That was definitely the feedback they got. It was the feedback I gave them, too.
Their solution is to make the game 5v5 and rebalance the a ton of heroes instead - and a change that big is too much for OW1 and now has to wait for OW2.
They clearly didn’t abandon the idea of 1 Tank per team. The advantage of shorter queue times just too good to pass up.
then why go back to it?
Because they hadn’t put the extensive effort necessary to make 1-3-2 work. All they really did was change the tanks a bit and that was it. You can’t keep the game as is and just rework the tanks, EVERYTHING needs to change to fit.
I imagine they saw something good despite all the negative feedback, though I also imagine that it convinced them that ‘more than 2 dps is not a good thing’.
What?
He rarely engaged.
Unless you count communicating in that little private discord of theirs.
Personally I think 5v5 is the way to go. For sure.
But having 1 healer and 1 tank isn’t a bad thing. When they tried 1 healer, they had 1 tank and 4 damage. That is insane.
1 tank, 1 healer and 3 dps would be a much more viable set up. Obviously you would buff healers in this scenario. Also, if it really was a problem that comps would fall apart as soon as the healer died, then you could have play tested other options such as allowing the team to resurrect healers only by standing on the body much like how it works in PvE modes with the drone animation.
This would allow teams to fix the mistakes and still make a come back.
They didn’t play test this. Not that we know of.
Td;lr Tanks feel garbage, whether 123 or 122 these points still apply.
Td;lr Support players aren’t amazingly happy about it, 122 or 123 these points still apply.
Td;lr DPS feels great. This doesn’t apply overall to 122 completely but they would still feel good.
And they go through with this anyways, Make tank feel even worse to play, Support somewhat worse to play, but don’t worry, DPS feels better to play than it already does! Why am I not surprised? 
What surprises me was that they thought the problem with 1-3-2 was not that solo tanking was not fun but that there was just too much happening and that if there was less happening it would be fine so it lead to them having the idea of removing part of what made OW great (the chaos).
But that mean they’re working on it, they thought about those issues and are trying to resolve them.
OW2 will be more chaotic in its current state with only one tank and zero changes to any of the roster. It will be a disaster more or less. Doesn’t matter if there is only 2 DPS instead of 3. The results will be the same.
No it will be far far less chaotic of that I am sure. You cannot just remove 1/6 of the game and have more happening in it. This is not a good thing though. Trying to sell people on less happening and it being easier to keep track of everything is not a good sales pitch as the chaos is the main selling point of Overwatch.
Also, it is not really fair to talk about no changes to the current roster as at least 6-8 months from release they are likely not even really thinking balance so much as they are thinking “What do we ant these heroes to be able to do?” which comes first before trying to figure out how they balance that in terms of gameplay.
Oh, man, I was so concerned about dps mains. I am glad I do not need to worry.
Because they didn’t “go back to it”
What they tested was 6v6 in a 1-3-2 format with three DPS. None of the DPS had nerfs. The tanks barely got changed. It was hell.
What they are doing for OW2 is 5v5 1-2-2 with huge changes across the game, CC nerfs/removal, nerfing mobility and sniper heroes, and reworking and buffing tanks in big ways.
That’s not at all the same as the horribly unfun 1-3-2 experiment we got to try
Tanks felt garbage during 132 for some people. Do take note of the last sentence in that paragraph.
Besides that though, pretty sure they did actually address this in the content creator AMA, saying they’re hoping that the tank buffs (Which I don’t believe would be possible in 132 because too much damage etc.) will counteract this anxiety.
The negatives were really about there being too much damage. Given 122 doesn’t have an extra damage character I don’t think the criticisms there really apply, though I acknowledge the tank buffs could change that.
Overall team health will be much lower because you are missing 1 tank. At least 400 HP lower. There are plenty of DPS who can do more than 400 damage and both teams have 5 players. You could give yourself a refresher course in classic quickplay and judge how chaotic the teams are when you only have one tank.
I think it’s very fair to talk about the current roster and future balance.
The issue with qp classic is that a lot of people stack in that mode for easy arcade wins. Most of my games are up against relatively traditional 222 comps and our healer is Sombra.
Maybe TOO much chaos.
You could even take that anecdotal evidence and apply it in OW2. What if your tank doesn’t pick Rein?
Even better yet: will Rein be the only tank in OW2? What is the tank balance going to look like? Because 1-3-2 was a whole mess by itself.
Well, unless they completely hit em up, Piggie Smalls is still going to be my tank of choice. I imagine it will play out similarly to when I am paired with a Ball that doesn’t know how to play Ball. And that experience is not fun, fam. Like pigs to the slaughter…
Safe to say, balance should be the #1 question for OW2.
Like 1st problem of overwatch right now is queue times, you win’t fix that by just releasing new heroes. In a few months it will happen again, in every tier of play there is a huge lack of tank players.
We need new players, current system we have is not sustainable. Sure 2-2-2 6vs6 is great for veterans, but it’s not very welcoming for new players. Open Queue 6vs6 might be another answer, but same thing applies. Teams are too reliant on tanks, you can’t do anything if you don’t have to them to make space. Tanks synergies are problematic and are the main point of creating annoying metas
Except your example is nonsense and your premise is sort of nonsense as well and I will detail very easily why.
There being 400 less health is irrelevant, who cares that a DPS can do 400 damage (or most tanks tbh). I do not understand why this is relevant or even sensible.
What matters is that now about 1/5-1/4 of the damage in the game is now gone. Ultimate charge just took a major hit with the tank passive (and less tanks) meaning less ultimates in the game. Overall killing capacity just went WAY down because there is one less person to apply pressure. Overall things happening in the game went down. All of these spell simpler not more chaotic. Who cares that a DPS can do 400 damage to something that doesnt exist? The problem is that now contesting players is now a much more annoying deal.
There is no universe where the game is more chaotic. It simply does not exist. The only way for that to happen is if they went 6v6 and decided on 1-3-2 because then you have the same number of players with a reduction in a Tank but you dont have that. You simply have one less person in a game creating less to happen.