100% more enjoyable than 5v5 for a myriad of reasons. After yesterday’s games, all I could think about in my last 2 hours at work was Overwatch. As someone who has been super frustrated with the state of 5v5 since S9 especially, this test couldn’t be more welcome!
The Good:
I have my second tank! I’ve finally been enjoying playing tank again! With the new additions to the tank roster, there is so much more team composition variety. Some of them are overtuned, but more on that later. Counterswapping still exists of course, but the outcome of a match is no longer dictated by your hero selection in spawn. Tanks having less HP means there is more of a window to outplay an unfavorable matchup. This doesn’t even account for the fact you have a second tank to help you out, and split enemy attention and resources. Less cooldowns are being used on me when I play tank.
DPS feels incredible. It seems on first glance that one would have less space to do things, but having 6 targets to potentially pressure, rather than 4 in 5v5, goes a long way. It doesn’t feel like playing DBD when tanks can actually be meaningfully interacted with. Besides this, abilities like Suzu and Grip feel far less oppressive as their uses actually need thought put into them. You don’t feel like you’re being constantly cheated out of kills every single fight.
Support gameplay actually doesn’t feel all that different to me. The main difference I find is that I consistently have a tank or DPS to peel for me if I need it. I still have ample opportunity to deal damage, and team fights depend far less on shoving heals up your tanks’ behinds than balanced usage between everyone on your team. It’s so much more exciting than 5v5!
The Bad:
This section will mostly talk about balance. While there are some glaringly overtuned heroes, it isn’t as bad as I initially thought it would be. Nothing really feels weak — there are just a few outliers who are a little bit too strong. If I was to write a list of heroes that could use nerfs they would be as follows:
Hazard
While he doesn’t really function well in 5v5, he feels great in 6v6. His playstyle can actually be enabled by other tanks, which makes him very fun to play in this format. However, he is ridiculously hard to kill if you know what you’re doing.
Reduce his damage reduction with Spike Guard, or reduce his armor a little, and he would probably be perfect. Perhaps a slight reduction in boops from Jagged Wall.
Rammatra
Reduce how much HP he gets from using Nemesis a little, and that’s all. He is overall not all that much stronger than other tanks, but this would help bring him in line. I don’t die on this guy.
Wrecking Ball
This guy is pretty tanky, and neccessitates counters, even in 6v6. His HP can be reduced if they give him some counterplay against CC. Make Adaptive Shields grant CC immunity for a short duration, and the tradeoff would be fair.
Sojourn
She is already overtuned in 5v5. Being able to build rail even more easily, while actually dealing meaningful damage on tank, puts her over the edge. I would reduce her charge per shot.
Lifeweaver
This guy got a lot of buffs. If he’s being played, your kills are dropping drastically. He is a very poorly designed support in the first place, so he still needs a rework to inject some skill expression which would also allow for fine tuning.
Juno and Lucio
Just reduce how much speed boost is granted. Not by nerfing cooldowns, but by nerfing the percentage of speed granted. Everything is mobile, and with two tanks, these two can be absolutely suffocating to play against.
The Ugly
The DPS passive. This is here to keep sustain down, but sometimes it just feels like you’ll blow up randomly when playing tank with lower HP, even through healing. I acknowledge that burst healing is overtuned, but the DPS passive to keep it down is just a bandaid fix. Remove the passive, and nerf burst healing.
S9 HP and projectile size changes should not be present. Not in 6v6, and not in 5v5. It still disproportionately benefits hitscan over projectile, and screws up DPS balance, breakpoints, and tank survivability.
All in all, I haven’t had this much fun in OW2 on any role since OW1. I will be religiously playing this every day I can until it goes away. This needs to be a permanent format.