You hear this after pretty much every loss. Everyone assumes dps can insta-kill anything in their way and If they can’t they’re just bad. Did you ever stop to consider…now this might be a stretch…
Maybe the dps didn’t do anything…because generally dps can’t do anything?
Maybe, just maybe…dps are not as amazing as we all think they are. Just like the other roles need the other two to cover their weaknesses…maybe dps need the other roles to cover their weaknesses.
But Kev…what weaknesses do dps have?
Well let’s think for a moment. DPS have pretty low hp so their ability to make space for their team is pretty bad. They need tanks for that. They also generally don’t have the ability to heal or provide some kind of utility to their team so they need their healers for that.
And If their tanks can’t make space or their healers can’t, well…heal. Then DPS are about as useful as those training bots that shoot peas at you.
So maybe the next time we all start to dog pile the DPS after the game…we start to maybe look at ourselves and what we could’ve done to help them dps better. Just some advice from someone who plays DPS and hates getting blamed all the time. Also someone who plays tank and hates not getting blamed when they didn’t play well.
Generally, I only see people complaining about DPS doing nothing is when the tanks are tanking, the supports are supporting… and nothing on the enemy team is dying - push after push fails because the enemy team gets down to 1/4 health but things don’t die.
Without seeing the games you’re complaining about, it’s hard to know what was really the problem though. Maybe the tanks were bad, maybe the supports were bad, maybe the DPS were bad. Or maybe no-one was bad and the enemy was just better.
Problem is, players don’t get much actual feedback from the game besides the terrible medal system, so when a Tank or even a Support has Silver or Gold Elims, or Silver or Gold Damage, they automatically assume they’re doing the DPS’ job for them and they’re not contributing.
OW needs a better Player Feedback System, something that says “Well, for a Player of your rank and a 2 Round Match on Hanamura, 7K Damage is quite low, you should work on that.” or “Hey, you had 18K Healing for that entire match, and even though you lost, that was a solid performance, so we won’t take away as much SR as usual.”
Even then, stats aren’t the entire equation, and Impact is the more important metric, but the problem is there’s not much you can do in order for an algorithm to interpret the information in a meaningful manner that makes sense in the context of the game, unless it’s capable of viewing and analyzing the entirety of the match and each player’s performance individually.
The only thing that DPS provide (Excluding Sombra, Sym and Mei they’re utility based) is damage, so if that damage is being blocked or healed through or their team isn’t setting them up to do damage, they’re contributing nothing. Thats why independent burst DPS heroes are the most picked and often the best choices.
This. I only feel “the dps are doing nothing” when I’m playing around the choke taking 6 players worth of firepower for like an entire minute and nothing dies. My favorite is when I or my other tank finally eats it and then Widow gets a kill…wow, very helpful as the enemy team moves in to finish the slaughter. Back to square 1!
Nothing is dying, and were running out of resources too quickly: Tanks are playing Bad, we need to be more aggressive. Maybe grab a Lucio to Help
Tanks are in there fighting, but they die super fast: Either the Tanks are playing Badly, or the healers are.
You’re in the fight, but nothing is getting finished off despite standing on point for 30+ seconds: this is where it normally falls on the DPS, as it should. If you have space, and you still aren’t hitting shots, that is most definitely on you.
I just had a reaper run straight in the other team repeatedly while flaming rein for having more kills because he “Has more HP” and our mercy for healing us instead of the DPS.
I was Mei, my DPS partner was torb. And mercy was trash talking because we couldn’t contest a soldier in the Hollywood highground
Look girl, it would’ve taken at least 20secs to get on top of the highground. By that time he would’ve 100% dropped down
(He dropped down like. 7secs later…)
This happened to me the other day as McCree. We had a Wreckingball that was literally off on its own getting taken out on every dive it took it the player switched to Hog and fed like crazy.
Our mt was a Sigma who got focused. I have no idea what the other dps was doing. Our Lucio was focusing on trying for environmentals and not really getting them.
Our Moira literally never used healing orb and bragged about having “5 gold medals”.
Now, on support I main Moira so I know she should never have a Damage medal and getting elims is stupid easy when you use damage orbs.
I was eliminated literally right next to the Moira multiple times while the player focused purely on dps.
I had 4 silver medals and 1 bronze for objector time.
The Moria player blames our loss on “dps did nothing.” While I know with high certainty that had our a Lucio played with the team bopping away the enemy Reaper when the pressed in on a flank, or when our tank got pressured, and had the Moira used more healing instead of damage, we would have done better.
I can’t know with certainty if we would have won any of the rounds, but the fights would’ve been more contestable for certain.
It’s not solely any one persons fault, as it takes a team to work together so that each person can leverage their skill with that hero as best as possible.
And when 2/3 of your team ISN’T working together, it’s a sure way to experience defeat.
It’s because DPS have no control over teamfights. All they can do is “pew pew” at their enemies, something tanks and supports are capable of too. So you either insta-gib an enemy or shoot long enough to get your ult. Then press Q and hope things die; if not - repeat the cycle.
You can win without DPS, but you can’t win without tanks or supports. Hence why GOATs was effective and 3/4/5dps comps barely worked. And it was before role lock, before all these DPS nerfs in times when they needed buffs instead (you’ve limited damage available anyway).
half the time someone says, this team is terrible, or dps is bad at the end of the game, the other team was just way to strong for us. getting outplayed.
its not the team or dps’s fault, its a game, and you lose, its not the end of the world, and you’re not going to die if you don’t win in quickplay or comp.
