Flats (T500 Main Tank) [OW Team] Suggested Changes

General Discussion
1

Thanks to MING-13669 for their thread on the topic. Being as it was very bare-bones in both formatting and not updated, I decided I could do both to further the conversation.
You can find the original thread here:

Disclaimer:
The list is meant for brainstorming ideas. Not all of them were from Flats, several were from chat, and Team 4 is meant to pick and choose to try what sounds good. NOT pick all of them.
Roadhog Reinhardt Zarya D.Va Wrecking Ball Orisa Sigma

Roadhog:
• Health reduced from 600 to 400
Scrap Gun - • Reduced pellet damage to minimum required to combo Squishy (225) heroes.

Take a Breather - • Healing reduced from 300 to 200.
• Damage resistance reduced from 50% to 30%.

Chain Hook - • Damage increased from 30 to 50 (or 100).
• Cooldown increased from 8 to 10 seconds.
• Resets on kill?

Reinhardt:
• Immune to stuns while shielding.
• Armor increased from 200 to 225.
• “Iron Wall”, passive, reduces all damage to Barrier Field by 25%
Barrier Field - • Health increased from 1600 to 2000
OR
• Recharge rate increased from 200hps to 300hps

Charge - • Now has better steering control.
• Now cancellable by pressing the button again.

Firestrike - • Now has an additional charge.
• Damage per charge reduced from 100 to 80.
• Projectile Speed increased from 25 m/s to 50 m/s.

Earthshatter - • Stun duration increased from 2.5 to 3 seconds.
• Initial impact crater now inflicts 400 damage?
• Now does massive damage to Barriers?

Zarya:
Primary Fire - • Now lightly pulls enemies toward it.
• Minimum damage increased from 75 to 90.

Secondary Fire - • No longer damages herself.
• Now charges up like Symmetra’s, but for more damage.

Particle Barrier
& Projected Barrier - • Health increased from 200 to 300.
• Duration increased from 2 to 3 seconds.
• Charge per damage blocked reduced from 0.2 to 0.1.

D.Va:
There are two changes I do not have context for. “Radius increased by 20%” and “Range increased by 12.5”.
There is no context or abilities listed for these.
• “Phone Home”, active, D.Va calls for a pick-up back to spawn.
• “Emergency Eject”, passive, D.Va gets ejected 15m upwards, 10m in the direction she holds down.
Boosters - • Movement speed increased from 118% to 150%.

Micro Missiles - • AoE damage increased from 1.5m to 3m.

Melee (Baby Form) - • Damage increased from 30 to 200.

Self-Destruct - • Can now be controlled remotely.

Wrecking Ball:
• Can now jump 100% higher.
• Hammond (THE RAT) is 100% bigger.
Quad Cannons - • Ammo increased from 80 to 100.
• Damage now scales from 1.5 - 5 to 2 -4.

Grappling Claw - • Damage reduced from 50 to 30 at High Speed.
• Now has a maximum attachment time of 3.5 seconds.

Adaptive Shield - • Now gives ultimate charge when shot.
• Cooldown reduced from 15 to 12 seconds.
• Duration increased from 9 to 12 seconds.
• Shields per enemy reduced from 75 to 50.

Piledriver - • Cooldown reduced from 10s to 8s.
• Can now be activated from jumping.
• Damage reduced from 20-100 to 15-80.

Minefield - • Now gives (more?) vertical knockback.

Orisa:
• Can now charge?
• Health reduced from 200 to 150 (total now 400).
Fusion Driver - • Movement penalty increased from 30% to 50%.

Halt - • Radius increased from 5 to 8 meters.
• Cooldown reduced from 6 to 4 seconds.

Fortify - • Can now be headshot while active.
• Duration increased from 4 to 6 seconds.
• Damage resistance reduced from 40% to 30%.

Sigma:
• Health increased from 300 to 350 (total now 450).
Experimental Barrier - • Size reduced by 15%.
• Shield now instantly-castable?
• Health reduced from 700 to 400.

