“Can we get a shield tank?” This is my Reinhardt conspiracy theory, and I bet I am not the only one that thought about it.
Rein is unprecedented in an FPS without any fps mechanic. He doesn’t shoot a gun (Firestrike is not a gun), doesn’t throw grenades or anything of that sort, he is just a big guy in armor, with a hammer and a shield. And it worked well, extremely well. Partially because many maps were seemingly designed for him (just check out any of the older maps and see how many spots and chokes are exactly 1 Rein shield wide).
In fact, he worked so well that he was the frontline super star for infamous GOATS meta, that one triple tank/support meta, setting the tone, tempo and plays for his team.
Because he worked so well however the devs wanted to give us more anchor (read: shield) tanks so we are not stuck with just Monika Reinhardt. Clearly Rein’s formula to success was his BBS (big blue shield), so they gave us more tanks… with big blue shields.
The other shield tanks
The unmovable, seriously never moves her shield because she just can’t, static Orisa
The “there is not a single mention of ‘shields’ or ‘protection’ in any of my lore” Sigma
And for bonus points, the bringer of the dps apocolypse, Rein’s own squire, Brigitte (she was released with 600hp shield, that’s more health than Zarya has, yo).
So to write down the complete timeline
The maps were designed for a shield tank like Reinhardt, setting him up for a lot of success
Rein’s success was confused with his shield (“pls swap to shield”, “And here is an alternative hero to Rein, because they have a shield too!”)
Rein inspired Brigitte and together they birthed Goats, which in turn forced role queue
Confusion about Rein’s success caused the emergence of more shields and more shields caused more problems (double shield meta)
There is too many shields guys. The tanks are too tanky guys. We can only have 1 tank now guys. You can cancel Rein’s charge now guys.
Just look at what every second tank main is afraid of for OW2 “I can’t play Ball/Dva/Zarya/Roadhog because the team wants me to cosplay as Reinhardt’s shield”.
We asked for shields and we got them. But we should have asked for more hammers. If we had more hammers then Goats would have been dead, double shield would have been double meh, and all of this could have been avoided.
The main tanks were real and Reinhardt killed them. He killed Overwatch and he will kill Overwatch 2 next.
I see what you mean, at the beginning of my OW time I thought they would go crazy with different shapes of shields, basically having a rounded shield rein, a triangular one, a puzzle piece one, etc etc lol
kind of sad that hasn’t happened and instead we got the rolling ball and floating old man but at least they have managed to keep the role sort of interesting, at least for me
What I barely touched on too is the massive effective health pools tanks come with.
Originally, only Zarya had less than 500hp, her self-bubble can “increase” her hp a little bit. But since release we got:
More damage reduction with Roadhog’s self-heal and Orisa’s Fortify
D.Va better Defense Matrix (was changed from cooldown to a more pro-active resource meter)
Larger temporary health pools with Sigma’s Kinetic Graps and Wrecking Ball’s self-shield (and Doomfist self-shield, actually)
And who started the trend of big health pools? Rein’s 2000 hp shield.
However the irony is that without a shield, tanks just cease to exist, they blow up instantly. But the damage needed to be higher and more frequent, because tanks got more shields, more damage reductions and even more health. Some even got more mobility, so add some CC too.
I am personally off the opinion that “big fat dps” was honestly the better way to go for tanks. If tanks have less hp, if they are simply “less tanky” then you can reduce dmage and healing across the board too.
Instead we got 1 less tank, which is really the same thing when it comes to “team’s total effective health”. Meaning that if the devs can balance the game for 5v5, they could have balanced it for 6v6.
(There is other advantages that come with 5v5 on a more social or personal level, like individual plays having more impact, but that comes with its own disadvantages, like blaming the individual who has nobody to back them up, etc.)
Nono, he was definitely forced on us. But, release aside, I would question if it was Blizzard that forced him on us, or us.
The Asian region is known for favouring Winston over Rein for example, to them the shields aren’t ever really a problem.
But we aren’t in the Asian region. And Sigma and Brig can be as powerful as they want, because at the end of the day: Can you please swap to the shield tank?
at the beginning rein was one of the only hero with mercy for people who suck at pewpewing thats why he was very important to the game, to attract a larger public.
idk, people in most ranks are so bad at positioning and stuff that it doesn’t matter if rein’s even good because he’ll always be played
if players have absolutely no idea when to engage, how to take high ground, or how to kite rein or zarya, there’s no reason to bother playing other tanks because your allies will never be able to take advantage of your kit
rein is the most overplayed hero in the game’s history, and it’s not the hero’s fault that most people don’t know how to properly play against rein or without rein
Totally, that’s what I’ve always said. Rein has been a meta from bronze to diamond (representing about 80% of the community), and many times he has been a meta in masters and gm (like right now).
In my opinion, the most disastrous thing about his design is that his ultimate encourages the mirror match.
What abilities counter shatter?
-Sigma used to do it, but since he has a 2 second cooldown, Rein only needs to wait for his shield to break or deactivate it, to ult in his face without problems.
-Orisa’s shield only needs to be broken before it reset.
-Zarya can block it, but she has to be in a suicidal position in front of Rein, not to mention that he only needs to break it or activate it before reset.
In all these situations, not only is it very difficult to block, but Rein can always have the initiative to do so without any difficulty. This difference in “difficulty” is much more noticeable at lower ranks where the easiest way to block shatter is simply … to use another Reinhart, which can even block it just with luck.
Now add that in those ranges most players do not know how to play from highground, or use dive, and generally feel “safe” behind their tanks, and you create a scenario of “If you do not use Reinhardt you are throwing”
In 5 years, Blizzard has not been able to prevent this from happening and neither Orisa nor Sigma have been able to overcome the ease with which Reinhard counter himself.
That is true too, Rein’s best counter is another Rein.
Or well, for the Asian region, they “just dive the backline”, but that isn’t always easy.
Rein’s Shatter is one of the most powerful ultimates in the game. It can stun multiple people, immobilises them, exposes all shattered players to get easily killed and even sets up Rein himself as his swing and fire strike can hit multiple people and nobody can dodge his charge.
The ironic part is that the only non-shield and non-(support-)ultimate counters we have to Rein shatters are: Crowd Control
You don’t just need that Flashbang, Sleep Dart or Freeze to stop that Hammond rolling into you, you need it to cancel Rein’s Shatter or prevent him from killing your entire team by himself after he did use it.
What’s even more ironic is that Rein’s “intented” playstyle, having his whole team behind him, sets up him perfectly for other shatters. With Winston/Dva the team is much more split up and less susceptible to getting wiped by single ultimate.
But the devs already have a solution: Maps
They are now making larger maps with lots more cover. Try shattering a street that is twice as wide as King’s Row and has more cover. The solution is already there, but they didn’t want to give it to us.
Teams need to learn to work in the new environment because otherwise DPS & support will try to micromanage their tank players, Rein will be the only hero allowed to play and the tank population will collapse to crisis levels (it’s going to anyway but even worse). They need to stagger tank releases:
OW2 ranked season 1: No Winston, Sigma, Rein or Orisa
OW2 ranked season 2: No Rein or Orisa
It’s the only way Dva, Hog, Ball and Zarya will be allowed to get play time in ranked.