3 dps is a problem for some tanks like Rein and Orisa, but I could be really good for tanks like Winston and Wrecking ball. It would be cool to see a version of overwatch where the default tank for most ranks isnt determined by the characters ability to hold up a shield.
Personally I’m really excited to see the overwatch team experimenting with bold ideas like this. I hope the community gets a chance to try it out.
I think my IDEA is much nicer, people complaining a lot that healers are the problem cause “too much heals in the game”
if there is only 1 heal, kill the 1 heal and ur happier, right? 
and could give buffs to a little HP and buff the hps from healing for solo heal
Thanks for this explanation Jeff, and I love that you guys are experimenting with comps and balancing characters around it! What if you guys gave a slot for flex players in role lock? They could fill in the questionable gap between DPS and Tank.
Throwaway Idea: 1 Tank, 1 DPS, 1 Support, 3 Flex- limit 2 tanks max, 3 DPS max, 3 supports max. 1:1:1:3 with limits. As a flex player, I miss the ability to swap roles in the middle of the fight, and maybe this is one option to help fix it. This kind of composition naturally allows for more flexibility during gameplay, and the worst scenario is ending up with only 1 healer. Not great, but your ideal Flex player will try to fill in the gap for support. A major pitfall would be DPS mains queuing as flex with no intention to actually flex.
Most GM games and OWL scrims are Orisa/Sigma/Mei/Baptiste right now, it’s not exactly a secret.
I have this idea that’s on my mind since everybody hates to shoot shields, what if we make shields even weaker and buff tanks in a different way? give them more damage more mobility?
People pick up Damage Heroes because they are fun playstyles, and very diverse Heroes and a lot of them to choose from.
So what if we make tank heroes more fun! Like you want people to play Tanks, then make them more engaging and fun to play like DVA in her newest PTR Update!
I’ve really liked the last 2 patches only wished Orisa and Sigma got more nerfs and Winston a mini Buff somehow like mobility for example.
Like sometimes I don’t understand why you are so scared of making bigger balance shifts when we know those tanks are very strong.
Also Hanzo Nerfs are great I just wish he would even get 1 less storm arrow, again.
But I’d love to be proven wrong and maybe the last patch allows more diverse Hero pools for the start of the Overwatch League.
As I mentioned above, as a tank main who was sick and tired of solo tanking pre-Role Queue (note I wasn’t always a tank main; I only became one because I was also sick and tired of 5+ DPS team compositions!), I sincerely hope that Overwatch never goes 1 tank 3 DPS 2 supports.
If it ever did it’d be without this tank main.
I’m sorry, but I find this very hard to believe considering there is no mandatory team chat for Competitive matches nor has backfill been added to Competitive to compensate for leavers.
The answer already exists in game in other modes - backfill.
I understand this but if you want to reduce the psychological player pressures of playing OW(tank, healer, DPs roles) the obvious solution is to get out of the 6v6 bubble and make team size larger. You can’t solo tank with the nerfs to tanks in the last patch.
This is why I am disappointed in the direction of OW2. I know you will probably make more expansions in the future but I wanted bigger maps, bigger team size and more heroes. I could care less out PvE playing bots but to each his own. Follow the TeamFortress 2 model and balance around rez timers/ultimate.
Tanks should be split into shield and non-shield; one of each. We’ve already descended into role limits, why not go the distance.
The barrier category would squarely feature Rein and Orisa, and Sigma could be included depending on how Blizzard wants to balance him.
Introduce it as an arcade mode. Players will know it’s not permanent and you’ll be able to test it out with the current hero states.
2 tank, 3 dps and 1 support pls
make my team hate me even more when they see me right click for 0.01 sec
The problem I see with this is that people were crying about there being too much healing even when picking heroes was a free for all and we ended up most times with just one healer and maybe one tank on anything lower than Diamond. I’d love for there to be more healing in general but people still complain about healing creep in the face of many times there having been proof that heals are often the first thing to be nerfed with the exception of Zenyatta and maybe Lucio. It’s only a matter of time before Baptiste gets his healing nerfed, too.
It wouldn’t work with the current hero states though. That was one of the biggest emphasis of this entire thread.
Well if it’s solo heal, how can they complain about “healer power creep” 
A couple of quick thoughts for you regarding roles:
Tanks: each tank will definitely need to be rebalanced around the single tank role. Particularly the “off-tanks”.
Your dedicated tank players will enjoy the spot light, conversely it will “feel” just as bad for them when they go down because the team will likely crumble. Just like in older games with a single tank.
Support: support players will have a lot of pressure places on them to keep the team going. When there are multiple DPS heroes on a team, fights go faster because many supports can’t keep up with either how spread out the team gets, or they pocket a hero and keep an eye on another.
Supports end up the easy pick for the multiple dps to focus on. Just like early overwatch, playing support ends up being very frustrating because you see the spawn room more often than others.
Damage players love it because, yes, the game becomes more “FPS” like. But players will go back to complaining about supports not healing when supports can’t be everywhere 3 damage heroes are going.
Also, some damage heroes are currently and will continue to be detrimental to play in such a scenario. These heroes need current balancing and will need it even more under a 1-3-2 game.
Some supports will essentially be out classed in their own category. There will need to be more rebalancing in this category too.
Under the current system of very few and limited health pack and no auto heal regeneration out of combat, that’s a terrible idea.
From personal experience, I don’t want to depend on one healer nor to play that one healer.
Hey Jeff! Thanks for giving us insight. I love overwatch, but I’m just not playing it anymore because of the queue times.
