As someone who plays tank every day

General Discussion
41

Hate to break it to you but Players are leaving OW period, and the ones that do join are going to lean closer to DPS as their first picks in the hero pull.

Like their shooting on balancing the roles at the moment, And ya thats going scare away the people that want a power fantasy over a fair game.

Especially since OW was basically designed around everything being a broken tool or ability, to learn the hard way of balancing something like is almost impossible when the power curve is all over the place.

Now that just about ever tool is being pulled closer together, Sigma with all his tools and utility gets the clunk that comes with being so multi-purpose. While the heroes that have more clear cut specific playstyles are having a bit of their reins loosen.

Like winston the hero that can jump and place a bubble, is still usable in an environment were a hero packed with stun, shields, DM, decent damage output, and a team wipe ultimate, exists.

42

I don’t play tank often (I was a tank main at one point though, before I began playing Moira), but I consider myself a very good D.VA/Ball/Zarya player and I feel the same, I also don’t know what all the fuss is about.

The only thing I feel are the Orisa nerfs tbh.

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43

I’m in masters, I don’t want to switch my forum account (this is pre 222 account, my main account is plat border)

And yet low Gm plays Winston and D.va. Especially Winston. Winston Zarya is a legit comp, comboed with Doom.

In masters both Rein and Dva are played btw (swear to god, if you don’t believe me, go check any stream, I promise you you’ll see them)

I rly should lvl this account man, I have all the skins and items on my main acc anyway… At least to put some wight to my statements

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44

I’m also in master. my profile is public. My most played last season was Reinhardt. Matman, flats, bogur, and other dedicated tank mains have expressed their dissatisfaction in the current state of the game.

I know because I watch flat’s, emongg’s and bogur’s stream.

That’s cause not all of us are god WB / Sig / hog players and would want to play our favorite heroes. In some maps, these outdated tanks are still somewhat viable, but not every map is king’s row / rialto (good rein zar maps) or gibraltar (good dva monkey map)

yep you should. In this acc, my dps and supp are low so I can play with friends, but in my favorite role, I got master. If you really are master, then you should have no problem ranking up and getting it. and if you really are master, you should be able to tell that there really is a problem with the amount of damage and damage modifiers in this game. unless of course, if you rarely play tank or you’re not master

and you mean to say that every top 500 who’ve voiced out their thoughts on the current patch and people like me (master) are just parroting what they say and sound stupid because it’s “popular” ?

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45

I’ll just leave this here

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46

No, there’s a difference between raging mid game (as players do), and some random chuck watching, taking them seruously and writing essays about tank balance.

I’ve been playing this game for 4 years and I do not remember a time where a tanks didn’t cry about getting stomped - same goes for every other role. People get rekt, they “cry” about it - gold/plat plebs take it as gospel.

Also Gm’s top 500 are not a humongous group - they have different opinions, and there’s a difference between an opinion and random venting mid game.

There’s a difference between “how my main hero is doing” and how “game balance is doing”

47

Every player role is always crying. That’s normal.

Even while not being a tank main myself, I can see how weak tanks, and especially main tanks are now, with the exception of WB. I can see tanks getting melted faster than both healers can heal them and shields melting within seconds. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that playing an exclusively melee hero like Reinhardt can be frustrating to play when his shield is down faster than he can get even close to melee range. Sure, you can dance around corners or a payload, but it just doesn’t feel like being much of a tank at that point if you can’t even survive a couple seconds in the open, does it?

The tank issue is not exclusive to Rein, but this explains it quite well and goes beyond just Rein:

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48

And what about the enemy tank? When myself and the enemy Rein enter a duel I promise you it’s the bubble-nade timing that decides the fight, and not the dps - the dps only decide where we fight, cuz i promise you we are not fighting in their LOS - that’s what chokes/corner are for, and that’s where Rein v Rein fights happen, and thnx to all the balance changes (less shileds, more swing damage) these fights happen and conclude faster - and I’m personally fine with that cuz I hated playing one choke for full 30 seconds and then losing, i hated how al fights were dependant on who got the ult first. Now they are actually dependent on skill and abilities more than ults. (just my humble opinion)

My personal experience with playing the new Rein with a Zarya is that we went from bubble when swing to bubble after nade only - that’s it.

The only problem is when you get discorded - then you cannot engage, untill your deeps contest zen. Which makes me believe that discord is gonna get nerfed soon (and then everyone will cry how blizzard hates supports just as much as tanks, and I’ll roll eyes)

Other than Orisa (as I named in the OP) you only have D.va not being 100% viable - but she is still played, she had an armor buff and imho it’s the old defense matrix nerf that keeps her from being completely broken (given how broken and OP her boosters are)

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49

There are other match ups for a rein than an enemy Rein, and the issues are not exclusive to Rein. Tanks get shredded by the sheer amount of damage, damage amp and CC, hence why WB is so strong now and hard to kill even through CC.

Just viable is not enough. Technically everything is viable, but there’s currently so little between a tank hero being viable and not viable. There’s is so much damage and damage amp in the game right now that tanks simply do not feel like tanks if played against an enemy who aren’t picking their noses instead of shooting. A fact is that tanks got significantly worse than they used to be. That’s not a matter of opinion. They just don’t have the impact they should have and used to have in the past.

It’s not just a matter of some mid-game rage or a few people being dissatisfied. It’s across all ranks. You are right now genuinely the only person I know of who is fine with the current state of tanks. Even non-tank players see it, including myself, although I do play a fair amount of tank as well.

