I honestly just want to gauge the opinions of the forum on this one.
In a recent thread, AndyB talked about how DPS are more impactful in OW2 and the dev team is currently taking that as a win. So my question for all players, DPS or otherwise, is this: Do you think DPS are not impactful/powerful enough, and need more power in comparison to the other two roles?
You can qualify if you want. Say that some DPS feel powerful enough while others don’t, or that DPS are powerful enough at some ranks but not others.
Here’s the quote, for reference.
Note: I view it inherent that if DPS are to be made to feel more impactful, other roles must feel less impactful to compensate. Maybe you don’t, and if you want to argue that, go for it.
Personal request: Please don’t turn this into a “Let’s bash Blizzard and the dev team” thread, or a mass argument over their merits/failures.
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To me it’s not that DPS don’t feel important, it’s simply that tanks feel more important. If my tanks go D.Va + Hog, I feel that the game’s gone up the creek before it’s even begun. On the other hand, I don’t generally care what my DPS chooses.
I’m fine with impact being spread more evenly among roles. I’m not that good at the game, so tanking is immediately more stressful to me because I happen to have chosen a role that’s more central to the team’s success.
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i play support so im not 100% in tune with the impact that dps feel they have, but i think the fact that id rather let my dps die than my tanks or other support because i know we can win a teamfight without our dps but not our tanks / other support tells me that dps probably should have some more impact.
The issue is suppoorts and tanks have integral roles in a team but dps dont really. Tanks have to make space and absorb damage. In order to absorb damage they have to have some sort of damage negation ability like a shield or orisa fortify + they have high health pools usually consisting of alot of armor. In order to make space they have to be able to threaten the enemy. Tanks have threatening abilities like rein charge than can oneshot you, monkeys dive which can 100 to zero a support in like a second or dva charging at you and busting you down with primary and rockets in like 1 second. Roadhog has an extremely long range hook that is pretty much a death sentence if you’re below 300 HP, and he can use that to threaten line of sight.
Supports are also integral because they provide healing and utility, a team comp cannot work without healers, i think weve all played QPC and had to suffer with no healers, its literally impossible to play without them. Supports (besides mercy) usually are equipped with damage to be able to defend themselves from the likes of sombra, doomfist, tracer and hammond.
DPS on the other hand, their main role is to do damage. And there in lies the issue. The other roles are capable of doing enough damage to be impactful. Tanks have extremely threatening abilities that provide alot of pressure and are tanky and supports can do damage to protect themselves, and provide utility but dps just do damage without having the tankiness of tanks or utility of supports.
I feel like moiras constant state of underwhelming impact as a support can be attributed to the same thing. All moira does is damage and heal. She doesn’t provide any unique or meaningful team utility which is why moira is only good when her healing is overbuffed to compensate for her lack of ultility. Same with DPS. They’re only good when they do too much damage.
GOATS is an amazing example of how little impact dps have. you can literally have a team comp crafted around tankiness, healing and utility and dominate the game for months.
As much as i like being really useful and needed on a team as a support player, i think the game is most healthy when the impact is more evenly distributed throughout the roles
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DPS has consistently been the least impactful role in the game. Usually the most impactful has been tank, sometimes support, but I can’t think of a time where dps really felt like the most impactful role. Maybe back in that ball sig sniper meta with ashe zen and mercy, but then I think support was way more impactful. The job of a dps can be done by the other 2 roles, but a DPS can’t be a tank or support which inherently makes DPS heroes less useful than supports or tanks. They were so weak blizz literally had to force people to play dps with 2-2-2(at high sr at least). So a power shift in their favor seems justified, but I want the roles to have as equal impact as possible rather than DPS >>>>>>>>>>>> TANK > Support.
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At the risk of hoping on the DPS blame train, I instead have what I think is a very fair question: if DPS doesn’t feel good to play, why play it?
DPS is by far the most popular role; it has the largest roster of all the classes, the last hero added to OW1 was a DPS and the only confirmed OW2 character is another DPS, role queue was implemented to stop every game being 3+ DPS, and they are constantly trying to incentivise people to queue tank and support to make up for all the people queuing damage.
so if the role has such little impact, why is it still so popular?
