Priority Passes is an insult

General Discussion
1

I honestly think this move is extremely insulting to people who actually play tank (and to a lesser degree, support) because rather than making the quality of life of tanks/supports better in order to help queue times, Blizzard’s basically saying “We’ve given up on making it a good experience, so now we’re just going to force you to either play tank/support for some of the time, or face the wrath of 30 minute DPS queue times.”

DPS queue times weren’t always as atrocious as they are now, but over the course of role queue, they’ve gotten worse and worse. Why is this? Well, you could ascribe to Jeff’s “ice-cream” theory and just say that it’s because people like DPS more, but the fact that queue times are getting worse and worse over time is a good indication that changes to the game are scaring off tanks/supports.

So maybe (I mean, just maybe, this idea is pretty out there), the fact that literally every tank except for Winston and Zarya have received heavy nerfs since RQ came out MIGHT be scaring away tanks.

Maybe the proliferation of extremely powerful hitscan + Tracer comps MIGHT be scaring away supports, especially since Blizzard is keen on nerfing Brig, the only support who could actually survive at least 1 hit from a Widow or potentially deal with Tracer.

Maybe the death-death-death meta of increasing damage, decreasing heals, and decreasing defense methods is making tanks/supports LESS fun to play and dps MORE fun to play.

And maybe the fact that it’s been over a year since we’ve gotten a new tank or support despite the fact that DPS have more heroes than tanks AND supports combined might also make both of these roles feel extremely stale.

The rising DPS queue times are because tanks/supports are leaving the game or switching over to DPS due to the fact that there are serious issues with the tank/support roles. And what is Blizzard’s solution? Essentially acknowledging, “yeah, we’re just going to force DPS players to play tank (with a dash of support occaisonally) or suffer the 30 minute queue times as a consequence.”

Some of us LIKE the tank/support roles, and want to see them get love. Fix your queue times by actually caring about a role other than DPS for once, Blizzard.

66 Likes
2

more than an insult, it is a relatively “sterile” solution. as you pointed out, this feature once again facilitates dps players rather than making the gameplay of other classes interesting. but I think the problem is another, perhaps much more delicate: abnormal expectation that is swelling around OW2, or the day when we will officially return to have new heroes in the game.

the promise not to release new heroes was the true castration of the tank and support classes, which saw a further block on the launch they could acquire. ow seriously needs new heroes, heroes who create new countering, otherwise we will always have the same picks with which to face certain support and tank heroes … and as we all know, when these are nerfed in their certainties (eg the barrier of orisa or brigitte’s supporting) these completely lose their original countering … and there are very few alternatives to deal with a particular pick … the variety that dps can enjoy is missing.

but I don’t find it consistent to call this feature an insult. frankly they’ve done a lot worse in the past (like the release of echo, another dps that we certainly didn’t need as fascinating in her concept.

11 Likes
3

Even when tanks were at their strongest, people still didn’t play them :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

It just wasn’t a big deal until role queue came along because you didn’t need tanks. Anyone who played before role queue knows that many, many matches were lost because nobody would pick a tank.

32 Likes
4

When RQ first came out, DPS queue times would peak at around 5 minutes.

Now they’re peaking at around 30 minutes in some ranks.

Saying that this has “always” been a thing and that nothing is changing is categorically incorrect. It has most definitely gotten worse, which I talked in detail about why in my post.

Maybe, you know, you could read the post next time?

8 Likes
5

I mean, it’s just how it is

Tank has always been the least played role, tanks were too strong on top of that, so they got nerfed. Some people can’t handle the concept ahem so they just quit playing them altogether instead of adapting.

10 Likes
6

I think a lot of dps players are simply more comfortable playing dps, if they are rewarded by playing other roles they might get a taste of it enough to develop a liking

no amount of “love” is going to fix the imbalance between roles, sadly

4 Likes
7

Average you mean. When it came out, I remember that it peaked at 15 minutes for some players straight away. 5 minutes was queue timer for normal classic comp.

4 Likes
8

Allow me to just quote myself since we’re having the same argument in a different thread.

Buddykins, I’ll say the same thing to you here. If you want people to actually agree with you, you need to do more than just make statements without a shred of logic, reasoning, or evidence to back them up. Claiming that things are “just facts” is a quick way to make people realize you don’t know what you’re talking about.

1 Like
9

Actually it’s not an insult. It’s a feature to reward flexing with less wait time between games.

Hope this cleared things up.

Your handsome pal,

Handsome

10 Likes
10

There, I fixed it for you.

If they added 5 new DPS tomorrow, that would be a new feature, wouldn’t it? But for tank/supports who haven’t had a new hero in more than a year, it would also be an insult that they spent their design time making life better for DPS players while tank/support continue to be nerfed/ignored.

15 Likes
11

tanks literally used to unkillable for the most part

1 Like
12

Love it or hate it, the facts are facts

13

Actually I don’t think you did. Because some people just like playing flex but also want to play dps sometimes because they enjoy characters in all three roles. Hope this cleared things up.

Your handsome friend,

Handsome

12 Likes
14

you… you do realize that it’s exponentially faster and easier to implement something like this than it is to make, what, 5 new tanks and 5 new supports? bringing the tank and support classes even with dps is going to be a very long process. this token system isn’t their final solution, it’s a stopgap to fix queue times while they work on the class balance issue in the background.

the choice blizzard made wasn’t “do we implement a token system? or do we fix the tank and support classes?”
it was “do we implement the token system or do we just do nothing?”

so instead of trying to high road blizzard, why don’t we thank them for doing this thing we didn’t have to do? i’ve always been very cynical about blizzard’s approach to this game, but this is the first time since i started playing that i truly am happy about something they put in the game.

ps queue times at the beginning of role queue were obscene. they haven’t gotten a lot better, but they certainly haven’t gotten worse.

8 Likes
15

Yo Chris Paul got traded to the suns, wtf is this?

17

i saw your stupid icon while i was typing that out and i knew it was you, you son of a gun

phoenix got fleeced btw and okc could field an entire roster out of their picks over the next 3 years.

18

I am very surprised by your response. I thought Priority Queues was something we have always wanted for a long time.

Because I was very surprised by your response, I read it carefully. I think I see what you would prefer. I think I get it, but I don’t think you are aware of what it would take to get us there.

2 Likes
19

Sis that aint it.

GOATS existed purely because Widow determinated whoever won in pro-play and the GOATS team didnt have a strong Widow player so they instead stacked tanks and healers as a bandaid. They said so word for word. It and 2B have always been symptom metas that are rotative to whatever is less nerfed and could fullfil the job of surviving Widow and whatever hitscan of the month there is.

Launch Brig was overtuned, yes, but she still had counterpicks that made her life miserable. The issue is that pro-play has always been dominated by dps heroes that make Brig’s counterpicks trash.

14 Likes
20

My heart disagrees About the fleecing. The suns kept 10 this year which is weird. But whatever, Cp3 has a 100% success rate of getting guys named Deandre paid. He’s gonna teach book how to unleash the dragon

21

I appreciate that respect. In many ways, this feels frustrating because it is basically them saying, “Yeah, we get that playing tank is a chore, but if you do it, you’ll get to play DPS faster.” That’s why it feels like an insult to me. The only reason Tanking is becoming more of a chore is because of their changes and their lack of attention towards tanks/supports in general.

I get the feeling that this change will turn into an excuse to keep on caring more about DPS balance than tank/support balance. All I want is for them to actually give tank/support attention at creating new features and benefitting the heroes.

3 Likes