All tanks (Yes, even Roadhog) have abilities that are focused on protecting themself, protecting teammates (by blocking/absorbing projectiles, ex rein shield or matrix), or disrupting the enemy with crowd control, with only a few abilities being completely about damage. The only two I can think of is Rein’s firestrike, and Dva’s micromissiles- both options for short ranged heroes to do mid range damage.
This is why people say Mei is a tank, but why Bastion isn’t. Everything in Mei’s kit falls under the list above. Bastion can heal himself, and that’s it. He can’t displace enemies, he can’t protect his teammates, all his abilities are damage damage damage. But, Bastion has more HP than Mei. And Bastion has armor. And Bastion has his Ironclad passive, too! So why do people say Mei is almost like a tank, but Bastion isn’t? Because Bastion doesn’t do anything a Tank does, he just has high health.
So, to those saying that: ‘wow, tanks finally feel tanky now!’ Tanks have always felt tanky, you just can’t play tanks right. Being a Tank isn’t about hitting enemies with a wet noodle while being a big damage sponge. Being a Tank is about being a presence on the battlefield that protects your team, and kicks the butts of people who don’t respect you. Kicking butt is essential to protecting your team, and you can’t kick butt in this current experimental.
These tank changes are genuinely awful. I have not met a single tank main who likes them, and the people who do like them wouldn’t pick tank anyways if they had their preference. So, unless if you want Tanks to bottleneck queues to 20+ minutes, maybe lets avoid these changes.
I do think a good portion of the appeal to the tank role is surviving things the enemy wouldn’t expect you to survive.
Zarya’s only got 400hp, but she can pop her bubble to be practically invincible, denying an ability that would otherwise kill her. I find that sense of active denial pretty fun, which simply being a chonky target doesn’t really help accomplish.
Couldn’t this argument be used for Hog not been similar to the other tanks? He has his hook, okay, so he only is a tank every 8 sec? Can’t they just increase Bastion health to 400 HP and make self heal an ability with damage reduction on top and call him a tank?
I guess that’s true to some degree. In some other games I’ve played where stat building plays a vital part, a tank could even be a build with low health but high agility, flee or luck stats that can dodge/evade most of the attacks as well. Some could have continuous use of abilities like protection walls, shields, etc. to block damage, like a Mage class with force fields that can cast rapidly and have the mana amount to recast repeatedly. In some scenarios that could be utilized to tank monsters or players. They weren’t always dealing damage though but made enemies exhaust resources or created a safe space so that allies could attack.
I think most people in this game refer to tanks as characters that can charge into the front lines of a fight, or that can block or take more hits than the average character can take and survive. And for some in a more strict sense provide protection to others as well. Most tanks in game do so by definition and arguably some characters like Mei.
Despite that, I think the majority of players get “bored” if they can’t do anything more, like “win fights” as well. A more stringent design around solely blocking or taking hits is a niche that satisfies only a small portion of players. Ever since role queue was added to the game, the developers have had the challenge to try to balance around these concepts while also creating unique designs that can appeal to more players. I think ultimately, that is the goal, trying to create a design that satisfies the desire of “tank players” while appealing to a larger portion of players to combat queue times (I guess this is obvious lol).
i’d wager the live problem with tanks is that there’s not much player feedback on tanking. Damage is obvious, you shoot things, they die. Heal is also rather obvoius, you heal things and get assists.
But the game doesnt really reward tanking (on a player feedback point). Because tanking well is not something that can easily be seen without prior knowledge of what tanking means, on top of rein being the average pick for a long time has colored the perception that tanking means “put shield and press w/hold the choke”.
Even more damning is that the medal system rewards damage blocked and objective times, so many people think that’s the tank job.
This exp basically rewards bad tanks and punishes those that mastered the heroes and know how to punish enemies that don’t respect space and exploit openings to push (or even creating said openings).
Paladins does tanks so much better, since it made most shield temporary to highlight that protection isnt the only thing you’re supposed to be doing. On top of calling them frontlines.
hog is a tank by virtue of his damage threat and the hook essentially creating a “no go” room. He also has high health and requires a lot of resources to take down, which means less pressure on his team.
Bastion could work as a tank with a rework actually. A good example of a bastion like tank could be characters like raum or ruckus in paladins. Ruckus in particular wouldn’t be too bad of a template for a tank bastion. Ruckus had a gatling gun type weapons, missiles (like a less damaging soldier rocket) and a personal bubble that behaves kinda like hammond adp shields).
Mei really, you could just buff her hp and she’d already have a solid tank kit. Even doomfist would be a fine tank
This is the wrong assessment to have with regards to Mei.
Paladins is a MOBA, Overwatch is an FPS. Different design goals.
Some key misunderstandings about Tanks in Overwatch.
All Tanks have offensive abilities. Typically they tend to have more offensive options than many Damage-role heroes. You can argue that Reinhardt has Firestrike, but you forget Charge. Roadhog’s Hook is an offensive ability, as is Whole Hog, and it’s often overlooked that Roadhog as two modes of fire. Zarya’s damaging beam and alternative are some of the strongest available weapons in the game. And Winston’s Jump Pack is both a mobile option as well as a strong source of area effect damage on par with Swiftstrike.
Mei does not have this. She has two modes of fire, one of which is far lower than any standard damage from any Tank. Ice Wall is not protection, but area denial, and Cryo-freeze does not help anyone but Mei herself.
If taken literally, the idea that Tanks have abilities focused on protecting themselves and/or their teammates, then you could very easily posit that Genji is a Tank, since that is what Deflect does. Or you could argue that Cassidy is a Tank given his two defensive abilities in Flashbang and Roll (and likewise, Tracer’s Blink and Recall).
There’s far more to Tanks that stated here, and it’s fairly clear you haven’t noticed them or what they are. I’ll leave it to you to think critically in trying to understand what Tanks are in Overwatch and what defines them, and why they’ve been a problem.
How is Paladins a MOBA? The card system? Cause they feel very similar… other than tanks in that game being able to take quite a few more hits than OW tanks. And supports being useless the longer the game goes thanks to cauterize.
On one hand, I like the restrictions of 2/2/2. It is the funnest version of the game for me personally.
On the other hand, I don’t want characters that straddle roles to be confined in their design. Mei is the Tankiest DPS. Hog is the DPSiest Tank. Brig on launch was meant to be the Tankiest Support, OK bad example perhaps.
My main point. I don’t want the hero designers to be confined by our expectations.
I agree completely.
This also only furthers the point that Roadhog is a piss-poor excuse for a “tank.” Even if his hook is able to displace enemies, it’s used almost entirely selfishly, and he even goes way out of optimal tank positions so he can land his hooks and get kills.
Also, I wouldn’t say I like the experimental changes, rather I like the direction it’s headed. The content creator behind the changes seemed to have the right idea, but the utility that tanks were given to compensate for the lost damage was poor. If we gave them more solid utility to control fights, in place of their lost damage, then I think it would’ve been a great experimental.
Kind of lines up with what they’re trying to do in OW2, leaving most of the CC on tanks while removing it elsewhere.