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DPS have enough impact.
Especially at Bronze to Diamond.
Its just an excuse bad DPS players give to put the blame for a lose on somebody else.
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At every level of the game that I’m familiar with, it seems like Tanks have a noticeably greater impact than Damage heroes. Not too sure where supports fit but for my rank I feel their impact is slightly below the other two roles, however that doesn’t look like the case in pro play.
In pro play, damage heroes eventually became almost totally irrelevant, until 2/2/2 lock literally just forced teams to play them. If it wasn’t for rolelock I’d expect the pro meta would still be some version of 3/3… And in my plat games (where I’m a tank one-trick) I usually find myself with gold-silver damage/elim medals, which seems off considering I always have two dedicated damage players. I’m not putting this down to me being an awesome player or always getting bad DPS teammates, it feels like tank heroes just do more than damage heroes on average. They’re not as lethal as DPS I guess but I think they do more damage over the term of a whole match. So yeah giving DPS some more impact seems like a good move on the surface, even though in the context of plat I think Supports need the help a little more, but that’s the role I’m least familiar with so I’m not positive.
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I dunno, I used to be commended more for nice kills than nice saves unless I did an important Beat drop or Transcendence. 
hehe… why i should prioritize to heal someone who can be insta killed with fully healed HP? xD
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It’s popular because it’s fun. I’m primarily a support player, but I’ll play tracer on occasion because I absolutely love tracking and there isn’t a true tracking support; kinda bap but hes sort of a hybrid and moira is not hard to aim with at all so she doesn’t count. DPS just has a lot more mechanical variety than the other roles which allows it to attract players that want to use those mechanics.
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this is a troll post right?
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currently dps is very imactfull role
at same time they are very fragile and dependant
simple existance of widow can make whole team to hide behind walls
good phara literally can make you beg your DPS players to pick hitscans
symm can change route to objective for whole team
mei can devastate any dive
etc(too lazy to continue)
problem is… some DPS players want to be not just impactfull but also independent
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I genuinely have no idea why you would think that. I was hoping to start an honest discussion on the way the three roles were balanced in relation to each other.
I feel like such a discussion is especially relevant considering the dev statement I quoted above.
This is a complex issue: There can be a difference between “meta” and “impact.” There can be a difference between “fun” and “power.”
I think getting people’s opinions on all of this is good.
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I think this is important. Would the dps crowd be happier if they had more impact but less fun? Would tanks wish for the opposite? It seemed like they were advertising the Brawler class as exactly that, though all we’ve seen so far has been less impact and less fun. Hopefully that changes, though from the statements they’ve made, I’m not holding my breath.
It’s an interesting question, though. As dps gain importance, the game necessarily becomes a deathmatch. If Genji had the same impact as Zarya, but you had to spend the game in your own backline peeling for healers, would they want that? The reason tanks and supports are so impactful is because they influence the team. It stops being a team game when what matters most is individual performance.
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You are right, of course, in that adding DPS power necessarily makes damage higher in the game. Making DPS more survivable will also have the drawback of making damage less able to kill them, making DPS less powerful as they become more powerful, weirdly enough.
It’d still be enough to make tanks/supports feel worse, but having DPS not be able to kill each other would tend to make DPS feel not THAT much better. So it does seem like more power must equal better TTK and more reliable damage–other increases of power are self-defeating for the role of DPS itself.
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Dps ruined the game they need to be deleted from it i’m gonna make it my mission as a tank main to ruin as many dps games as possible just because they’ve ruined tanking
Every tank main should do the same f DPS there scumbags
For this game not to be a reject like Heroes of the Storm. Because if OWL fails than OW gets abandoned. Yes DPS needs to be on top but at the same time you can make an actual Tank since it will be only one instead making a big chungus DPS. Won’t have an off tank to block the flank. Give supports some utility changes overall.
I would love to not have my match decided cuz my team wants to run hammond with a mercy pocket 
No. They dont need more impact. There is only 1 tank now, why would they need more damage??? Nonsense
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