To Hard? No. Honestly, in general they do not require more game sense, mechanics, etc. than other types of heroes.
Where the big difference is how punishing it is. If a tanks plays poorly, the impact is much more significant than if a damage (or even healer) plays poorly. It is a far less forgiving roll. So, not harder, but more punishing.
Also, there is far less reward feedback. There is less positive response for doing things right. Most of the time when a dps “pops off” it is because the tank did their job well, but the dps get the credit. Makes it less rewarding to play.
Tanks are not to hard, they just take a different way of thinking. That way of thinking is boring or unfunny for most players. Your thinking shifts from my survival is #1, to my team’s survival is #1.
Worse than that, not only does the BarrierTank have team-wide impact, they are reliant on their teammates healing them, shooting near them, and positioning with them to get that impact.
Meanwhile their solo-play impact is pretty minimal.
So if you mess up. Really bad.
If you don’t get heals and firepower and team-positioning, all at the same time, your “fun” is greatly reduced.
And you only really get to do truly fun stuff with Rein till about 20 seconds before the battle is over.
All I’m really saying is that I don’t think theres a clean solution for it atm. Whatever they do wont really fix anything because the dynamics of another role would have to be sacrificed
Whenever someone brings up skill on the forums, everyone just craps all over it and say it’s incredibly easy. There’s never any respect here and it’s pretty sad.
That said, an average tank gets an average rank, ranking is proportional to other players.
Got a pretty good solution just sitting over here.
I.e. Less HP for barriertanks to make them Diveable, but more Barrier, and more Firepower. ✅ Fixing BarrierTanks and OffTanks
I think the idea that all roles need to have equal impact is less relevant for 2-2-2. And we should be heading in the direction of equal Fun/Popularity across Roles.
Climbing with Tank is a lot more difficult than Damage/Healer, because you are so much more dependant on the performance and coordination of your teammates.
Also because of Tank scarcity, you are forced to play a much wider skill range of teammates.
With DPS it might be only 150SR up or down from you.
With Tanks it’s like 300SR up or down from you.
Main tanks are some of the highest skilled heros in the game. But a lot of lower ranks don’t really understand how to play tank at all, and just kinda stand in front of the team.
So then they think it’s boring.
But personally I don’t touch tank because of heros like Sombra and Doom who make me feel completely useless.
When it comes to playing DPS or Healer, most heroes can get good value in spite of low strategy (Sombra is an obvious exception).
However, when a tank player disregards strategy, then there is only one high value tank available: Zarya.
As a tank’s job is to keep focus off of their team, Zarya unconditionally does this, because Particle Barrier and Projected Barrier directly stop the teammate from being focused, and they give Zarya advantage for successfully tanking for the team.
On the other hand, every other tank requires some map strategy, and various conditions to be effective.
Reinhardt and Roadhog need to plan their abilities, utilities, and ults around map corners. Similarly, Winston, D.va and Wrecking Ball have to lock their opponents out of map advantages, which is purely strategic.
Orisa and Sigma are simpler to play than other tanks, but their barrier placement/management still requires map-specific strategy to get any value.
Maybe or maybe not, thing is “heavies” have ususally just never worked and Barrier tanks are the only way of actually accomplishing tanking in a game, where the enemies act on their own accord.
Just being aware of this is also a good start, instead of thinking an equal split will ever be achieved, or that more tanks/supports or buffing them in general to insanely overpowered status, would fix or even alleviate the problem in the slightest, which we know from the same places, that it won´t.
So if they need good barriers to function, firepower to be fun, but be counterable at close range but not medium range.
Then all you gotta do is lower their HP.
It isn´t only health that makes them problematic, mitigation (Barriers and such) can also function as a substitute healthpool. Making the hero more deadly at lower HP, while upping the mitigation, won´t fix that alone, only in very few instances with specific heroes.
This won´t fix, DM, Barrier spam and dancing etc tho. How would you fix them for the classes that cannot do anything about it, when you make the tanks stronger and this defensive aspect stronger too ?
they’re too hard cause they broke the balance within and between the roles and how you perform is a lot less impactful on the outcome of the match. picking the right cards like this is a hearthstone game decides 90% now unfortunately.
I don’t understand how to tank. I know I am supposed to make space, push the payload, get on the point and stuff, but I always feel like I’m just feeding. And that I need to be babysat.