MR really shows how bad OW's power creep has gotten

General Discussion
1

Iron man has infinite flight, spider man has 12 abilities when you count passives, Punisher has reaper shotguns, s76 rifle, and bastion turret with a shield. Yet somehow, some way, this game feels substantially less powercrept than Overwatch. Let’s focus on OW’s 2 problem roles, tank and support

What are the strengths a tank can have? Typically

  1. Damage
  2. Zoning
  3. Survivability (for simplicity this counts both keeping yourself alive and blocking stuff from your teammates)
  4. Mobility

It varies from game to game, but your archetypal tank is very strong and zoning and survivability, decent at damage, and poor in mobility, but you can change it up, for instance a dive tank trades some of the survivability or zoning for more mobility. Let’s look at some random marvel tanks

  • Groot - Decent damage, God tier zoning, decent survivability, bad mobility
  • Venom - okay Damage, mediocre zoning, god tier survivability, good mobility
  • Peni Parker - God tier zoning, good damage, decent mobility, bad survivability
  • Thor - God tier damage, decent zoning, mediocre survivability, decent mobility
  • Captain America - Bad damage, Mediocre Zoning, Good survivability, God tier mobility

Meanwhile some Overwatch tanks

  • D.va - Great Damage, mediocre zoning, God tier survivability, god tier mobility
  • Winston - Good damage, decent zoning, Good survivability, god tier mobility
  • Reinhardt - God tier damage, Good zoning, Good survivability, decent mobiltiy
  • Roadhog - God tier damage, god tier zoning, god tier survivability, bad mobility
  • Orisa - Good damage, god tier zoning, great survivability, decent mobility

The tanks just aren’t allowed to have weaknesses in comparison, they’re good at almost everything and rarely subpar in more than 1 thing, and when they do have weaknesses it’s not inherent stuff to their kits, it’s boring ZZZ rock paper scissors gameplay like beams completely ignoring defense matrix free, nade completely robbing hog of all his sustainability for free, hack robbing ball of all his mobility for free, etc.

Similar story with the supports. Broadly there are two types of healing. Sustain healing, that keeps someone who is consistently taking damage alive, and triage healing, which quickly saves someone who is about to die.

MR supports, despite being incredibly strong, are usually one or the other. Rocket Raccoon is exclusively sustained healing, if someone’s taking burst damage he can’t save them. Adam warlock is exclusively triage, he does an insanely strong burst of healing, but if he has to use it too often he can be stuck with 7 seconds of no healing available whatsoever.

When they do have both forms available, there is usually some other tradeoff. Mantis’ life orbs are a small burst of healing followed by a large amount of slow healing over time, so primarily for sustain, but in an emergency you consume all of your orb to stack the burst healing effect, but you’re throwing away you’re overall healing potential by doing this. Jeff the shark has both forms, but he’s close range and has to leave his fin form, greatly reducing his mobility and increasing his vulnerability, to heal people

in Overwatch Practically everyone released since Ana has sustain healing, a strong burst healing backup on ~10-12 second cooldown, one of these is usually long range, some status effects thrown in to annoy you, it’s just a mess

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This is reminding me of early OW1 arguments about how Genji actually has 8 passives, and using those same arguments, having to prove that Mercy has twice that.

Punisher doesn’t have an Bastion turret with a shield, he just has Bastion’s turret mode Ironclad from one direction.

As for Shotgun… Winter Soldier has it too, with much less ammo and better range.

Mobility-wise, he’s actually pretty good, but it’ll take some substantial time to build his ramps and ledges. He’s also really strong in crowd control.

He has the second highest damage of the Vanguards, but it is short-ranged and fairly narrow.

Wouldn’t call her damage good, wouldn’t call her mobility decent, wouldn’t call her survivability bad.

Probably the second most mobile character of the Vanguards. Venom would be better, Strange would sit in number three.

Nowhere close to good mobility.

Actually really good at zoning. Unless you like dying, that is.

Not really good damage, Primal Rage I guess is decent for zoning, barrier’s better at it.

No, damage, while good, isn’t god-tier. Wouldn’t call his mobility decent, either.

Roadhog doesn’t really zone that well, unless you’re running Whole Hog, and he isn’t great at damage, either.

No, I’d call Winston and Reinhardt better at zoning, than Orisa.

Tanks are generalized for a reason. They were intended, originally, to be only one per team and were designed to be something akin to a wild-card that could create safety and space for the team.

Those templates haven’t really changed with Overwatch’s age.

That’s actually the same thing. Triage healing is sustained healing. And all Supports are functionally built for triage-healing; they methods that they do it by, either through over time healing (per second intervals), or by burst (large chunks of healing, either through regular fire or by cooldown); is the core design of the Support-level healing in Overwatch.

No, Rocket is healing over time, he runs an ammo system, those produce bouncing balls that work like Moira’s Biotic Orbs, and have a set amount of healing per ball, and can only heal one target at a time, with a set capacity.

No, all healers in Marvel Rivals are triage healing. Adam Warlock is more closely angled towards burst, however.

Not slow, think of it like Regrowth from WoW.

Uh, this doesn’t improve healing. If you’re wanting to burst-heal with Mantis, you use her ultimate.

This is wrong. Jeff heals over time, and he can litter the field with bubbles that act like healing potions that can instantly heal others. Additionally, he can do this directly on an ally without having to leave a bubble behind.

