As a tank player I feel like tissue paper in this mode. I’m spending most of my game time walking from spawn. Tanks felt fragile due to open queue rules in the max-2 and kingmaker experiments. But with one more enemy shooting me, and with the reduction to tank power levels it’s much worse in this mode. I rarely have such a strong feeling about an experiment - this is a case where I feel I have to speak up.
Plus there’s the added difficulty of following a game with two more players in it. I don’t miss that.
For reference I’ve been playing mainly tank regularly since about 2018 so I do have 6v6 experience. Was Overwatch 1 this rough? Maybe I blocked it out.
I’m sure this will get plenty of replies saying “skill issue” etc. I’m expressing my opinion man! I do not like this mode!
Edit 2024-12-19: I might be warming up to 6v6 after more practice. I will admit that co-tanking with my kids is great. My younger kid wants to play tank almost exclusively so having an extra slot to share the role is helpful for us.
Edit 2025-01-03: I’ve done a 180 - I’ve been playing 6v6 almost exclusively since it came out, and it turns out I like it after all!
Well also I think it doesn’t help a lot of the balance is kinda with s9 healthpools so quite a few things do quite a lot more damage but tanks got like 50 more health and there’s the dps passive now too so it is quite a bit harder for some tanks.
i.e; rein does 100 dmg a swing and yeah he has 2000hp shield but it just feels like a shield bot. Mauga does 180dmg on a hard cc with his stomp meanwhile his cardiac lasts 3 seconds and has a 15 second cd
I suppose people like me who are happy with the status quo should speak up more often. My only complaint about 5v5 is increased scrutiny on the single tank leading to toxic chat. But I have the option of blocking chat to deal with that.
to be fair, this 6v6 balance patch was definitely not up-to-par with the current community standard. tanks just got slightly more health than their OW1 forms, the tanks feel more clunky (rein is a huge example), a LOT of stats for many heroes were not updated for 6v6 and this caused the “tissue paper” issue your describing.
They feel more clunky compared to what, 5v5 or end of ow1? Cuz yes, I agree they feel worse than 5v5, but compared to ow1 I think they kept things to make them feel less clunky, like rein can still cancel charge.
Overwatch wasn’t as rough for tanks, definitely.
The abilities weren’t the same and some heroes didn’t exist.
I was surprised to see Rammatra is able to completely ignore Reinhardt’s shield.
Also, using the ult with Roadhog turned out to be a death sentence…for myself since I didn’t have to watch for the Genji, but also Orisa which is a lot buffier combining fortify and spin, Doomfist which negates damages…
Overall, where I could quickly destroy any shields before, the nowadays situational abilities which are overabundant completely negates whole hog.
I think it takes some adjusting when you’re used to 5v5 tanking. Tanks in 6v6 can die much faster on both teams and I think that’s a good thing. If you’re dying too much it is often because you are making mistakes. You can’t be as greedy and you need to be way more careful with your health and sustain cooldowns. If you play recklessly, people will punish you for it. If you make a mistakes, people will take advantage of that. Tanks in 5v5 get away with so much stuff because of how much they can survive. You might have to make several mistakes on tank in 5v5 before you actually die. You need to be more careful in 6v6 and respect your opponents more.
Also, it’s okay to die in 6v6 as a tank if it allows the rest of the team to push forwards.
So far, folks still seem to play like it’s 5v5 and are EXTREMELY afraid to die for some reason.
This game has respawn. If you die while allowing a team kill and leaving one remaining tank on the battlefield, it’s absolutely a win.
This is real and true. It’s fine as a tank in 6v6 to sacrifice yourself for your team, especially on offense. The fight is not over if you die. So in a way, you can make more mistakes without ruining the game for everyone on your team. Sometimes you can go in and do something crazy, and if you get them to use valuable cooldowns or you create an opportunity for your dps to get a kill, it was worth it even if you died for it.
More cc, more sources of damage, less total health, less defense in the kits.
I just don’t understand why if they clearly need people to queue for tank that they would nerf everything and revert the other two parts of the tank passive.
I too don’t remember 6v6 feeling this bad but it certainly does and I want nothing to do with it
“But but but… the dps passive should fix all the issues with 6v6 sustain right guys guys” 6v6’s of yesteryear.
Be it the kicker with 6v6 is that most of the bulk tanks had was actually in their pairings and a lot of people complained that it was stacking tools barriers / dm’s or be tissue paper thin like they are now.
Some contributing factors to why you might feel this way:
The damage role passive did not get removed for some reason and is in fact stronger on tanks in the 6v6 mode than in 5v5. (15% instead of 12.5%)
Tanks have more or less the same health as they had in OW1, but everyone else has more than they used to because of the season 9 health pool changes. So the power creep from 5v5 didn’t get reverted going into 6v6.
The hitbox changes from season 9 did not get reverted either.
To be clear, it is good that they removed most of the tank passives. It’s just the execution of everything in the patch in general is just bad, and it’s carrying so much garbage coming over from 5v5 that doesn’t need to be there.
Well see my experience has been, I play mauga, I get everyone low and then my team doesn’t follow up and we just lose because it’s a 5v6 and they have 2 tanks.
They just stabilize with defensive cds that the 2 tanks have.
Part of that is just mauga sucks to be fair but still
Im kind of mixed on it. Sometimes it feels okay, other times its old numbani with 4 tanks on the field and nothing is happening.
I also dont miss getting chained cc’d by ball doom and friends. And the more i play, the more I’m convinced that tanks (at least as they envision it) don’t work regardless of format.
Please don’t take this as condescending (the game is really hard) and please instead take it as constructive advice, but I think this is a skill issue.
We kind of got lazy in 5v5, all of us. I’ve seen a lot of people make what would have been big, obvious mistakes in old Overwatch and then blame the balance for what was really them trying to 5v5 tank in 6v6. It’s a hard adjustment. I myself have made plenty of mistakes so far relying on my 5v5 training to try and tank. But I’m taking a deep breath and realizing that I’m making mistakes, and that I have the power to prevent these situations.
Oh I tried Mauga today!
It was awful. I didn’t like him. Feels more like a DPS that doesn’t actually do damage.
I have yet to try all heroes implemented during Overwatch 2 but so far, I think they were trying to appeal to DPS players when designing them.
And as for the useless sacrifice, well, currently, folks are fresh out of 5v5 where it is not recommanded to die and I noticed some game where the whole team preferred staying put during a whole minute without advancing instead of trying to go for it.
But yeah, sometimes, even if they do follow through, it does not always play out and you find yourself doing a reenactment of the Lord of the Rings, screaming “LEGOLAAAAAAS! KILL HIM!” at your screen.
But it’s better to take the risk and fail than not even trying.
Except many abilities and weapons got balanced around s9. Rein, winston, brig got more damage on primary, mauga stomp does more damage, ram vortex (mauga and ram didn’t exist in 6v6 so fair enough I guess but still)
rein pin is at like 300 now? a rein pin + firestrike basically kills doom and queen
The increase in hp relative to those increases in damage is not great.