I’m sorry, but this isn’t true.
Other than Hammond all tanks are either slow, or, as is the case with Orisa, really slow. Rein’s charge is ok…ish.
Lucio is the only really mobile support. Ana and Zen might as well be dragging an anchor behind them. Brig’s shield bash is short and has a long CD. Mercy need a line of sight and needs to be close enough to use her mobility. Bapt can jump really high … great. Moira can vanish-move, but if you mess that up, you’re dead. AFAIK Moira is not that popular in higher ranks.
DPS have a ton of mobility or at least good escape options. I think only Bastion, Mei and Torb are slowpokes (and for a good reason), the rest have at least one good mobility/escape option.
There was some talk about DPS having long queue times. I believe that stems from philosophy that was brought over from other games. Take MOBA games for example. It is probably the most satisfying to play (DPS) carries. Especially if you get fed and then you “PoWn” the enemy team. They at least seem to have the biggest impact and are generally more revered.
DPS will never be the most powerful role because everyone can do damage, however DPS feels greater to play because of how much you can do, there’s more to switch to, you can get more creative
Let’s say there’s a flanker, you need a stun, as a tank you have
Sigma (he’s supposed to be in the frontline so he’s not even good at it)
Hog
As support you have
Ana (sleep, unreliable because you’re probably gonna miss)
Brig (punch bag don’t even bother)
While as damage you have
Sombra (not a stun but works in most situations)
Mccree
Doomfist (if played on backline. Not that I recommend it)
Mei (if you manage to freeze with her nerfs)
There’s a pharmercy? You have
Tank
Dva (if you don’t get melted)
Sigma (can work but unreliable)
Support
Bap (but you stop healing)
Ana (but you also stop healing)
Damage
Ashe
Widow
Soldier
Mccree
Depending on the circumstances bastion, sombra and Mei can work
So like, yeah
We just need much more heroes on supports and tanks, because I honestly feel helpless when there’s a flanker on support
My biggest issue with support is that I can’t force my teammates to win.
We all, I guess, saw teammates unwilling to go in, because they would die. But you can’t make them “not die” - your supporting capabilities aren’t designed to keep at good condition someone targeted by multiple enemies at once.
As DPS, you are less prone to errors - only mistakes you can make are your own mistakes, which can be corrected or avoided. As support or tank, your own mistakes are added to mistakes of different players, so chances of someone screwing up and ruining your collective efforts skyrocket.
It can be difficult even for 2 players to work together, while tanks require coordinated efforts of nearly whole team - not only high requirement, but also very unstable. Obviously, when tanks(and supports) are balanced around scenario, when whole team works together, they become awful in real game, where having even 1 player working together with you is already gift from matchmaking.
Like
I can escape them but I can’t quite kill them
I can’t make them free ult charge for my team if that makes sense
It’s much more effective to hack a doomfist than stunning as brig in most situations
Not like it’s useless, but unless the team is there, they probably won’t die, so even though you can escape them, others might die
I was a healer main ( peaked at 4.3k before leaving comp) and now as a tank player I can tell you the problem is the same from both perspectives and I agree with you 100%.
As a healer, my concern was how inconsistent DPS could be. They could literally carry you one round and the next two they would not be able to land more than one shot or get one pick.
As a tank, the problem is literally the same. I get questionable supports and tanks here and there but DPS is clearly the problem.
You either get good DPS who peel, who work around tanks/healers, who communicate, who land shots constantly or who gets picks constantly OR you get the soft throwing ones, the ones who go in 1 v 6 with their ult, the ones that pick Sombra+Sym against Pharah Mercy, etc.
It can be quite a s*** show at times
Ultimately, this was bound to happen when you have 17 heroes on one role and less than half of that on the other two…
You can’t control space without getting the enemy off of it, so at the end of the day either killing the enemy team off or literally preventing them from entering your area are the only true ways to win.
Obviously, physically preventing them from entering an area isn’t very easy and shouldn’t be either, so that only leaves one option
I am ok with DPS picking absolutely anything…as long as they actually hit their shots. As there are Symmetra players, that can hit Pharah in mid-air with orb. And players, that manage to fire shot at enemy tank…and miss.
Supports and tanks have to be reliable, in the first place. We do not want to add even more moments, where everything can end up for nothing. Especially if you deny tanks and supports dedication to healing and blocking.
