I know this is going to be an uphill conversation when you do not understand why double shield came to be (fun fact it had nothing to do with DPS heroes as most metas are shaped by the top Tanks unless the balance state is really messed up) but I will try anyway.
First lets talk Cassidy. He is the furthest thing from powercrept. Cassidy launched with 70 damage fan and was broken. Later on he had 30m falloff and was broken and then he had a .42 firerate and while not broken was stronger than now. Basically Cassidy is as far removed from powercreep as your argument is from being cogent.
I could talk about Soldier having traded in bloom for recoil or Tracer having only gotten a range buff after Blizzard introduced heroes (and kept doing it after Brigg) that made it so she could not function at a close range as she got by in early OW due to there be niches of heroes that were not in existence, but lets get to the more interesting topic: Bap.
Amp is a problem with Bap as it relates to his damage but it is not the problem. A good Bap is doing as much damage as healing (and he does a lot of healing). The nickname Bap76 exists because it is almost unbelievable how much damage he is capable of, as a ranged Support with a lot of healing. It is something that drastically boosted the damage going out in the game.
Next up lets talk Sigma. You are right that Sigma is far weaker now than when he launched but that is because when he launched he was, without question, the strongest hero in the history of OW. We have had 70 damage roll, S2 DVA, Moth Mercy, reworked Hanzo, launch Brigg, and Sigma was stronger than all of them. So yes he is weaker than that (one would certainly hope so) but he is far from weak. When you compare it to the launch state of this game it is still more damage than you would expect from the Tank role.
Basically when you look at this games history: healing has gone up a fair bit, DPS from damage has gone up a little bit, DPS from Tanks has gone up a lot, and DPS from Supports has shot up leading to a very bursty game. When addressing that burst though I tend not to look at the smallest violators. Complaining about DPS being stronger is like trying to pull over the guy doing 70 while 2 guys doing 120 speed right by you.
Complaining about DPS being stronger is like a cop trying to pull over the a sports car doing 70 while a truck and a family wagon are doing 120 speed right by you.
It’s not damage-creep, it’s power-creep and it is real and it’s evident in more than just the DPS roster
Take Winston, one of the most powerful tanks during dive, he’s had the least balance changes of any hero and look at how well he’s fairing at the moment, if he’s getting outdone by other tanks it shows just how much power-creep the game has experienced
Don’t get me wrong I hate this latest balance patch, but it’s not just DPS that are getting/have been power-crept, I also think the Rein buff was unnecessary too and is another example of power-creep
The only times that the developers have ever used the term “Power Creep” has been to describe shields and abilities. Also was mentioned about healing when they did a global healing nerf a while back.
They have never referred to power creep in reference of the dps heroes.
Take that as you will.
I know this is going to be an uphill conversation when you do not understand what power creep is (fun fact cassidy is a prime example of power creep. he got a bunch of small buffs that brought him from a fine pick to broken. since then he barely has gotten the changes that brought him back down to balanced. another great example of power creep: Solider and Reaper)
One last thing:
cap
that has always been and always will be tracer
because she is the cover girl and blizzard refuses to nerf her.
I couldnt find the healing quote when the global nerf happned but i know it excists. Think it was a video maybe. Ill post when i find it.
Here is the other one:
“My personal feeling is that I would like to see less barriers and cc and see the game trend slightly more in the fps direction than the moba direction,” Kaplan said. That came at the end of his long reply to Reddit user Companion_Kubu, who asked about the issue of “power creep.”
“The Blizzard VP said he was trying to “focus in” on the true source of the creep; it looks like that may just be abilities and shields.”
The addition of several shield-using champions, and many more with “crowd control” (or CC) abilities like stuns or slows, has left behind some players who prefer precision FPS gameplay.
h ttps://www.upcomer.com/more-fps-than-moba-jeff-kaplan-comments-on-possible-overwatch-future-directions/
h ttps://www.dexerto.com/overwatch/jeff-kaplan-wants-overwatch-more-like-valorant-than-lol-in-sequel-1400587/
It’s weird though, they never really followed in that direction, they did briefly but reverted a lot of nerfs after that ‘era’, particular Sigma and Brig who arguably have been most detrimental to the game since their release
And every time Hammond became the top tank they’d end up nerfing him, despite him encouraging heavy hitscan metas which would make the game more “FPS-like”
Well i think it has more to do with the devs not being able to do all the changes they want to OW1 heroes, because some or most of the changes will be irrelevant once OW2 comes along.
With all the changes to the gameplay, reworks, hero tweaks, and new heroes coming.
But that philosophy and direction is sure evident for all the things that are happening in OW2.
So i can see their opinions didn’t really change and its going forward in full force for OW2.
Yes nothing they do makes much sense. The only conclusion is that the balance team is biased towards specific heroes.
Look at the heroes the balance team loves the most: Tracer, Cassidy, Rein. Literally all 3 of those heroes don’t fit any roles whatsoever and tracer/rein are not even close to FPS’y heroes, especially rein. You’d think the devs just favour specific metas but literally these heroes all fit in completely different metas. The only conclusion is that the balance team has more people “maining” these heroes.
