Main vs Off Tank Separate Role Q

Because restricting people’s choice in heroes has only improved the game.

No no no, please THIS TIME it’s going to be different.

3 Likes

Don’t you mean Reinhardt queue and offtank queue? Rein is the only functional main tank right now.:grin:

5 Likes

Most tanks don’t play main tank.

1 Like

Yes let’s make the tank queue smaller by breaking it into two queues based on player made names for certain heroes.
So the purpose of this is what ? to make DPS queues longer ?

I don’t really see any positives beyond maybe making it more likely that there’s a capable main tank in the group. It would certainly discourage me from queuing either one.

The problems are many. There seem to be relatively few main tank players (and even from them, not all play main tanks exclusively), so queue times would probably get longer for everyone else. Choice of heroes would get reduced a lot (and there isn’t that much choice for tanks anyway). The definitions most people use for main/off-tank are different for high and low ranks of play, and pretty much whatever definition you use, some of them are on a grey area - and not always the same ones. It would also place more burden on at least the main tank - a problem that’s also present with the 1-3-2 composition that’s been talked about. The one potential positive certainly doesn’t outweigh the negatives, both potential and certain.

It’s an interesting suggestion but the more “buckets” we add, the slower matchmaking will be. Overall, we want to reduce queue times, not impact them further. Hope this makes sense.

126 Likes

Thanks for responding!

I agree but also, splitting the roles would further restrict hero choices when we already have role lock and hero pools. It would be interesting in something like OWL tho. If one team had an assigned main/off tank, and a main/off support.

1 Like

Hi Jeff - Off topic, could you please please give us some idea when we might expect Hero 32?

3 Likes

I truly appreciate that, homie. Hopefully the 321 test goes well.

1 Like

So are you planning on making tanks more similar to each other so there isn’t an “off” and “main” distinction?

1 Like

Its obvious in design and balancing they have gone that way to a degree. The problem are the archetype designs like Mercy, Rein, etc…

Dont worry.

Everything is fine.

Me buddy picks hamster and i go dva … most fun to play for us!

1 Like

A tad off topic, but if it isn’t too much trouble could you perhaps elaborate on your new balance philosophy of balancing for the meta?

I’ve been having a bit of confusion personally on how the balance team would tackle metas with hero pools in place, specifically how would you balance for the meta, when the heroes locked could be better than the current meta heroes themselves or perhaps counter said composition?

Sure, I just meant even more so I guess.

Mercy is actually straddling the line between off and main healer, so she may be a good example of what they can do to make it so that the distinctions don’t exist anymore

1 Like

There wont be any 123
. drop that

4 Likes

They are going to test it with experimental card.

4 Likes

Have you thought about giving the “off tanks” more “tanking power”? Honestly, something like D.Va is fine since she has a very flexible defense but if you look at a tank like Roadhog… He literally does nothing to protect his team in the traditional ways the other tanks do, he has a hook sure, but I don’t think that justifies his tank position (there are other peel options that non tanks have that basically can serve the same purpose as Hook)

1 Like

No they wont …

4 Likes

Are there any plans to reduce the number of buckets then? Situationally or otherwise?

If we don’t have separate queues or some kind of one-barrier-per-team situation, Sigma has to be reworked. Right now if Sigma and Orisa are at all viable individually, they will always be the best tank combination together, and overpowered.