Experimental card: moving heroes to help queue times

General Discussion
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DPS queue times are too long, one thing that can help with that is moving DPS heroes to other categories. I propose these moves mainly by which heroes would be most suitable to move:

DPS -> Tanks

  • Bastion
  • Doomfist

DPS -> Support

  • Symmetra

The DPS category goes from 53% of the heroes to 43% of the hero roster, a far smaller disparity between the choice of Damage heroes and how only 33% of slots are for DPS heroes.

This would of course come with a few changes but not many changes, no radically newly functioning abilities:

  • Bastion’s Ironclad Passive (20% DR) now also applies in Configuration: Recon
  • Doomfist’s ‘The Best Defence’ Passive is replaced with 150HP shield-health
  • Symm’s orb now heals allies 80HP on direct hit instead of damaging foes
  • Symm’s beam only goes up to level-2 (60-dps to 120-dps).

That’s it. but here’s a few likely questions I’d like to answer right now:

WHY SO FEW CHANGES?

Summary

The more you change, the more uncertain variables you introduce, this is all that’s needed to try out these heroes as tanks or supports. Their existing kit are known quantities, we already know how most of their kit works in the game. Even Symm’s beam is the same right up until it would go to level 3 beam.

The main purpose of this is to see how their existing kit works in the tank/support role with minimal changes. So bastion can only have 1 barrier but 2 DPS heroes exploit the space created by the high but fixed threat of sentry gun. Doomfist is a high mobility tank like Winston or Hammond.

The problem with reworks is they just introduce new dynamics that may have unforeseen interactions, you end up constantly trying to chase a stable state. Every change has huge effects as it interacts with all the other heroes in the game.

WHY ONLY THOSE HEROES MOVED TO TANK?

Summary

Because out of all the DPS heroes only Bastion and Doomfist are physically large enough to count as tanks. https://i.imgur.com/Z3gJnqr.jpg We also know they can situationally exist in the game with the health equivalent of a tank: (1) Doomfist can gain up to 150 temporary shields with his passive = 400HP (2) Bastion’s ironclad + armour can allow him to survive up to 400 damage. The lowest HP of any tank in Overwatch is 400HP.
The only problem is the capacity of Doomfist/Bastion to survive this damage is inconsistent, Bastion must be in Configuration tank/sentry, Doomfist must have hit several enemies simultaneously with his abilities.

BASTION HAS HIGH DAMAGE, HOW CAN HE BE A TANK?

Summary

Same way roadhog can be a tank even though he deals 900 damage in 3.5 sec which is enough to put Echo to shame. Tanks aren’t low damage, their damage is more limited, the most important quality of tanks is that they… tank. They tank damage. The “tank” analogy doesn’t imply weakness, a Sherman tank is both tough AND has a powerful gun, but you need flexible forces like riflemen and grenadiers to clear out the foxholes.

By the way, the time for Roadhog to mag dump 900 damage is the same amount of time it takes for bastion to reconfigure into sentry, deal 900 damage, then reconfigure back to recon. Then they both take about the same time to reset.

Bastion works so well in the tank role as his most cheesy tactic of hiding behind double barrier is now impossible.

WHY RETURN SYMMETRA TO SUPPORT?

Summary

Because her kit is still overwhelmingly support focused, her teleporter is an ability that has its impact balanced by how allies can use it. Her ultimate is far more for enabling her entire team rather than just enabling a solo-play or nerfing the entire enemy team.

YOU REALLY WANT NO OTHER CHANGES TO THESE HEROES, EVER?

Summary

Not never. Definitely some nerfs/buffs could be tried later like trading the burst damage of Doomfist’s primary for more effective poke damage, change sentry gun’s spread from shrinking to fixed but slightly smaller max spread, dial back damage on Symm’s turrets if they’re too powerful for a support hero. But this isn’t something to be too hasty about, such changes might be completely unnecessary.

WELL SINCE THEY'RE TANKS WHY CAN'T WE ALSO GIVE THEM...

Summary

Hold it right there, don’t just try to turn Bastion/Doomfist into Rein or turn Symmetra into Mercy. Giving bastion a barrier that would be like giving Roadhog a barrier… that would inevitably just mean his existing strengths of hook and high DPS shotgun must be nerfed and you’ve ended up with a really bland vanilla hero.

Work with as much of what the hero has as much as possible.

Symmetra needs (something like) a change to her alt fire as there’s such a high expectation that supports heal, a non-healing support is going to be too much of a disruption to role-queue expectations.

HEY, SOMBRA SHOULD BE A SUPPORT!

Summary

Sombra may be suffering as a DPS hero but it’s not because her kit is more suited as support. Her kit is entirely focused on attacking the enemy and enabling herself, that’s not support like at all. Symmetra’s kit is pulled in two different directions, she has a potentially high damage beam on one hand vs teleporter and ultimate that are extremely team oriented.

Sombra’s problems can be solved by making her fit in the DPS role better, not give up and try to change everything to make her work as a support hero.

