Edit: title edited to be a bit more indicative of problem orientation as suggested by other commenters. I wouldnt say all devs but that player and inherent game problems aren’t the same is my point.
So, I recently saw that my lord and savior Titanium came back with some spicy hot observations. And I love them. Feel free to read them. This isn’t an attack on Titanium. I love them and all the spice they bring.
But I don’t agree with everything. Because I’m a polarizing monster with spicy, tinfoil hat, hot takes of my own. And this is one:
Damage Creep isn’t a Problem. In fact, I believe in the New Overwatch™, it’s a solution. A direct explicit #NewDirection done on purpose. You can agree or disagree with the destination of where a ship can go, how to get there or whatever… but it doesn’t mean the ship going a certain way is never going to reach a destination.
In this case… the captain has decided in fact: to uplift DPS and DPS exclusively. It might come at the expense of supports and tanks…. But I think that’s just the breaks in the line of “DPS deserve* to have the spotlight.”
“DPS deserve the spotlight” is where balance is going for the next… year or two I would say. Definitely at least until OW2. And if you aren’t a DPS or like DPS eqsue things, I’m guessing you’re gonna be sOOl. Deal, or more specifically… leave if you don’t like it.
I promise… I’m not TRYING to be a total jerk here and I have a thought. Gimme a moment of your time, oh sweet lovely supports and tanks. I promise, I respek. But, I have a thought and I don’t think you’ll like it.
Disclaimer
Let me start off and say quite explicitly: I DO NOT like the direction, and I DON’T Like the DPS role, and I think the direction is entirely misguided.
Imo DPS as a role is the easiest role, it’s the most basic of roles, and the game is catered to the role in every way possible. Imo the most difficult role is Tank to master, but support is the most difficult role to get value from.
That’s why I prefer those roles, and why I prefer DPS that work into those roles (Mei, Sombra, Symm, etc.).
This isn’t some rage filled anti-support or tank thing. I LOVE those roles.
But that isn’t my point for this post. My opinion isn’t relevant to what I witness. My bias can be. But I really am doing my best to state my observation and thought outside of what I want to see.
Thank
So, Let’s start at the beginning….
Let’s Talk about Bastion.
Bastion… broke the game.
I am so glad Chibi isn’t here anymore, she would feel so attacked
Now… Bastion isn’t an issue today by any form or measurement. But Bastion was* an issue upon the launch of overwatch into the masses.
Bastion was the constant go-to for POTG of just melting entire teams to the point of memery.
Were you good season one? No you weren’t. You were trash. Everyone was trash. I was trash. Your friend was trash. And we all died to Bastion. One by one like little toddlers who don’t see traffic.
“Overwatch is fun except for bastion”
“Nerf bastion”
“What terrible design”
Terrible design? Bastion came first. Now, yes, tracer was our first developed hero. But everything of the idea of overwatch was born from the gender-noncomforming robo Mom/Dad of Bastion.
So of course Bastion was going to come with a simple ANTI-TRACER look.
Oh… what? You thought that was McCree? No. I don’t mean to DEAL with tracer. I mean designed, away from.
Tracer- hyper mobile. Fast. Smol. One strong smol clip. Recall
Bastion- immobile. Slow. Clonkity. Massive okay Clip. Self heal.
So you see what I mean? Bastion came along with tracer to aim where the game would go.
But Tracer- has abilities. And when you come from rainbow… aim and shoot is much easier than blinkity blink blink.
We started this game around Bastion. And Bastion Sparked some interesting answers.
Responding to Bastion
We did not start the game with responding with tanks, and coordination. We started… with murder. And we loved the murder.
Sniper McCree. Zen 50% Dmg boost. Pick Widow and AIM FOR BASTION.
Because we dun suck. Um… Zarya had like massive bubble charge, that never went down. Dva had a DM that wasn’t today’s fluid but it was a MASSIVE dm that was NEVER used against bastion.
We just did more and more murder.
BECAUSE WE WERE BAD.
But something happened… after a WHIIIIIIILLLE… and I’m talking post-ana release: we got better.
And I do Mean POST ana. Yeah… Ana launched and we didn’t enter triple tank… we entered Beyblade. Triple tank came LATER.
Our answer to problems was always DPS. DPS is what makes or breaks the game. But then something happened: ana was nerfed in what helped DPS- Speed. But she’s still really good somewhere else: Tanks
Ana gets buff
See when Ana gets buffed, we see that she actually isn’t bad. Not when you use her for something not what people initially used her for: healing.
Ana launched and people drawn to her were using her to two tap. To “deal with” things. And it’s not until nano is nerfed that we realize… 75 heals on a 100% heal nade is freaking strong. Especially for tanks.
It doesn’t matter how many torbs or mccrees or anything is on the enemy team, if you have an immortal hero. A hero, easy to hit, and already with a massive health pool.
