Against a shield, a weak point

General Discussion
1

do you want to save tank shields from trash pick but don’t want the return of the double shield? then we begin to think of a weakness that creates countering, justifying a return of health and decency to the tanks.

  • we have several damage splash damage heroes (pharah, junk, symmetra, bastion ult, soldier, zarya, d.va). it would be interesting if the bullets are blocked but those hits give extra damage to the shields., even those that intersect.
  • some shields have tiny devices to summon them (winston and Orisa), if you aim at them from inside the shield to destroy them, as happens for the immortality field? it could be a great return for flankers who are usually overlooked and increase the available strategies.
  • Symmetra beam is the only shot that earns a bonus on hitting shields. but what if, for example, you earn an ultra loading bonus when destroying enemy shields? this would discourage continuous shield replacement gameplay (sigma and orisa), creating a real disadvantage to having too many easy shields in the field.
  • sombra, if she hacks orisa or winston, could he also cancel their shield?

if we find a weak point in having too many shield spam, we will not only see fortified tanks, but also more cautious and perhaps with real counter picks.

2

There was, and it was a more elegant counter that didn’t brute force it with raw damage to the shield.

Orisa was a throw pick during dive because she kept dying with her shield still up. A complete dive comp may not be that common across the ranks, but the heroes that made it were certainly popular. Which means there was atleast one hero in majority of the games that bypassed Orisa’s barrier completely and accessed her giant critbox at point blank. She kept dying with her shield still full and spent most of her time walking from spawn instead of tanking.

That changed when Moira went live as she’s a hard counter to Genji, followed by Brigitte who deleted Tracer. Only then did Orisa start becoming viable.

The point is, Flankers didn’t care how much HP your shield has when they can just bypass it altogether. Either buff the flankers (Tracer, Genji, Sombra, Reaper, etc.), or nerf the anti-flankers (Moira, Brigitte, McCree, etc.)

3

Or… OR we nerf the reason why double barrier is needed to stay alive. Just a thought. Also reworking Sigma would help so he is not anymore a ace of all trades.

2 Likes
4

I agree.
Give barriers a “Crit Spot”
Let Sombra Hack remove placed barriers.

5

There are plenty of tank mains (like me) who are very unhappy with playing tank right now, and you want more tank nerfs? In the first place, hog, sigma, orisa, and ball are played because they don’t randomly explode cause of discord / damage boost / baptiste imax theater + hitscan heroes. I have no idea what rank you are, but that suggestion will make a lot of tank players uninstall.

I’ve seen clips wherein gm tank streamers get melted in half a second. I’ve had that happen to me in master. It is plain unbearable to play tank right now. I’m actually surprised some people still think we need barrier nerfs when barriers are trash right now.

4 Likes
6

Double shield is becoming a boogey man.

People need to go back to the shield revamp patch and from then on understand why double shield was stronger after it and why it went away when it did. Hint: It was not because shields were uncountereable - because they aren’t.

3 Likes
7

I don’t think we need more tanks nerfs as shields currently are already weak and with what you are suggesting it would make shields useless. Personally I never had a problem with shields and in fact I wish they would revert the shield nerfs on Orisa and Reinhardt.

8

wait, WAIT And read everything: I said that one of the reasons there are so many nerfs to shields is because there is no ideal method against shield spam. IF we want the shield numbers to come back healthy and usable, they must come back with a new mechanic that makes the tanks cautious depending on who they have in front of them, and not useless against everything like their current state (very weak shields). is an argument that wants to save tank shields from being totally useless by accepting that some picks can counter to the point that overdoing the shields in the field is not a good idea. maybe only 1 main and 1 off tank yes, but without going to propose the scariest of ideas as a double queue between tank main and tank off role.

I hope it is understandable that the double shield, unfortunately, is really a problem as much as the abuse of 3-3 in open queue. it needs to be fixed, but we wanted that completely killing orisa and sigma of nerf is not the solution. changing the current figures is not the solution, the interaction must be rethought, the same which then leads us to think that ( for example) D.va is not good against certain heroes.

9

Even if the shields were buffed the changes you have suggested would cause the same problem we have now where too much damage are popping shields in seconds or flankers out right deleting shields at their source. I firmly believe double shield should be an option just not meta.

10

I do enjoy the idea of ways to counter barriers, but it doesn’t all have to be a barrier weakness to discourage them. I’ve always wanted more things to function like firestrike and Sym’s old RMB, with pierce going through barriers. If barriers didn’t block essentially everything meaningful, they wouldn’t have such an advantage over other forms of damage mitigation. And on that note, introduce more forms of damage mitigation with different rules.