WHY NOT MEI AS A TANK? IT'S OBVIOUS BECAUSE... SHE KINDA IS A TANK?

Summary

Mei isn’t close to being a tank any more than Soldier 76 is close to being a support hero (because his biofield can heal and only supports can heal).

It doesn’t matter that she has to be within 10m to land her stun, so does McCree, I don’t see how this makes her particularly tank like.

All the problems with Mei are made exponentially worse by trying to rework her as a tank. If there is any problem right now with Mei it is that she is a Damage Hero who is too much like a tank. If she had always had 200HP then any suggestion of her being buffed to 250HP would have roars of opposition as it would then enable her to freeze enemies too easily. If you suggested she had 350-400HP they’d think you were trolling.

Loads of DPS and support heroes have some ability that makes them in some way invulnerable (Wraith, Fade, Deflect, Immortality field) Mei isn’t anything like a tank just because her invulnerability has the trade of of the longest duration and self-heals but at the cost of movement.

If Mei was a tank and froze targets then there would be more DPS heroes on a given team who can quickly land long-range headshots who could exploit the freeze. How is this something the game would benefit from? If she can freeze you in 1.5 sec, why make her have such a high Health pool that it’s impractical for most lone heroes to be able to frag her in time?

Bastion as a tank means there’s less barrier tanks that can smother sentry in barriers to make cheese comps like pirate ship. That’s a good direction for the game to go.

Mei is nowhere near as close to a tank as Doomfist/Bastion:

  • Mei’s hitbox is nearly identical in size to Tracer’s hitbox https://i.imgur.com/Z3gJnqr.jpg
  • Mei’s HP is at most still 37% lower than the lowest tank HP
  • Mei’s frequent hard stun is far more a characteristic of DPS heroes.
  • Mei’s wall doesn’t make her a tank any more than DVA’s lack of a barrier makes her a DPS hero.

You may think you want a Mei with 350HP freezing you… but you don’t.

She’ll have the health pool to barrel into anyone holding W+M1 as she’ll be tough enough to get away with it. No changes with cryofreeze can help this bad balance direction.

5 Likes
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Loved your opinions and sugestions. I wanted more people to read it. I can see that you put a lot of effort on it. Blizzard needs to see that we are claiming for this kind of changes, and there are lots of good ways to do it

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Thank you, I think I may have put a little too much effort into it.

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I feel like they would need more changes than that

As someone who has done doomfist and bastion reworks for tanks, they would def need more than that

Ive tested em with workshop too, both felr really nice

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I may think that she would be reworked to BE a tank.

For you to just think she would just get a health increase is just weird.

Who says she gets a health increase? What makes you think she will be able to freeze afterwards rather than just slow?

Why are you arguing that she shouldn’t be a tank, just because you have one vision of her, as a tank.

She is more of a tank than Bastion ever is.

You could EASILY move her to tank, making her have slow, and weaker walls, but on shorter cooldowns.

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More changes as in the number of changes be the same but to a greater extent or just a greater variety of different changes?

What more is needed? More defences for Bastion? Less damage from Doomfist?

250HP “tank” with a hitbox the same size as Tracer’s hitbox is hardly a tank.

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from my notes, i have this

/Bastion rework/

  • Moved to tank role, More specifically, he is a Bruiser
  • 200 hp / 200 armor

Sentry mode

  • Damage against players reduced from 450 —> 300
  • Deals critical damage against Barriers for a 1.5x multiplier (450 DPS)

ironclad

  • Removed

New passive: Sonar

  • Every 4 seconds, a sonar ping is emited, it will reveal all enemy players in a 10m radius for 0.8 seconds
  • Performs a radar ping Noise if any enemy is detected the louder it is the closer the target is, and it will priorize warning you from targets behind you

New E ability: Configuration defense

  • Can be held for up to 2s (its a resource meter)
  • Frontal barrier that protects bastion with 200 hp
  • Regenerates after not beeing used for 2s, at a rate of 50hp/s

for doom

/Doomfist/

General

  • Is now a tank, most specifically, an OFF tank designed for disruption
  • HP increased to 400

Rocket Punch

  • Damage Reduced (50 Punch, 100 impact)
  • Hitting a wall causes a 0.5s stun afterwards

The Best defense is a good offense (Passive)

  • Is now an active ability bound to R
  • Accumulates damage dealt at a 1/2 rate (2 damage 1 charge) by abilities
  • maxes out at 150
  • Consumes all the charge to give the ally extra HP that builds up over the course of 3 seconds
  • Lasts 4 seconds
  • Cooldown 10

Sesimc slam

  • Cooldown increased to 7
  • Slam maximum damage reduced to 75
  • Slammed targets are rooted for 0.5 seconds

Uppercut

  • Cooldown increased to 7
  • Uppercut airlock increased to 1 second
  • Uppercut damage reduced to 25

Meteor Strike

  • Deals 100 damage
  • Roots all enemies hit for 1.5s

These changes reduce doomfists offensive potential while increasing his self sustain and CC to make him fit into a more tankish role, The damage was mainly nerfed
to discourage doomfists from going into flanking missions with his new increased health, and due to this exact thing, his passive was reworked into a more tank- like
ability, his New CC should be less focused on assasinating enemies, and more into opening oportunities for allies and peeling

the goal was to move them into a different role while trying to keep their current identity and not pull a sym on them

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Well if you are concerned with Que times, start playing the tank and support role.

