For this thread I’m not going to propose or advocate for a change. This isn’t about that. Rather, this is just going to be an illustration and a thought exercise as to how we got into our current game dynamic in regards to the the shields generally thought of as for team protection*.
*Notation there is that this will, by it’s nature, exclude discussion on Winston’s shield, because that shield is more generally for facilitating his own attacks rather than for his team’s defense.
So we’ll start here. Imagine you’re playing a top-down party RPG, and you have to go into the great unknowns. You have three shields you can chose from to protect the team. 1: A very strong shield that has the downsides of not covering a lot of area and doesn’t move once placed down. This means it is easier for enemies to circumvent and you yourself can’t move much without compromising the protection it brings. 2: A very nimble shield that can go wherever you need it at that moment. It is substantially weaker, but at least you can keep responding to emerging threats. 3: A shield that is a hybrid of the first two; it is stronger than the weakest shield, but not as nimble as that second shield. You get a bit more protection, but it isn’t as quick to move around and protect the team.
This feels balanced, doesn’t it? Each shield has tradeoffs and different strategies you’d want to employ under their protection. Each one feels like it should compliment a different party composition or at least offer something for consideration when you’re making your selection. But that isn’t what we have here in OverWatch, as I’m quite sure you already surmised where this was going.
What we have here in OverWatch is the strongest shield also is quite nimble (though not the most nimble) and covers the most area. There is only one tradeoff - that the shield can’t be thrown in someone’s face or up to great heights. That’s it. The other shields start off dramatically weaker and suffer from numerous other drawbacks besides that.
This is why we’re currently in a situation where teammates pressure the tanks to play Rein. And that people are tired of seeing Rein in every game, typically on both teams. And people complain about the lack of viable options in the tank lineup, because one hero has all of the shield without compromise. And people are tired of playing Rein and want more variety.
Before you start typing out a very angry response, yes, I know why this is. It is because we balance shields based on the hero that wields them; not balancing shields as a separate entity that needs give and take between the big three. But as I stated in the first part of my post, this is about illustrating how we got here and why it’s unlikely to ever change.
But if you always start with the same premise or framing device “these heroes need to be individually balanced” as opposed to “we need a balanced shielding dynamic in this game with give & take depending on which shield you bring”, then nothing will change. Starting from the same point, and filtering it through the process of “these heroes need to be balanced (as opposed to these shields need to be balanced), will always result in the situation we have now. One hero is allowed to have a shield with all of the best qualities, then we sigh in frustration when we have an exceedingly narrow range of options to protect the team.
If we are ever to get other options for shields, it’s going to be filtered through that same process. The only way we get any other decent shields will be if they are put onto a hero that is otherwise exceedingly weak or the most boring to play. Because balance. And it’s quite odd that only tank players are ever asked to make such selfless choices on behalf of their team. Think about this in regards to supports-
Supports come the closest to being asked to make the most sacrifices on behalf of the team, because the team will pressure them for at least one of them to be a “main” healer. But you can still play two main healers without issue. Nobody makes threads saying that running two main healers should automatically cut their healing in half, or that Role Queue needs to split healing into “main” and “off” to prevent the return of double-main-healer meta. Nobody gives all of the healing without compromise or tradeoff to one single healer, then balances all other healers to still only be barely viable when paired with said main healer. No team absolutely, positively, without-a-doubt must run Moira to have enough heals for their team.
Now change that dynamic around. Do we have only one main DPS? If someone goes Ashe, do teams pressure the second DPS to not go McCree because we fear the returned of the “double-hitscan” meta? Isn’t it odd that DPS are mostly a good lineup and can work in most situations and we don’t have threads saying that “DPS” role queue needs to only allow one precision hitscan?
Anyway, all this is food for thought. Maybe we need to change our thought process on tanks, maybe we don’t. I’m just saying that we’ve painted ourselves into a corner with the way we frame the discussion on tanks and shield balance, and that’s resulted in the situation we have now.