Damage heroes are the least impactful but most popular?

General Discussion
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Should Damage heroes be buffed, nerfed, or left alone?

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People have said that DPS have been the least impactful since well before OW2 was a thing, and yet we’ve never had a shortage of DPS players. So I don’t think it’s actually a problem with the DPS role as a whole. Instead, individual DPS characters should recieve changes that make them relevant or simply more fun.

Even within a role, we can see that impact doesn’t really correlate with popularity. Mercy is not the support a guy goes to in order to have impact on the game, since the only impact Mercy really has for most ranks is through Rez - which, even in ranks where it’s easier to pull off, doesn’t happen that often in a match. It doesn’t seem to affect her pick rate at all. If I hop in to a QP game then chances are high that I’ll see at least one Mercy.

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Some damage heroes need to be buffed, while others are left untouched.

More so than Soj being broken, the problem is that multiple DPS have too little lethality, and so she is often uncontested.

Better to buff things and make everything feel good to play than it is to nerf the few that have agency, thus making the entire role feel terrible to play.

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There is freedom in knowing you don’t matter. But realistically, i feel like only a few dps are in the category. Sojourn is definitely not one of them.

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A nerf to armor and headshot reduction removal would do more to the dps role. It’s worthless shooting at tanks and more worthless shooting their heads.

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They are popular because they dont want any kind of responsibility.

Doubt me - go watch Emongg stream. See how much work he puts in - IN comparison to his tracer.

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Tanks are just more… tanky than they should be right now. Everyone is, in fact. They buffed everyone so every hero has trouble killing anyone, with a few exceptions.

DPS has smaller impact now because heroes are more spongy.

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It depends on ranks. The higher you go the more impactful DPS role is. At top ranks it is the most impactful role.

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It’s not fair that we have low impact, I believe DPS needs buffed. Why should tanks and supports have all the influence? I would play it myself, but it’s so boring.

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They’re not the most popular anymore, supports are the ones with the longest queue times. My dps queues are almost as short as my tank queues. And should anyone really be suprised when you have characters like kiriko that will outright win most dps duels and even if they lose they have the most broken escape tp ability on a 4 second cooldown AND wall climb. Compare a nu character like kiriko, basically no weaknesses, to an og character like tracer where if someone sneezes on her she dies. And hot take but i used to think tank was the most miserable role and it certainly can be with ana in almost every game, until i started playing dps again and realized how underpowered the role is. There are overtuned tanks like zarya that make the role of dps feel like a joke.

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There’s also a ton of auto aim healing and low effort healing, burst healing, suzu, and team healing ults compared to overwatch 1. The power creep in that regard is insane.

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To get your base impact, I guess dps are the ‘least impactful’:

-Tank: stand there and take damage
-Support: heal someone
-DPS: shoot an enemy

One of those three is more active than the others. Beyond that though… it’s based on responsibility:

-Tank: be the focus of the enemy team; do damage; try not to die
-Support: ensure your team doesn’t die; do damage
-DPS: do damage

It’s the most straightforward job.

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The issue is, when the opposite was true, that was a problem. When tanks died in one frame or so, no one wanted to tank.

I think this is true, too. Some complaints I see about the Damage role really seem to be a skill issue. Complaints like “Pharah is hard to shoot” vanish as people get better at the game.

Maybe that’s fair, too. “Less responsibility, but less impact, and you apply consistent damage at every relevant range” is a pretty big upside to the “less impact” part.

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Yeah thats pretty much it.

Its sad how some heroes are ultra trash like Sym vs others like Sojourn or Cass.

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Heard this “DPS least impactful” so many times it’s white noise at this point. And don’t you dare say supports are the least impactful ones or the DPS mains eat you alive. I don’t say this like ever, but this sounds like some skill issue to me.

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I play dps every so often when I want a shake up and have never felt like I was just cosmetic. Well, maybe when the tank went zarya since I largely only play junkrat and torb… but for the most part I feel like I’m fairly lethal and a relevant threat in diamond matches

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I’m fine with the idea of the Damage role being the least impactful because its been explained well to me. One time, years ago on this forum, someone put it like this:

"Tanks are useful prefight (getting into position), during the fight, and post fight (chasing away the enemy and holding space). Supports are useful during the fight (healing, buffs/debuffs, damaging) and post fight (healing).

Damage heroes are really only useful during the fight. With the exception of Torb, Sym, Hanzo, and Sombra who can do a bit of setting up prefight, mid fight, and post fight if they want"

We can extend the logic to flankers too, if you want , but that’s player dependent. If a tracer dies mid flank, she didn’t have any pre fight/post fight usage at all.

Back to my main point, that logic makes sense and it also doesn’t make demands out of the game. Maybe damage heroes should have the least impact. Someone has to have it, and if they’re the most popular with the most characters, then they don’t also have to have the most impact, do they?

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Damage has the least impact in a fully coordinated game but the most impact solo.

Imo there’s two camps of players saying it’s low impact:

  1. T500 players/high GM: Dps is the least impactful here barring a few exception heroes.

  2. everyone else: it’s a genuine skill issue due to improper and lazy positioning, as well as a lack of mechanical skill needed to execute correctly. The exceptions are easy heroes who have high impact while having lazy positioning(Bastion is an example)

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How are DPS heroes the most popular? My dps queues are like 1-2 mins while support is always 4-5 mins sometimes even reaching into 8 during off hours.

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Queues have gotten way better in general, but Damage heroes have been the most popular for the longest time. At least, according to blizzard.

And, uh, everyone else who speaks on the topic.

When do you play? I’ve never seen long support queues unless all queues are long for some reason.