There’s a nice topic about this:

50

See, this is why I don’t get it, Wb’s biggest weakness is CC (way more than other tanks cuz he can’t block CC + it completely disables him and his gameplay.) So if CC is so strong how is the one tank who’s value literally depends on not being CC-ed so strong/meta.

What is then?

Do you have an example of a tank not having an impact? Cuz I’m pretty sure that they solely impact where dps can dive, who they can contest and when.

For example…? Name just one difference of impact. Just because a gold Rein is punished more severly for his cd managment and positioning doesn’t mean that he has less impact - since bad passive positioning and holding M2 on main didn’t have impact in the first place - that was unimpactfull bad play - “I’ll just stand here until my team carries me and feed them infinite ult charge without dying fast enough to end the pain”

This is the same story with Brig - she’s totally viable and fine now, not OP, not “braindead”, not a “must pick” - but viable and rewarding when played properly

51

I stoped playing every day as tank and in general this game for many seasons now. I felt the change of dmg metling tanks faster already during the “goats meta”, especialy because my rank didnt played it, but changes were made agains it. I managed to play through that, but during 222 implementation the ideology of “if something cant compete, lets buff its dmg and see what happen” stays, either in flat number buff to dmg itself, fall off, or speed how people shoot.

Its even shown with tanks, when they tryed at first to bring rein to play by buffing his dmg. After what, they had to anyway nerf other 2 tanks, but left dmg in.

RN i admit i dont play this game, and i would probably be worse at playing tank, but from what i know since playing last time (around echo being added) as tank, i started to hate it so much. The existence of tank turned in to “you are to passive” when you made two steps forward, and died. Barriers breaking in moments, and basicialy because of big hitbox, the only way to play was having pocket ana, or hiding most of time, making teammates even more angry at “passive tank” gameplay.

Its not just dps, supports, or tanks. Over time all roles had added dmg to them, more and more. Yes there were some nerfs as well, yet they still had added so much potential dmg that it was just matter of swapping off to other hero who didnt got nerfed at the time, then hero nerfed will be getting worse and worse stats, to the point where they will “have to” buff them to compete.

Not saying everyone going to hate the changes in the game, and had problems with it, but i mainly use my personal opinions and gameplay experience complaining. Thats why for example, im disliking doomfist, even if his stats are not in good place.

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52

As someone who has played tanks across the ladder, you can play anything you want in the gold area because there is no TEAMWORK. As soon as the enemy start coordinating storm arrows, echo bombs and other abilities into the main tank there’s nothing they can do. This is a damage meta, (not saying dps) but sheer damage. Whoever outputs the most in a small amount of time wins.
A bit of a big take here but competitive only really becomes competitive from diamond up. Even diamond might be a bit low. You can play whatever hero you want in most ranks (unless the balance is really bad). however if the higher you get the more garbage the tanks are (as a role not as a singular character) why would anyone want to climb?

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53

Because if played properly, most CC isn’t long enough to burst him down through his 1k combined HP and shields before he rolls away at lightning speed, you can’t headshot him, he also needs to be reacted to unlike other tanks who you always know the positions of and can predict them and prepare your CC. It just takes much more to kill him than any other tank in the game, meaning CC and a lot of cooldowns need to be used on him for a kill that isn’t guaranteed unless enough people turn around to burst him down.Plus dealing damage to his shields doesn’t give ult charge, so unlike other tanks, he’s not an ult charge battery.

Stun any other tank and they will take 100% more damage from headshots and with less health to work with than WB. Count in damage amps and they flop in a split second. The difference is, you NEED to CC a WB and commit abilities to only him to kill him AND it takes more damage to do it. That’s not the case with other tanks.

Saying that something is just “viable” might as well mean “it’s not quite weak enough to not be picked”. Plus you have to have at least two tanks in every game, so saying none are viable wouldn’t make much sense. There are no tanks right now except WB that can straight up be called GOOD heroes compared to the DPS and support roster. Tanks are just a comparatively weak role to the two other roles.

I didn’t say the do not have an impact. I said they used to have much more. Back when the amount of damage wasn’t so abundant.

Ability to survive. Again it’s the same thing everyone is talking about. There’s way too much damage in the game. Echo can burst down any tank with just stickies and beam without damage amps. Other heroes with Bap damage amp, discord orb, Mercy damage amp, bio nade to deny healing with the amount of damage supports can pump out… there’s basically 4 DPS heroes on each team. Either tanks need to be tankier or overal damage/damage amp in the game needs to be toned down, with the latter being prefferable. So basically the problem is not with the tanks being weak, it’s that everything else got much stronger and new tank buster heroes were put in the game while tanks themselves went basically unchanged.

It’s not a problem that tanks are weak when played wrong. It’s a problem when they are played properly and at a high level and still being weak. It started as a meme of “haha MT bad”, but now people are genuinely starting to get frustrated with the situation.

54

Every now and then, I saw a Genji went in 1 v 6, got blown up, then complained where was the heal.

Every day I read this forum, there’s always tank players who complain that they got blown up facing 6 enemies without taking into account of the team and the enemy’s position and los. Then they complain about bad balancing

Same mistake, just different roles.

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55

tank is actually in a good spot until they pick echo or hanzo etc

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If Rein can get countered by Hanzo/Echo, then you’re allowed to counter Hammond with Sombra/Mei - I promise you it takes less skill on these to to take down Hammond than it does for Echo/Hanzo to take down Rein