Main Tank and Off Tank Role que System

Competitive Discussion
1

Hey guys I’m Dhillon and I am a 4488 peak Off Tank player and I am here to talk about how Overwatch can make the role que system better by adding a Main Tank and Off Tank role que.

Throughout my time in Competitive I have noticed one of the biggest factors in the game is your tank lineup and yes that is mostly correct. So what I and many tank players have been facing throughout all the ranks is that they will either get double main tank or double off tank on the same team and have the same hero pool so one of them is forced to either play main tank or just play what they normally play. Unfortunately some tanks aren’t that flexible and decide to play what they play and the other team has a good tank lineup, 9 times out of 10 you will lose the match. I’ve seen people very frustrated with this and how they could have the potential of getting sr without praying in que to have a Main and Off Tank and not 2 of the same role.

Before you say that oh Dhillon why don’t they just learn how to play the other role to be a flex tank well yes that could happen but both roles are completely different to each other and have many different skill sets to each other so it makes it hard to adjust. Also people may say if you add Main and Off tank que why don’t there be a Hitscan and Main Support role que. What my opinion on that is that their is no need to add them as for Dps and supports you can combine many different varieties of heroes with them but with tanks it’s limited to a certain amount of combos.

So if Overwatch decides to add a Main tank and Off tank role que they should go by from what pros say what Main and Off tank are as it is the most accurate representation and you can do many combos.

Tank Role que
Main Tank: Rein, Winston, Orissa, Hammond
Off Tank: DVA, Roadhog, Sigma, Zarya

Even if you are limited to these tanks you are still able to play multiple types of tank lineups as I will put examples down below run by top tier competitive Overwatch.

Rein + Dva
Rein + Zarya
Rein + Sigma
Orissa + Dva
Orissa + Roadhog
Orissa + Sigma
Winston + Dva
Hammond + Dva
Hammond + Roadhog

Their are many more tank lineups that I listed above but that is the majority of tank lineups ran in the top competitive Overwatch ranked.

As you can see their are many good things that can be done to improve the role que for tanks but their are some cons that come with adding the Main and Off tank role que. First, the que times will be longer like dps and support but that isn’t really the biggest concern to most people. Second is specifically for Main tanks is the match quality as their are not a lot of main tank players in the game and depending on the sr of the player they may get put into a higher or lower sr match they are normally playing at. I think that these are easy fixes with some tuning to the system and hopefully matches can be great without the stress people need.

I hope Overwatch takes a look at the tank que system and hopefully fixes it by adding this type of system so the match quality of games gets better.

Thank you for taking the time to read on why Overwatch should add the Main tank and Off tank role que system.

2 Likes
2

Question would take forever

3

I’m gonna be transparent here, I only read the title.

This needs to be a thing though. I feel like I shouldn’t play tank just because I’m a horrible Reinhardt.

Might as well make it a Reinhardt and other tank queue actually.

1 Like
4

Where would Sigma and Hammond fit in? What happens if the right call is to double-tank?

In the low ranks, a hog and DVa can do wonders against a Bastion comp.

5

Sigma would fit into the Off tank category and Ball would fit into the Main tank category. Also with the hog and Dva being good together I say that is false and you are talking about the lower ranks when teams are not the coordinated and the simple way to counter that comp is to run any comp with a shield and it’s will be super easy to kill them.

6

Stopped reading there.

7

I know you read the entire thing.

8

Negative. When someone shows they have no concept of reality I stop reading their posts. For further measure, you are now ignore listed for a month.

9

OOF well this is my first post on the forums so take it easy dude.

1 Like
10

I think this would be interesting to try implementing. I do believe it would make balancing tanks easier in general, and I also believe it would allow for much more consistent matchmaking, much like RoleQ did.

I also personally like the idea similarly as a GM off-tank that doesn’t really bother practicing main tanks and as such is out of place when “forced” to play them in matches, although I don’t play much anymore.

I do think there are a lot of issues to be addressed though.

For starters, there aren’t that many tank heroes to begin with, and they all play notably differently. As such there may be many players, like myself, that are particularly good at only some of each sub-role. For instance they may be good with 2-3 off-tanks, and only 1 main-tank.

