Pharah needs to flank a lot in order to be viable, if she just fly and fight around the front line, she’ll get shoot down very fast.
This feels like confirmation bias… almost every character outside of the original crew is subject to silly calls for deletion. Let’s add a few more real world flankers in… and btw Reaper definitely is a flanker, why bother with a tank that might hurt you when you can jump on that Ana? Lucio, D.va, Moira to name a few, then we have Wrecking Ball, and even Spamrat… the game is full of characters which do flanking though they maybe aren’t solely for that, people use them all the time. The latest trend I see is for some reason DPS Reins… they look to get a flank position or high ground and come charging down on people, often not even using their shield…
But to answer why? Because flankers benefit from kits that make counter play difficult at best in most cases. Tracer for instance - so easy to spam that blink and get away but hey you got that kill on poor Ana you must be so skilled right? Ana OTOH has to have commensurately better aim skill and prediction than the Tracer, which has led us to Brig… see the problem? Cheap and easy movement with little skill to pull of is the biggest source of most of OW’s problems… and I would say the majority of OW’s balance issues trace back (no pun intended) to the characters you mentioned first.
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You COULD argue that concussion does let her go pretty quickly, but you are right, she doesn’t really have an escape.
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maybe it’s just the people that make threads are support mains haha.
Well anyways, I guess everyone just dislikes flankers. idk why, I love them.
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I think the game has issues, but Tracer / Genji are not one of them unless you are in GM.
I am far far away from GM, so I don’t care 
I’ve spent lots of time in gm as a support player even when dive was meta.
As a support, I just feel like it’s a challenge rather than heal botting, especially with mercy. I love it.
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Tracer damn well RUINED me in the open, but, I WAS playing Zen at the height of dive 
- so it was expected
She was in every single game, which did drag on a bit, which is why I can get people getting upset when a meta lasts too long.
But, I couldn’t really argue with that - I was playing Zen, who was ALSO in every single game 
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That is laughable to say the least…
She doesn’t have a pick rate, which is why I don’t see her as a problem at lower than Masters.
But… if your beef with her is that she is the force which generated Brig, then, you are in good company. Hell, Seagull went on a rant about it mid game more than once 
She needed a support counter and it took Blizzard so long to generate one. I think it wouldn’t have been so much of an issue if they had done it earlier.
By flankers, I’m talking about heroes that benefit the most from flanking. For example, a McCree can flank too, but he’s best stay behind a shield.
Reaper’s spread is large, it is more beneficial to him to shoot at tank instead of squishy, he’ll get the most out of his dps that way.
Lastly, you are describing a scenario where an Ana having to deal with her counter, so it will be a lot harder for her to kill a Genji or Tracer more than they can kill her.
I believe when the forum talked about “skill” in this game, they are talking about easy to do their job versus hard to do their job. There are multiple definition of skills, so to point at this hero and say “this hero takes no skill” is pointless unless you can define what skill means.
For example, between a Tracer and a Genji having to kill the enemy team versus a moira having to heal her allies, which job is harder? Moira and flankers all have high skill ceilings, but their jobs are different, one is easier to do than the other.
One can argue that Symmetra is the hardest hero in high rank, not because her skill floor is high, it is because her skill ceiling is low. In order to get the most out of her among the top players, one has to go above and beyond.
You need to define what “skill” means to you, before we can expand on this topic.
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IMO flankers are hated for invading peoples comfort zone. They just want to win that fight infront of themselves and not deal with being sudenly bombarded with rockets or hacked. The same goes for snipers but differently as they punish lazynes.
it is my beef, most definitely, and its rationale. Excessive low skill unlimited movement is the weakness in OW’s overall design and they refuse to admit it. Things shouldn’t have been so out of hand as to need a hard counter with that design in particular.
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LOL yes, all those people are just lazy… omg… the arrogance or inability to see a fundamental game design problem… amazing.
I thought we are talking why are these forums biased, not about their powerlevel.
In which case, you totally have my support on this. It needed solving for SUCH a long time, and the fact there is only one support which is the solution makes the solution fragile.
If Brig gets nerfed out of existence, we are back to square one, which is a bad place to be.
And it will force Brig v2.0 to be created, and I don’t really want that either.
Maybe Echo will ALSO counter her, which will make things more stable in the long term.
The real answer is a hard, hard look at mobility particularly for Genji and Tracer and maybe reign it in slightly.
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Could do. I think it would be hard for them to Balance Tracer so she would have a pick rate below masters and not be broken above it.
If they did nerf mobility, then, she would basically be out of the game except at the very highest level of play, and I don’t really want to see that happen either.
It points to a bad design, to be honest, but I’m not sure how you would go about fixing it.
I was hoping that they could add cripple to some heroes, so they could counter mobility without breaking the rest of the cast, which could help.
Mei could do with Cripple on her spray, since it is a CC which is useless vs mobility heroes.
But, if she got a real pick rate the forums would have a melt down…
You know how it is. I think Tracer is just hard for Blizzard to balance. They have kinda panted themselves into a corner.
Their only real chance of balance is going to be either a rebuild, which, just isn’t going to happen, or, they keep putting in supports / tanks with anti mobility features.
It is a mess.
I’d LIKE her to see more low ranked play, without being broken at high ranks. But, I can’t see how to manage it.
No mention of Torbjorn anywhere in a flanker thread, strange.
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Well not everyone had to deal with goats, plus, it doesn’t reflect that tanks are strong but more so that the most optimal way to counter damage creep was to have Rocky Balboa yell at your Genji “c’mon, hit me in the face! Think you hit hard huh? Hit me harder! You ain’t nothin!”.
Flankers should flank too, not go headfirst in front of a tank and win. It should be a finisher or an opportunist, hitting the enemy distracted by the rest of your team, not “hello I’m here see me ? Well doesn’t matter you spotted me, I’m winning this.”
Most flankers(well, the working ones as you rightfully mention) have no drawbacks to being spotted.
Sombra and Doomfist are the most fitting when it comes to calling a character “flank”. You spot Sombra and she’s in a very bad situation. You spot Doomfist and he is most likely going to trade 1 kill and die.
Rest of them can ignore that.
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I thought that this was the point of this thread ^ so instead of asking ourselves why are these heroes hated we are now discusing what is the best way to nerf them? Lol. Why? There were times when I could agree, but now? Why are we still getting posts that demand these heroes to be nerfed even in the times of 3-3 meta? Or did I not read properly?