Tanks should be on their power level of there peak.
Though, some of these could get toned down like Sigma // D.Va.
Although, I find it silly that tanks that had the option of being played with a second partner are still worse than there “solo tank” version of themselves. This is outrageous. Hopefully we get an update, and MAYBE, MAYBE, some crucial changes to the OW2 tank role.
As a tank player, we want to tank. Not deal damage.
We don’t play DPS, we play tank. And what do tanks do? We block damage, make space, and push for our team-mates. That’s what I find fun in tank. I don’t want to be a “bigger DPS”. I want to be the “Protector & Engager.” I don’t want to be a “High Health DPS.”
Hot take: The tank should be the most powerful character on the team if we’re doing 5v5. If you’re gonna shove the responsibility of an entire role on one person, then give them the tools to actually do it.
With OW2 making Tanks the battering-ram of the team rather than the shield–which I don’t mind, if done right–it would require a lot of effort and intricacy to get it right. Some ideas:
D.Va: mobile and packing firepower, but pretty fragile compared to the rest of the Tanks. She should be the glass-cannon of the role.
Orisa: an immovable object that’s great for bunkering down positions, she should be hard to displace, but not able to transition easily.
Reinhardt: pretty much the standard Tank. I’d like to see them remove or reduce the movement penalty he has when Barrier Shield is deployed (as a way for him to get into damaging range effectively).
Roadhog: his main takeaway is that he’s a bodyguard (for one person, thanks to his size), and is very brutal in his methods. He should have the kill potential, but pretty one-note in terms of anything else (a one-trick pony, but in a good way).
Sigma: elegant and strategic, he’s probably one of the current Tanks that should require the most management with their abilities (he can excel at damaging and durability, but only under the right conditions).
Winston: he’s mobile, but that’s pretty much all he has. He can displace well, but doesn’t really have much else going for him. Perhaps experiment with making him either bulkier or deal more damage?
Wrecking Ball: is definitely going to need a damage increase on his Quad Cannons, and perhaps a durability meter for his Grappling Claw to avoid spin-to-win occurrences.
Zarya: what was shown for her was fine, but she could perhaps get a reduction as to how much ammo her weapon consumes.
Here’s an idea I think could work: give Tanks some fraction of Damage Resistance ( just a flat out baseline DR%) , but it only works if they getting damaged from two or more sources at once. Call it the “Hardened” ,or “Grit”, or “Tough Cookie” passive or whatever.
Or let them fight to negative HP if that’s too fancy. (You could call this one “Last Stand”)
Or, maybe the team gets an audio/visual cue when their Tank’s armor breaks or they down to 25% hp or something, I’m just spitballing here.
I’d like to remind everyone that Sigma and D.va were only problems for higher levels of play. Generally speaking, they were fine. That’s not to say that higher levels of play should be ignored, or that those two should be buffed again, but I don’t think it would be hard to make them powerful while still having healthy downsides.
For Sigma, I’d make it so he could only do one thing at a time. No canceling his abilities, which means you need to wait until your animations are done before you can do anything else.
Stacking tanks has been a problematic balance issue from GOATS to Double Shield metas – the tanks individually don’t always feel strong to play, but they are far too strong stacked.
Removing tank stacking allows Blizzard to make tanks individually feel strong. I feel like this has been the goal from the start.
I’m not disagreeing with you, but isn’t that a bit of a contradicting statement? If the tank has all these responsibilities then it’s only because the tank role is far more impactful than the other two roles, whereas if the tank role isn’t as impactful then they’re not going to have responsibilities because the main difference will between DPS or Supports
But the big question would be, would it be enough? I mean, that’s not a bad idea at all, but would being able to eat a few bodyshots from 2+ opponents be more effective?
At lower ELOs the bodyshot thing would be more helpful and at higher ones your idea would be better, that’s how I think it would shake out, most likely.
I mean that since the tank role is supposed to be equally impactful as the other roles, the the individual tank player must be twice as strong to compensate. Like them doing the jobs of both the main tank and off tank since just doing one or the other leaves the team with a big weakness.
Do I think it’s going to happen? No, not a chance, especially if the Zarya “buffs”–where her barrier has like half the uptime now–are any indication.
But yeah, this would be nice. Realistically, if you want the solo tank to feel good, they’re going to need to be more powerful than they are now. But I just don’t see any evidence that’s what will actually happen
i still wonder how some tanks are gonna work solo actually. zarya and roadhog, they dont seem like good solo tanks. i also have the feeling rein is gonna be meta
The problem right here is that this doesn’t speak for all tank players, this is a minority of the tank players who enjoys. I do think that tank damage shouldn’t be that high but they should be able to basically just int at the enemy team. Problem is that when your health is that high, you basically need to do winston tesla cannon levels of damage to a single target if not lower to not be able to kill anything that gets the tiniest bit of healing.
Very few people enjoy being the person who basically only gets assists in a pvp game.