When DPS are just expendable cannon fodder, game works best. As DPS are allowed to do absolutely stupid things, without compromising team as whole.
Though developers didn’t lie - tanks are fun, if you enjoy pain.
Well said, even if they aren’t the strongest roles, they feel the most satisfying for the reasons given. Now Blizzard even wants the DPS to also have more and more power while still having these things. Maybe they should work on given Tanks/supports some freedom instead of just giving DPS more power every patch.
All Tanks, Damage, Support move at the same speed. Exceptions are Genji, Tracer and Lucio who have slightly faster movement.
In terms of mobility abilities, passives, etc. Tanks like Winston, D.va, Wrecking Ball, Reinhardt, and even Sigma (limited to his Ultimate) have some form of mobility.
Winston, in Primal Rage is the fastest in terms of covering terrain and ignoring obstacles. He can cross entire maps in relative seconds. Wrecking Ball is the fastest hero in the game and one of the most mobile, only one who competes with him is Lucio.
Reinhardt’s Charge travels 50 meters, does 50 damage on bump, and 300 damage on slam. It’s cooldown is one second longer than Swiftstrike.
D.va travels 25 meters in 2 seconds with Boosters on a four-second cooldown. By comparison, Pharah gets 12 meters on a 10 second cooldown (and Echo get 24 on a six second cooldown).
Orisa immunizes herself against all forms of crowd control and is not impaired by any movement-impairing effects for several seconds. Zarya has similar functions, but is limited to 200 damage or 2 seconds. (This is why it’s important to understand that a lack of mobility is not a weakness).
And so on and so forth.
You could argue that, Damage is loading their mobility abilities or options with other effects such as additional damage, or immortality, and you are right about that. However, even simple comparisons indicate that Tanks and Supports still end up with slightly more effective returns or are on par. Winston’s Jump Pack is a good example. Up to 50 damage in an area with 20 meter maximum distance and a 6-second cooldown. Compare with Swiftstrike, 50 damage across 15 meters maximum distance and an 8 second cooldown. And then Lucio’s Soundwave is 25 damage 8 meter cone, 5-ish meter knockback, 4 second cooldown. Lucio will end up doing two Soundwaves in the time it takes for Swiftstrike to complete one cooldown (unless of course, Genji participates in an elimination while Swiftstrike is on cooldown). Lucio’s mobility isn’t tied to Soundwave, and neither is Genji’s, but Lucio is tied to being on the Support-role, and he’s competing extremely well offensively when compared to Genji; or just about any close-range projectile damage hero. This isn’t really unusual, given where Overwatch started, but it’s important to understand why GOATS happened and why it continues to be a problem despite the 2/2/2 compositions.
Only in part because they lack a third tank and/or support to make it work. Numbers-wise, Overwatch still maintains some semblence of value and 2 tanks and 2 supports aren’t going to compare quite to 2 damage, 2 tanks and 2 supports. It’s not that damage was unviable, it was just that it was irrelevant.
Sure, I can see that too. Passive regeneration works as a qualifier, and I can see Kinetic Grasp acting as an active conditional heal in the same way TAB does (and both can be interrupted).
Yeah, I think what was going on in my head was some related to the Offense/Defense split and thinking in terms of Offense heroes - which would exclude Mei and Bastion. Sombra, I still wouldn’t count, but Reaper certainly fits here with his Reaping passive.
Doomfist is locked to 150 extra shields that aren’t static. So, while he can reach 400 health, if he lost 50 of his 250 core health, he’s locked at 350. It’s also not damage-resistant like armored health and it falls off faster than other extra-health. So… I’m not sure if Blizzard would view it as healing, but I don’t think I would. Still counts as eHP, and still allows resiliency and bulk, but not as valuable as regular health (since you can’t heal it) or armored health.
This is probably the best observation as to how most casual and less dedicated players look at Overwatch and those same players that view MOBAs like LoL and Heroes of the Storm. In LoL and DOTA there’s a lot less dependency and the ability to “carry” the team has a lot more weight. Overwatch doesn’t work like this because of how much inter-dependency is related towards the roles in the game. Thus, Overwatch less like a MOBA and more like an MMO (which goes back to what I said before about Overwatch being an FPS with MMO-like trappings), where clear distinction between roles exists and the dependencies based on them. Overwatch sorta ends up having to tilt these dependencies in favor of the Tanks because of PvP-issues.
