I used to be part of the “Reinhardt should be nerfed” crowd until this week. When you look at pickrates this week, Orisa and Sigma are being picked together again. If you nerf Rein and take him out of the equation, we will be back in double shield meta.
Why is this? Sigma and Orisa both are terrible main tanks. But when you put them together, there’s enough shielding to protect the team. Remember: Orisa’s shield (600 health) and Sigma’s shield (900 health) combined is 1500 shield health, just 100 lower than Reinhardt’s.
Reinhardt doesn’t need nerfs, but Sigma and Orisa do need to be buffed to his level. This will be tricky because we’re not far off another double shield meta.
Yeah this is true. OP’s math is bonkers. It should also be noted that the other big element for them is placing their shifts after each other to get pseudo barriers. Fortified Orisa and Kinetic Grasp Sigma both function as a barrier of sorts, despite not technically adding to that flat barrier HP in a direct comparison to what Rein has. It also means that they can get barrier recharge from queueing their partner’s barrier then their shift then their partner’s shift. They used to be able to stand in formation for a good while eating the enemy damage if they queued their barriers/shifts correctly. Now they also have to rely on cover to recharge more often.
They also both work together in breaking the enemy barriers, compared to Rein/Zar where it’s specifically the Zarya’s job (though she does it very well).
That’s why they need to do what they should have done a long time ago; limit the team to one shield tank. The thing is realistically even with sigma and orisa nerfed, double shield with rein and orisa is the second most viable comp behind rein zarya. Double shield will always be an issue for this game unless they do this.
It’s inevitable, barriers are mandatory, Orisa + Sigma is just like having a 1500 barrier + 2 off tanks behind it shooting, lets say it’s like playing D.Va and Hog with a 1500 deployable barrier you just got as an extra item in the spawn (just an hypothetical extrapolated example).
You nerf it, playing 2 barriers is necessary.
You buff it, playing 2 barriers is a bonus.
If they nerf rein then dps ques will triple because no other tank will be worth playing. I hope they do it so that dps and support mains realize how crucial tanking is. I’ll gladly hop on dps and insta lock torb and bastion, nothing else
They need to just make a rule; if you play more than one barrier tank (Reinhardt, Orisa, Sigma, Winston) all tank barriers on your team are reduced by 30%. Then, buff Orisa and Sigma’s barriers significantly. That way, they can be played individually, but together they are weakened - but not so much that double barrier can’t exist at all, it’s just not dominant.
Also a lil side note. Dva this month has lower damage output than both sigma and orisa and is also 10x easier to deal with… Sigma almost outputs more damage than hog and zarya yet has a shield + CC + damage negation.
It baffles me to this day how devs didnt see the double shield issue forming when the kits are so overloaded in comparison to rein
If they buff Orisa/Sigma’s kit and not their shields, they can prevent barrier stacking from being anymore problematic than a rein shield. And if they are even smarter about what aspects of said kit they buff, they can leave enough weakness for dive to be viably run against it too. Ultimately that’s what we should want, multiple tank comps being able to check each other in different ways.
If you play on competitive right now, it’s all double barriers with Sigma and Orisa.
If you go anything else, you are at a major disadvantage.
Don’t forget that Orisa and Sigma can still fire constantly while their shields are deployed, while Rein has to choose either attack or defense, not both.
Also they have other tools such as Halt, Fortify and Matrix to fill in the shield downtime.
Only reason Rein was good (Not anymore with Echo release), is that with lucio and zarya you could bypass the walk time it takes to get close to them and brawl.
I’ve updated my OP.