Okay admittedly I did use a hyperbole, but the point still stands. Blizzard has spent 5 years trying to convince players to play Tank more often to help alleviate the queue times for DPS and support, but they had little success. Let’s also be honest, 4/1 ExC Sigma was not even remotely balanced. Yes, it was fun every time I make Magneto jokes and shouting, “Welcome to die!” when I use Flux. Even still, he’d just break the game being able to peak corners in the air preventing Damage from doing anything on high ground better than the actual Tanks designed to harass high ground.
Tanks being slow, big, and cumbersome isn’t the reason many people don’t play Tank. The reason is because it isn’t fun playing a hero that draws all the aggro towards you. Players would rather be the pop-off character or if not, then the Support who does their work quietly without creating much noise where they are. Also, Tanks aren’t powerful because of their individual strengths; they’re powerful because of their Tank synergies. Very rarely do we get metas that are dictated by powerful Support duos or DPS duos.
And why do you think they’re not doing that? Orisa can do more on her own than Winston can because she has a gun, a displacement tool, a shield she can fire from behind, a damage reduction tool that stops CC in their tracks, and an ult that doesn’t lock her out of 90% of her kit. All Winston has on his own is his left click, jump, shield, and an ult that is hard to get any sort of kills on squishies. Players pick Hog/Ball because they can get things done BY THEMSELVES. Reinhardt was hard to get value out of by himself, but then they started changing him over time to be closer to Roadhog in terms of individual strength with weaker team play potential.
That’s what the devs are trying to accomplish. Give Tanks more power over their own potential rather than more power over the Tank Synergy which has led to some of the most obnoxious and unfun metas to exist. (Triple Tank, GOATS, Quad Tank, Double Barrier, and now Double Bubble). It’s also what caused Tanks to get nerfed, some to the point of being gutted because of how strong they were in a synergy.
The problem here is you can’t go back and play OW1 anymore as they are combining the 2. What initially was seen as a good thing has shown its main downside.
I honestly think 5v5 will lead to much more tank variety, and I’m happy to see the buffs they’ve already given Reinhardt. In addition, with 5v5 new tank designs don’t have to be held back by the existence of Reinhardt anymore, we can actually have NEW shield tanks. And they won’t get gutted like Orisa did.
If they can increase the amount of utility each tank has to make up for the off/main tank missing the effective number of possible comps and strategies has at least doubled. I am holding my breath on that though as so far what they have shown is too little.
yeah I don’t agree, you see, everyone in overwatch draws aggro one way or another, take wrecking ball for example, yes he’s a tank but he can step out of danger so easily that a hero like McCree would probably be green in envy, aggro in overwatch isn’t even meant for tanks, the main strategy in game is going for supports and dps, it is however the tank’s job to get in the way but here’s the problem tank’s aren’t nearly as resilient as they should be and THAT’S why people dislike the role
Players picking hog/ball has nothing to do with them being able to do things by themselves, they go for them because in order to “tank” with them you gotta be creative with your use of their kits, it isn’t just standing there and blocking damage, you gotta be able to create space and find a way to stay interactive and effective
that’s why I liked sigma from april’s fool, he was an awful tank, if you flew too high you’d be out in the open and you had no barrier either, basically you depended on your team even though you were flanking from high ground all the time, you had to be creative in your approach and was far from squishy since you still had both E and shift
Point being, not necesarily a good thing what they did on april’s fool but the approach is what I’m trying to get at, they most likely had the most tank players during that time