I’m sorry, but if the only reason Blizz can’t buff Orisa’s flimsy barrier is because it might be too good in double barrier, then double barrier should not exist. When 1 barrier tank is selected, grey out the rest. Barriers synergize too well with each other. It’s a toxic comp to balance. It forces the game to be designed such that only 1 barrier is good or double barrier is OP.
2 Likes
I see nothing wrong with double barrier as long as it isn’t overly-dominant comp.
Orisa/Sigma wasn’t overly-dominant because of the barrier, so I see no reason to shift Orisa’s power from Fortify/Halt and into her barrier.
5 Likes
The strat behind Orisa/Sigma is to simply put up the next barrier while the previous one recharges, and just keep doing that over and over, covering the weakness of barriers which is supposed to be the downtime. So Blizz’s solution is to give Orisa a laughably bad 600 hp barrier that doesn’t protect anybody on its own. To compensate, they tried making Fortify better, but again that’s not going to protect anybody.
So the existence of double barrier literally stops Blizzard from balancing barriers.
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Wrong. If that were the case comps that rush pass barriers would just speed over them, like dive and Rein deathballs.
Orisa/Sigma was overly-dominant because once you got past the barriers, both those heroes still had enough brawl to match any deathball comp with Fortify, raw damage, grasp, rock and halt. It’s why double shield was even stronger after the shield revamp patch and Orisa/Sigma needed multiple nerfs after that, it’s why Fortify had to be nerfed to 10s 40% DR, it’s why rock had a damage nerf.
Double shield was not “sit behind barriers comp”. It was a deathball with range.
Shift Orisa from brawly to a bunker tank, bring back bunker comps, and double shield can exist just as fine as just another map dependant comp.
2 Likes
I see everything wrong with any barrier. They need to be removed from the game, and tanks should be reworked into dps.
Uh, not wrong. Rushing past the barriers would get you killed for the reasons you described. So enemies couldn’t rush past the barriers, and they couldn’t NOT rush past barriers, so they picked barriers, and it became a game of alternating barriers back and forth.
Then when it was time to further nerf those heroes yet again, what are they gonna do? Make barriers even worse? Well they kinda did with Orisa, but no they had to make everything else worse so hopefully people will stop picking those dang barrier heroes so much.
The solution is simple: give the power back to the barriers, grey out all barrier tanks when 1 is chosen. The whole idea of buffing Fortify and Kinetic Grasp to compensate was terrible. Those abilities are personal defensives; they don’t protect allies.
Just give Sym ability to attack through shields
Check Twitch for Valorant key drops.
4 Likes
I’m waiting. Hahahaha
Limiting the most limited role in the game even further isn’t a solution to anything.
Rebalance Orisa to be a bunker tank, and we will be just fine.
So you want a system where if one tank is picked, 3 more become grayed out, making half of the tank roster unavailable for the second tank player?
I thought people didn’t like hero pools because it decreased their options in tank/support? This just does the same thing on a larger scale.
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That would be a start, but they would need a hell of a lot more counterplay than one orb on a low pickrate hero.
Actually only 2 get greyed out. Winston technically has a spherical barrier but I see no reason to include him, because no Winston is gonna spam his barrier like an Orisa anyway.
So you get into a match, lets say there’s an off tank player there already so because 2 off tank is a throw comp, it means the player is given only main tank heroes to pick from.
But you can also get into a match and get Rein/Orisa/Sigma greyed out because… Barriers bad. So 3 out of 8 tanks are not available, again.
That’s before synergies are taken into account, like you wouldn’t want Hog/Winston, right? So you take another cut to the hero roster for tank players.
But wait, there’s more! Hero bans are a thing, soon enough only in master and GM, so the 8 heroes become 7 automatically in those ranks.
Potentially this means you’re leaving a tank player with zero choice in what hero they play. They could potentially get into a match and have literally only 1 reasonable tank to play.
Queue times would be 30 minutes for support.
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It would literally be all the same tank comps except for the ones abusing double barrier. It’s not at all as limiting as you make it sound.
In fact, because Blizz could now balance around 1 barrier tank, they have a lot more room to do it right and create comps that would otherwise never exist due to the balancing limitations of double barrier.
Barriers are good because of their potentially long uptime.
Whenever you get a tank combination with a good barrier uptime that can Braw and/or use range Spam, people will use them because it’s safer to cluster behind barriers as a “Deathball” playstyle, unless Devs make changes to the game to favor Mobility, to favor more flanking / sniping in a Surround, Poke, Spam and “Dive” attack playstyle.
By abusing you mean using heroes with synergies. No problem with that as long as it isn’t an overly dominant comp.
Yes it is that limiting. Whatever limitation you add is too much, tank roster is already the most limited by far. The fact that we can play shield tank together that previously had no synergy - like Rein/Orisa - is a great thing, not a bad one.
Those comps exist already. Winston/Dva, Rein/Zarya, Orisa/Hog.
Limiting the tank roster further does nothing but worsen the queue times.
I hate this idea with a passion.
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Yet another reason why the game should be 1-3-2 or 1-4-1
I really don’t mind waiting for Blizz to release more tanks before implementing this idea, but if they did it immediately with the roster they have now, it’s not at all that bad. Worst case scenario it’ll feel like when Rein was the only barrier tank that existed, but I highly doubt it’ll even feel like that.
I actually made a thread arguing that Orisa barrier is far too flimsy. You wanna know the #1 argument against that was? How it’ll impact double barrier. Nobody disagreed that it was too weak by itself, but rather that it would be too strong in double barrier. That’s how toxic the existence of this comp is to hero balance.
Remove double barrier and Blizz can actually start balancing these heroes.