I was sceptical of 5v5 when it was announced. And I still think Blizzard need to follow-up on their own statements about addressing mobility and burst damage, like they did with CC. But overall, I see way more hero variety in 5v5. It feels healthier for the game.
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That is a STRAIGHT LIE. The switch to 5v5 didnt happen until Aron Keller became director. I distinctly remember this because there was absoluty NO DEVS were talking or hinting at it. The announcement came straight from Aron after Jeff left on one of his blogs. Jeff never once not ONCE entertained the 5v5 switch, They did a 1.3.2 experimental, and decided it was not good and that was that. The only “THING” I could think of was a 5 person team for PVE but the amount for the “teams” on PVE could vary if you went off released events. But a switch to 5v5 under jeff wasnt going to happen.
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Go back and watch the Blizzconline 2021 footage. It’s all 5v5.
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More lies. Blizzcon was Feburary of 2021. The announcment to 5v5 was MAY 2021. Jeff Kaplan leaving Blizz APRIL 2021
Yeah, no hints or discussion about it at all: Whats all this talk about 5v5? (Feb 2021)
Take the L and move on.
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LOL a random post from RANDOS. I litterly said NO DEVS were talking and you link a random post of nobodies talking about the rumor of 5v5. Im talking about DEVS talking about 5v5. Find me a post from someone who actually had AUTHORITY TO MAKE THE SWITCH TO 5v5 TALK ABOUT 5v5. OH wait let me help you with that
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/overwatch/t/blizzard-save-your-game-go-132/446226/67
Jeff littterly outlined why single tanking sucked and all the things that he stated in the experimental are EXACTLY what everyone is complaining about tanking today. funny right? JANUARY OF 2020. GET DUNKED ON
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And yet here he was 2 months later: https://www.pcgamesn.com/overwatch/year-four-battle-pass
How does it feel to be so aggressively wrong?
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5v5 is hell
one small mistake and a gigantic snowball lost push occurs for one side
In 6v6, when a mistake happened, the co-tank could step in and stabilize the situation.
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You DO realize hes talking about the PVE right? You do realize that OW2 was supposed to be a PVE game right? Thats the “you’re not just gonna give us the same game, right”? YOU DO REALIZE that at this point OW1 was abandoned and the PVE was being developed at this point right? AND HE STILL DOESNT EVEN SAY ANYTHING ABOUT 5v5, YOUR JUST READING INTO IT and coming to a conclusion YOU WANT. You are litterly trying to reach your conclusion by reading between the lines even though Jeff said absoluty NOTHING concrete. You know what Jeff DID say?
“Another fear around this issue is that metas will be even more limited as players tend to take the “path of least resistance” towards their hero choices. If Reinhardt is deemed meta, do we only see Rein from now on? Are we all mad at our tank player if they play the hamster? 2) Some tank players felt a tremendous anxiety about their performance in the match. They felt like being the lone tank put a lot of pressure on them and if they died, it was a really big deal. Some of our tank/support players who would occasionally play tank stopped playing tank during 3-2-1 and only gravitated toward support because they felt intimidated to be “the main tank” and have so much focus on their play.”’
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This was a good read. 
He’s literally talking about 1-3-2 and changing the sizes of teams.
Of course nothing was concrete, it was 2020. You wanted hints though, and those were hints. Don’t try and move the goalposts now.
1-2-2 was Jeff Kaplan’s idea. It is an evolution of his other idea, 1-3-2. It was in the works for 2+ years. It’s pretty easy to trace if you’ve been paying only the slightest attention.
I’m sorry that this upsets you?
hints? So now your interpretation of hints is now what Jeff SAYS FACTUALY? He is HINTING at PVE from what i interpret. The 1.3.2 experiment was a test to get que times down for DPS. Not to fix balance or tanking issues of 6v6 format. He litterly states this in his own post. No NEED to HINT at what he says, he just straight SAYS IT.
I.E Aron Keller announces 5v5, They switch to 5v5 and the game feels like were in beta trying to deal with all the hero and balances changes because the decision to switch was made in April and the game was rushed out by October without the 4 or 5 years of development to really think these changes through because they were working on the PVE since 2019 and had nothing to show for it. Thats my conspiracy theory.
And all the issues we are currently seeing in 5v5 were learned during the 1.3.2 experimental but when Jeff left those lessons were apparently lost and Aron thought it was a great idea and worth the teething pains of the switch.
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Roadhog should have been reworked even during 2-2-2, it’s about time we’re getting a Roadhog rework.
