Double Shield Meta

Competitive Discussion
1

As a Main tank player, I’d like to talk Double Shield.

To start off, I think thanks to role queue the game is better and more fun to play than it ever has been and the developer team deserve immense credit for giving us this.

That said, balance is always going to be a topic of discussion because I believe a game like overwatch can never be fully balanced in terms of equal pick rate etc etc. There will always be a meta. So, accepting that, let’s move on.

So the question is - why do we have a double shield meta?

The answer is simple, but to understand my argument, here is a recap of what each shield tank does:

Reinhardt has a strong barrier, which he must put away to attack and can only do so at close range. As such, his playstyle needs to be close to the enemy team.

Winston has a barrier he puts down at his location, shielding everything around a central point. His playstyle is getting in, getting some damage in, then getting back out for heals.

Orisa has a barrier that she shoots out and although it is static, she can shoot while shielding. She is good when she can keep the enemy a good distance in front of her shield.

Sigma has a barrier that he projects forward and he can shoot while shielding. He is good when he can keep the enemy in front of his shield.

So you will notice the similarities between Orisa and Sigma’s playstyles. While they do feel very different to play, they do the same job and having both of these heroes selectable at the same time creates far too much synergy.

This is why we have a double shield meta now when in the past, this would never have happened. Orisa, reinhardt and Winston all have unique play styles and as such don’t work well together. Now we have a shield tank who plays very similarly to Orisa and as such, we just play two shield tanks because they do the same job and give you basically 100% shield uptime when used together with no drawbacks.

Solutions:

  1. Nerf one or both of Orisa and Sigma until their pick rates drop.

This seems to be the path the dev team have gone down, and while I think it may give you results which indicate the problem has been fixed I don’t think it addresses the underlying issue- which I have explained above.

  1. Limit each team to only one shield tank.

While this would fix the double shield issue, I don’t think anyone wants to further increase queue times by separating tank players further.

  1. Temporarily remove Sigma from competitive play until he can be reworked.

This would be the more difficult but ultimately most beneficial option. Because the root cause of the problem stems from Sigma and Orisa having such a similar playstyle, Sigma would need to be reworked until he has a playstyle that is so distinct from Orisa, Winston and Reinhardt that he will never synergise with one of them more than they would with an offtank.

To me, option 3 is how you really solve the issue from a gameplay perspective. While I do like sigma and think he plays very well, unfortunately, I think his playstyle compliments Orisa far too much and that unless you nerf one or both of them into the ground or fundamentally change sigma, they will only ever be played together.

Thank you for reading and I look forward to any comments.

5 Likes
2

Uhhh a reasonable and logic thread. :+1:

3

  1. You have particular nerfs in mind? They were both nerfed recently.

  2. Absolutely not. That’s way too complicated and a slippery slope. Some people propose hero bans which would be a better solution. Dont want to face teo shields? Pick one for your ban.

  3. Not necessary as he himself isn’t broken by himself. And again, what nerfs do you propose? Best I can think of is a delay before shield regeneration begins after it breaks, better rewarding shield break.

4

Hi, please understand I don’t think any of the shield tanks need a nerf. I am exploring possible options.

If you could not tell from my analysis of each option, the option I agree with most is option 3 where he is temporarily removed from play and reworked into something that is more different from the playstyle of Orisa.

5

You have two offers under the category of “solutions” that involve proposing nerfing shield characters, or removing Sigma until he is changed to a point where he is less impactful in the meta. That’s the definition of a nerf.

1 Like
6

They need to nerf Reaper and Mei and maybe buff armour.

You can easily destroy double shield by ignoring it and jumping through it as a mobile tank such as Rein, Ball and especially Winston and Dva, however none of these tanks can survive for long enough if there is a Reaper or Mei on the opposite team waiting to destroy you.

IMO double shield is the result of nerfing all the other tanks to become unplayable.

1 Like
7

No, see you are putting words in my mouth.

I don’t think Sigma or Orisa is OP and need a nerf.

The rework suggestion does not mean I want him to be less powerful.

The goal in all of this is for two barrier tanks not to be played together.

So, once again, the suggestion that I support is to redesign Sigma so he has his own type of comp or style of play in the way that Winston and Reinhardt have.

This is the best way to fix this issue without just nerfing sigma and Orisa out of existence. I have also had pointed out people would suggest hero bans as a fix, so maybe that would be option 4. However, to me, this is very similar to just removing whatever hero happens to be most problematic at the time.

8

I agree, Sigma has 1500 shield hp, he shouldn’t when he is capable of being extremely aggressive even with his shield up, capable of stunning and attacking. That’s like 3/4 of Rein’s shield when rein cannot contribute to the fight with his shield up, a fair shield hp should be 500-750.

9

I’m not putting words in your mouth, I’m quoting your words.

“Solutions: Nerf one or both of Orisa and Sigma until their pick rates drop.”

If you truly dont think they need a nerf than you need to amend that.

Second, it sounds like you endorse 2 more than 3 if “The goal in all of this is for two barrier tanks not to be played together.” Again, just quoting you.

Plus, does that mean you disapprove of Orisa/Rein, or Rein/Winston?

