She won’t work as a tank by just adding more HP & making her bigger.
She needs abilities redesigns and buffs. Cryo should freeze enemies in its close proximity, wall needs -2 seconds on CD took off, primary needs more ammo or better consumption or faster freeze cos it’s too slow. Blizzard needs to be on a smaller radius but to freeze faster so not anyone except Bastion and Hog can escape it etc.
There’s a lot to change.
And even on current exp 15% bigger scale for just 150HP seems a big nerf because 350HP for 10% or less seemed more suitable
Well, devs do. (I.e. Too much MOBA, not enough FPS, slow fight tempo)
And they’ve been screwing up Tank balance for the past 3 years to avoid comps like that.
And now they need to fix queue times, and make Tanks more desirable, without causing more high durability comps.
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I can promise you that past the first week, slapping Mei on the tank role is not suddenly going to cause the tank role to be popping. It’s not like there are hundreds of thousands of us Mei mains, we are a very, very small number. A small number that will become lower if we have hundreds of hours ruined and our entire playstyle shifted. If anything, you will see overall times suffer because Mei generally isn’t a hero people like playing against and having more of her in games will not incentivise people to play more. People hate playing against her highly nerfed state now, how do you think they will act when she gets mass buffs to compensate for her replacing an entire tank (if she ever gets played which I argue unless you make her straight busted, there will never be a reason to pick her over Zarya, Rein, Hog or Sigma).
Oh of course it wouldn’t.
But removing a lot of the things that would cause high durability comps, allows devs to buff Tanks to become more desirable, without causing high durability comps.
Also really dude, I’m well aware it’s not possible to fix queue times without upsetting people.
But just because that’s true, doesn’t mean they shouldn’t fix queue times.
Realistically, when you combine the Mei/Brig/Bap/Sigma changes together, you’d probably lose about 0.1% of the playerbase.
But that’s a bargain compared to losing 5-20% from bad queue times.
This I am all for. I would love tanks to get some juicy buffs for multiple reasons. Queue times, overall enjoyment on the tank role and because then some of the weaker DPS may get buffs to help them out (Sym for example may be allowed to get her big ol’ beam back and some of her damage which will help her against DPS too).
I am just incredibly against ever swapping heroes roles in a post 2-2-2 world. I wouldn’t wish hours wasted on anyone.
Since my favourite heroes are all in the same role (Mei, Reaper and Bastion), this is something I am really against even if I didn’t have reasons outside of this alone for this.
Do you think the devs could justify losing 5% of their playerbase, because it might upset 0.1% of their playerbase?
The same could be said for…Widowmaker, Tracer, Genji, Doomfist, McCree…
Almost every hero in the roster really.
And beyond the first week, I can guarantee you she will still be played. You underestimate the power of variety and the willingness for tank players to be able to play differently.
She is viable as a tank and that experimental proved it. Make it so and bring her back from oblivion. Because quite frankly, you may be a Mei main and always playing her, but lately, whenever a Mei popped out at the beginning of the game, I thought a new hero had been released.
Her whole kit is a tank kit and her abilities might just finally be useful with two other DPS in game instead of taking up the space for one DPS and underperforming as damage-dealer.
The difference is, those heroes are still playable. Heck, Sigma is my go to tank still. The nerfs on these heroes haven’t caused the mains of these heroes to need to literally rethink the entire way they play the game on their hero. The changes to these heroes may have hurt the mains alittle, but it hasn’t given them the middle finger on hundreds of hours of their life which is what will be happening to Mei mains if you swap her role.
Not to the extent of Mei and you know it. No other hero I play do I get abuse for more than I do Mei for simply existing. I literally can do nothing the entire game and the enemy will still flame me just for playing Mei. This doesn’t happen for other heroes except for pre-nerf hog where his hook could grab you across the universe.
She just isn’t though. Slapping 150hp on her doesn’t suddenly make her a tank. Why would you pick her over the other tanks?
If they tripled Mei’s usage by moving her to the Tank role.
Do you think devs would look at that as a bad design?
Maybe you should play other heroes.
It’s not just Mei. It’s Junkrat, Mercy, Symettra…
You know, “unskilled” heroes.
Her freezing abilities are an asset, I can protect myself and my team with a wall or an ice cube instead of running around like a headless chicken while inhaling a cannister, I can contibute to the defense of my team, create an opportunity for my damage dealers to take a shot and I can draw attention to myself and pester the enemy while being able to survive.
Which part does not make her a tank?
I don’t think that’s their complaint even.
Just that they like switching to Reaper, and other DPS, and they like high durability brawl comps that try to mimic GOATs.
And that Mei would somehow be forced to be less flank oriented than flank Hog, because reasons.
And the real irony to me, is that the hero with the most similarity to Mei, is Roadhog. Who, in many ways, is superior to Reaper. And uses skill shots with similar velocity to icicle with his hook.
