We could test out reduced damage to shield from hitscan shots. I would be open to seeing how that works. All hitscans do 50% less damage to shields.
Option 2 would be increase some heroes damage to shields like Junkrat and Pharah. But that would still make for boring “always shooting at shields” game mode.
AoE heals strong -> Shield/armor burst
Burst shieldbreak strong -> burst hitscan
Burst hitscan strong -> 2x shield
2x shield strong -> dive
Try to go dive -> hard countered by damage/healing creep
Thus the cycle is broken at the point where dive heroes get bullied.
Now you’ve run back into the root problem of Overwatch, there’s no true counter to mobility that doesn’t hard punish tanks. Dive will reign supreme again because Tracer has not changed fundamentally since launch and is only kept in check by overtuned longrange burst hitscan heroes and Brig.
Ah yes, all these problematic super strong hitscan heroes like Ashe (ill give you that one, Ashe is broken), Mcree (one of the lowest winrates and has nothing outside of gun and a mediocre cc), Soldier (bruh), and Widow (only op in Masters+, until then you can literally ignore her). Also lets ignore all the projectule heroes that are good like Torb, Doom, Genji, Echo, Junk (map specific, but op on his good maps), Pharah (same as Junk), Hanzo and Mei (same as Junk). Lets also ignore bad hitscans like Sombra and Reaper.