How to fix Tanks issues, including CounterSwaps

General Discussion
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So I’m a bit late on making this. Was busy with some IRL stuff.
But here’s how the devs can fix most the remaining issues with Tanks.

How to fix Tanks issues, including CounterSwaps:

TANK POPULARITY - Tierlisting Pickrates

To start. The goal of having all meta tier heroes be equal, isn’t achievable, or even that desirable.

That instead the devs should be focused on “Maximizing Fun” by “Tierlisting by Pickrate” for Tank heroes by this criteria:

  • Fun to play As

  • Fun to play With

  • Fair feeling to play Against

Which in my estimation would look roughly something like this, for GM1 players.

  • Winston
  • Reinhardt
  • D.va
  • Zarya
  • Junker Queen
  • Sigma
  • Ramattra
  • Doomfist
  • Wrecking Ball
  • Mauga
  • Orisa
  • Roadhog

TANK DURABILITY - Kinda sad I even need to write this

  • A lot of these changes will affect Tank durability or survival in some way. To the extent that becomes a problem either lower Tank health, convert armor/shieldhealth to normal health, weaken defensive cooldowns, or increase the DPS passive.

TANK COUNTERS - Combine Armor Changes

  • So a problem with the current patch is that it didn’t really do as much as seemed intended to address burst damage on Tanks. It just shifted the DPS to Cassidy, Hanzo, Pharah and Junkrat. Rather than doing a complicated rework of those heroes. Here’s an easy fix:

ARMOR

  • For damage between 17 and 10, it’s -5 damage
  • All damage at 5 or below is reduced by 50%
  • All other damage is reduced by 30%

Comments: This basically does the effect of both armor math’s combined. And mostly just brings some of the higher performers against Tanks back in line with other DPS versus Tanks.

TANK COUNTERSWAPS - Ult Charge Retention

  • So one easy fix to deal with Tank CounterSwapping, is to just remove it entirely from Comp.
    But a more targeted way to do it, would be making the Ult charge retention 30% for Diamond Comp players, and 0% for GM1 and above. (I’m sure SVB would have a lot to say about this)

TANK POPULARITY - Buff Reinhardt

For many people, Tanking is Reinhardt
So if you want more Tank players, then make Rein more Fun is a big part of that.
The previous armor changes might be enough, but otherwise I’d suggest something like

  • A. 5% faster base movement speed
  • B. 200 more shieldhealth
  • C. +100 armor
  • D. +10 damage on FireStrike
  • E. Landing a FireStrike gives an “Empowered Hammer Swing”

TANK POPULARITY - Buff Winston

A lot of high ELO players, especially in Asia, generally feel like there’s something wrong with the game if Winston isn’t meta.
To the extent that he’s not already where he needs to be with the armor changes
Probably just something simple like +100 armor, or -1 sec on Leap.

TANK POPULARITY - Nerf Hog / Mauga / Orisa versus other Tanks

  • Generally, by just increase the number of bullets they have by say 2x, but decrease the damage in half. This should make it so that these heroes aren’t that good against armor

TANK COUNTERSWAPPING - “Choose your Meta” system

Now, this is what I meant by “Permanently fixing the CounterSwap issue”
So as the devs covered before in an AMA, the frequency of Tank CounterSwapping is an issue.
It’s a voting system that allows Tank players to choose their preferred meta.

“Choose your Meta” system

https://imgur.com/a/mTMFMTm

  • Simple to code
  • Easy to understand
  • Quick to use
  • Positioned so that it will actually get used with some frequency
  • Never forces a Tank player off of a hero they wanted to play
  • Gives players 3 different metas, regardless of what the balance is like.

Comments: This should be huge in making it so Tank players actually get to play the heroes and playstyles that gets them excited about playing Tanks. Maybe not all the time, but often enough to keep things interesting.

TANK POPULARITY - “Hack and Hinder”

Just make it so that neither of the abilities can cancel Tank mobility abilities that are already cast and active. Such as Reinhardt Charge, Doomfist Seismic Slam, Hammond PileDrive etc
This brings back that big dopamine hit that these Tank players are going for the big risk vs reward play. But it sucks that it’s so easily removed.