I’ll be honest I dislike that direction but it does seem the most logical, a huge amount of OW players, or at least in the early days jumped over from CS:GO (I don’t know if it’s related but the average peak of players literally dropped 200k on CS:GO when OW was released) and hitscans, Tracer and Genji were hugely popular with CS:GO players, it’s also evident (at least if you leave the forums) that most players are more interested in the FPS route
Even here people regard dive-meta as the “golden-days” of OW and that meta was a heavy “kill your opponent quickly or die” meta, everything just seems to point towards that direction being the most “popular” despite the forums being heavily against it
The issue I mainly have at the moment is that don’t seem to give any clear direction, and they’ve given us virtually no form of communication whatsoever, I’d be less critical of the current balance patch if I knew why they’re doing it but the best we got is little snippets of comments from Andy and that’s just poor form from the developers in my eyes
It’s hard not to come to that conclusion, they give us very little idea on why they do the changes they do, they’re adamant they’re not bias but some heroes haven’t had balance changes in literally years while others have been fairly prominent and have gotten loads of balance changes, I honestly hate it
I agree with the top part of your post but this part i quoted i dont agree.
I mean it may be just me but since probably role lock was implemented , if you go through all the developer notes, interviews, videos , etc since that time period till now , this direction is always mentioned and sprinkled in everywhere.
Im one of the people who carefully look for hints and things like that when they give us info and updates, and Blizzard isnt usually straight forward with their wording, so i can see most missing things that the devs are clearly telling the player base.
Thats why i always try to link quotes or videos whenever possible. To show its not just me saying this.
To keep it short: After the GOATS disaster, there was a total 360 internally and the new direction was to make OW like it was in the early days. A fast paced , exciting FTS team shooter. And to get away from slow paced moba gameplay as much as possible.
To me it has been hammered by the devs over and over again, Just that people cant seen to understand, or dont want to accept it.
Ultimates were spammed more as they were cheaper. The 3 defensive ults at the time: MR, Beat and Trans all were built pretty quickly. Which was needed to counter the ult spam from other ults being built quickly. Sym had the option of TP, which was her most used ult in GM gameplay.
Back then, people did not use their ults effectively like they do now. You treated it like a cooldown from how fast it was built. The game absolutely had a higher power standard back then in S3 than now. Soldier’s fundamentals are insane, he’s clearly overtuned. He a ticking meta timebomb.
Ana was in S3, and she’s a very powerful main healer. Nanoed often and had great heals that DVA put in place giving other sources of healing edge cases over Ana’s own.
DVA and Rein had stronger damage mitigation options back then also. 2000 HP barrier that has more hp than Orisa and Sigma’s combined. Very thick DM from DVA. Double shield’s issues were never barriers, but rather basic cooldown management between Orisa/Sigma ensured 100% uptime of abilities. Weakening barriers helped add vulnerable periods on downtime on their cooldowns.
I’m not quite convinced you played through those seasons. The numbers were bigger back then, I hope you’re not being a poser.
You cannot be power crept when you are in your 4th strongest state especially when the strongest state was when the game launched so the only creep Cassidy has experienced is a gentle walk downhill with some occasional bumps in the road.
Also if you honestly believe Tracer, in any incarnation, is stronger in any way shape or form than launch Cass, S2 DVA, Moth Mercy, launch Brigg, reworked Hanzo, buffed Hog, buffed Genji, launch Sigma, and I could probably list another dozen, then I question if you have played Overwatch longer than 3 months because Tracer is a strong pick, but those heroes were auto lose if you did not have them and Tracer is nowhere near that. She is one of the two S tier DPS (other being Echo) but the game is not over if you do not have one like it was with Moth.
Objectively, nearly every damage hero does at least as much or more damage than they did at launch. Of the new DPS, only Sombra could be classified as a low-damage utility DPS. Ashe has some of the highest, most consistent DPS throughput in the game, and Echo and Doom are easily in the top 5 for burst capability.
Yes, overloaded new tanks and supports are also problem, but why would you even try to pretend that DPS have nothing to do with damage creep? It’s just so bizarrely disignenous.
I could break down your whole post. But that would be me typing paragraph after paragraph, which i dont have time to and dont feel like right now. Maybe ill get back to it.
All im going to say , is that some of the heroes that were released after season 3 were monsters out the gate and were the most powerful heroes the game has ever seen.
Brig , Sigma were the most broken , Ball had massive shields, Orissa brought more barriers, Doom was way more powerful then he is now, etc. The more new heroes came out the more they made 76’s sustain damage pretty irrelevant. That’s why he was a throw pick for like 3-4 years since season 3. Even with 19 damage. Its silly that people are losing their minds because hes actually decent now. He still gets little value vs double shield or a DVA constantly in his face.
lol As far as a poser, I been playing since beta. Whether you believe it or not. Also have 3 accounts.
Cut out the psychedelics buddy. Have you ever looked at Tracer’s patch history? or her pickrates? or any stats related to Tracer ever? or just played the damned game?
What complete and utter delusion…
Why are people allowed to say the stupidest nonsense on this forums and get away with it?
You’re one of the few people in this forum who has the least bias when it comes to balancing. I’m curious on what you think about supports balance right now? Do you think ana and bap are too OP compared to other roles/heroes? Or is it some specific abilities (e.g. lamp) that’s only unhealthy and need possible rework?