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Wouldn’t it be simpler just to have ironclad apply in recon? It serves the same function as your changes but there’s just more changed with yours, changes that could have unintended consequences. We KNOW how sentry already performs, it’s a known factor. It really helps to have Sentry be identical as it just shuts down concerns of “how can I possibly deal with this?!” well you’ve been dealing with this sentry for the past 2 years!

Self-repair now no longer heals bastion to 100% in a single charge, by changing too many things you cause disrupting ripples of effect all the way down the line.

A simpler change than something weird like critical damage against barriers is simply have bastion’s spread remain at maximum. Revert the “shrinking spread” buff, so a state we KNOW how bastion used to function. That’s wide enough that at typical ranges most shots fired at DPS heroes will miss so the damage they take is equivalent to reducing damage to 300DPS but as barriers are universally large they’ll get the whole 450DPS.

The problem with 300DPS against tanks is bastion’s fire rate of 30 shots per seconds (which probably can’t be easily changed without messing with sound effects). That means 10 damage per bullet. That means dealing only 150DPS against armour.

This allows Rein to begin a charge from THIRTY METRES AWAY and he’ll pin Sentry before the sentry gun fire kills him.

This is too radical a change, it changes too many interactions with unforeseen consequences.

You’ve got the cart before the horse, people disproportionately queue for DPS as there’s a far FAR wider selection of DPS heroes, there’s far more likely to be a hero they want to play in the DPS category than in the Tank category.

Also Tank category could do with more variety, DPS category is spoiled for variety.

I’m also concerned that someone will queue for 10-12 minues then face a double-barrier comp protecting a sentry bastion. Double barrier is bad enough but with a sentry is just extreme.

All the problems with sentry come from how Bastion has so many tank qualities and the whole necessity of 2-2-2 is to reduce the problems that come from stacking multiples of the same category of heroes.

Double-barrier + bastion is IMPOSSIBLE if bastion is a tank, after the barrier nerfs now Sentry works in a fundamentally different dynamic, removing any single barrier in overwatch is really not that hard (outside bottom-of-bronze) Sentry has to exist in a far more dynamic state than the hated static bunker comps and pirate ship.

This is a chance to get rid of pirate ship.

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the reason why i changed ironclad is because it causes problems with healing,

having 20% reduced damage means that, every HP is worth 20% more, but only when taking damage,

so if you are beeing healed by mercy, you are beeing healed for 60hps inestead of 50, which is a interaction i dont like

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True, yet that is precisely the interaction many now want for tanks!

They don’t like how tanks are such ult batteries. Roadhog is the main target right now but bastion would be in the same vein.

Another problem is a big easy to hit tank is going to take damage at a higher rate than a fast mobile hero, yet too often you can give the heal rate meant for the slow ally to the fast ally.

Damage reduction mediates this problem.

I remember I talked about this on the old bastion megathread and only much later did I realise “wait, where was this DR-heal interaction ever a problem?” this was long ago, long before 2-2-2 so there was a bit more focus on things like GOATS then.

Many heroes already depend on an interaction of healing and Damage-reduction (from % reduction and armour). There are far more egregious examples in the game such as Ana healing Orisa.

Ana can (with help of her bionade) heal 660 damage in 4 seconds, in that same 4 seconds Orisa can have fortify up reduce incoming damage by 40%. That is so high that if facing the full blast of Bastion’s sentry gun Orisa would steadily GAIN health.

But that’s… not a particular problem in the game.

What is a bigger problem is surviving in Sentry without DR, depending on your own self repair.

Bastion staying in sentry and deciding to not fight but self-repair is a passive move that better pay off. It takes about 0.5 sec for Self-repair to even begin healing and from how the animation looks there’s no way to really speed it up.

Yes, the heal rate could be increased but now we’re bombarding the players with a laundry list of changes. For what? We already know how survivable Ironclad Sentry is when combined with healing, still not that great. This is what I’m talking about with “known quantity”.

This is such a round about way to make Recon have the same effective toughness as Sentry when the most direct way is to give Recon the same defensive attributes of Sentry.

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We are exactly asking them to move dps heroes to Tank and Supp role, because we want to play on those roles, but we want variety of gameplay and heroes on them. The more the heroes on one role the more people intentify to that role and want to play on it. DPS queue is inflated because dps are 53% of the game’s cast. Obviously more people want to play dps. There are more dps characters, and more chances of people fall in love with those characters in that role

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