This is wrong. Supports will have at least two abilities for healing, one that’s attached to their weapon through Primary or alternative fire, and then a secondary healing that’'s usually tied to a cooldown, or ultimate ability. Most cases, the secondary healing is area-effect, but not always. There are more area-effect healers in Overwatch, than there single-target healers.

This is also incorrect. Support healing in Overwatch is based on proximity, long-range or short-ranged. If you’re short-ranged, you usually have higher mobility, if you’re long-ranged, you usually have less mobility. There are heroes that sit in between these extremes, and some exceptions.

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The whole argument about tanks is null and void becauss in MR you can have more than one tank so they can afford to be balanced thay way, OW moved to one tank to appease DPS players so had to compensate tanks to be able to play in a solo environment.

8 Likes
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Not having weaknesses is just a sign of a bad design philosophy.

OW devs favor overlapp over specialization.
They want every role to do everything, but with slight flavor variations.

Going back to the basics of the hero shooter design is the way to go.

Tanks should have low damage and great survivability/space creation
DPS should have high damage with different flavors
Supports should have low damage with great utility/healing and good mobility/survivability

All exceptions to those basic rules must come with the necessary trade-offs.

Not only every hero must have its own trade-offs, but also every role must have a distinct and clear identity.

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They should also have a monopoly on crowd control, but devs never get that right either.

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They should have weaker survivability then.

Id also agree with most of this if OW was still a team game and encourage players to play like a team, its just glorfied deathmatch now

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It’s all about having trade-offs.
Either a bad survivability or a bad mobility.

2 examples:
Tracer: very squishy, highly mobile.
Torbjorn: quite resilient, almost no mobility.

Both heroes fit the DPS role quite well

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Theyve increased DPS survivability in OW2 as theyve tries making the game more about solo play.

Theyve given heroes good survivability without the best mobility and then those with mobility still have survivability

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Yeah, that’s a different story. That was the global HP buff, which has its benefits and drawbacks.

What matters is that there must be a good contrast between everything.
That global HP buff reduced the contrast a bit, but it’s still there to an extent.

As I said Torb and Tracer still play quite different to each other. Both have great damage, but with different playstyles

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Sure i dont disagree with that but it doesnt have anything to do with my original point, if balanced should be in the direction you said then DPS should overall have less survivability, they should REQUIRE their teams support to pop off.

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I mean, everyone got an HP buff.
Tanks got an even bigger HP buff.

DPS are still the least survivable role overall.

The contrast is getting weaker. The overlap is getting bigger.
I’m not defending the season 9 changes either. But I don’t believe that they fundamentally changed the game. It’s still the same overwatch but a bit more watered down.

Many reworks need to happen, regardless if they maintain or remove the season 9 changes

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Huh? How does Mercy have 16 passives. Using that logic, of course. Because Genji does have hella passives. Way more than Mercy unless I am mistaken. Enlighten me.

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Around 50-60% of OW players want DPS. Even after people complains that “DPS is cosmetic” this role this in demand and has a longer queue time. For downplay this case devs increased supports damage potential. And it is good, cause now they able to stand for themselves.
About tanks, devs already said, that they are not satisfied with the current state of affairs in days of OW1. This role was passive and boring. Mostly just role for giving space for your team. But people more like do kills, directly affect to match, not secondary. In result in OW2 we have clear DPS role and supports and tanks with makings of DPS
Even in OW1, devs wanted agressive tanks, that philosophy they want

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15

one of the biggest problems in overwatch is critical damage

in my opinion. all critical damage should be limited to 150%

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16

One of the biggest problems in Rivals is frame-rate being tied to fire-rate.

It’s p2w by default.

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You aren’t saying having better hardware is … oh I dont know… kind of like … cheating?

https://imgur.com/a/1V6GH1f

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No it’s not the same as cheating, it’s terribly built into the code of the game because the devs suck at math and engineering, which is surprising because of asian stereotypes.

I know you have no real defense to the fact Rivals is p2w though.

edit: so even in a cheater vs cheater scenario, it comes down to who spent the most money on the correct parts for their setup; p2w even on that level, LOL.

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I don’t need to defend it. It’s not pay to win - better hardware = better performance. I don’t know enough about UE5 to say for certain, but this sounds like something to do with inputs being registered on framerate. Even at high framerates there’ll be a cap, but at exceptionally low framerates (which is why they show 30 fps) you get a variance and less inputs registered for a small difference.

People trying to pretend this is make or break are deluding themselves, but why am I telling you this? It’s how you live.

Also, look up high precision mouse input and what it does in Overwatch. Better if you go watch the old video from OW1. P2W :drooling_face:

edit- one last thing though for Rivals’ problem - hopefully this is something that can be fixed with optimization and not just an unfortunate UE5 thing we’re stuck with. AND it doesn’t affect consoles at all.

4 Likes
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They have a flying mccree to counter that

Their snipers have a melee weapon not to mention all those invis auto lock kid heroes.

And can still be one shot or two tapped by others and not given trash passives to become a mini tank during those phases.

It’s literally the good of old overwatch like world you deal with threat of nukes with threat of nukes with everyone not by saying ok here you go some people can nuke someone during these phases but other times you can’t nuke which is what overwatch balancing has done.

When everything is op no one is the literal motto of overwatch which it has strayed away from.

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Just play 6v6 it’s still the same despite garbage s9 on top making tanks a lot more weaker than in their prime.