Again I won’t try to say too much since I lack a ton of play time on Hammond, especially not in comp, but from my experience playing him (and watching yeatle and other top500 wrecking ball, with mines especially it is possible to hard carry games. In ow2 brig won’t have shield bash stun, Cassidy likely won’t have flashbang, Mei looses freeze etc. A lot of wrecking ball counters especially in the dps category simply don’t exist anymore (Mei still has wall and slows, I’m not saying she’s completely unable to counter ball but it’s not as much of a hard counter without the freeze breaking grapple). I think wrecking ball is gonna be really strong.
You’re ignoring the fact that there are times when you flat out need a shield.
I can only think of Havana where that’s the case. And that’s largely due to awful map design than it being a shield is strictly necessary, and usually because of widow (which they said they’re taking a look at already, what they do with snipers and if I trust them to do a good job is a different question). On first point tanks can always push dps off the high ground and on third it’s tough without a shield but again, mostly just had map design.
Re-read your statement here and then tell me you truly believe 5v5 with a single tank is a good idea. You’re going to get matches where someone hard picks Hog and when the enemy team swaps to counter Hog, your tank will be unable or unwilling to swap to a Rein or something more useful.
That’s fair, and I have this same concern. Again I don’t play rein because I think he’s pretty trash but one trick tanks will be a problem they’re gonna have to figure out. Tanks have this the worst because tanks play drastically different from each other. A good rein can’t necessarily play wrecking ball and vice versa. The mechanics required are too different. Same with sigma, d.va, etc. However that’s different since I was speaking specifically about role lock.
How was it finally defeated? When one team in the league made a 4 DPS comp and plowed through it. Double Shield comp isn’t ridiculous in QPC because you can simply swap to more than 2 DPS and break shields easily.
Overwatch league is nowhere near applicable to ladder or the rest of the game. That’s a coordinated premade team. They CAN play multiple heroes at the highest level that’s why they’re on that team. I, a plat tank who plays a lot of sigma, and barely gold on dps because I simply lack the mechanics to play in plat as dps would be unable to mirror what they do. Quick play classic sure because the matchmaking is loose but imo ranked needed role lock to reduce the insane chaos of playing with randoms, and quick play is ranked lite.
The more coordinated your team was the better pre role lock is, but it’s like others say. The highs of no role lock was higher, but the lows are much much worse than after role lock. You get multiple one tricks on the same team and gg. At least now with 2 per role then one tricking the same hero is less likely (should we do something about one tricking? Yes probably.)
These days I play more and more tank and it’s really frustrating having to play against something like rein zarya when I don’t like playing either hero really and my team expects me to mirror and win the tank battles. We could play a comp that can burn tanks and sometimes it happens but a lot of the time you don’t and get blamed for tank diff. In 5v5 as a tank I’m less reliant on others including my second tank to be able to deal with their tanks. And fair enough I main sigma who’s basically always a good pick, so I’m biased, but oh well.