Also…about this…im not too sure
There hasnt been a single game ever who has had any sort of role queue ever managed to have balanced queue times across multiple roles
It just doesnt exist
And we are talking about RPGs here, OW Is the first Class Based shooter that goes for a role queue system
and its clearly not working
Suprise suprise, people who play FPS games Want to shoot
They dont want to protect anyone, nor heal anyone, they want to kill the enemy team
So comparing overwatch role queue to role queue system from RPGs already shows a trend
But you will say “But magy, you cant compare RPGs to overwatch, because overwatch is a shooter”
I was comparing role queue as a system, but lets void that comparision based on that
Inestead, lets look at overwatch’s close neighbors, Paladins And TF2, games you like citing when talking about offensive tanks
And i can tell you without a shadow of a doubt Tanks in those games ARE NOT POPULAR
We dont have numbers to compare like se do in overwatch, atleast for paladins, for TF2 i recall finding stats that showed Heavy was the least played class in the game, unofficial, but we work with what we have
And in paladins, might not be as precise, but you can ask anyone who plays that game that tanks are rare to see, in casual matches the first 3 picks are flanks/damage
Then the 4th is a support, and the last one is the tank
I have almost as much playtime in both OW and paladins, both as a tank player, and i can confim both games have the same issue…
Even when paladins tank can absolutely pump damage hard and out right play like flankers or damage
All that this “queue times” solutions, have never worked
Ofc i still think mei could be made into a tank, but im talking about the general idea of bringing DPS into Tank…it has never been done succesfully, and OW certainly is not the game to pull it off
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seems like any game has a issue with tanks if its the tank-heal-dps archetype. by definition tanks are suppose to be huge and tanky, there suppose to get hit in the face and ideally do some decent damage… thing is they cant do TOO much damage or they will have to get toned down since what would the point be of the dps role.
i remember it happening in wow pvp with the release of the death knight. a new tank class that was both tanky and had insane damage. ruled the pvp scene for a bit before they had to do some massive nerfs.
happened here with sigma i guess and maybe a bit with hammond. two “new” tanks that were overtuned when the playerbase finally figured out how to play them to their upmost potential. everybody remembers goats too where you didnt really need a dps most of the time unless said player was a superstar
Just because perfection is probably impossible doesn’t mean it can’t get better.
Devs should be heading in that direction, and trying everything that seems like it might work.
As for the Mei part. That’s more of a fringe benefit.
The main part is that by removing a major cause of highly durable compositions, which allows for more value to get pumped into Tanks, without causing a highly durable composition.
Yeah but your overall plan relies on that perfection
You need a lot of.dps players to start playing tank to not only make up for the “collateral damage” players who prefer the old tanks but also to at the very minimum the count of tank players
Even Forcing dive in as the meta, is not going to increase the tank player count
Ah, thats the trick. You’re only seeing the first two steps.
- Clear out “Unmatrixable AntiDive on heroes that aren’t OffTanks”
- I.e. Remove a key component of most highly durable compositions
- Make Dive be dominant
- Although this is more related to the premise of buffing barriers up to Rein tier
- Buff Tanks until they are reasonably popular.
- While avoiding excessively durable compositions
- Making sure 1v1 duels with DPS aren’t too lopsided
- Focusing on kills and regen
Thanks for making one of your usual threads.
I’ve been wanting literally the exact sort of changes which were presented on experimental ever since 2-2-2 went live.
You have my full support (without dissecting things) for once.
If we are trying to get “as close as perfect as possible” why is part of your plan to make a composition dominant?
There are two parts of the issue about tanks, one about which tanks are meta (people hate everything thats not dive)
And the other one is the fact that all the tanks are unplayable but two
Which is the bigger issue here?
Clearly you think the first
Personally i find that the second is the issue
I feel like people would be more likely to play tank, if all tanks were reasonably viable, inestead of if they were forced into playing the more “fun” (according to the mayority) tanks every match, or lose because that creates burnout, people can only play the same thing for so long, even i would get burned out after beeing forced to play the same char over and over and over again every match, even if it was my favorite, while the other would allow for reasonable space for flexing, even if one comp is slightly better overall.
One focuses on a portion of the playerbase (the dive enjoyers) while the other tries to make it so everything is playable.
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That’s less of a “more tanks users” thing.
And more of a “I don’t think devs have the systems needed to deal with low barriers yet”.
OW2 PVP, Low Barrier problems
So it’s easier to make Orisa and Sigma barriers more similar to Rein. And some Winston, because of the Dive at high tier. Which gives Plat and below a lot of SingleBarrier Tank options to work with.
(Which is LONG overdue for Plat and below)
For high tier, the reason for Dive, is because you want to avoid DoubleBarrier Rush. Which leaves pretty much the only close range comp being Dive.
That said, again for high tier, I think it’s a lost cause to get them to play more than 8-10 heroes for a given patch, once the meta has been “solved”.
For that you’d need something that’s equivalent to a ban system.
Pick system, instead of Bans