DPS - In current state

General Discussion
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Warning: Rant incoming.

Disclaimer: I am not by any means an amazing pogchamp DPS. I’d say I’m average at best for my tier. That being said, I usually range somewhere in mid plat to high gold, aka the average player base.

Currently, DPS feels terrible to play. Not only is the queue time terrible, but the actual carry potential feels minute in comparison to the tank and support role. Now before I get flammed, I usually play in mid-plat, so I’m aware that communication and teamwork aren’t all that great, and thus it’s up to me to take an active role in shaping the game.

Before I get flammed:
Yes, I track ultimates/important CDs.
Yes, I use key positioning. (high ground/LoS cover/medpack access/escape route)
Yes, I look at team composition and identify and persue winning conditions.
Yes, I shotcall.
Yes, I counterpick.
Yes, I am aware I’m not perfect.

With that out of the way, it is exhausting to try and carry as DPS. The game feels as if it’s decided by which team’s has a better tank and support lineup. If a tank presses W + M1, they win you the game. If a support player prioritizes survivability, they win you the game. If your tank is passive (as I believe 70% of tanks in lower elo are), good luck getting follow-up on plays, lining up shots, or even starting a fight. The whole game stays in a limbo poke phase with multiple staggers. If your supports get annoyed that they have gold damage, they then go off on their own and play OW - Singleplayer, instead of staying safe and healing. Good luck trying to sustain a fight for more than 10s (Medal system just encourages a skewed view of how the game should actually play). As a DPS, I’m giving 3 options to influence the game. I can flank to shift pressure unto to the enemy backline, in some misguided hope that my tanks will seize the opportunity. I can try to get pickoffs, from off angles, hoping once again, that upon a pick my Tank will press W. Or I can stay with my tanks as a Mei/Reaper/Mcree/Jrat playstyle to enable my tanks. But instead, what will occur is my tank, who will be too afraid to push in, despite my clear coms to do so, will just get cold feet and stand behind cover, thus the rest of the team will be too afraid to push in as well. Eventually, the enemy team gets ults, and so when our Tank does finally push (usually with 10s left), the enemy team just presses Q. As a DPS I don’t have the ability to self sustain after a pickoff, I cannot initiate a fight without getting severely punished for it. On top of this, the expectation of a misinformed community is always “DPS sucks, nothing is dying”. News Flash, anyone can get a pick. It isn’t a DPS exclusive task. Thus, my point, at the moment DPS doesn’t feel like a carry role.

Now, I will play devil’s advocate, when ENABLED, DPS feels fantastic, and the carry potential spikes infinitely. And that’s the saddest part of it all, the fact that I get super excited when I have teammates that understand their roles, and enable me to play mine, and vice versa.

/end rant. I needed to get that off my chest. Has this happened to you before? Do you agree or disagree? Why or why not? I’m curious to see if it’s just a personal issue I need to work on, or if others are struggling as well. Thanks for reading. :slight_smile:

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I’m going to quote one of my posts to explain this

The reason that carry potential in low-mid ranks feels poor is often because the other roles dont do their job

as you go up in tanks you can see how much more important DPS become, once you get to masters games are usually decided by them because the supports and tanks both do their jobs. And the reason that they are decided by DPS is because they simply have the highest numbers.

A masters tank and support has about half the ability to carry a masters ranked game than a DPS, simply because they dont have the means to. DPS dont have to protect their teammates (as much) as the other roles, they are compleatly unchained and they can spend the whole game killing enemies.

Theres another person who said this but I can’t find the quote so I’ll paraphrase.

“Healing doesn’t win games, damage does. If you want to play supports and tanks and just sit and heal, or just sit and tank then you’re never going to climb, someone who picks Supports or Tanks with the intention to not only heal/sheild, but also with the intention to try and get/secure kills will climb”

A defensive Ana/Moira/Mercy is going to do half as much as an aggressive one

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Heals would rather do your job then heal

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In most Overwatch’s comps, DPS are rarely the carry role and that has been the case for the longest time.

The advantage of DPS is that you get to pick whatever into most comps. The synergies aren’t limiting, most DPS can be played with most tank duos and sup duos.

I think Overwatch has a major design issue coming all the way back from the planning phase. It’s a space based objective, yet we have heroes that work space so much better than others, thus their impact in the game is greater.

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IMO lot of what you said goes for the other two roles as well. Playing tank seems like feeding when you don’t get healing and while you try to push and make space the enemy team just goes straight through your shield because you don’t do enough damage to scare them.

Same goes for supports. You can heal all you want, but if your tanks don’t move and your DPS refuse to maintain LOS then you could as well not be there at all.

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Welcome to Overwatch. In all seriousness, the better tanks and supports have gotten, the harder it is to pull of those crazy plays, especially when your tanks and supports would rather blame you for everything than set you up. That is just the way it is, now.

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My problem with dps is how rude they act, telling me to switch even though I have all medals and 3 deaths as D.Va. Like what? dps SHOULD ALWAYS have gold damage.

If you are going to be rude and mean to tanks and supports YOU go play tank and support to see how hard life is. DPS it is time to get off of your pedestal and grow up.

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I agree with you to a certain extent. No player, regardless of role, should be hostile, or disrespectful to anyone. We’re human beings, so we’re not perfect, and sometimes we snap, but I don’t think it is a behavior we should continue.

However, I want to point a couple of things:
-Having all gold medals/damage/heals etc, is practically pointless. In fact, many recognizable figures, and respected players have discussed at length why the medal system fails to serve as an indicator of your impact in the game.

