Experimental - Triple Damage Feedback Thread

General Discussion
492

My thoughts on the Overwatch experimental changes!
Contents:

  1. queue times.
  2. tank Changes.
  3. Other ideas instead of a set 1-3-2 queue.

Experimental is now live, allowing players to try new balance updates, rulesets, and game modes that might be awesome or might not ever make it past the “Experimental” stage. One of the primary uses for this testing ground is for players to provide feedback for wild changes to the standard game you’re used to playing. For more information on this new mode, see our patch notes !

1. queue times.
The whole point of the overwatch dev team to switch the role queue from a 2-2-2 to a 1-3-2 is becuase of the long “<10mins” queues that come along with playing dps and that dps players have been complaining about since launch of the role queue system. Okay heres an example, your queuing up for dps in normal quick play the estimated time underneath says "< 6 mins " compared to tanks " < 2 mins " and supports " < 2 mins " and this isnt just a full guess in fact if your a dps main you probably have tried playing tank or support once or twice and realised how short the queues are. so why does the overwatch team want to possibly introduce another system for role queue, well in my opinion having longer queue times does make you more distracted, less focus and less ready to play, whilst if you play support you get into a game in 30-90 seconds and your not going to tab out to play another game or watch a 12 min youtube video you are going to stay in the game and be focused and ready to play your best. This is why the dev team introduced the “while you wait” system, 2/3 of the player base plays dps and this is apparent with how short the queue times are in the experimental mode, from “< 10mins” to just “< 2 mins” really does show how many people play and pick dps. But before we get ahead of ourselfs and congratulating the overwatch team for making damage queues 4 mins shorter, think of what is about to happen to the tank queue times, its been apparent only one day after the launch of the experimental mode that tank queues have swapped from “< 2mins” to “< 6 mins” with one tweak tank queue times have become longer and having the balance changes to all tanks at the same time as this makes the rest of the team to heavily rely on this one tank, double shield meta gone… but now theres a higher chance of damage players and support players dying more often (especially on defence) because of the lack of shields, now thats where the updates and balance to the tanks come to play.
Heres the main point im trying to get to, in the perfect world 1/3 of the player base would play tank, 1/3 play damage and the other third play support, but thats not going to happen without huge nerfs or changes to dps heros, and buffs or additions of more heros to tank and support!
2. tank changes!
Now theres lots to talk about, these balance updates to the tank roster are great and make the fluidity of playing a tank better, but the whole point of them is so shields can be a reliable way to protect your team, changing the speed of regeneration and the overall heath of the sheilds and even the overall heath and armour to the tanks making them better “body blocking” heros to save the team. Now most heros just got a couple changes but the big big one is roadhog, having his “take a breather” ability heal 25hp/s in a range just smaller than lucios “cross fade range”, this extra healing makes team fights more interesting because before when you killed the enemies supports you won the team fight, but now that roadhog can heal all 3 dps players at 25hp/s in a range just smaller than lucios which does a bit more than half of that at only 16hp/s. Now this isnt going to sustain 4 players against ults like, molten core, blizzard or any high damage ults, But we need to rember this will add a tiny bit more complexity for when you should use hogs take a breather as now it can heal allies as well as yourself. I think the tank changes are great but the fact dva can hold her defence matrix for 4 seconds scares the living hell out of most mcree, mei, zaria and bastion players.
3. other ideas instead of a set role queue.
Ive been thinking of something like this after they announce season 21’s hero pool and season 19’s map pool to have a role pool, let me explain quickly.
Having a switched role every week or fortnight, so lets say today its 2-3-1 and in a fortnight its 1-2-3, but keeping damage above 1 so 2 or 3. This idea may be stupid but having something like role pool plus a hero pool with differentiate the comps and meta that you play each week even more than just having a hero pool.

Conclusion of the 25th February Experimental Mode.
Personally I dont really care about queue times that much, but what i do know is if im picking damage to play quick or competitive play i know im going to be there for 6+ mins, and about the tank changes i think they are great and very useful, but way to overpowered with 2 tanks but since there are only 1 its great.