10

You are looking at the wrong hero to rework. Sigma needs slight nerfs but the hero that should get reworked is Orisa. I very much dislike how her shield management and her playstyle in general work.
Both sigma and rein need to manage their shield and get to the enemy team before their shield breaks. Orisa simply throws a new shield after her shield breaks and she uses her shift to survive all while moving towards the enemy. So instead of slowly depleting their shield resources they instead have unlimited amount of it while they are depleting yours.

Also the underlining issue why is double shield played in the first place are the overbuffed dps heroes like mei, reaper and brig which make playing dive which should in theory be good against it impossible.

1 Like
11

This is actually a pretty good idea, like how bungie disables exotics/weapons when a broken exploits is discovered. Wouldn’t really hurt the tank mains, probably sigma mains, since I heard most people got tired of playing double shield and bunker in one places anyway.

12

Quoting me yes, but totally out of context. I also said this after analysing all options.

Also please stop trying to tell me what I mean. I mean what I say and if you didn’t read it all, that’s your fault, not mine.

13

I feel like Sigma is probably in a good place right now. Double shield is strong, but it id no longer the MUST pick that it used to be. More nerfs to Sigma could make him unplayable outside of double shield. The problem right now is mostly Orissa still. She was a must pick before Sigma and was released and is still a must pick now.

14

Orisa is not the problem. She is now near unplayable without Sigma because of her barrier nerfs.

She was a must pick before Sigma because all the nerfs that were made to nerf Goats left all the tanks except her in a weakened state.

Armor Nerf–> hurt her a little but due to her avoid damage playstyle and her fortify she could weather it the most PLUS it upped her damage.
Boop Nerf-----> This nerf destroyed Winston/D.Va (their pick rates plummeted after this change and for good reason, they couldn’t dive targets because they had no character control when they got cc’d) It also hurt close range immobile hero. Once again Orisa stays a healthy distance away and has a CD to prevent boops

Then there was the precision nerfs on D.Va to further wreck her viability and the Lucio nerfs to cram a sock into Rein/Zarya/Winston comps.

She was the only tank left standing and remains that way due to all those nerfs (except lucio nerf) still in game.

Boop revert is prob one of the biggest way to return some power to tanks. An armor revert wouldn’t hurt either or at least give MORE armor to select tanks to off-set the global armor nerfs.

15

I honestly have no idea why teams should get two main tanks to begin with, but I’ve just learned that you need to drop the hitscans (widow,hanzo,soldier, cre, ashe) in favor of doom-reaper with some occasional mei-bastion-sym involved.

16

People don’t like reworks, I wouldn’t want Sigma nor Orisa to be reworked.

Problem is they do so much when shielding their team, if their barriers was the core of their gameplay (Like Rein) it wouldn’t be a problem.

18

I think the way how blizzard resolving meta problems are wrong and unreasonable. For example you said they can restrict 2nd shield tank to ever being picked in addition, to prvent this crap. But same could be done with goats - restrict 3rd tank or 3rd support pick and synergy breaks down. All they need to realise, we need nerf synergies instead of individual heroes to get rid of meta statement. But instead of that they restrict role swap with roleQ implementing, which causes many more issues and didn’t fix main issue, you can still have 2 off tanks or rein zar agains orisa sig, what is the difference when we were playing 1-4-1 with ball mercy and 4 dps? But it was actually fun comp btw…

19

What are you talking about? Orisa is unplayable without Sigma? Thats crazy talk. She is pretty much always a solid pick no matter what the other tank pick is. The last patch hurt sigma more than Orisa, as some teams have started to replace Sigma with Hog.

20

Holy s*it a good thread??

I agree completely, Option 3 is honestly the best option.

Rework Sigma into more of an off-tank, he can continue to compliment Orisa, but certainly not as a main-tank. I think if Orisa/Sigma wasn’t the meta the tank queues would be more active, in turn decreasing the DPS and support queues. This season I did my 5 games of tank on my main account (went 4-1 on Sigma with no experience or practice in quick play) and placed 3850 after finishing season 17 3689. Haven’t touched tank since, Sigma/Orisa is boring, unfun, unengaging while being must picks, particularly in higher tiers.

21

To be fair if I had a choice of removing either Sigma or orisa for rework, I’d go for the orisa. The double barrier meta is not fun because it’s too passive, you don’t enjoy shooting endless barriers and flanking and counterplay is extrememly hard, so mirror playstyle is the safest bet.

Now whille Sigma keeps enemies at range, he’s still a very dynamic hero, who has ways to hold a position and deal with flankers.
Orisa on the other hand is a weak moving barrier bastion, who only promotes passive gameplay. And she’s just too boring to play for the majority of the players because of that.

So what I would actually do to Orisa is:
1. Take away her barrier and make her off tank with less health
2. Make her smaller and a bit thinner for a more centaur-ish look
3. Give her mobility like hops with a small cooldown
4. Give her a shotgun, or an smg and a root ability instead of halt
5. Keep the fortify, so she has a unique surval kit
6. Change her ult to increse speed and damage around her for a period of time

You get an amazing new hero out of orisa with a unique playstyle and you get rid of the passive play as a result, it’s a win-win in my mind