if you missed it
https://www.reddit.com/r/Overwatch/comments/i0t53g/ask_us_anything_join_the_overwatch_development/fzsoind/?context=3
and if ur too lazy to click a link:
[Blizz_JeffKaplan]
[14 days ago]
i think this is a good discussion. but i think a lot of the good points get lost in the echo chamber of the internet. i’ll see a good thread, video etc about power creep but then there is a lot of “group think” that happens and you have a bunch of people who think they are agreeing on something, when really they are not.
“power creep is bad!”… “btw buff roadhog, revert rein earthshatter nerf, buff pharah, you should TOTALLY be adding way more new heroes… and they all better do new cool stuff…” … “oh yeah and power creep is bad!”
personally, i prefer when the conversation is more focused. is time to kill to fast? do we feel like CC is too much? too much/little healing? and then apply all of these to individual heroes…
we’ve added 11 new heroes to the game since it launched. obviously, the game is going to change when you do that. we just need to evaluate each hero on their own and make adjustments.
my personal feeling is that i would like to see less barriers and cc and see the game trend slightly more in the fps direction than the moba direction
that last bit is these changes in action.
so expect more CoD-like in your OW of the future.
8 Likes
Yes, the change in direction that brought us away from 2400 combined Orisa/Sigma barrier HP and a 2000-HP-barrier Reinhardt and nerfed stun durations into something more reasonable for most abilities that apply them.
The horror.
8 Likes
Ugh, but they won’t commit!
They nuke Sigma and Orisa completely but they refuse to touch golden boy Reinhardt. Which just means that the one remaining shield tank is obligatory until the end of time.
If all the barriers were trash equally what they did to Sigma/Orisa might work, but they’re not.
27 Likes
If they balance around high ranks and OWL (which Jeff literally said recently, and they’ve said numerous times) why would they nerf a hero that isn’t meta? Or even really close to it?
1 Like
Too bad the only FPS tanks are hog and zarya.
Well, they do take into account lower ranks, as you can see from Pharah/Bastion/Junkrat. If Reinhardt is left alone he’s going to be hard obligatory in masters and below. This shouldn’t be allowed to occur.
2 Likes
Not more CoD. More movement, and kills. It’s more reaction strategy based. Overwatch will still do what it does. But faster. I’m so down for that approach. It’s really how it started off.
3 Likes
Rein has literally always been good in low ranks, because “oooooh a big shield is easy to play with”. Like, low ranks have never been good at dive, and you can’t really fix that.
4 Likes
Well, they could NERF REINHARDT. Then, Winston, Wrecking Ball, etc. will be better able to compete.
2 Likes
No, rein would STILL be the best for low ranks.
Remember OWL season 1, dive was literally the best comp by far, and all the high ranks ran it? Rein was considered trash. Low ranks STILL ran him. All the time. He was still the most popular tank. He would have to not have a shield to not be the most popular tank for low ranks.
2 Likes
If i wanted cod i would play cod. If i wanted cs i would play cs. I dedicated over 500 hours to this game over the last 4 years to get away from those games. Its upsetting to me that they are pulling a 180 here and going full cod. They dont realize what they are giving up and the community that was built under the original principles of this game.
7 Likes
But you don’t even seem to understand why barriers were as necessary as they were. If I’m not mistaken, barriers had stayed mostly the same for years. So why weren’t they so desperately relied on beforehand?
Please don’t act like DB was the bane of your existence because DB was brought in to help with sustain as hitscans and other heroes were too dominating prior to 2-2-2.
5 Likes
Honestly, maybe they should gut him for a while?
I’m sick of Rein. He has always been the best tank, to the point where playing anything BUT Rein was generally a terrible idea. Double barrier and various Sigma comps were the only comps I can think of that ever competed with him. Reinhardt kind of angers me from a balance perspective; he is basically Junkrat, but a tank, and the developers’ baby. He is so faceroll easy to play he dominates low rank (easier than Junkrat, IMO) but he is always balanced to be halfway decent in high rank too. This means he’s always overwhelmingly the best in low rank, and he has some undeserved rep for being hard to play when he’s clearly the easiest tank in the game.
3 Likes
If I want to play CoD (and I don’t), I would play CoD. But I play Overwatch.
Maybe I should not buy Overwatch 2, this is not what I want to play
9 Likes
That’s exactly why they can’t balance around low ranks. Because low ranks ALWAYS play to maximize certain things (healing, shielding, dmg, etc) which is why Moira, Rein, Ana, etc. have always been popular. When you’re not good at using the resources you have, more resources solves the problem. Zen not giving enough heals with the Moira? Just swap to Ana, run Ana/Moira, and suddenly you can facetank more dmg! It would make more sense to keep the defensive ult and have the utility, but low ranks literally don’t know how to play that way, especially in solo q. So the only way to balance certain heroes for low ranks would be to make them trash. Like, all time bad. Which would be a terrible balancing philosophy.
1 Like
But they do balance to low ranks! Sort of. They don’t let pub stompers run wild unless they’re Reinhardt. Lots of really obnoxious DPS don’t get balanced in such a way as to make them viable in high rank; Junkrat, Symmetra, Bastion, Torbjorn, and Pharah are good examples. For some like Pharah and Junkrat, it’s pretty obviously because they’d dominate low rank completely if they were average in GM. I don’t see why Reinhardt doesn’t get the same treatment.
If I had, I’d likely have commented negatively about DB itself.
I prefer fighting DB over Rein-Zarya. It just seems to have far more going on.
However, that’s largely because playing DB shifted from maintaining barriers indefinitely to actually thinking a bit about when to cycle my shield forward as Sigma and to use of natural cover between Orisa shields.
1 Like
Since Reinhardt is now mandatory, I’m forced to quit tanks altogether. And I’ve already quit Supports two months ago. That leaves me with the DPS role but I’m not drunk nor high enough to wait 7 minutes for one game with two tanks and healers.
The development team has addressed the barrier problem so poorly I don’t wanna play this game anymore at all. If any of you can recommend me a solid OW replacement, I’d be incredibly grateful.
3 Likes
You mean until the next “experimental” patch. 
They will never, ever dumpster Reinhardt.