I, for example, can hardly play Dva in spite of generally being much better as off-tanks. If there were a situation where my team needed to run dive unexpectedly my best option is Winston. As it is now, I can communicate with my other tank and I can swap to Winston assuming that they’re able to play Dva or Ball, neither of which I’m particularly good at.

Now, there are certainly counter-arguments to this, and I can even present one myself: if this queue split happened I would probably spend a bit more time learning Dva so that I could play her more passably in these situations, rather than swapping to Winston as my “dive crutch”, but this doesn’t necessarily work for everyone, especially lower ranked players.

And speaking of lower ranked players, they don’t understand Ball and Sigma. Most low ranked players have the impression that Sigma is a main-tank because he has a shield, and similarly that Hammond is an off-tank because he doesn’t have a shield. As a result of this, they try (although often unsuccessfully) to play them into those roles.

Sigma isn’t too bad here, and I think it would be better for lower ranked players to force Sig as an off-tank, Ball is a different story though.

Most low ranked players simply don’t understand the concept of tanking in Overwatch to the degree needed to play Ball as a main tank. I already think he’s a bad pick in low ranks to begin with, but I believe a change like this would almost completely cripple him below diamond, possibly even masters.

I believe this would result in Blizzard reworking Hammond to better fit into one of the two tanking categories better, at least in respect to low ranks.
This is obviously conjecture, but considering heroes with similar situations in the past (Hanzo, Torbjorn, and Symmetra) I believe it’s highly likely. I also don’t believe Hammond actually needs such a rework, and is perfectly viable in higher ranks where tanking is better understood.

Furthermore this presents a problem for the devs. The developers have historically been fairly bad about the distinction between the two tanking sub-roles, and generally don’t even acknowledge them.

Sigma, upon introduction, was referred to as a “barrier tank”, for example. While this is certainly true, he does in fact have a barrier, he plays quite differently from other “barrier tanks” which are popularly considered to be main tanks.

I can’t assume the intent of the developers, but I don’t believe they necessarily “intended” for Sig to be an off-tank and Ball to be a main-tank. By enforcing these roles though, the devs would have to reassess how they develop tanks entirely, and may need to make some adjustments to current tanks to better fit whatever they begin to define as the distinction between these two categories of tank.

This could be either a good thing or a bad thing, depending on the popular opinion and the manner that this is executed in, but it would nonetheless be a much larger undertaking than simply dividing the roles between main and off tank.

Those are just some of my thoughts on this. In general, I’m not opposed to the idea, and I could be wrong on either the existence or significance of any of those issues, so I’m open to discussion.

11

I definitely can understand that especially for the lower ranks. I think what can happen is instead of a Off tank role it can be a a Flex tank role where every tank in the pool is playable. The hero pool will be the following below.

Main Tank: Rein, Orisa, Winston, Hammond
Flex Tank: Zarya, Sigma, Dva, Hog, Rein, Orisa, Winston, and Hammond

By doing this you can run the same combos in today’s ranked matches but with this new role que. The biggest problem I can see with this though is the que times especially for Masters and higher as the player base is lower.

12

Hard disagree. Ignoring how bad the queue times might get, how this stifles variety even more, and how this kind of thing might encourage one tricking even further, there’s no need. While there is undoubtedly a difference between main tanks and off tanks, it’s not so substantial that you need to treat them as different roles entirely. With the exception of Roadhog that is, but he’s just a failure of game design.

Also anyone who believes the difference between main and off tanks is more significant than the difference between main and off support has clearly never played Support consistently at high ranks.

13

What I know of for overwatch that on console and PC, supports are clearly different as I will show an example below. I played console since season 3 and stopped playing on season 12.

Console Support:
Main Support: Ana, Mercy, Moria Bap
Off support: Brig, Zen, Lucio

PC Support:
Main Support, Mercy, Bap, Lucio
Off Support: Ana, Moria, Zen, Brig

With supports there is no need to add a role que system because you can combine almost every support combo together and do well depending on the enemy team composition.

14

relax that guy is just a troll, even my mind went like hog +dva better than any other combo? Yeah as a off tank player I completely agree with ur opinion