Basically, barriers have monopolized damage mitigation and become the primary way to play tank effectively. There is plenty that could be done about that.

11

I would be fine if they gave back piercing orbs and some shield buffs.

1 Like
12

As long as we only give pierce to abilities with obvious drawbacks-- slow projectile speed, easily telegraphed, can’t 1-shot, on a cooldown-- then these abilities would mostly serve to apply pressure that, say, a D.va wouldn’t struggle with as much. And this is how you create a place for other tanks that don’t have barriers.

13

In Beta, Pharah’s E did bonus damage to barriers. The devs got rid of it because it wasn’t balanced.

That is because the bonus damage was a static numerical value.

If, instead, bonus damage was applied as a percentage of the max HP value, tailored to the ability being used (its base damage and cool down use over time), along with the rest of the hero’s kit, it would be possible to implement.

Take Helix Rockets. If it did, say 20% special barrier damage, than against Brig’s shield it would do 100+40 damage.

Against Orisa it would do 100+120

And so on. Though ideally I think 15% would be more of a sweet spot to start out with.

The counter to this argument is that if there are multiple “barrier busting abilities” in the game, it will make single barrier tanks on teams worse, enforcing the sense that you must go with 2 barrier tanks because 1 shield isn’t enough.

14

Yep like the current Sym orbs.

15

Shields have counters. Sym, flankers divers and rush comps don’t give a toss about shields.

The shields weren’t the problem in double shield. It was grasp, fortify, halt and the constant 200 DPS Orisa+Sigma had together. Both Grasp and Fortify made close range shield counters useless, Orisa/Sig were in fact the best rushers in the game, notice how the shield revamp only strengthened that meta and they played a lot with close range dps like Mei, Doom and Reaper. Furthermore Halt combo’ed with everything and was used to such effectiveness that it was a dive counter, particularly when combined with Rock. The damage with shields up made closing the range an uphill battle as well.

Now, adding more shield counters, with however many buffs to barrier HP you can muster, is going to counter single shield just as much as double shield comps. That’s not helping, it’s strengthening the reliance tanks have on self sustaining CDs (Adaptive Shields, Fortify, Grasp, Breather) and those are already the only tanks that can get anything done.

The interaction are fine, Blizz just failed to understand the meta so far and made the same mistake as you did just now, they tried to decrease shield dominance afterall, it’s called double shield, but that only got us more months with the buggers until Grasp, Fortify and Halt were nerfed.

Now, to increase shields, it’s simple, do the 180° from the shield revamp patch. Nerf Fortify and Grasp, buff the shields, buff Lucio’s speed decrease Sigma’s range and we’re good to go. Orisa/Sig crumbles against rush and dive.

This meta could have been fixed in May if Blizz wasn’t so stubborn and self assured, and if Geoff wasn’t trying to end main tanks. Now we got a bunch of crap shield tanks with forkton of damage and self sustain cooldowns so they can survive 2 seconds through the massive damages going through uncontested.

16

Interesting, but I don’t like it.

Considering that shields have weak hp already, destroyed in two seconds or less, your idea would make shields potentially turned into flash paper :dash: :thought_balloon:; very unfair.

17

Am I taking crazy pills? I must be misunderstanding what you mean otherwise I cannot believe my eyes.

18

Depends what you’re interpreting. I’m not suggesting double barrier is dominating, I’m suggesting that barriers as they are now are the absolute best form of damage mitigation as opposed to defense matrix, Zarya bubbles, Hog’s flat damage reduction, etc. If the devs want more tank variety without having to gut barrier HP(though they already have) they would be wise to find forms of damage mitigation that can compete with a barrier’s versatility. Restricting barriers to “main tanks” does not work.

One way was introducing more things that penetrate barriers, which was the discussion you joined in on.

20

Yeah I interpreted it correctly I’m afraid. Seems I’m not crazy just yet.

Here’s the rub: Barriers suck. The last year has been defined by damage mitigation through not barriers. It’s Fortify, Grasp and more recently Breather and Adaptive shields.

Barriers aren’t monopolizing anything, they can’t get anything done, Orisa’s barrier is probably among the weakest abilities in the entire game.

The reason double shield persisted for so long was a compounding of factors, barriers being stronger than other tanking CDs is really not one of them.

Introducing anything that counter barriers, be it pierce or special damage modifiers, will re-inforce the need for self sustaining cooldowns and counter single barrier just as much, if not more so, than double barrier comps.

We cannot possibly make barriers any more useless than they already are.

21

They are like that already.
Let’s see how much time until blizzard can fix the whole tank roster, it is a bad joke right now.
And let’s see how they fix it, buffs are not enought. They need to nerf hitscans, echo and zen