I won’t make this long or drawn out, but my take on Minimum 1 is that it’s a great QP mode, especially for flex players like myself, but I doubt severely its viability as a comp mode.
It’s nice to swap from healer (my main) to tank or DPS and win, but that doesn’t provide for an accurate competitive rank.
2-2-2 role queue is still the gold standard for comp modes, and 5v5 and Minimum 1 don’t come close.
I much prefer it over 2/2/2, but the correct comp is almost always 3 tanks, 2 supports, and 1 DPS. That’s just the nature of tank design right now. I don’t think has real competitive potential either without a bunch of hero reworks.
I find it ironic that we cannot get enough tank players, but the team with the most tanks tends to win.
Triple tank with 2 supports and a single DPS seems to be by far the best comp.
I think there are plenty in 5v5 because of the neigh-invincible nature of the tank role. The mantra of 5v5 is don’t shoot the tank, kill the supports, allowing tanks to get away with absolutely murder while standing out in the open.
6v6 requires synergy and team work between all roles, but the greater the synergy and teamwork, the more quickly the win. If you haven’t been on the receiving end of a 6v6 dive where you were helpless to do anything because your team wasn’t working together, then you didn’t play enough 6v6. (Not you specifically, just all players)
Minimum 1 requires role adaptability, and as you correctly stated, a three/one/two comp.
I prefer 2-2-2. But, I like m1M3 better than 5v5.
It’s human nature: I don’t want to be the single tank, but paired up with 2 more? sure, lets go
People are usually willing to flex onto tank if needed when they want to win. Almost nobody wants to queue specifically for tank. It’s a different feeling.
I kinda wish there was a way to keep both modes. Because there is a charm to both styles of play. Most days I want to play a normal fps and 5v5 is better for that. Other days I want to play that clutter filled goats chaos hehe. Playing 3 tanks as Zarya can be really fun lol. I have an issue if either becomes the only option we have. I wish there was some way we could have both without splitting the community tbh.
I actually find myself enjoying tank a lot more in 6v6. Especially Mauga is someone I hate in 5v5 but love in 6v6. He’s just so easy to counter in 5v5 but in 6v6 you can play around your counters a lot easier. And when i have 3 tanks he’s a blast to play lol. I can’t say the same for whatever poor soul picks dps on the other team hehe
This is me 100%. I won’t queue for tank in 5v5, like at all. Doesn’t matter to me that it’s overtuned and nearly impossible to kill. I’m a DPS/Support player.
6v6, I’ll hit flex without hesitation. Minimum 1, I’ll swap to tank if it will help us win.
It’s one of the best iteration the game had from the relaunch with ow2. Or better, it’s the best version of the game i’ve played in ow2 for now. Never liked Role queue and stopped playing the game for 2 years after the release in ow1. Luckly Open queue in ow2 is normal gamemode and not arcade. This min 1 max 3 is what they’ve had to do back in what it was 2018-19 when they forced everyone with role lock.
It is human nature, but not as you describe it.
If someone is given a choice BEFORE the game which role they should play, knowing that the other roles will be filled (1-2-2 and 2-2-2) then they will choose the role(s) they enjoy the most and not pick the ones they don’t.
If they are not given a choice before the game then, in the game, they will choose whichever roles need filling to give a good comp (3-1-2 for example) even though they are playing a role which is not their favourite.
In-game choice is made on a different criteria (winning) than pre-game choice (most fun role).
The issue they create with min1max3 is that the best comp is usually 3-1-2 and, since the choice is made in-game rather than pre-game, people will gravitate to picking those roles for the best chance to win. Unfortunately, 3 tanks is generally not very fun for anyone.
The ideal is 2 tanks so why not min1max242 or min1max243? Either of those would give a much better experience, not only because we are not almost forced to play 3 tanks, but because 1 person on each team gets out of being forced to play tank if they want their team to win.
Making a mode that makes more people play their least favourite role to win is not really making the game more fun. Sure, it’s making the queues shorter, but over time it will lead to people going off the game if they are playing tank in way too many games.
I think that it would fit in splendidly as a replacement to the current 5v5 Open Queue, both QP and Ranked modes. And in a world where a compromise needs to be reached between going back to a 6v6 format and resolving the queue time problem, m1m3 would be a good starting point, in my eyes.
It seems to me that the only reason Tank is least played is because it takes learning a specific type of skill to get to the fun factor.
The amount of times I’ve heard players say things like “I don’t want to play Tank and hold a shield up all day for my DPS to try and kill the enemy team” and my first thought is “why are you holding up your shield all day?”.
I mean, I guess I can’t harp too much because at one time, I used to think playing Tank was boring… but the moment you realize how to be impactful and learn how to read the fight and what to do, it became just as fun as playing the other roles. In fact at times, it was more fun than the other roles.
The problem is most players are in metal ranks and most of those players don’t think through what is actually happening. It’s just “I see an enemy so I shoot at them until one of us dies”. They aren’t tracking enemy cool downs to know when they are weak. They aren’t going after punishable targets and have any target priority in general. They don’t know if they are even winning the fight or not until everyone on one of the teams is dead.
They don’t know when they have the advantage and can be more aggressive or when they have to stabilize and poke or flat out retreat.
So when you are playing DPS, you just shoot at stuff until one team wins. If it wasn’t your team, you flame your teammates in random toxicity and move on.
If you are playing support, you just healbot and pat yourself on the back for doing something.
But Tanks don’t really get that same luxury as the other roles of feeling like they are doing a lot when in reality, it’s because they really aren’t doing anything.
Either they aren’t doing well and they feel that because they blow up or they are doing well and they are getting direct value, but the problem is, a lot of lower skilled players are merely guessing at what they should be doing. If you don’t know when to push the advantage, you probably aren’t ever doing it except by accident because it happen to be the time that you decided to march in on the enemy. If you don’t know that you should be stabilizing and you decide to march in, you die.
If you don’t know you should be retreating and you march in, you die.
So if you don’t know when you should do what, you only have a 33% chance of doing the right thing at the right time when you decide to march in no matter what (and even then, it’s probably less than 33% chance because things happen quickly in moments and if you miss those short timed advantages and go in 5 seconds too late, you might be on the side dying instead).
It’s a shame because tanking is fun and would be far more popular if it wasn’t for the fact that a specific skill that is valuable across all roles, wasn’t ignored, but it’s a skill set that Tank players must get down to have any success where as other roles can get away with feeling like they are doing more than they are when they also don’t have that skill.
I personally prefer 5v5 Kingmaker mode as I think it provides the most compromises and best of all kinds. They just need to buff each kingmaker hero on its own terms.
But regardless of what mode Blizzard chooses, it won’t make much difference until they tackle the excessive cheating and smurfing.