They’d have to make tanks have bigger fields of team protection so that they can reliably catch damage for most to all of their team more often.
The fat DPS tanks should have been reworked even in 2-2-2. After this upcoming Roadhog rework, they still need to rework Doomfist, Orisa, & Wrecking Ball. This would help significantly against double sniper. Also, snipers were not top damage picks during double barrier meta, I remember seeing Doomfist + Sombra to get past the barriers, or you’d see heroes good against barriers like Symmetra.
6v6 would be the easy way to have the needed team protection to give enough of a buffer in fights to not get picked off early as a DPS or Support. They’d have to do sweeping changes to tons of things in 5v5 in order to lower all the damage in the game, and then they’d also have to reduce all healing so that doesn’t get out of hand. Giving all tanks bigger fields of team protection is another thing I mentioned earlier.
There’s 11 tanks in the game right now, compared to 8 back in OW1, so that automatically means there will be more tank variety. Secondly, in 2-2-2 you could have a Reinhardt + DVA vs Reinhardt + Sigma or something like that, where 1 tank on each team is mirrored, but not the other tanks slots. That’s still tank variety. The more tanks they add to the game, the better and better 2-2-2 becomes compared to 5v5.
The only stale tank meta I recall in 2-2-2 was double barrier, and that was easily solvable by making Orisa + Sigma more vulnerable to being rushed or dived by making them have less sustain up close to enemies. You would do a power-shift, so Orisa + Sigma would still be viable, but there would be a play-style for pros to counter it, instead of having to mirror Orisa + Sigma all the time.
The rock-paper-scissors thing is not over-stated, it is a common issue. Note, when I said rock-paper-scissors tank meta, that also means having to swap to another tank because the enemy DPS or Supports decided to counter-swap you too, not just the enemy tank.
With a 2nd tank, no matter who on the enemy team tried to counter swap a tank, there was another tank to soften the match-up (like DVA Defense Matrixing for Winston against a Reaper).
A problem that 6v6 had, such as too much CC, was solved by them doing non-5v5 related changes (removing a lot of the stuns from damage and support heroes). Name any problem 6v6 had and it could have been solved.
5v5 has introduced lots of problems; some can be fixed if they do the needed changes (like by making sure all tanks can play like a main tank), other 5v5 problems cannot be fixed without going back to 6v6 (solo tank experience feeling too pressuring, 5v5 encouraging constant tank counter-swapping, game-play feeling more stale by only having 1 tank per team, etc.).
I don’t care about when GOATS was meta, because that was not 2-2-2. During GOATS meta, Blizzard made lots of changes that hurt tank players because they were trying to kill off GOATS in the pro scene.
Chain CC was not addressed yet by removing stuns from damage & supports like they did for OW2 that they could have done in 2-2-2 (having tanks that are overly-focused on CC like Orisa & Doomfist is even hurting tank queues in 5v5). Also, the number of tanks in the tank roster was half the size of the DPS roster, that is a big reason why tank queues were hurting some in 2-2-2. Lots of people queue multiple roles. I know queue times would be fine in 2-2-2 if Blizzard focused on those 2 issues I listed.
Another thing I think helps tank queue times is shifting certain tanks away from being overly defensive to have a bit more offense. I guarantee you that tank queue times would be shorter if 2-2-2 was on live servers right now than queue times were back in OW1 2-2-2 times. But also like I’ve mentioned, even if the queues are a little longer in 6v6 for 12 people to get into a match, that is 2 more people in a match that don’t have to find another match.
Any dominate tank duo can be addressed, just like dominate tank heroes in 5v5 get addressed, or even dominate DPS or Support pairs getting addressed.
I’ve stated that DPS & Supports needed stuns removed from them so playing tank would’ve felt nicer. Blizzard also needed to release only tanks and supports to start catching up to the number of damage heroes back in OW1. Shifting some tanks that are overly defensive towards a bit more offense like they did for OW2 is another thing they could have done in 2-2-2 to improve it.
It would not be massive tank nerfs, each tank would have their health reduced by 50 to 100 lower. Tanks are largely the same as they were in 6v6 besides having more health.
5v5 may be a failed experiment, but 6v6 also failed. We could always try 7v7. Add in some restrictions to prevent triple flanker, triple sniper, etc.
It fixes the tank problem, with three dps that also means burst damage isn’t as necessary. Supports can have the off-tank for peeling, or the third dps for peeling. Tank Synergy becomes less of a problem due to triple dps.
Your dogged insistence on Kaplan not having his hand in the decision to move to 5v5 is… strange.