Kinetic Grasp - • Now moves 50% slower during channel.
• Percentage of damage absorbed reduced from 60% to 35%.

Accretion - • Now says “Yep” upon completion.
• Can now be Reflected and destroyed by Defense Matrix or Accretion.

Gravitic Flux - • Now gains slow-falling after the cast finishes.

Winston:
• Now deals 100% more damage against Deployables, including Barriers.
Tesla Cannon - • Ammo consumption reduced per target affected:
(5% for 2, 10% for 3, 15% for 4, 20% for 5, 25% for 6).

Jump Pack - • Jumping damage increased from 1 to 50.
• Landing damage increased from 1-50 to 1-75.

Primal Rage - • Swing speed increased to 2 per second.
• Total health increased from 1000 to 1500.

Feel free to discuss these changes below. Keep in mind that some (like Reinhardt’s 2 Firestrike charges for reduced damage are parity changes, and were already seen on the Overwatch 2 Playtests). In addition, according to what was said in-stream these are to be taken with a grain of salt and none are guaranteed to see testing by Team 4, let alone to be implemented.

This updated list was made at 11:15pm EST, October 31st, 2021.
If he updates the list again on Stream or on Youtube, this may become out-of-date.

4 Likes
2

Apart from primal rage everything else is extremely bad as many had said earlier in that thread.

Winston already has a huge burst DMG combo while jumping if you know how to zap melee at the end of jump you do literally 100-120 DMG, anymore DMG on that would make him op.

Hog changes would destroy him.

Rein changes every one of them sounds like someone wants to enable cheatmode for him.

29 Likes
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Just kinda solidifies my view that Flat’s usual takes on balance are “What would be the most fun for Flats”

Not “What would be the most fun for the largest amount of players”.

Nice formatting though. Creative use of the kbd boxes.

43 Likes
4

I’ve come across way more interesting ideas and reworks on this forum than stuff that T500 is suggesting. Some of these ideas, particularly the D.va one does sound interesting. But others are just straight up buffs of an existing feature. I don’t see how that’s going to make tanking fun at all personally.

Changes like Zarya’s rocket jump (from secondary fire) allowing her to jump even higher is what I consider interesting. Having it do more damage sounds uninteresting and it already does lots of damage when she’s fully charged.

3 Likes
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The only t500 I have found to have good grasp of game balance is prolikechro, his suggestions and discussions are well thought out, unlike what’s best for my main ideology of most gamers.

6 Likes
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He does usually have some pretty good takes.

2 Likes
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A fair take. Though important to note the Orisa and Sigma changes listed in the previous thread were not at all up-to-date. In that version, her Barrier was removed. In the up-to-date version, that was not requested.

That version also did not include changes for Zarya, Wrecking Ball, or Roadhog.

As a Winston player, agreed.

Yeah, I’m hoping we get more information on what the thought process is there. They seem really heavy-handed.

  1. His Armor increase from 200 to 225 already occurred in OW1 without breaking him.
  2. Charge and Firestrike changes include no new changes from what we saw on OW2 except for the Firestrirke Projectile Speed buff, both the cancellable Charge, better steering on Charge, reduced damage on Firestrike, and second charge on Firestrike are already implemented.
  3. I don’t think Stun Duration revert on Earthshatter to 3 seconds would ruin the game, it just lets Reinhardt get one more action off before the enemy can recover. Which, at least from my perspective, is perfectly fine given that there is no longer any follow-up damage from a secondary Tank. I definitely don’t agree with the Earthshatter damage increases, nor do I think OW2 Reinhardt needs to be immune to stuns while shielding. The others I don’t think are too unreasonable.

Thanks for your input! :heart:

Perfectly fair viewpoint. He said that was part of his reason for buffing D.Va, because in his words (paraphrased), Tanks enjoy the game more when D.Va is viable because D.Va has a healthy design and fulfills a good niche in the Tank role with her mobility and duelist nature.