TANK POPULARITY - “Suzu”

Samito actually makes a really good point, that one of the more upsetting aspects of Suzu to Doom/Ball/Rein/etc players, isn’t even the invulnerability. It’s the intangibility. Specifically, the knockback immunity. I would like to suggest removing knockback immunity from Suzu.

TANK POPULARITY - “AntiNade”

Yes, I’d like the devs to do something about it, but they won’t so whatever.
But if they did, the most direct fix, would be reducing the duration on Tanks by Half.

TANK POPULARITY - “Roadhog”

While just hard nerfing Roadhog might be the solution in the short term.
Longer term the solution is move Roadhog from very Narrow Counterplay, to Broad Counterplay.
Specifically, make it so that he has some direct way of dealing with AntiNade, like a Cleanse on Breather. But then drop him down to like 600hp, or maybe even 500hp
That way the counterplay is “Shoot big guy with gun”.
As opposed to this silly Hog + Antinade + Suzu silliness.
That causes a lot of frustration for all parties involved.

TANK POPULARITY - “Hanzo” - Optional

Regardless of how they change Tanks, he’s still gonna have a crap ton of AntiTank damage, with Arrow+StormArrow.
But they could trade away the AntiTank in return for having oneshots back. But remove the most frustrating oneshots at longer ranges. (But still breakpointed to take out a Widow)

Something like this:

HANZO

StormBow (Primary Fire)

  • Damage increased to 125, up from 120 damage
  • Headshot damage reduced from 2x to 1.5x at beyond 40 range

StormArrows

  • 3x storm arrows, or just lower damage per arrow.
  • If possible, give it reverse falloff on headshot damage, where it deals less damage at close range, and more damage at longer ranges. It’s a magic dragon arrow, so it can follow unusual rules.
  • Alternatively, make the arrows non-stacking burn damage

Filler

  • If needed:
  • Either buff the Lunge range, cooldown, or let Hanzo maintain arrow charge while climbing

Comments: Which should make it so that Hanzo players get their midrange oneshots back. But he’s less of a menace to Tanks.
Which is pretty similar to what Arrge asked for.

TANK POPULARITY - 2nd Stage of Regen, and HealthPacks

One more thing that could help a lot with Tank popularity, is to give them more autonomy. Here’s one way they could do that without interfering with mid-combat healing.

Tanks - 1st Stage of Regen

  • Currently, after 5 sec out of combat:
  • Tanks recover 10 Health + 5% of their maximum HP per second

I’d like to suggest this:

Tanks - 2nd Stage of Regen

  • After 9 sec out of combat:
  • Tanks recover 10 Health + 15% of their maximum HP per second

Basically it’s Paladins regen.

2 Likes
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I am not going to lie, guys, I believe GreyFalcon might understand tanking better than Blizzard.

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Heh.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXBpOc5MfeQ

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Except I’m seeing Rein in most games now (Rein or Doom) and am already pretty tired of him. Definitely do not give that shield any more health!!

Didn’t the armour changes already debuff hog against armoured tanks? Hog throws wet fish at armour now. I also wouldn’t like Mauga to have even more shots - the constant noise from his guns is already hugely annoying, as is always being on fire when he is around. The fix for Mauga is to rethink and rework. He is a terribly designed tank.

5

Well, yeah.

I’m thinking there’s something they could do though.

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For many people, Tanking is Reinhardt

It’s more like for many people, tanking isn’t mAuGa. I’m sorry but I simply do not enjoy just shooting the other tank 90% of the time as part of core gameplay in any hero. Not being able to mitigate damage or eat abilities further adds to the boringness of a hero. Mauga to me is basically an even more boring version of hog.

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While I partially agree, hero rotations can achieve that, although only if they break the mold of 1-2-2. For that they would also to tone down certain tanks perks like they did on open queue.

I mean, they normatized the damage, while the ones who could be problematic on burst could be managed with multiplier on crit or simply keeping the crit damage at expense of damage on bodyshots damage by example.

The hp increase and armor can keep the ratio of damage on pressure and burst within similar levels.

Tbh, if only tanks had armor I wouldn’t mind. One question why specifically 17? You’re thinking in some particular heroes like soldier slighly out of his range?

