Flats's question about fixing the tanks

General Discussion
61

I am of opposite mind the way to fix tank is to massively nerf them. (I know it is a crazy thought) Their health pools shouldn’t be more than 400. You might think what the hell why make them bad that won’t make them fun. What is not fun is being counter picked by everyone and the other tank player because you are double the value of every other hero in the match. (you gain way more value counter picking tank because of this)

The fun of tank isn’t to stand in one place and be the pin cushion the fun of tank is to make plays with dynamic abilities and ults. Having more health just plays into standing at the front and taking every hit.

To make tanks more fun to play as, make them harder to play as, and more punishing to play badly as while also having them be the focal point less. (due to health nerfs)

2 Likes
62

Reinhardt has a total health of 700. Three times the health of every non-Tank in the game, and more when you consider how much damage resistance armor is afforded to him. He has sustain. Again, the question isn’t about damage, but whether your not you’re willing to let Reinhardt win every CQC engagement in the game by putting more on him.

He has no problems batting away non-Tanks, but 100 damage per swing isn’t going to do much against a Tank with 800 or more. That’s literally 1/8th the damage dealt to health per swing versus the normal 1/3rd of the of the health towards a non-Tank.

63

You compare Rein to DPS and not tanks. Why?
My comment was about tanks and their sustain enabling them to brawl unlike Rein who has nothing during combat
Health can be somewhat sustain, but it’s not a tool. Basically every tank has a sustain tool outside of hp

Ram sits at 375hp, transformed at 600, while Rein sits 550
Rams transformation is basically a heal, while he also gets speedboost and has DF like block

Many tanks struggle 1v1 kill tanks. Try to take out a Orisa on any tank

64

I completely agree with all of this.
But I don’t know how to fix the counter swapping issue in 5v5 setting… and it seems that neither does Blizzard.

65

That’s my point. Right now they do a lot of damage, but they aren’t generally very tanky. SImply throwing a discord orb on the tank and you can blow them up pretty fast.
When I gave those two options, the game is currently in a state of one of those options. It’s that Tanks are closer to the DPS role than they are to the old Tank role, or any typical Tank like role.

Again, something that can be adjusted, but the point of giving them very impactful ults is so that it has high impact of securing kills quickly. So yeah. If it’s too powerful, you just adjust how quickly he can swing or again… just limited the amount of time his ult takes so he can’t get to more than 2 enemies if they are all spread out and he has to leap to each one.

I don’t know what rank you are playing in, but Dva’s bomb is not only not the most successful ult in the game, it’s easily on the lower side of all ults when it comes to getting kills.
It’s extremely easy to avoid and is more often than not, used to make space.
Besides just easily getting out of it’s LOS in time, it can also be easily blocked by a shield, immortality field can stop it from securing kills, a bunch of characters have ability to go invulnerable to avoid it (Wrath, Fade, Teleport, Suzu, Bubbles, Chryrofreeze, Lifegrip, Recall) and then you just have mobility characters to easy avoid it. Blink away, Leap away, Grapple away, Punch away, hell, Soldier can just run away and behind cover in time.
Mauga can tank it at point blank range with Overrun.

Dva’s bomb is extremely unsuccessful at securing kills by itself unless maybe in Gold and below.

1 Like
66

Yep, and as I said, Rein’s is tied to his barrier.

It’s not a heal, it’s just a proportional return for the new size he receives. The only heal he gets is if he activates his ultimate.

Yep, because they’re not angled in that way, they’re designed to deal with crowds, not other Tanks.

They are plenty tanky. They have three times the health of any non-tank, they can immunize themselves against thousands of points of damage for brief periods. They’re capable of immunizing themselves against critical hits, and several of them can heal. One of them is the fastest hero in the game.

Discord doesn’t become a problem until you exhaust your defensive tools, or you open yourself up to it, and don’t seek a way to remove it. Same with many other directed debuffs.

Tanks aren’t there to secure kills. Well, sorta… their “one-shot kill combos” that many Tanks had have been reduced in power so that they’re less effective now, because of complaints about them. Roadhog is about the only one who still has one.

I didn’t say its success was about scoring kills. If D.va’s Self-Destruct was ineffective, she wouldn’t be nearly as picked as often.

You guys have to remember that the foundation of the Tank-role is built on enabling the Damage-role to do its job, and that Tanks weren’t built for going up against other Tanks in the way you want them to. Tanks are generalists, they don’t really have any advantages or disadvantages, but they are supposed to be damage-sponges and withstand a lot of damage and firepower. So when you’re a tank going up against another tank, you’re going to be dealing with that same generalist, damage-sponge-ness that all Tanks embrace. It is a problem with the core concept of Tank designs, and why it doesn’t work outside of MMOs.

Overwatch’s tank designs are still based on that concept and are built around dealing with crowds and capturing space. You can use analogs like football games with linebackers, and note how linebackers generally don’t “beat” each other, they just buy time for the QB to make a play.