I cant wait to see what the overwatch team has for us to test and experiment with in the future.
- TheClaySlay

1 Like
493

Tank queues are this long because players want to try out the tank changes and there’s no other game mode to do so. It will go down.

2 Likes
494

i think its pretty cool mod i love it the que times ( so far) are great having 3 dps is awesome in case someone is slacking which is not that good in anycase but in 1-3-2 is surely better cuz you have 2 more dps to pick up the phase love the tanks although zarya and dva are really overpowered and could use some of jeff’s love like you destroyed hanzo and reaper is also unplayble since ever (too much spread cant hit anything even in point blank distance and the closer you get to do dmg the easier to counter and kill you unless you play in gold and bellow you guys really need to reduce the spread not the pattern randomizer like you already did , cuz that one didnt help almost at all) however there are some issues in my opinion , some comps are really frustrating to deal with and make the game not fun and straight up toxic , things like pharah+mei+briggite+bastion , most of the games i played so far had atleast 3 of these heroes at the same time making the game more tryhard even than ranked also keep in mind for the last 3 years we only see mei getting buffed which resulted to this annoying hero we have today mei needs huge nerfs or rework , i dont see the reason having every 5 seconts walls ( i know its 5 only if u dont destroy the wall ) but lets be real noone destroyes the wall, everybody ignores it please fix mei and the game will be actually fun to play , isnt this supposed to be the whole idea ? games arent supposed to be fun to play ? why overwatch isnt? thanks for your time reading it i hope u keep this in the back of your head greetings from greece. and give hanzo his BOW back, i feel like im shooting rocks with a sling and its not fun anymore

495

You guys need to nerf RoadHog honestly it not even fun anymore and buff Healer they are getting way to push with no health … d.va is completly useless now , its not even a tank anymore… you guys should work on that… buff her lifes idk… sigma is ok … reinhart need more shield duration… and for god sake IF theres is 1 tanks ONLY BUFF SOME HEALER , The Life they give , THAT NOT ENOUGH ,

Hope this will help . That what i think anyway !

496

THANK YOU BLIZZARD for remainding me how bad this game was before 2 2 2.
Before 222 you had 3-2-1 in one of two matches

5 Likes
497

Have not read all ~500 posts, but following are some comments from playing yesterday.

  1. Gold-Platinum player here … as always, each ‘rank level’ will have its own play style, so bear that in mind.

  2. Agree with comments that tank queue is higher because we all want to try out solo tanking + new tanks…but it is also reasonable that the queue times /will/ go up when you cut the viable slots in half.

  3. DPS times are down, relatively speaking, but it is also just on the Experimental Card…so who knows.

  4. Solo tanking at low levels where people don’t group up or ‘help’ as much is frustrating much of the time. You can clearly tell in games where you have support (and I don’t mean just healers keeping an eye on you) and those that you don’t. If all your dps ignore you, chances are you either have to play like a DPS (and make almost no space) or you will die a quick and horrible death.

  5. Saw lots of DVa, Hog, and Rein … two sigma’s, one that just got melted over and over again, and a few Zarya’s. Have yet to see a solo Hammond (did see a solo Winston late in a match that actually worked out well … another, not so much). Triple DPS against a dive tank = ouch!

  6. Healers are infinitely more important now… if you have a dps healer, you better hope they are killing things faster than the opponent because with all that damage coming in, healers have to be /on the spot/ or people are dead. Can’t heal dead (or stupid…).

  7. Matches were still fun and still ran the range from never losing first choke/point to being steamrollered all the way to end.

  8. Mei is way too OP at this rank + solo tank, as she can easily melt the enemy tank if he isn’t careful (and even if it is a 1:1 trade, you still have 2 dps left and your tank versus just 3 dps on the other side … not a good trade for the other team).

  9. Rein was ‘meh’ … if he had a strong team around him, he could carry … if his dps were all flankers that ignored him, he got melted down in a hurry as he is just too slow.