A move like that is a huge endeavor. In a large company something like this can take months, even years of conversations between management, marketing, engineers, various focus groups and so on. Let’s, for argument’s sake, disregard the evidence that the OW2 build at Blizzcon was already running in the 5v5 format before Kaplan departed and consider the likelihood that Keller, a mere month after the fact, spontaneously made, announced and ran with a fundamental change to how his team’s whole product works. It’s highly unlikely, bordering on impossibility.
??? unneeded if you ask me, hes in a good spot now, has since one shot removal.
They have plenty big fields of protection already.
???/ ori, doom, and ball all need reworks? thats the hottest hot take ive ever heard. maybe ori, but they are all in good spots now too, excluding ori, shes a raid boss.
no it would not, I think ow is in a state where moving to 6v6 would kill the game. I think people underestimate how much tanks would have to be nerfed to bring 6v6 back, and then tanks would be honorable dps agian.
disagree, as many variations as there are, none of them come close to how it feels to be the sole tank on your team. I fell useful as tank now, where as in 6v6, I felt useless.
counterswaps are a problem in all roles, and just becauses its one tank, doesnt mean anything. This is by far the weakest argument ive heard. You could have any of your supports or dps, counter their counter swap. Yall seem to think it has to be another tank, but you have 4 other people on yur team that can counter swap to help you.
yes, but its easier to change one hero than a group of 2. Its like nanoblade. You cant buff blade even though its weak as heck, because nano exists.
much more health, 200 about. thats a LOT, of health.
off topic, but very few folks sport that avatar
could you tell me why you use it?
Tank went from “where should I set up and position myself” strategic gameplay to “oop, they on zarya now, time to get off D.va and swap to winston” brainless gameplay
Ill give you that. But was OW2 REALLY a complete game on release? Or was it really OW1.5? Would you have considered OW2 its own seperate game when it used 95% of the OW1 assets? How many people say OW2 just feels like a glorified update? If they have released OW2 with the whole PVE missions I would of been like Yeah your right no way it could be done in such a sort time frame. But noone feels that OW2 was its own game or its own thing. I mean alot of features were actually removed! So basically the PVP was slapped together in 7 months (This is when PVE was canceled apparently, prob to give PVP more resources) and get it out October. I think for what we got and the resources of a whole team concentrated on just getting something out in 7 months is completly plausible.
At the time, I could understand WHY Aron would of wanted 5v5 based on what we were told. Shorter Que times, easier balance, more autonony, easier to design new heros around. And if he had any chance, this was the moment (When Jeff left and He became director).
IMO the introduction of more interesting and fun heroes is what brings people to the role. With JQ, Ram and Tankfist being added. There’s a plethora of fun heroes to play.
Personally in OW1 I LOVED playing Tank. Because of Reinhardt. But what happened when my tank counterpart kept choosing Rein before me? Or I got bored of playing Rein 10 games in a row? I had no other tank I wanted to play. Sometimes the odd Roadhog here and there. But I’d rather play Ana, Zen, Lucio, Mei, Junk, Sym, Torb, Hanzo than play any tank other than Reinhardt.
If OW 1 had JQ, Ram and Tankfist, I’d have 4 tanks to swap between when I got bored! Wow! I wouldn’t have to stop queuing tank!
Everyone on both sides of the argument, including myself are making large assumptions in this thread as to whether 6 v 6 would work in OW2, whether or not it would negatively affect queue times.
My assumption is, the horrific state of tank in OW2 has caused previous tank mains to never queue tank again. It causes some if not many of the new players who start playing the game and think wow tank is awesome and OP! To eventually learn no, tank is the magnet of 90% of blame, toxicity, and can barely dictate their own gameplay.
My other assumption is the only reason you have a tank in your games now is because of the weekly challenges. I did an experiment before where for 20 games both QP and comp, I asked in match chat, ‘hey tanks do you enjoy playing tank?’ Did not receive any ‘yes’ answers. None. Ranged from ‘sometimes, but rarely’, to ‘no’, to ‘fk NO!’.
Having a larger roster of fun and diverse tank heroes would certainly bring in more tank players. IMO It would have helped tremendously in OW1.
OW1 launched with 5 tank heroes, 14 DPS heroes. In OW1 lifetime the game released 3 new tanks totalling 8, and 4 new DPS totalling 18. One of those tanks (Orisa) was very boring to many even in her original form.
I think they made the wrong decisions when choosing not to produce more tank heroes than the other 2 roles. This impacted queue times IMO. Lack of diverse choice in the tank hero pool.