Blizzard has mentioned that they’re trying to put more individual merit into Overwatch so that “solo-carries” are more possible (without having a large skill-gaps being a contributing factor). From an E-Sports standpoint, this also would create a more visual spectacle and in turn make Overwatch more fun to watch.
No Overwatch is more like a MOBA with FPS style. It’s not like DOTA or LOL… but it is very much like Heroes of the of Storm in terms of team fights and the lack of carry/ snowballing.
They risk to make DPS irrelevant once again, if they do that.
Downfall of DPS is that damage is nearly all they can do. Often they are unable to survive their own damage.
Unfortunately, Blizzard is unable to let tanks and supports focus on their own roles. Instead, they are “fat DPS” and “DPS with utility”. And as long, as it is that way, there would always be risk of DPS becoming obsolete.
I think you and I have slightly different views on mobility and where its value comes from. To me, a big part of mobility is how often I get to use it, its price (time and resources) and how versatile it is. That is why I believe that, overall, DPS have it better. Sombra is in sprint mode while cloaked and she can teleport/escape to safety in a blink of an eye. Soldier sprints. Genji and Hanzo wall climb and have double jump. Widow can grapple, either to a high place or just some distance away on the ground level and she can catapult herself into the air. Ashe can shotgun threats away and can reach high places almost as good as Baptiste. Junk can use concussion to move around. Pharah and Echo fly, Phara can also boop herself around with concussive blast. Tracer needs no introduction :). Reaper can teleport a fair distance and is faster in wraith form, which is similar to Torb’s overload. All of Doomfist’s abilities move him around (many times to his early demise). Symetra has teleport; which is not exactly a great mobility feature. McRee has low mobility. Mei can reach higher places or map ‘shortcuts’ with her wall, but other than that is not very mobile. Bastion has, thank Thor, low mobility.
I generally discount ultimates when it comes to mobility, since usually mobility is not what they are primarily used for. In a sense that I will not go into Primal rage or use Transcendece to try to get from spawn to my team faster.
I’ve put Rein’s Charge into the “…ish” category because it pretty much just goes straight. It’s rare to use its full length due to how maps are designed. It has a short charge time, which gives opportunities to stop it in it’s tracks. Rein is vulnerable and predictable during the charge and you can’t cancel it.
All that being said, I believe it is perfectly fine that DPS have better mobility. It’s a big part of the overall role they play. The alternative seems to be line infantry tactics from 18th century: “Let’s meet in the middle and fire all we have at each other”. An unfortunate consequence of better mobility, and I guess agency by extension, is that DPS heroes at least feel more exciting to play.
Then why does it cancel ultimates? That doesn’t ‘secure kills’ it saves teammates from being killed. Like support abilities. Also isn’t the main complaint about Sombra that hack is designed to help her team secure kills and create openings because she doesn’t have enough damage to do it herself?
Most support abilities that aren’t healing help the the team or themselves get eliminations, that’s the point of utility (that thing supports are meant to give to the team). Anit-nade, sleep, damage boost, discord, speed boost, amp matrix, shield bash all help the player and their team secure kills and I wouldn’t call any of them dps abilities.
I agree to the OP but i want to answer to the statements about the metas
All modern metas were made out of which are the most viable characters to negate Widowmaker
Dive - Disrupt Widow
Goats - Overheal sniper fire
Double shield - Block sniper fire
I would go that far that Widow is the thing that ruins the game. Think about it, a character that can one shot all squishies from very far away and has an actual wallhack.
And i would go that far away that GOATs was the best modern meta possible. It wasnt Brig that ruined the game but the desperate attempts to force delete the meta. Give Tracer falloff buff, nerf Tank survivablity, nerf overall healing, making Reaper and Mei into an unstoppable force of nature. And these poor balance choices still linger in the games overall balance.
And it wasnt Sigma that caused double shield. It was the fact that you are forced to have two tanks to block burst and sniper fire with the combination of nerfed defense and healing.
Both characters were the victims of objectification. They were in wrong time and place when a big change has happened ingame.
Can’t be obsolete when you’re forced to bring 2 no matter what. Even in the current game if you go to qpc or competitive classic tanks are ran over dps because they’re just better.
And Sombra only has that kind of ability. She can only help the team offensively. Supports all have an inherent defense quality to them.
You can try to consider hacking healthpacks to be defensive, but they’re almost always too far out of the way to really help hold your team together. They are a last resort kinda deal.
