Tanks
The vast majority of tanks on the whole will be rather useless should the opposing team run Ball/Hog/Sig. As far as we know, these OP OW1 heroes are retaining what makes them fundamentally broken and overpowered. Until this is addressed, all other tanks will be fairly obselete by comparison.
Reinhardt, Winston and D.Va are going to incredibly victimized here due to how they currently play. Not enough is changing with their kits, and much like those other three I mentioned, what fundamentally gatekeeps them (i.e. limited range) is going nowhere. All three are still wildly ineffective at anything greater than 7m. This is nothing new though. All the alpha playtesters said Rein and Winston were trash, I’m just reiterating this, and considering that D.Va and Rein are the most popular tanks in the game, buckle up for even longer queues as those mains evacuate.
Lastly I want to mention our new tanks, Tankfist and Spearhorse. I firmly believe Tankfist will suffer the same fate as Rein, and will play as a discount Ball/Rein hybrid. What counters DF now will continue to counter Tankfist, as the hero has zero form of poke and ranged pressure. In addition to this shortcoming, we don’t know exactly how much CC is leaving the game. But what we do know is that his “Power Block” does not stop CC. This means that Hog, Sombra, and possibly Cass an Spearhorse will continue to abuse the hero, while Echo, Torb, and Pharah will abuse his lack of poke.
Spearhorse looks fun and strong, yet I have few doubts that her massive hitbox will leave her susceptible to flankers farming her while snipers dome her from a mile a way. In addition to that fundamental issue not being addressed, the community will never stop whining about not having a barrier to hide behind. So I fully expect Spearhorse players to catch some serious flak when they won’t swap to the one effective barrier tank in the game (Sigma).
In summation, tanking looks awful. I sincerely hope I am wrong in every fashion of the word, but based on all available evidence I don’t think I am.
DPS
Prepare for flanker and flying hell. And on the off-chance you’re not in a lobby with some form of Tracer/Echo/Pharah/Reaper/Sombra/Genji, you’re just going to be getting dominated by Widow. I mean, that’s all there really is to it. I still firmly believe Echo will run the lobby should she be chosen, which is going to highlight a bevy of issues with her base kit and Ult, not to mention it will highlight how oppressive pockets are (as if we didn’t already know). I see traditional hitscan being effective on most of the OW1 maps they were already strong on, but little in the playtesting we have seen suggests they are not well suited for the new maps or the newgamemode Push. It would appear mobility is king and CC is queen. Range and high damage output from range looks to be fairly unnecessary. Which is why I believe OW1 maps will benefit hitscan heroes more than these new maps and game-mode.
Lastly, I want to address Sojourn who looks decent, but more balanced than the forums thought. If she’s getting forced constantly for the sake of testing, I fully expect Echo, Pharah, and Widow to make their presence known as to who is dominant in that matchup. Her mobility might wind up being the thing that carries her kit. I have yet to see anything that suggests she is too oppressive, minus her overtuned Ult. But I would like to think that would hit the discussion table early.
In summation, expect little variety from your DPS as they just stick to these broken overtuned heroes and live in your backline for free.
Support
And now the most misunderstood, soon to be rage quitting, unbalanced role in the game.
Supports have dominated this game since the release of Ana. What is ironic is how few in the support community understand how broken the role is. You are DPS Lite with the best Utility, best Ults, and only sustain source in the game. It’s why in +3.5k players all complain about how supports run the lobby, dictate pacing, dictate metas, and throw harder than any other role. Nothing is more broken in this game than the support role.
Yet +80% of the community doesn’t see them this way. They see them as these passive and helpless healbots who need barriers to hide behind, and DPS to kill enemies before their own poor positioning is exposed. But the reality is at high level play they are the strongest role in the game. And at low level play, they are the strongest role in the game, 80% of the community just doesn’t understand how to abuse this.
So, going into the beta, supports are already beyond capable of surviving flankers and carrying, it’s just a matter of that support player already understanding how to do so. If you’re a healbot who hides behind barriers the Reaper (pun intended) is knocking and your time has come. If you’re constantly accused of DPSing while on support, you’re in luck. While many view this as antithetical to the fundamentals of a support, high level players have understood this for a long time- Supports are there to support and frag out themselves.
So why am I going off on a tangent regarding support? Well I expect many in the community to complain how farmable the role is, while high level players sustain their OP playstyles. How and why? With the absence of one fewer tank and fewer barriers in general, average support players must now learn fundamental positioning techniques that they may have never bothered with because “we have two shields”.
What is most ironic concerning support and the beta is how much conversation pertaining to sustain will fallout of the playtesting. While I fully expect matches to be entirely lopsided, the losing end of that is going to complain that “nothing would die” while the winners will say something like “I felt unkillable”. And therein lies the dichotomy of the support class.
Some heroes simply possess way too much sustain, the primary culprits being Bap and Brig, who have not had their fundamental sustain issues (ie heal stacking) addressed. Much like live OW, a bad support comp will be negatively highlighted, only I believe it will be more obvious to players now. Tanks have long born the brunt of the blame in matches, and with one less tank, their responsibilities and capabilities will drastically shift. Supports however are as strong as ever, and there’s no reason why they cannot absolutely dominate this game, there’s just a learning curve that will be combating 6 years of established negative behavioral patterns.
What I am ultimately driving at here, is that I fully expect a wave of NERFS to overtake the support class following either this beta or the next. Which will be wildly confusing and upsetting for +80% of the support community, but again, I have laid out exactly why that will happen and why it should happen.
I Have Little Hope…
Do not fall prey to content when we have all been starved of it for over 2 years. Good is good, and bad is bad. It’s easy to forget this when you’ve had nothing to eat. A poop sandwich is still a poop sandwich, you’re just starving. And this is effectually what I see happening within the community following the beta. Eating up and “loving” their poop sandwiches.
I desperately want to be wrong, but nothing we have been shown thus far suggests this game is an improvement for main tank-tank mains such as myself. Maybe DPS mains will enjoy it more, and for all the reasons above I believe the vast majority of support mains will hate it, but I fully expect nearly all the remaining tank mains to walk out the door.