-DPS needing to always have gold damage is also a misconception for the reasons stated above. If a widowmaker lands a pick on a 1 target and gets out alive, she’s gotten massive value, even if she later does nothing but body shot targets through the fight. Or a support that sleeps an ulting nano Genji, or a Dva that eats a Grav and Dragonstrike. There are no stats for that. Overwatch is too complex to be reduced to mere stats.

With that being said, I am sorry that people, especially DPS, may have been rude to you. It’s not all of us, and deff not always. I think the game just frustrates everyone when we’re not on the same page. Because the game relies so much on teamwork, not having it, leaves the player feeling powerless.

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not always like i could easly get 10k+ damage with Sigama a little less with Orisa and around the same with dva.

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As a DPS main I couldn’t agree more.

I main tracer, and playing a DPS hero like her right now, feels even worse than playing a DPS that’s actually viable.

Don’t get me wrong, when my tanks are being super aggressive, I can go aggro on the enemy supports, turning the teamfight into a big messy brawl of the enemy being scared, which is exactly what a hero like tracer needs to pop off.

Most DPS heroes can’t get picks by themselves. It’s all about focusfire. Something you don’t see in most ranks, but it’s something that I’ve learned from playing with an actual team, and playing some games in open division. If you all call one target to focus, THAT will be your entry pick. If you can’t get a pick from afar, your tanks should M1 and during which you call out a target to kill first.

Winning on DPS is so reliant on what your team is playing, and how they’re playing it. The solo carry potential is almost non-existent, yet people still expect you to carry all on your own.

Truth be told, DPS can’t do anything without their tanks being aggressive. Sure, there’s such thing as being overly aggressive, i.e running all the way through the frontline to the backline, but it’s hard to cross that line.

So many tank players are scared to push, cause they see all the damage coming in and it frightens them. If they’d played a bit more headstrong, they’d realise they can just hold W through the damage, making space while their supports keep them alive.

Playing DPS feels terrible in soloqueue, because theres no communication at all

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This is the problem with DPS.
When enabled, they can be too powerful, which is why a lot of DPS are so much more powerful in higher ranks. But with bad teammates who play passively or don’t do their job, it can feel impossible to do anything.

DPS need to be slightly less reliant on their teammates but their overall potential when enabled reduced.

Honestly, this game in general needs a big change.

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We need this mechanic in OW.

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The reason the carry potential of DPS feels low is because it is. If 2-2-2 was removed, GOATS would instantly become the meta again. That’s how good tanks are.

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You are right. It isn’t exclusive task for DPS to make things happen.

Due to one of those “happy” matches, I made a comment to my self saying “I don’t get how people are playing World of WarCraft dungeon in Overwatch” meaning that often their logic looks like “tank is going to soak all the damage and that’s it, while DPS goes in and does the magic and well, healers heal”.

Ana can completely prevent an ultimate and Moira can completely escape an ultimate and they are both support roles.

Anyways, as a DPS, I don’t feel that it’s impossible to carry the team. I have been in situations where, let’s say as a Reaper, I did a lot. By the end of the match, I get healers saying “Reaper carrying” and it did feel like that and I don’t mind that effort as much as I mind that people cannot see the following:

  1. You are on the objective
  2. You solo 2-3 players in the objective (like 1 tank and 1 healer)
  3. No one is there to pressure the objective in our advantage, they are at the back regrouping or should I say they are at the back, frying the eggs.

I am aware that regrouping is necessary when you have a constant feeling of team being scattered all around but it’s beyond me how they cannot see that there was just 1 players left on the objective while rest of their team is on the way to the objective or dead. We cannot get Rein or Winston to charge there and hold the position. Then, opposite team comes back in full might and then I have to try all kinds of combinations to help the team and that goes on and on, to eventually lose.

Some players don’t deserve good DPS.

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It’s a team game. there’s a bit of rng on whether you wind up on a good team when you’re only 1 out of 6.

the way I see it, if your tank gets indecisive, it’s your job to tell them to move in to give you more space, or back out, instead of just standing there on rein taking unnecessary damage to his shield. It’s a bit of a harder job with supports who think they are tanks… unless they’re mercy, and you can just go pharah and let them taxi, in which case their bad positioning matters slightly less.

point is, you can only do so much on each role.

dps feels bad when they kill things, but no one moves in afterwards, or does the objective. Or HELLO did you not see the giant wall-hack arrow I just fired into where the red character shape of the widow is hiding, why are you peeking past the shields into her sightlines?!

tank feels bad when pressing in, but no one is following you closely, but you can’t always tell because you don’t have eyes at the back of your head, and then mei walls you off, and then you die to her innocent, smiling face as she slowly freezes you, SMILING, SMILING ALL THE WAY.

Or when you have that one flanker who won’t come back, and you try your best to save them by bubbling them, but then they take that as a license to continuing overextending and die…but at least you get more charge.

support. *sigh. honest to god I’d say THIS is the most helpless role if you’re not a healer who can peel for themselves. Hey guys I slept the nanoblade, or the ulting monkey, or the dva that can eat our grav! team: tickles them back to life immediately. and then you die.

or even more likely: hey team our backline is being harassed and that’s why I’m not healing you, can you please help I don’t have the damage capacity to kill them faster than they can kill me. …team? Hello? aaaaaaaaaaaa (edit: excuse me while I swap to brig)

and one for everyone: people who haven’t learnt to run towards their team when they’re in trouble instead of simply the nearest direction away from whoever’s chasing them.

It’s hard to carry when no one’s willing to coordinate.

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Pretty much my literal DPS experience in a nutshell. It’s kind of a relief to see that I’m not going crazy and that it’s an actual thing others are experiencing. I guess misery really does love company.

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