn’t have to be hugging corners/cover or their allies to stay alive and ignoring the enemy or avoiding them would make them a much more appealing role.
You mentioned League before so I’ll mention it again, one of the bigger reasons in their unpopularity was being the weaker link of a team while serving less an active role in combat. People liked them a lot more when a more concrete identity was made and they actually served more of a purpose in fights that wasn’t only playing careful, heal, and making sure a single character didn’t die.
Just in similarity, a lot of people liked support in League because they were the holders of CC which was a tool to use against certain matchups. I wouldn’t say Overwatch would need the same in resolution but the issues in popularity I think are quite comparable.