I’d totally support 1/3/2 in OW. I love it (1 tank) in WoW and it would make me play only Tank. While Roadhog is my fav char I’d be totally ok if you even delete him from the game just to decrease loading times (if this would make any sense)
Right now I’m mostly playing DPS because I don’t have the same Tank-Feeling like I have in WoW. To be the strong guy in front of everyone, leading them… it’s just not the same in OW right now.
1/3/2 with reduced queue times it would me make interested for OW2 again.
Right now my friends and me are sitting there, every evening “What are we gonna play today?” “Overwatch?” "Lol, wanna enjoy queue or what? Let’s play anno… " “Anno it is!”
To the roadhog problem… make him stay a tank, but change him or rework him. Maybe change his scrab gun to a tar gun with less damage, but easier to hit enemies, similiar to Mei’s gun, but only with slow, not freeze and make his rightclick a flamethrower that burn slowed enemies for extra damage and poke on a long range.
OR do it the other way around. Rightclick launches a blob, sticking enemies to the ground in AoE for 1-2 seconds and make his leftclick a flame thrower for dps.
Of if you don’t want to change his visuals, maybe give his normal gun some kind of ‘nail down’ effect that slows or CCs a bit.
His breather should give him a bigger damage reduce as a only tank OR maybe create a smoke cloud for the teams that heals and the enemie can’t see through to give him some kind of ‘shield’ (that can also be set on fire)
Thank you Jeff for staying in touch with us, It is encourages me so much, that I see how ow dev’s team are actually working and thinking about community suggestions.
Also might be a good idea to do 1 maint tank role, 1 main support role + 4 flex roles (for dps off healers and off tanks but restrict barrier stacking in case if sigma considered as off tank hero and tank stacking to prevent goats playstyle), bc flexibility was a part of Overwatch in before and we lost that huge playerbase who was glad to fill needed roles. When I was climbing from gold to gm ranks before role q, I found that even if whole team goes like 4-5 dps composition, 1 main tank usually gets 1 main support, and 1 main support gets off healer by free will, then 1 dps might switch to help his main tank also by a free will w/o asking, bc players just needed that one main tank player to start something, but at team assembly they’ve just shown thier desire to play current hero. And then starting 4-5 dps becomes 2-2-2 all of a sudden. Of course at low elos players are not communicating that much and this is the actual reason why they cant build proper compositions. But as higher you go as higher chances to get teammates who not hesitate to ask for help being reasonable. That inspired me to play ow competitively.
Tank main here… I would be fine solo tanking if it was forced. But I am a tank in every game that has tanks and the games that don’t I tend to play more durable characters.
The biggest issue before RQ was going against 2 tanks as a solo tank. Rein vs Rein is fine… fun even. Rein vs Rein + Zarya is a loss.
All this is assuming reverts and buffs to nearly every tank.
Hey Jeff! Gotta say, I’ve really been loving the heightened communication from you and the team here the past week or so. Even when I disagree with your vision and reasoning, I at very least usually can respect the thought process behind it, and I don’t think I speak for myself when I say that, for many of us who get frustrated with some of the changes that are made, this kind of communication really helps things be more palatable because we can see the why and not just the what.
That said, 1-3-2. I can’t say I’m a big fan of the idea, in part for the reasons that you list out. Personally, I really enjoy that there’s a considerable diversity in tanks and that certain tanks can be paired to create interesting synergies, even outside of the “standard” combos like Rein-Zarya, Orisa-Hog, and Winston-DVa. Hammond-Zarya, for example, is an outstandingly fun combo for many players. Beyond just the pressure to alter some of the more-iconic tanks in the game, I feel like 1-3-2 will take away from that.
With that in mind, have you or the OW team ever considered altering the team dynamic more drastically, such as going for a 2-3-2 team roster? I know that this is a considerable change since it doesn’t just alter the team composition but also changes team size, but it’s an idea that’s been floating around the forums that I think a lot of people are warming up to. The idea here, obviously, is that it improves the DPS queue without considerably changing the Support or Tank experience, but personally, I’d suggest that it also helps relax the stress of high-coordination teamwork since more players = more instances of engagement = more chaos. I’d compare it, if you will, to the difference in Slayer and BTB in Halo. Even on vehicle-light maps (meaning closer in style to Slayer), BTB tends to be less sweaty and more enjoyable. If changing the competitive format is a concern, too, many games also differentiate between the “casual” (read QP) and “competitive” (read OWL and potentially Comp) modes in terms of team size–a great example being Destiny. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this
(also totally unrelated, but I’d love to hear if there’s something in the works for my gal Brigitte–a lot of us have been pretty… underwhelmed, to frame it diplomatically, by her since the rework and wanted to know if there’s anything you all are planning for her)
This sounds like it would be a fun PTR playtest, and I personally don’t believe it would be a problem if it didn’t end up going to live.
At the very least it would have been a very worthwhile playtesting experience, just to say “now we, the public, know.”
If some sort of special event, just like Bastet or Nano Cola, were designed around a PTR playtest, with a badge or profile icon that would transfer onto Live, I feel like that would be a wonderful incentive to bring people to try it. You could even bring back Closed Beta-style surveys for more data collection.
I wouldn’t mind playing a 4v4 or 5v5 playlist. In fact, a 5v5 playlist with either No Hero Limits or Quick Play Classic ruleset, seems like it would be a fun alternative to a standard Role Queue match.
I’ve been a strong believer in having separated queues where casual, semi-serious, and serious players all have their own playground. 2/2/2 seems to be a Comp “Lite” mode that turns a lot of people away, and Arcade seems to not really fill the niche of casuals because of how drastic the ruleset changes and constant rotations can be.
Having a 5v5 game mode where the core gameplay is loosely the same, but different enough from the Comp experience, seems like it could carve out a section for casual play and fast games.