I feel like Mei is a WAY better example.
Realistically they are probably going to make some major barrier tank changes soon.
And that’s going to reshuffle what offtanks are meta.
This is a side effect of horrendously and intrinsically flawed design. The current and all past incarnations are a mistake.
DM should not be the bulk of Dva’s survivability, and standard hack eats up far too much of Sombra’s power budget. There’s really no fixing these two without addressing that.
I doubt it does anything to ladder unless they gut Rein.
She’s not, though? During the Melee she was run situationally and map-dependently, with only a few teams comfort picking her in beyond that.
Not lately, at least outside of hero bans…
Sombra reaches a competitive state in OWL, in a world of Tracer-Echo and the like. That doesn’t mean that she’s been balanced around that level, though. She’s been more balanced around forum-storms of “nerf Sombra! she’s anti-fun!” threads than she has high-level play. She had some serious impact in Goats due to the nature of Goats, and that was that.
I think devs realize that the entire Tank Role needs to be fundamentally more popular.
Which probably means some big buffs.
In particular I’d suggest cutting the HP on Orisa/Sigma/Rein roughly 20%, then buffing their firepower about 14%, and then buffing their barriers back up to where they were in September.
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Ha ha ha… ha ha… ha. No, they are not going to buff barriers, bro. Expect the opposite. And for good reason.
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mei was just as miserable on ladder as she was in scrims and OWL
I’ve probably thought more about barrier tank balance than anybody else on the forums or reddit 
Trust me, the concept is really solid.
And I’m saying this after posting on the topic for 6 months.
The short of it is “DoubleBarrier with strong barriers is fine, if it’s weak at close range”.
I just mean they blidgeoned her on ladder to try and balance her for OWL. So she is a better example of OWL balance messing with the game.
Wait Sombra is being played in OWL? She really needs to get nerfed ASAP!
Because they’re team heroes. This is not an OWL problem, it’s a team problem.
Overwatch is a team-based game, you even rely on your team a lot more in Solo queue than in other games and there are heroes who are strong in a team-setting (Sombra, Dva, Zen). The issue is that the vast majority of the playerbase doesn’t play it as a team, and is not even given the tools to do so.
This balance question isn’t about OWL, it’s about whether you want to work against your own game design or if you want an unbalanced game for your playerbase.
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When owl stops playing dva, when their job is basically playing dva 24/7 even when ladder has abandoned her, all hope is lost when even owl pros feel that dva is not good enough to run.
If the best players in the world in the best teams with the best team comps with the best hardware who get paid, coached and skrim 8 hours a day can’t make Dva work in under the best possible conditions, despite always forcing players to run Dva in every possible scenario? Too bad, us plebs won’t be able to either.
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I mean you’ve seen the Orisa Sigma dominance in OWL whenever Orisa isn’t banned (she’s been banned three weeks already), right?
Despite all the witch-hunting, they’re still extremely effective on ladder as-well.
D.Va requires higher skill than most to get value out of.
Sombra requires teamplay.
D.Va and Sombra are great picks in the scrim scenes or Path-to-Pro because of the emphasis on teamplay.
Sombra is great at relaying information or doing assassinations.
She can’t be buffed to relay information better if your team is Bronze and doesn’t even look at half of their screen.
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she’s used in current kr contenders, and contenders has no bans
wgs stomped runaway with sombra dive compositions (sombra/echo/winston/d.va/brig/zen) and runaway often tried to match with their own sombra
d.va was used plenty in the may melee but the meta shifted hard to double shield as it went on, but contenders has a pretty healthy mix of double shield and dive right now so d.va still has a place (though she’s by no means a must pick)
i think the biggest issue with people that want these heroes buffed is that they generally ask for unreasonable things, like buffing sombra’s damage or making d.va a super bulky tank or giving her more damage
I think the biggest problem with Sombra, and possibly d.va is that they require a lot of communication. Other dps and tanks and carry and play by themselves. But the reason they can be used in owl so well is bc it’s a 6v6 full comms. You can coordinate dives which Sombra and d.va excel at. However, on ladder, people don’t listen, people don’t comm and there’s all sorts of variables to consider.
Otherwise you just kinda pester the enemy team, or try and go in but not finish anything or play split etc.
I STRONGLY disagree with you.
There are numerous buffs/tweaks that could be implemented to help Sombra out on ladder without breaking her for pro play.
Stuff like increased Hack visual/audio callout when completing a Hack, change her damage falloff from 70% to 50% reduction, lowering TL cooldown, ect.
Saving this comment for when barriers get buffed
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I’d say that the hero design ruined these heroes because their unique value makes them either mendatory or irrelevant in high lvl of play. And w/ stat nerfs this situtation is not going to change.
Naisu. We can make it a friendly wager. I will call you my lord and savior, the God king Boshy, if they buff barriers. If they nerf barriers, all you need to do is sit there in shame. Deal?