Comp Role Lock Is Punishing DPS Players for Liking DPS

General Discussion
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So, DPS/flex player here. (Well used to be flex when it was possible.) However, I enjoy playing DPS the most. Hate me for it. The DPS category has the most characters, and most of them are immensely fun to play. I believe that there is a greater amount of DPS mains than at least tank and flex players.

Role Lock now has players waiting in queue for 10-30+ minutes per game if they would like to play as a DPS.
No matter how long the estimated wait is, I’m stuck in queue for over 10 minutes. This is compounded when I have to restart the queue (if a friend wants to join while I’m waiting patiently in my long line), or if the match begins and a player leaves immediately; right back into the queue for another 10+ minutes I go. Don’t even get me started on the players that throw the game after you’ve been waiting 10-20 minutes to get into a match. This has happened multiple times and my record wait time thus far is 35 minutes to play one single game as a DPS player. I spend more time in the queues than I do playing the actual game.

I get that Blizzard is trying to stop people from using GOATS and needed role lock to do so, but this prevents me from being able to play the game nearly at all, and I’m frustrated to the point of wanting to quit. But I love this game, and its toxic community. I just would like to be able to play.

Before I get a ton of hate and people suggesting that I just play support or tank. I do sometimes play support, but I like to play DPS and I want to play DPS most of the time. Imagine if the queue went from the nearly instant state it was in to 10+ minutes for tank or support.

I want to level up my DPS SR, and now that the SR is role specific, the only way I can do so is by playing DPS. Playing as a tank or support will not level up my DPS SR.

I keep hearing that “Role lock is supposed to allow me to actually play what I want to play more often and not have to worry about upsetting anyone.” Yet I’m hardly able to play at all. I can play whatever I want, so long as it’s support or tank. We paid money for this game too.

This drastically reduces DPS characters play time, which means becoming proficient with them will be more difficult. It is harder to rank up DPS when you’re limited to 1-2 games every hour or two. Not to mention the eye fatigue and general hatred for this system that builds up sitting and waiting at the spinning circle above the searching for a game screen.
Games become far more stressful because they are less frequent and I personally spend more time worrying about winning and stressing over a loss.

Another testament to the wait times is that I’ve been able to write and reread over this entire post three times in the time I’ve been queuing for just one game.

To summarize: wait times for DPS main play are atrocious and this needs to be remedied. This will cause many players to leave the game, myself included. Toxic people are going to rejoice that DPS players are leaving, but how ridiculous is it to want players to leave for liking the features that are appealing in the game. Might as well just remove all of the DPS heroes if everybody hates DPS players so much.

23 Likes
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Whatever and nerfing tank after tank is hurting the overall game.

So i couldnt care less about dds needing to wait a few minutes.
Suck it up.

34 Likes
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This is exactly the type of response I expected. You dislike what is happening to your role so other roles must suffer. Wouldn’t you rather have a game where none of the roles are miserable with their game?

And it should be noted that it is not “a few minutes.”
Tank queue times are very short in comparison to DPS. You might be getting nerfed, but at least you get to play the game.

Hope your experience gets better.

13 Likes
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Yah, the solution is, that dds stop only playing dds.

And beeing abel to play 2 misrable games in the time you play one isnt much of a good gain.

6 Likes
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I had 4 minute queue times in my games tonight. Not to say this is the same for everyone, because those at signficantly high or low ranks will have less players to play with which does mean higher queue times. But for me I have been very lucky with queue times.

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D.va, Roadhog, Winston got some buffs this patch, didn’t know that Orisa and Sigma are the only tanks in game.

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I believe the queue times are also different across the SR spectrum. Mid plat has been 10+ each game. I’ve been trying for a few hours.

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I don’t even play dps, i’m a support and off tank main, and even I think the dps wait times isn’t cool. Like, I hate this, ‘well sucks for you, because it isn’t happening to me’ mentality. Like, if supports and tanks had to wait 10+ mins to get into a single game, no one would be happy about that if they wanted to play.

14 Likes
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Yah, right. The dva buff is so minor you barly feel it. RH is now even better against tanks and Winston for once is nice, but wont be enough to change the meta.

So we gonne have some more month of frankensteins bunker with horible tankplay.

3 Likes
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just don’t like dps 4head

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This is exactly the point I’m trying to make. I understand the OW community can be pretty nasty sometimes but I’d want every player to enjoy their game regardless of what role they prefer to play. I have nothing but love for supports and tanks, no role should get the short end of the stick and all should be fun in game and when people are just trying to get in a game.

2 Likes
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There are sick people that are unable to distinguish themselves from the games they play, so any attack against blizzard is taken personally. I primarily play support and I HATE role lock. My wife and I used to play OW for hours some nights, but now we can’t play a match without getting frustrated at our inability to switch roles.

4 Likes
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This is in reply to you Sxc, I’m new to these forums so think I goofed the reply.

True! I could go on and on about how much I despise role lock and that it does more to hurt the creativity and fun of comp matches. I miss having the ability to flex across the roles and try to make things work with my team. I even enjoyed the crazy 4 or 5 dps comps that straight up beat opposing 2/2/2 comps more often than not. Now if I feel like I’m not keeping up in my role, it’s an L for all 6 of us instead of somebody swapping me for heals or tank.
My wife is a support main and hates waiting in queue with me for games so when I play with her I end up going support.
I think Role lock was a mistake but I don’t see it going anywhere no matter how many people speak up. They wanted GOATS dead at all costs.

1 Like
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Role lock is better and if you can’t see the proof in the insane queue times then no one can help you.

Where are all those “But I flex” people? Clearly the near instant queues for tanks means teams need tanks… get to flexing.

5 Likes
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Role lock is definitely an excellent addition to the game and queue times is a necessary casualty.

1 Like
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Rather this just proves that tanks are largely undesirable to play by most people that that is the issue that should be remedied. Forcing people to play things they don’t want isn’t going to solve anything better than making those things more appealing for more people to actually want to play.

Flexing is not locking yourself in a role for an entire match. Flexing is changing your role mid game to fit the needs of your team.

I’ll play more games as tank if I start off DPS and realize that we need a tank for the win then I will in my 10 minute queue where I’m forced to remain my DPS role for the entirety of the match.
There are plenty of DPS locked games I’ve played where I would have gladly switched roles with a tank.

4 Likes
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this is rich. tank players have to either choose orisa or sigma and win or die because
widow 1 shotted your team
your dps dont wanna shoot the 30 hps doomfist who has those 30hp thanks to his busted passive
you have to go orisa sigma due to fact they dont get melted by sym reaper mei doomfist.
yeah no tanks dont get to play either

4 Likes
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Ah, yes. Are you referring to the long ques, the comp creativity being flushed away, or the players that are leaving, or the ones that have already left for other games that don’t require you to waiste so much time waiting to play them?

Your logic is about as sound as any loon when they defend their deity.

1 Like
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I can live with role lock, as much as I dislike it. But just accepting that DPS players have insane queue times because of it isn’t a very helpful solution. I still think it’s better for these things to be brought up so that an answer can be found.
I’m not asking to remove role lock, I’m asking for some kind of fix for the wait times. I’d rather that then just accept I can no longer enjoy the game like I used to anymore because of the change in the system.

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So the all the dps leaving are why all the dps have to sit in long queues?

Creativity… you all are still on that bs train. No one believes this one…

1 Like