498

Unfortunately, no solution is viable.

You leave the 222: The 321 will be unhappy.

You set up 321: The 222s will be angry.

Have you thought about a 321 Flex? Maybe that would satisfy everyone.

A 321 Flex would allow you to have the same variety of compositions as before the 222 but with a more balanced base and still be able to form a 222.

With a 321 Flex, you can have compositions like :

3 DPS, 2 Healer, 1 Tank
3 DPS, 2 Tank, 1 Healer
3 Tank, 2 Healer, 1 DPS
3 Healer, 2 Tank, 1 DPS
3 Tank, 2 DPS, 1 Healer
3 Healer, 2 DPS, 1 Tank
2 DPS, 2 Tank, 2 Healer

In addition, you could even implement in this 321 Flex the possibility to switch roles:

We start with a composition:

3 Tank, 2 Healer, 1 DPS.

In play, the Tank wants to play Healer. The composition changes:

3 Healer, 2 Tank, 1 DPS.

They change again in the 3rd round and their composition changes to 222

2 DPS, 2 Tank, 2 Healer.

This big advantage makes it possible to regain the flexibility which made the charm of Overwatch while having more exotic but effective compositions in certain cases.

499

Can you guys do that ? In rank if someone leave its automaticly almost a lost… lets say it 6 vs 5 , the team with 5 ppl should be able to swap character ! NO LOCK HERO ! if im a tank i should be able to go Healer…

Or something else !

Same thing ! Someone leaving we can go to the spawn and Request a switch character
Exemple = you see in the chat
= LinkOwn= Request Tank to Heal

If someone interested they go on the spawn location and we could be able to switch !

That could saves a lot of defeat if someone leave !!!

500

The changes can never be balanced though, that’s the issue. If you truly buffed these tanks to be more than “main” tanks, then I could see it, but that’s not what the changes were for only to make a few off-tanks “main tanks”. They didn’t buff tanks to carry as solo tanks, but as just sort-of “main tanks”.

501

The 3-2-1 is awful for Support mains.

502

you think you should be able to keep a tank alive solo as mercy, while he is being focused by 3 coordinated DPS?

thats a 3v2, and if they are coordinated and focus well they get the prize

503

The short queue times are nice, but the only real good thing about it for me. I just prefer 222, and would rather spend longer in queue for a match I enjoy playing more.
Some random stuff:

  • Sombra is at least better with two dps teammates
  • Dislike having less defensive counterplay options. Enemy Widowmaker, Hanzo, Junkrat enrage me even more
  • tank synergies are gone, which I think is a shame
  • a decent doomfist with three-second zarya bubbles on him is a nightmare.
504

Well, we know most of those people should be ignored.
They’re asking for Mercy buffs as a priority for 2+ years and they changed nothing.

I suppose they should be able to filter good feedback from bad feedback after so much experience with those players. xD

505

Its great, it can work with some more changes to tanks-supports mainly and needs time for players to adjust to the new format especially tank players…
I love the fact i canqueue for 2-3 roles and get to play some dps finally <3

1 Like
506

That’s what will most probably happen:

They will get all the relevant threads and they will do a sentiment analysis on them. Sentiment analysis and natural language processing identify positive and negative words through dictionaries. Most of the ones who are against without reason use the same arguments, because there are out of realistic arguments.

Therefore, the analysis will conclude that there are non-existent problems and it will be biased.

1 Like
507

This is just making me curious what the game would be like if it was 2/3/2 with slightly nerfed versions of the tanks that are in 1/3/2 an some how they slightly upgraded healers so it’s not such a terrifying mess, also maybe give ana reduced cd’s maybe a increased movement speed towards naded targets/allies?, Sigma increased movement during kinetic grasp? & Orisa ( shoots 2 orbs at the same time? ) idk they need better buffs. maybe have widow use more ammo per shot. rein is slightly to crazy. zenyatta makes your single tank feel like a raid boss. love the zarya change. road hog aoe heal slightly to large for my taste otherwise he’s great. I’ve been having a blast on Brig with all the squishes to mace. honestly just feels like whoever has the best tank wins. or whichever team manages to build the proper counter to the enemy tank. what if dva left behind a healing/movement speed trail when she boosted? also i’m gonna recommend this until the end of time. SOLDIER 76 GETTING 50!! ARMOR. Tell me what soldier doesn’t wear body armor into combat? we get a thicc cowboy that people already play to often, but soldier gets left out to dry despite hardly anyone playing him.