The first thing to launch pushing out DPS… was ANA. Explicitly. Working with ANA is what mattered because unlike DPS…
A tank is Safe. A tank, is predictable and secure.
Note: despite all the “this is the new Goats” nonsense about mei or sombra being used (inherently flawed but whatever I won’t screech even more)… Mei doesn’t synergize with ana. Sombra came later and wasn’t put in Triple tank. Because DPS aren’t as stable as tanks. Inherently. Tanks by their core nature of having more HP, makes them a safer thing to make immortal with heals, Because they don’t and can’t Die instantly.
They just don’t.
EMP had in 5 seconds of a tank on a health pack? Worthless. EMP can be screwed up. People can still shoot.
Rein on point? Value. Inherently. He contest. Overtime, he cap.
Tanks are the safer bet.
And Ana enabled this.
So ana kicked out the DPS first. Then how do we get to dive? What changed?
Dva. Dva Changed the game.
When DVA was suddenly able to eat those spicy nades and became immortal without ana… A whole wide world opened.
Dive
Genji and Tracer? Yeah. That’s Dive. Winston? Fo Sho. But you wanna know why Dive isn’t back yet despite ALLL the current attempt?
DVA was part of that first sweet sweet “skill” meta. And she hasn’t been brought up the way Genji and tracer have. At least not proportionally.
Because Dva’s original Use in Dive was to. Fluidly. Tank. And that’s been gutted and not replaced.
You can like or dislike DVA. But if you liked Dive… ya like DVA being Meta.
Even Genji was being switched out by the end of dive in favor of Widow. And Zen being swapped for Ana and Mercy. The OG Dive of Winston, Dva, Tracer, Genji, Lucio and zen Relied on DVA and Tracer and Lucio more than the other three.
So when you kill DVA… The Reliable part of the meta is killed.
See, everything relies on synergy. Ana’s synergy with tanks and lucio’s amp… made mini transcendence on a 10 second cooldown.
DVA was where the synergy was. DVA is what helped secure a kill, escape, or cleared opposition’s retaliation.
You could not swap DVA and reliably execute Dive.
And you could not run anything else against dive, when DVA was soooooo reliable.
Metas aren’t about pure power. It’s about reliability. Otherwise, the dive would have maintained Genji and Zen. Genji and Zen and even Winston get swapped because it wasn’t about their power levels. It was about their synergy. And you can find different synergies. But a meta needs something constant and repeatable.
Dive? It wasn’t about skill. It was about synergy. Just like every other strat meta. That’s why meta doesn’t work below Diamond. Diamond, is where people start to understand working together. Below that Is everyone working on their own.
Dive didn’t effect gold. Triple tank didn’t effect gold. NOTHING effects gold. Hell, even IronClad Dark Age Bastion didn’t effect gold
I play console. I had IronClad Bastion for a MONTH. Don’t come for me trying to claim Gold bastions were ruining games. They didn’t any more than gold struggles with anything else
This is why the meta’s after Dive were so short. We had a plethora of changes to the support and Tank Roster. From new additions, to balance to reworks.
The only thing that stayed the same was DPS. So we entered a weird time of things like Gravdragon .
Now, some things like Moth…yeah Mercy was a must pick. But there’s a difference between Moth or IronClad Bastion being meta and a strategy.
Because That only limits one hero. The rest kind of….get to be free?
Dive isn’t Dive if you replace Dva with Zarya, Winston with Rein, Lucio with moira, tracer with soldier, Genji with widow and keep Zen
Yeah Zen was an OG Dive but… Zarya Rein Soldier Widow Moira…. Aint diving nothin.
Moth Meta is inherently CENTERED on Mercy and mercy ALONE. You’re running meta as long as ONE of you is on mercy.
Not every team with a Lucio is running Dive. In fact…lucio is in many a meta. He aint the sole factor in any meta he’s in.
But, as we go forward, we also become more and more determined to find metas. And this means finding what is reliable.
And you know what is reliable?
Tanks. Tanks will always be reliable.
And so if you launch any hero with good tanking… That will be meta. Because reliability is more core to anything.
See, we aren’t forcing back “dps”. Are we?
We’re forcing dive. And Dive isn’t the only meta we’ve had with DPS… But it was the most reliable one.
We had double sniper. We’ve had sniper Mccree. Mei reaper? We had symm who didn’t even make it outside of beta 222.
But a- hero specific metas? It ain’t a meta. And boils down to only one player per team.
And b- a meta needs to last to be a meta. It’s why GOATs, Dive, Triple Tank are the core discussions of past metas and why Sigma Orisa and Not Orisa Hog is discussed as a meta.
Time is a core element to defining how a meta is seen and valued. And Only Dive was stapled long enough to be a meta that kept a DPS.
