Hello!
Just wanted to post my quick thoughts on what I believe might be a good idea to help “fix” the tank role. Hoping maybe some of the devs possibly still read the forums but I know that’s a longshot. Here’s my feedback though just in case!
So, it’s no secret that the tank role is really, really struggling right now. It has felt probably the worst it’s been to play in quite a while now, maybe even since the start of OW2, but I think that is because of one main issue: identity. To me, it seems like the roles of Overwatch have lost a bit of their identities, with this being most prominent on tank (I think it is true somewhat on support too and by proxy DPS but I’ll get to that later).
What I mean is each role of this game is unique and the jobs they’re supposed to be doing throughout a match are different. I absolutely love that about the game though and always have since the very beginning: a team coming together to each do their unique jobs and execute a plan to win. That aspect about the game just makes it so different and fun compared to other FPS games out there I feel, and I think deep down the community does as well even if they might complain about not being able to solo carry like as if they were playing counterstrike.
With that in mind, my ideas of what each role does are as follows:
A) The Tanks - Absorb damage and cooldowns as well as draw attention away from other
squishier targets on their team
B) The DPS - Put out the highest amount of damage and secure eliminations
C) The Supports - Heal their allies and enable their team (whether through healing or other buffs such as speed or damage boost)
What I think is the most off here is the tanks’ ability to do pretty much most of their jobs. In all the hype about moving over to 5v5 and making the game more individually skill-based the tank’s role got lost. To me, it seems like the sentiment was to move everyone towards a more damage dealing style of play, but in the end that just really ended up encroaching on the DPS’s job, which made those characters feel pretty useless for the longest time (remember all those seasons where DPS just felt like they had no impact), and is likely (at least partially) a factor that went into the decision to up the health pools and give the DPS the larger projectile hitboxes & passive they have today. As mentioned earlier, I also feel that the support role followed somewhat of a similar path as well, which again goes into the DPS role feeling useless for a good bit of time, although I don’t think the supports’ jobs got nearly as forgotten as the tanks since healing is still a huge (and quite obvious) part of the game.
So, what is there to do then? Well, I think we start by separating the roles a bit more into what they should be (in my humble opinion that is). To start off, I think tanks should not do as much damage. I don’t mean as in they do barely any damage at all, but definitely much less than what they’re doing now. In return though they need tools to survive and do their jobs more effectively. There would definitely need to be more damage mitigation for just the tank (maybe in the form of a revamped passive) so that they don’t just continue exploding. They need to be… well… tanky to say the least. There’s also other things the devs were doing that seemed like good ideas but never fully came to fruition.
For example, I think the devs were on the right track with removing CC from other characters outside the tank role and only giving it to tanks in the first place (especially in the 5v5 format since there’s only ever one tank per team at a time; hence only one person on each team can CC on a cooldown at a time). I believe they should keep doing this with even more abilities, such as getting rid of Mei’s freeze slow, Cassidy’s hinder, sombra’s hack interrupt, and even Ana’s sleep dart to name a few (yes, even the sleep dart). I myself am still on the fence about boops. I think they’re fine for the most part as long as they’re not on an extremely short cooldown but I could see a world where they get too strong if they’re buffed too much. So overall, tanks are the only ones who’d get CC abilities and with less damage being dealt by tanks in this scenario I think they’d need those abilities to help survive and still provide immense value to their team.
Next for tanks, and this is probably the most radical thing I’d do for the role just to see if it would work, is give all of them complete immunity to all CC. I’ve been debating with myself on whether or not it would need to be all the time or maybe they’d have like 2 charges of CC immunity that’d have to recharge over some period of time so that eventually they could be CC’d if they get too greedy perhaps (probably the latter). I feel this would be the perfect thing to make up for the decrease in damage too. You could go try to make plays even with the less damage and not have to worry about getting stun locked for 8 seconds while you explode. Also, there’s a possibility it could help with some of the counterswapping as well somewhat although not fully (with OW having different heroes with different kits there’s just always going to be one with a kit that is more affective against another than others).
I think these changes would go a long way to helping the tank role feel much better and much more like a tank to play. I know some people might complain that less damage would feel horrible and that you can’t kill anything on your own (or solo carry in other words), but that is mainly the DPS’s job to secure elims anyways as stated above. OW is a team game and you need to work with your team to win; that is truly the core of the game at its heart and what makes it so fun! The other aspect of these changes to think about is that as a tank it will also feel much, much better and more impactful as well as fun (I believe) to play when you do absorb damage and/or CC cooldowns for your team that would have otherwise changed a fight; basically, you could be an actual tank in the truest sense playing like that. That’s what the role’s job is! Also, again, not saying the damage needs to be insufferably low, but low enough just to compensate for the CC immunity and survivability tanks would get (and to not encroach so much on the DPS role of course).
Quick side note: there could be a situation where if tanks were made too survivable they could end up stalling for way too long, but it could also be that if they were nerfed any further then they’d just start exploding again. In this case, if balance cannot be reached for each tank (although I suspect it can be) a rule might need to be implemented for stalling capture points and payloads where if you outnumber the enemy tank the cart/capture progress continues anyways. I think that is an extreme case though and not likely with some balance tweaks over time.
Lastly, I did want to mention the supports. I am a support player myself and I do believe that over the course of OW2, and maybe OW in general, supports damage numbers have been getting bigger and bigger too. This is more of just a small addition, but these numbers might need to be looked at to make sure supports aren’t just DPS with healing abilities. Not saying supports only need to heal either, just that the role should primarily be enabling your team by healing and other things such as speed or boosts.
Anyhow, thanks for reading all that if you did. I’d be interested to hear any constructive thoughts on the ideas above. I’m positive I haven’t accounted for every flaw this might bring about, but from what I’ve run through in my head it seems like it’d be a better direction for the game to move in. Love this game and I hope it continues to get better and better as time goes on!