imho, he can “dominate the meta” because he is the most balanced main tank in game.
Moreover, for Tankers who had been playing Rein (and suffering from being ganked, bounced around, stunned, frozen etc), this current iteration with just 2 adjustments - movement speed with shield up + anti-cc passive - has felt the best it had ever been.
He is now a viable threat because he is not longer slower than a snail in molasses and can close the distance at a decent rate to slam Red Team players with a hammer. As much as i enjoy playing Hammond, i am enjoying using him again and he was my “main” from when i first started playing this game.
Because he can move faster and is resistant to CC, a lot of the other tank characters compliment him well.
Without needing Lucio all the time, Supports are free to pick suitable / enjoyable characters.
It is not that so much that he is OP, just that he is so balanced that the other barrier tanks do not stand much of a chance to be used over him.
A completely overpowered hero, to the point of being obligatory, is not balanced. It’s literally the opposite of being balanced.
As far as feeling good, no kidding, it’s almost like a laughably overpowered hero with all his downsides removed is really effective! Who’d have thought!
Yeah, I’d agree with Orisa being more difficult than commonly thought. There was a lot of bad Orisa play during her meta, mostly over-hesitant players who wouldn’t seize ground.
The thing with Orisa over the past few months is that she was meta-supported, which does make her easier. The same is true for Reinhardt–whenever you have a Zarya, or Lucio, or Brigitte, or frankly even characters like Ana or DVa, you get coverage on your weaknesses and Reinhardt becomes considerably easier to play. That’s not a flaw of the character, it’s just how metas work.
But, take them out of the meta context, and Reinhardt’s always been the safer, more-effective option because he is just flat-out easier. There’s a reason he’s been the staple pick for pretty much all of OW history below the meta level. That doesn’t mean he’s OP–he isn’t–but it speaks to how much more difficult characters like Orisa or Sigma or Winston are as compared to Reinhardt.
It’s hard to delineate what healthy tank usage should look like because there are so many options, but ideally, Orisa should just be unquestionably the go-to on static defensive maps like 2CP. Winston should be an obvious pick for high-ground rich maps, and Sigma and Reinhardt should be competing for the same niche in other offensive maps and more-mobile defensive maps. Currently, it’s really just: Rein, Rein, and more Rein. Orisa and Sigma need buffs, and Winston… is challenging because I think he’s mostly fine, but maybe a couple of small buffs
He walks a little faster with his shield up, and got a little more on his passive. The former is meh, and the latter is somewhat decent. If Orisa and Sigma hadn’t been gutted just after that things would be a lot closer in pick rate.
“Balanced” is the appropriate word and that is different from “viable” and “suitable”.
However, i would admit that i am looking at things from a MMORPG as well as a computer and tabletop RPG perspective, from which MOBAs drew their inspiration from and from which OW is partially (if not wholly) influenced by, being a “team-based” shooter heavily reliant on abilities and ultimate abilities.
Balance, to the RPG community, be it MMO or single-player computer and tabletop, is that a character (class / job in final fantasy XI and XIV etc) is that it synergises well with others and is only “OP” if it can take all and kill solo be it in 1v1 or 1v10. “OP” classes do not need to work with any other classes and can take on the entire game by itself with little to zero effort.
To be honest, Reinhardt, at the moment, is very balanced to me, just like Genji; Tracer; Ana; Lucio; McCree; Zarya; even Mei is. In fact, a case can be made for Ana being OP-ed because right now, her CC is the most “oppressive” because it is 5 seconds long! (It is not, of course).
He is simply used because he is just so optimally adjusted compared to Sigma and Orisa at the moment. Because if Orisa and Sigma were around in their pre-Patch 1.41 iterations, would anyone actually be using Reinhardt, in his current iteration, all that much?
Personally, though, just between you and me, i believe that the Devs will nerf Rein because their solution to “metas” has always been a “nerf this, gut that” approach instead of averaging things out by introducing good buffs/adjustments to make characters more enjoyable to play.
I really wish they could just make everything mostly viable. I don’t want Reinhardt to be completely unviable because I enjoy playing Zarya sometimes. The problem is, if he’s obligatory, you have to play him sometimes; you can’t just squat on Zarya and hope the other tank will do it.
Winston, D.va, Tracer, and Zenyatta are all fine. They do well sometimes. What they need is Mercy and maybe Genji needs some power rebalancing so he can be good outside of blade.