So why does this matter?
DPS haven’t been meta
DPS has a huge roster. So it’s hard to make any one of them shine. Dive is the only one that allowed ANY DPS. But note… the first hero to get mega buffs…wasn’t genji OR Tracer.
McCree, symm, torb, pharah, soldier, junkrat, mei, reaper, Sombra, ASHE???…. ALLL these heroes had changes specifically designed to make them explicitly better (or at least attempt this).
Not all succeeded. But look at…why. Why don’t we have people hankering for a junkrat Sombra Meta?
Mei and Reaper are Dps… but their meta isn’t considered one. It’s “Mei/Reaper Goats”
Sombra being used is called… “Sombra Goats”.
But… we don’t call Triple Tank… “Ana Goats”
Or PharMercy “Pharah Dive”
It’s not just about getting the DPS in the spotlight. It’s the DPS, DPS want to be in the spotlight. And that’s a BIIIIIIIG difference.
Because that’s what let’s them have “a hero moment.”
Let me try to explain:
Mercy statistically is a more stable hero now with Valk, right? But she has plenty of players who to this day want Mass rez back.
She’s weaker for it. Performed less consistently. But Many people want a place to mess up and want a place to explicitly shine.
It’s all about the mouthfeel. Not actual quality if you get me?
Dive has the shine and sheen that mei and reaper don’t. It’s part of the “high dps” unlike a junkrat and Symm.
We don’t just want any car…. We want the fancyyy car.
Because blizzard tried to give a car. And we rejected all of them.
We want specifically a Tesla. And anything less is trash.
And by we? I mean DPS.
See… junkrat, symm, mei, reaper? They are much slower heroes. And I feel… they have quite a few support players. Hell, on this forum, you have people openly talk about how they love bastion or pharah or sombra but they play tanks more anyway.
ECHO is a meta pick, and we aren’t considered to be in a DPS Meta. ASHE AND ECHO ARE TOP GOOD PICKS… and we aren’t in a “DPS meta”
Sombra isn’t a DPS’s DPS if that makes sense.
So making her meta… does nothing.
We want DPS to have their time to shine. And I know this… because they said so.
They told us they stopped caring. Why Do Ya’ll Forget these Things?
Straight up. They said they aren’t aiming for general balance and are only targeting meta.
Do you think they are forcing dive? Yes! They are! It doesn’t take a genius. They all but said the word dive when they said
“We aren’t going to aim for general balance. Also, have 40 buffs to Dive DPS”
WE. ARE. NOT. BALANCING. THE. GAME.
They Are explicitly balancing to the META.
They GAVE UP. And I don’t blame them. Meta is a social thing. We saw this with hero pools. Hero pools came and went and we still aimed for the same things over and over again in OWL. And Ladder lit itself on fire.
We don’t like diversity. But it doesn’t mean you’re FORCED to be anywhere.
Echo came and went and we get a comment about how “of course we aren’t going to ignore DPS.” Obviously, that wasn’t true. DPS GOT new heroes. But they got heroes… they didn’t like.
It’s not that Dps Needed a new hero. They needed a new shiny. And Echo is shiny.
We are going to buff and buff and BUFF the DPS until a DPS meta is clear and defined, and shiny.
Now personally… I don’t agree with forcing metas. But I understand it. I would have given up ages ago and just … started balancing as requested for any little dumb idea I saw.
“Less CC? done. All CC is halved.”
“Less heals? Done. All heals cap at 50 hps”
“Less Damage? Done. Range reduced” like….
Ya’ll would hate me lmao. I’m very “be careful what you wish for.” Note… I’ve never regretted changes that hit live that I’ve asked for. But I’m an awful… awful person.
Moreover, I do think, devs, that you need to recognize that… Tanks and supports be stable. And DPS inherently are not. And until you DUMPSTER tanks and supports… you won’t have a DPS meta.
More explicitly… you need to address how OWL plays and that’s not really a balance thing. That’s a social thing. You need to make OWL specifically… feel cornered into quick elims and that won’t be easy.
My guess? You need to force Zen and lucio as inherent needs. Because even Mercy has a kit that can work with dive…but mercy plays like she’s ana or moira. And as long as they keep a “group up, set up, attack” mentality…. Dive won’t hit.
But basically in short
For everyone else… Imo…. YEA THERE’S DAMAGE CREEP. They know this??? And aren’t trying to FIX it. They want MORE OF IT.
That’s like… idk… warning me about the burning hot water… Like dude… I’m making tea. I’m well aware of the water being hot. It’s not a problem. I wanted it this way.
And you may not want hot tea…but hot tea is the goal here I think.
So… Until a meta forms around 2 dps that are shinies… aka, you can replace the tanks and supports and still work with the dps… I think supports and tanks are in for a bumpeh ride.