508

I’ve only had time to play a few matches as a Support for right now so these are some brief first-impression opinions. I’ll have to test more to get a better feel for things.

I know that one of the main reasons for trying 3-2-1 is to combat the long queue times for DPS. Perhaps this will change as this testing goes on but my initial impression is that this plan is backfiring a bit. I only played Support because the queue times for Tank and DPS were equally long, over 10 minutes apiece from what the game said. When I started my last match the DPS wait time had dropped to 9 minutes with Tank being over 10 so maybe it’s shifting? Even if it is, it’s mainly just shifting away from DPS into Tank which was a concern of mine going in.

It did feel like I had to work overtime as a Support. I tried to prioritize healing the Tank but with the three DPS all over the place spamming “I need healing” it was tricky to keep up. From my outside opinion it did look like some of the new Tank abilities were helping to pick up the slack from only having one Tank but it only worked if the DPS stay clustered with the Tank. In previous matches, a strategy that worked well for us was for one Tank to act as a distraction while the other Tank leads the DPS in a flanking attack. Can’t pull that off now and kind of limits some of the strategies.

I’ll try to play Tank and DPS this weekend to give a more informed opinion. As of right now, 3-2-1 feels a bit hit-or-miss. It’s fun at times but other times I’m not sure if it’ll work in the long run.

509

I love the Experimental card, I think it was an amazing idea to add it!
About the 1-3-2 composition, it was pretty fun to play since it’s something new but I’m not really up for it to make it in the game.

1 Like
510

I am not a fan of 1x3x2 - What if, instead, we gave some sort of ‘queue time points’ for people who take the time to play tank/heals (or whatever is most necessary to balance the playerbase at the time). Then they can be applied when you’re in queue to get priority times.

1 Like
511

3/2/1 is much better, it makes more sense from a lot of perspectives
1- The hero pool contains more DPS
2- 3/2/1 The game is more fluid and dynamic
3- 2/2/2 queue times are terrible

Everything in the game points to 3/2/1

when playing 222, you feel like you’re shooting berries all day, the game is slow, dps performance usually define the game. I know that because I’m a bad dps, I feel like i’m only taking the slot of a good dps , instead of helping the team. With 3 dps in the game, you’re more forgiven to make mistakes, those wont cost you the game like on 222. You have some time to “shine”, while having low peaks of performance.

In 222, you’re require to keep the dps pressure 100% of the time.

I agree with the 3/2/1 and understand that some tanks may need some buff in orther to keep the role relevant, I just don’t agree with one thing:
Roadhog changes.

I believe in hero uniqueness and philosophy. and the change to Roadhog kinda kills his “role”
Tanks are supposed to “make space” for the DPS, some of them do it by protecting the dps, other by creating a “zone of death”, like Roadhog use to be, he is supposed to be a threat to get close, I remember the confidence I use to walk, when next to ally roadhog, it’s like the confidence of walking with your strong, jiu jitsu expert friend. But recently this “feeling” is getting weaker and weaker, since Roadhog role is becoming more and more a huge punch bag. I’d rather see Roahog a unique tank, based on threat, than based on the same “ally protection” thing.

That being said, I’d also like to take this opportunity, to move Briggita to the tank category. She also have a good potential to be a unique tank, one based on a healing aura, while being a threat to get close. I use to love playing Brigg, but since she got the rework I can’t, she just feel like a broken concept.

Moving her to tank is the correct path to her, she was created to be a front line hero, not a backline shield-bearer that magically heals allies from a distance.

1 Like