Thanks! Always thought that was what they were for… Maybe I’ll get to compliment you on your use of formatting in the future, eh? :stuck_out_tongue:

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Well a quick one that stood out.

A 2000hp barrier with 1.25x damage resistance. It’s a 2500hp barrier.

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Said on stream that they’re not supposed to implement all for each hero. It’s just meant for brainstorming. A sort of “Give the devs as many ideas as possible so they can try any they want”.

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These are very silly.

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I think a few could be cool. Like Sigma getting Slow-Fall after Gravitic Flux, or D.Va being able to eject herself back a long distance or skip to spawn after a short channel?

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If at this late date they’re begging content creators to send them balance ideas for Tanks, it means they really truly have no idea what to do with them.

It’s a very depressing development, made even more depressing by the fact that once again content creators will be putting their thumbs on the balance scale and if it’s not one of the cool kids, it won’t be fun to play.

6 Likes
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I can definitely see where this is coming from. I’ve got a bit of hope from AndyB mentioning that they understand we think Tanks are being treated like 2nd-class citizens that “Hey, maybe the Devs are aware of it”. But truth be told I honestly don’t think they were prepared for the undertaking of balancing in the new 5v5 format.

Looking at Bastion and Sombra’s reworks, they both look super cool. They both look pretty easy to balance by tweaking a few numbers, animation speeds or the like. But I’ve been disappointed with all of the Tanks seen in the OW2 playtests.

I can only hope that what we saw was a much earlier build and that they’ve done significant testing after-the-fact.

2 Likes
14

Tbh, I could totally see them putting back in his 3sec stun.

However, make it so that it does not pierce through multiple enemies.

If they all line up in a conga line. It would only hit the first person.

Since OW2 is gonna be a lot less about hiding behind blue rectangles all game.

2 Likes
15

I understand why they removed it for OW1, but seeing it removed in OW2 makes me disheartened at best.

Because in OW1 it hurts him, but he definitely doesn’t need it with the coordination we have in GM and T500. It’s not the reason why Double Shield is so much better.

But in OW2, that’s an extra swing or a Firestrike, or pairing one of them with Charge instead of Charge being on its own.

I get the thought process behind this. That’s honestly why I feel like Reinhardt needs more buffs to HIS barrier or personal survivability, because as we saw in the Pro Playtests over the 3 maps - damage hasn’t been toned down in the slightest.

Reinhardt’s barrier gets shredded, and then so does he. They even gave Winston more range to use from the safety of his barrier. But Reinhardt can’t shield and Firestrike at the same time, so he HAS to leave himself vulnerable.

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Well that’s the fun part about 5v5, they could theoretically just buff Tanks a LOT.

The only limit to Tank buffs is when it starts losing more DPS players than it gains from better queue times.

However I imagine the idea with less barriers is also to deal with making it so that Hog/Zarya/D.va aren’t throw picks because they don’t have blue rectangles.

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I really do not like the zarya changes, lowers her skill floor and ceiling tremendously.

1 Like
18

This looks like a fun game of “Let’s nerf the heroes I don’t like and MEGA buff the ones I do.”

Like, those hog nerfs are brutal, those Ball nerfs are EVEN MORE brutal (Seriously, reducing all his damage, making him give ult charge on shields? He already is one of the lowest damage tanks in the game statistically)

And then those Rein buffs are just insane.

7 Likes
19

As a fellow T500 tank player, a lot of these changes I do not like. Hog is gutted, rein/zar are getting an unnceccessary amount of buffs and skill floor lowering, dva and ball are straight up broken, orisa is somehow more broken (despite flats not liking her), and winston while the most balanced, is still unneccessarily power crept. Basically it makes most tanks broken when it seems like all these are implying brig bap sigma is being played on the enemy team

Honestly it feels like these were just for fun or with OW2 in mind. If thse were actually implemented in OW1, tanks would be massively broken minus hog who would be useless

4 Likes
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The zarya change looks like flats wants to turn zarya into sym 2.0 easy mode. She’s actually weaker though because the energy she gets is halved. What nonsense!