Being solo tank feels bad because :
The only protection you can get is from yourself, also it’s way easier to track for the enemy team. You can’t pass the aggro from one tank to the other and cycle defensive abilities. You can’t turn back to help your healers deal with flankers. If you die, nobody’s putting pressure on the frontline anymore.
Being solo healer feels bad because :
Your healing output may not be enough depending on your hero, your team composition and how your team positions itself. You are forced at some point to chose between different mates to save. You can’t support flanks as you’re needed to heal the frontline. If you die, your team has no heals at all. If like Baptiste or Ana your self heal is on a long cooldown, you can very well die from accumulated small damage.
I think that’s enough reasons to not even think about having less than 2 tanks and 2 heals.
assume this position, you are the only one who hasn’t picked yet and you have 5 dps on your team and no one is budging, what do you opt for? having a solo healer or solo tank?
and with this said the other team have similar composition but they will have the opposite of what you pick, if you pick support they will get a tank, if you pick tank they will get a support, so what do you do?
i also stated that i don’t know how things work in ranked because i rarely play there, but i have come across many weird comps in QP, including the most standard 2-2-2 and losing with that against weird comps.
i mean sure you can’t really afford to turn your back against the enemy as the solo tank and protect your supports, but you do provide potentially a lot of space.
as solo healer sure if you die the team is out of healing but if they can kill without it, then they will. just because the tank or support is dead doesn’t mean the fight is over.
I do not even believe they did it wrong per se, it is more that they did not want to do it and with nobody also biting the bullet, they felt more beta than usual being the teams rag.
I had no problem with solo tanking/healing as long as my team knew that and accepted the risks associated with it. If we can win with 3 or 4 DPS, who am I to argue?
The problem is, in a pub game, you can only apply very general strategies because you likely will never see these people again: In-meta strategies or 2/2/2 are the only widely known and therefore “easiest” ways to play. It’s natural for people to get frustrated when people try to play off-meta heroes/strategies or less common comps.
I accept that forced 2/2/2 is a good baseline, except now it’s been decided that this is the only way to play Overwatch, which to me is fundamentally limiting and will only serve to stagnate the gameplay over time.
It’d most likely depend on the map and what my mates are playing. If we have heroes like Genji, Tracer, DF… I’ll most likely go Winston or D.va to dive the enemy team. But I’d go Ana with heroes like Mei, Reaper, Junkrat, Sym… Because they can effectively form somewhat of a frontlane.
Main reasons that could explain this : Some of your team were filling in roles they weren’t used to, you weren’t prepared for this, or even the other team was just that much better.
I mean, it’s not like it’s impossible to go with just 1 heal, or 1 tank, or even none. It’s just that it gives you a lot less space for mistakes. You’ll get shot more and healed less, so unless you manage to kill everything before your team crumbles, you probably won’t make it.
And you also are effectively the only one paying attention to the frontlane. Be it Orisa, Rein or Sigma, I’d not hesitate to rush in if that’s the only boi sitting between me and the objective.
Big difference is that everytime one of your dps damages someone, chances are this someone is getting healed soon, while your dps aren’t.
Sure, the fight isn’t over. But most of the time, when your team realizes you’re dead (after spamming the need healing button for 10s), they’re already too low on health and not in the right position to fight with no healer. In some cases, a dps has a flash of genius, intantly pops his ult to at least even the grounds, but that doesn’t happen much; even less in qp.
i just don’t think it’s necessarily a hindrance to a team if those things do happen, quite the opposite it can be a boon to have one extra of something, but that though requires knowledge in how to operate a team like that.
that’s where i think those types of comps actually falls short compared to 2-2-2.
2-2-2 is more about set roles and is much easier to navigate for a more casual standpoint, you allways know what you kind of have to do and will easier fall in line and everyone knows their part unless it’s a very high meta comp like goats that’s gets played often where everyone knows how to kind of play it.
but that’s what i think.
i’m not saying 2-2-2 is bad for the game or any of that, i’m just saying that 2-2-2 might not be the end all be all for all types of play.
it’s just different.
Here’s the deal.
Solo tanking and solo heal are not bad. However the experience I will be having then falls on the rest of the team. I enjoyed solo healing if I had a barrier and any other tank. Then pick whatever dps. The issue is not everyone will. It felt most wouldn’t either. With solo tanking we really need two supports. But people won’t. Now people may not flex still. But we have a structure to allow one tricks to contribute and not weigh people Down.
Yeah, players were totally solo - Tanking/Healing wrong, right??
What?? No, seriously, what??
There’s a reason why they are both considered the worst roles to play in the entire game by the grand majority of Tank/Healer mains.
Because having zero support for yourself, being the number one target all time time, being an ULT battery and having to carry the other 4 people in your team by healing/protecting him by yourself is certainly a fun and extremely fair way to play the game, right?
If you want my opinion, there was only ever one tank and one healer very viable for performing their role solo. These were Ball and Mercy. It wasn’t impossible to run others but you’re really gimping yourself and those were the only 2 able to find success in pro play.
And not every tank/support player liked those 2 heroes, soo… sucked to be them.
Yes, I do miss being yelled at for not magically being able to be in 5 places at the same time to heal my fantastic 5 DPS comp, none of whom will peel for me and all of whom will spam “I need healing” repeatedly when I die.
Solo healing was absolutely not better and was not how the game was designed to be played.
This is alternate account I use to post on the fourms.
Yes obviously this is a bronze account with almost zero time on it I understand that.
You just have to take my word on it. Go to some of my other posts and I have a link attached to show my main account and my tanking account (which was originally for widow)
Blizzard actually did an experiment on this a while back, if I recall correctly, and also found that solo tank/heal sucked. Let me see if I can find the quote . . .