I don’t think 30% is a good approach on armor, I would rather have it on HS like we have currently. Pressure damage isn’t affected as much as burst on HP pools. Having armor affecting them offsets and helps to adjust hp and armor ratio of tanks by example, while having HS reduction to normatize even more. Their current approach is elegant and more stable for future hero revisions.

About tanks buffing, I dunno. I don’t think is a tank problem, but what other heroes do with them. The kiriko and ana are logical ones, CC shouldn’t be actually a thing on tanks, although hard CC should be. The sources of it should be shorter, while displacement/slow cc shouldn’t affect them.

Knockdown/stun effects are reasonable but shouldn’t have several sources of it in the game and their effects should be cut by half or a third on tanks.

I would rather solo tank on Open than touch it on RQ, in there I would have less hp, but the team could have more damage output or more healing output/supporting abilities.

While having more tanks being able to play, would mean requiring more nerfs on tanks. Which would be fine if was followed by reasons about why. I would rather have weekly hero bans to address overperforming metas than actually each quarter need to severely overhaul a ton of stuff to change metas.

I agree that heroes, specially tanks, should be more enjoyable and fun. But what makes them not exactly fun isn’t them, but others. Addressing what hurts their fun, they can be enjoyable. Either if is lack of another tank, excess of CC or oddball compositions or simply something else.

I would rather have overwatch heroes being unique than normatize like they did on diablo3

Edit: can be sound as contradiction. But my intent is to preserve the unique aspect of the hero and manage it’s risk. If a particular excel in something, add a risk on it or reduce it’s reward or both.

If a hero is overperforming on higher ranks, you manage crit damage multiplier, his own damage or the ammo/rate of fire ratio or his overall survivability(hp or mobility, based on what wouldn’t be going against his design). If is overperforming on lower you decrease his forgiviness or increase the risk by playing it.

Example, lucio power shift towards soundwave decreases his impact on higher ranks while improving his impact on lower ones. If he gets too strong on lower, decreasing hp could solve it while if not problematic on lower ranks but still problematic on higher they could address his damage again. Mobility is king for him, keeping him unique, just addressing risk/reward ratio.

Similar to sombra, who requires more risk on the engagement by less overall damage and lose invisibility. But to viabilize on lower a simply hp change could solve paired with her current translocator. Making it more appealing on lower and easier to get value, but requiring more time to get impact on higher ranks.

Tracer suffers similarly, her recall should had been her ult not an ability. That or do the effect of an inverse blink, like going to the previous position of a blink, instead of what currently does. That paired with damage decrease or hp decrease. Based on how would perform on lower and higher ranks.

Certain normatizations are fine if you “focus” on what the hero were supposed to do, either zig zag, either annoy foes or jump around. The risk and reward should be addressed to a point of having ways to counterplay without relying too much on CC by example, like they did in the past to manage lucio and tracer by example.

The fun aspect of the hero, are more tied to what is it’s purpose and for that I would preserve that unique point. Aside that, is more a case of risk management which they tried to change stuff around heroes. So, after creating a solid foundation they should go the risk management approach, right now I see the armor, hp and hs reduction as a way to get that foundation. Next step would fine tune what they want each hero to do and balance the risk and reward for those ranks. While some would argue that could dumb down stuff, the game is dumb enough on several heroes having too much value that they Shouldn’t anyways. So, you counter a bit the dumb down stuff by managing it’s risk/reward associated. Damage, crit multiplier, ammo/fire rate, mobility, hp pool, cooldowns all of those can add risk or reward depeding the intent behind it, without breaking the game if you have a good foundation.

Instead of giving everybody cheat deaths, nobody should have cheat deaths, if someone to be unique requires it, put a appropriate risk associated to it. Overwatch 2 is reaching a point of several heroes are starting to become less unique due how they shifted hard cc to knockbacks by example. That is a bad thing. Also a bad thing if a hero can do all, like some in the game do.

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Yeah not sure why they didn’t do this. Imo it’s better than the 25% headshot passive. This acts to make the TTK more consistent without punishing aim.

Not a fan of different rules for different ranks. We should all be playing the same game. Simply remove this from the game.

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