So I’ve heard about a time in Overwatch, or maybe they were imagining such a utopia, and there were three main team comps.
Poke, Brawl, and Dive
And it was like rock paper scissors where Dive countered Poke, Poke countered Brawl, and Brawl countered Dive, but how exactly did this work, and why did they counter each other so well?
Let me know if this question is too vague.
I haven’t played (m)any team shooters before Overwatch, but I’ve never heard of any other game having the weird interactions between updates, metas, and the community that Overwatch has had.
I would actually love for somebody (probably a bunch of somebodies) to do a multidisciplinary study of this game and its player base to find out what causes certain metas, and why people love/hate them.
This project would incorporate everything from straight mathematics to human behavioral science. I bet the results would be worth a whole book.
It’s gonna be a new science.
When students in the future are looking through their biodegradable textbooks, they should be quite entertained to find that the great convergence of the disciplines began with angry gamers.
I dont need a science proyect to tell you that
They were
There hasn’t been 2 metas ever, rock paper scissors would be the ideal but there’s always one that beats both and has no counter so you end up with mirror MUs
I don’t remember this. If it ever did happen it was just because the favored heroes of the moment weren’t set in stone for a while.
But how could it work, if the game were to be balanced around this, how would it work?
Like anything long ranged, sucks in close range, bad defensive abilities, bad escapes but exceptional at long range. And since Dive has the mobility to get close ranged (and is meant to be close ranged), they counter poke.
Poke counters brawl because they don’t have the mobility to close the distance between them and the opposition.
Brawl counters dive because of the higher close ranged burst damage and abilities that can go through/counteract the defenses of dive.
But it kinda sounds like a dumb idea having the game being played like rock paper scissors…
Timmy don’t demolish me
There was such a thing… kinda atleast.
The whole thing was more map-depanding and obviously dedicated by individual skill of the team and the player. Dive was still the strongest comp during this time BUT you had counterplay against dive on different maps and checkpoints on others where a teamvomp could counter Dive somewhat effectively.
For an example 1. Point Numbani was most of the times a “brawly” defence with Rein, Zarya on highground right and Ana and Soldier playing highground left while the attacker was most of the time run a version of Dive.
So, this idea has been really interesting to me for a while now and I’ve spent a fair bit of time thinking about it. The short version is that it never did work, and I’ll try to explain my thoughts on the why and how. This might get a bit long, so bear with me.
On paper, the idea of ‘Dive < Poke < Brawl < Dive’ makes a lot of sense. Dive heroes have high mobility that can close the distance quickly on the more stationary Poke heroes, the Poke comp can attack from range against the slower Brawl comp, whittling them down before they ever reach them and the Brawl comp has enough sustain to withstand dives and brute short range power to force them out before they can confirm kills. This is my understanding of how this concept works in theory, but in reality there are a lot of problems with it.
Next thing we’ll do is look at the main tanks, and what they do, because I feel (and I imagine most would agree) that they are the heroes that dictate the team compositions.
Reinhardt:
550 HP (300 Health, 250 Armour)
Hammer
Barrier
Charge
Fire Strike
Earthshatter
Winston:
500 HP (400 Health, 100 Armour)
Tesla Cannon
Jump Pack
Bubble Barrier
Primal Rage
Orisa:
450 HP (200 Health, 250 Armour)
Fusion Driver
Protective Barrier
Halt!
Fortify
Supercharger
Before we go further, I’d also like to remind everyone how armour works because I feel like that’s important. Armour will take 5 damage away from every attack that does more than 10 damage and anything less than 10 it will cut in half. Recently there was also a change made to beam type weapons that gave them -30% damage against armour.
Here are some examples of the heroes most negatively effected by attacking armour:
D.Va: 6.6-22 DMG/shot (vs Health), 3.3-11 DMG/shot (vs Armour)
Roadhog: 45-150 DMG/shot (vs Health), 22.5-75 DMG/shot (vs Armour)
Winston: 60 DPS (vs Health), 42 DPS (vs Armour)
Zarya: 95-170 DPS (vs Health), 66.5-119 DPS (vs Armour)
Reaper: 42-140 DMG/shot (vs Health), 21-70DMG/shot (vs Armour)
Sombra: 48-160 DPS (vs Health), 24-80 DPS (vs Armour)
Symmetra: 60/120/180 DPS (vs Health), 42/84/126 (vs Armour)
Torbjorn (Secondary Fire): 37.5-125 DMG/shot (vs Health), 18.75-75 DMG/shot (vs Armour)
Moira: 50 DPS (vs Health), 35 DPS (vs Armour)
So when we look at the numbers, abillites and armour interactions I think it becomes pretty obvious that Orisa is just better than Winston and Reinhardt before we ever even consider the heroes that work well with them. Up against Orisa with Fortify active, Winston is only doing 25.2 DPS while also being totally immune to all CC for 4 seconds. On top of that, Orisa’s barrier last for more than twice as long as Winston’s with a 3 second shorter CD while only having 100 less HP. Against Reinhardt, Orisa can output 1650 damage with one full use of her primary fire and Fortify completely nullifies Reinhardt’s Charge and Earthshatter.
Orisa has arguably the best CC abillity (Halt), the undisputedly best anti-CC/don’t die abillity (Fortify), the best DPS output among tanks (headshot, minimal spread, no damage falloff, high rate of fire, high projectile speed) and arguably the best damage boosting abillity in the entire game (Supercharger).
If you take all that and then add heroes like Sigma, Baptiste and Brigitte to the mix what can you really do? What are the weaknesses of a composition like that? You’re dead if you try to dive into it and you’re dead if you have to slowly plod your way onto whatever high ground(s) they are holding.
To make the game work in the aforementioned rock, paper, scissors balance strategy you would probably have to rework half of the roster and even if they managed to create that balance it still would not work because of the ability to switch heroes during the match. If you were playing a bunker comp, and the opponents were playing dive, why would you stick with the bunker if it looses to dive? So, your team switches to brawl/rush, your opponents switch to bunker, you switch to dive and it goes on forever and ever and ever and ever…
TLDR;
Never happened, probably never will, probably shouldn’t.