Shield Tanks
For all the differences between more traditional First Person Shooter games and Overwatch there is at least one similarity - without shields shooters kill things pretty quickly. There is no other damage counter that has emerged to compete and replace a shield. Thus the paramountcy of Reinhardt quickly became a fact of Overwatch life and has shown itself lasting. With the eventual and arguably belated release of Orisa and Sigma Reinhardt finally got some like to like competition. However, it turned out that if you round out shield tanks they could just be stacked. As is customary for Overwatch posters as soon as a big problem emerges that isn’t easy to fix many take the imbecile’s way out and imagine a savior hero yet to come who will deliver them from their predicament. The anti-dive Christ bore the name of Brigitte, who many subsequently swore has a ‘Hail 666 Satan’ tramp stamp on her lower back. As the game’s de facto prime creator, one Jeffrey Kaplan, has stated, “be careful what you ask for”. Likewise a hero powerful enough to break up double barrier would annihilate single barrier, and then you will behold DPS heroes in their original sin forms. Other feeble and inadequate ideas have popped up trying to discriminate between double and single barrier but I haven’t seen one defying common sense. As people are averse to anything that can even be falsely imagined as grandiose this is no surprise.
So the developers nerfed the living hell out of Orisa and Sigma’s barriers and on the eve of Overwatch 2 the game is back to square one, except now you can play Reinhardt with either Orisa or Sigma to spay and neuter the types of damage dealers that started FPS games. I have some fun pulling Bastion out at this point but the Reinhardt dilemma isn’t getting solved any time soon. You either keep his shield relatively strong and have him played all the time to the exclusion of every other tank unless there’s a temporary dive comp or you nerf his shield too “and here we go”.
DPS Queue Times
Recently I’ve started playing some tank and support. Jeffrey Kaplan’s modern day oracles - those employed by Blizzard to attach dubious assumptions and stereotypes to numbers and model the future - foretold of this. 2-2-2 Role Queue would induce changes in the behavior of players, just like what Heroes of the Storm needed when it was going downhill was someone versed in the technical financial literature to introduce loot boxes full of novel sprays, portraits, and God knows what other abominations meant to have people keep spending money until they get the actually valuable stuff or are able to conjure it out of scrap, but I digress. Many other players won’t bother and I had already stopped playing the game, granted prior to 2-2-2, until I heard that 360 hz monitors should be coming out later this year. I’ll stop again once I’m done spending another $300 on mice like a degenerate monkey. The Razer Viper Ultimate is a pleasant surprise.
The point is I’m getting some insight into the minds of tank and support players. First I noticed that recent queue time predictions are systematically false. DPS queue times are often > 4 minutes longer than displayed while support queue times are often > 4 minutes shorter than displayed. So even support players don’t have to wait all that long to get into a game. Ana is good, Moira is surprisingly fun at least for the time being and of course easy to play while quite effective, Mercy is playable, Brigitte is still quite useful against dive, Baptiste is just coming down from an overpowered episode, if you know how to wall ride Lucio remains a decent option, and Zenyatta seems to be bringing up the rear. When Zenyatta is bringing up the rear without being terrible you’re in a good spot no matter how much you may complain about the bigger DPS pool padded by a number of heroes that are garbage. With the return of the king, Reinhardt, who is a comfort pick for many and being able to plug more or less any other tank in the other slot tank players aren’t exactly suffering acutely at the moment either. Their queues are the same and even shorter than before role queue. Despite the constant restriction and division of choice tank players are subject to some of them just like to cry when you try suggesting alternatives formally integrating restriction and division in order to rebalance some tanks and increase actual selection diversity.
Based on my observations of floundering games not even a clear and precipitous decline will change many of these people’s minds (in fact, many of them will just silently quit), especially when their positions are reinforced by historic grievances against DPS players. These people are enjoying 2-2-2’s lack of pressure that for them has come at a low and gladly paid cost of somewhat longer queue times. Some of them even enjoy seeing DPS players complain. In their minds the game is centered on them - if their experience is more agreeable and their queue times aren’t a problem then they couldn’t care less what the broader risk is. They exhibit the same sort of selfishness they accuse DPS players of.
The risk, however, is there. In the context of how short and straightforward Overwatch matches are waiting on a regular basis in 7-10 minute-long queues, for some players even longer, tests your patience for and enjoyment of the game. DPS being the most popular role accounting for perhaps a majority of players makes this a risky proposition. In essence, 2-2-2 role queue was the nuclear option.
Overwatch 2
Overwatch 2 will no doubt give a reprieve from the effect of these problems. Excitement will be in the air and a lot more people will be playing for some time. But key problems won’t go anywhere. Overwatch has already shown lower than desired limits on its effective appeal.