That same principle works here.

67

Possible bandaid fixes. But inevitably I don’t think this will solve the problems that 5 v 5 have brought.

Remove tank busters.

Bastion gets reworked to be faster and weaker, remove his tankiness. Shrink him down. Perhaps turn him into a sniper hero in Recon mode, that can convert into a weaker Assault/turret form when he gets dove. Power similar, perhaps slightly stronger than Widow’s smg.

Reaper gets reworked to be longer range but less lethal up close.

Remove Hinder off a cooldown. It can stay in the game as an ult.

Nerf snipers more.

Tank passive reworked/added to reduce all debuffs effects by 30%

At the end of the day, imo we need 6 v 6 back.

68

How about a third option. Make tanks squishy and threatening. That way they’re not raid bosses but don’t feel useless.

That sounds like DPS? Yea, exactly. Just let them be DPS with supportive utility instead of a role whose point is to be a dmg sponge. Why is this a hot take around here? I’ll never know.

69

Tank counterpicking is strong in OW2 because the tank has been, and still is, a raid boss. Because of their inflated power budget, you get more bang for your buck when you counterpick the tank then any of the other members of the team.

This is also a function of raid boss tank design, not tank buster heroes. If you’re playing the strongest character on your team, everyone on both teams is looking at everything you do.

What makes the tank a “raid boss”? Its their health more than anything. It allows them to have the highest uptime of any character and contest point for forever, especially the most sturdy tanks like Orisa/Sigma/Hog. Having high health isn’t even fun, it just lets you be a dmg sponge, which isn’t cathartic.

Cutting their HP means less uptime, less objective stall, less importance to the match overall. Reorganize their power budget away from stall and more towards mobility/dmg/utility and you fix all the issues being complained about and make the role more fun.

1 Like
70

Some of that makes a lot of sense. You’d want to actively avoid giving their tank ult charge whenever you could, because they’d be even nastier than they already are. I’m not a big fan of ults, I’m one of the minority that thinks the game would be a lot healthier and more fun with ults that are less impactful as a team and more for teammate saves, area denial, basically inconveniences or small advantages for your team that are definitely part of the action, but not completely deciding the encounter. That’s not happening though, as I said, minority opinion by far.

71

That’ll probably happen with Reaper. I’d rather they just give him a small dash, like a quick wraith without full invulnerability, just damage reduction that would allow him to pop left, right, forward or backward and pass through an enemy with a short cooldown or charges. In fact, I’d like them to boost the mobility of a lot of heroes in the game, it’s a lot more fun when it’s fast paced. Even the Widow April Fools changes could work with some reduction in damage so she can’t one shot anyone but Tracer at a half-2/3s charge within her weapon range.

72

so how do you fix tanks so 6v6 is not “WANTED”?

nerf damage but buff survivability?

73

OW1 tank role wasn’t designed for 5v5. I don’t think there’s any way they can make tanks make sense in 5v5. You can’t have all the health, all the damage, and all the CC mechanics. Mauga on release showed you what that looks like.

74

There’s nothing wrong with being the focus of the fight - I like that. Its the associated stress.

“counter pick the tank role” is a horrible concept to start with. With a single hero pick, you can counter an entire role and the other role doesn’t have the tools to react in the same way and bust the tank buster.

Let the tanks use that health in effective ways - they shouldnt explode if they pop their heads out of cover at the wrong time.

75

Yes

As someone who plays around plat/diamond i am half the time using my ultimate just to get my mech back.

I always laugh when emongg throws bomb in and yells stuff like “i got the venom mine!” as if he just got a 4k

1 Like
76

Kinda easy, actually. Just takes a bit more thinking.

77

Well, we already have a melee hero with sustain, called Brig. What if Rein had inspire, but only for himself?

78

Would be worth a try and I would make sure Reins charge is as reliable as DF rocket punch
If DF can shoot past you and still slam you in the wall, Rein should be able to do it too. Make him a real threat

79

I mean… one could say that about anything in the universe when the paint brush is that broad.

They’ve concentrated too much strength in one role by compressing it from 2 to 1 and now folks have fattened up playing it.
There’s nothing to fix right now in its current state. Tanking is fine, but tank players are complaining about rock paper scissors gameplay and survivability which are a consequence of 5v5. Tank players are too accustomed to excess durability that came with its launch, and RPS & durability haven’t been a concern because healers have access to so many invulnerabilities and fights aren’t supposed to last 120+ seconds anyways, besides the RPS gameplay is a problem with the format (5v5) and not so much the role itself.

Play like a meaty DPS and utilize cover, collect SR.

80

I don’t think that’s a valid way to look at it when Role Limits exist.

It’s been 5 years since Open Queue was the primary game mode. So why are people still using Open Queue logic for Role Queue?

Realistically, they can either buff Tanks (directly or indirectly)
Or deliberately choose to NOT fix Queue/Matchmaking issues.

And it’s pretty clear which one of those design choices would grow the playerbase more.