how that with EVIDENCE not with words
Last 6 months bronze to GM rein have 33.96% pickrate & Zarya 22.25%
On competitive you play REIN/ZARYA on high ranks REIN/SIGMA/ZARYA.
Zarya & Hog paired togheter are “Horrid” they lose 9/10 times vs rein/zarya & rein/sigma.
The game feels great now, yeah he did ruin the game with double shield but that’s gone now hallelujah
The cost was them making Orisa unplayable for anyone not in OWL.
Honestly, Sigma wasn’t that big of a problem. Double shield at the start was very strong and hard to deal with. It was used in ever single game. But in the past few months, double shield meta has not been very common. Double shield has only been very prominent in grandmaster ranks. But in the entirety of the game, Rein and Zarya are the most picked heroes, and both have a bigger win percentage.
Sigma made the game hectic for months after his release. But he’s not a big issue anymore. And nor did he nuke the tank roster. He’s definitely very useful to have in the game. Nerfed or not
Or, maybe, just maybe it wasn’t Sigmas fault, but morso because nearly every off tank had gotten a substantial amount of nerfs that made them all nearly useless, making double barrier more reliable in every way possible.
Nearly EVERYONE wanted a new barrier tank because playing Orisa/Rein was horrifically boring, and Blizzard delivered.
What they didn’t anticipate was him and Orisa becoming a duo considering no off tank could beat them.
If anything, the nerfed off tanks is what caused Sigma to appear so strong
Nobody could have predicted it? Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that there was absolutely no way to surmise that adding a strong and versatile shield tank into the game would result in teams running double shields at all times; it still took Blizz until December (5 months) to make any meaningful changes, and even those changes didn’t kill the double shield strategy.
Sigma was released and double shield was established as the meta at all levels of play pretty much within a week or two; there was no finesse or skill required to run it, you just picked the two heroes that could both shoot and shield at the same time. That was the time to either make drastic changes or remove Sigma from play for re-tuning - not 5 months later.
Even if you want to give Blizz the complete benefit of the doubt and say that there was no possible way that they could have understood the obscene power level that Sigma had upon release, the problem they created has been allowed to fester for an entire year. Of all my friends that returned to OW for 2/2/2 in August, only one was still playing by January.
Saying “well, we can only say Sigma was a problem because hindsight is 20/20” is doing the players a great disservice and glossing over some serious developer apathy for the state of the OW product over the past 12 months.
You’d have thought they would’ve learnt from brig during goats but they’ve did exactly same thing.
Nerf the whole meta, buff the meta counters and ignore the clearly flawed hero design that they pushed through in the first place which enabled the meta.
Blizzard balancing 101
Big disagree.
We have 2 Actual off tanks Since hog is basically a fat DPS.
Ball is not an off tank.
We’ve never had an off tank since release and if anything adding more off tanks with peel abilities would be amazing for the game imo since off tank is a more attractive play style to most and more potential synergies with damage negation abilities could lower the strict need for shields.
1 or 2 more main tanks still would be nice (For OW2) but it needs to be melee based or short range and designed similarly to rein (Lower shield to do damage) Otherwise I wouldn’t trust blizzard to balance/design the hero well.
Someone needs to correct you. Orisa was one of the weakest characters at launch. She was was one of the most unpopular.
It took ages for people to wake up and realize halt was actually really good and complain about it. I’m talking like at least 2 years. She was considered a bad pick and a joke. She was 
compared to Rein for a long time.
It took over a year of her being out before someone was smart enough to give a movement speed buff while she was shooting so she could shield dance and actually be a bit aggressive and not be only good in bunker comps. That’s where orisa truly came out of the dark and actually became viable and not just a niche bunker defense comp pick.
Yes I feel like tanks are really balanced now , and I see more variety , although dva could still use some love
sigma is already an off tank. His shield is ok, but should be used sparingly.
I’d give it 600 health adn 60hps recovery so it can’t be spammed, but i’d compensate in something else.
I like his concept but yeah, hiw introduction led to the increasingly worse tank balancing.
Especially orisa, they done dirty to her, they kept nerfing the wrong things all the time and now is just a mess of a character
You worked really hard on that handle.
I think they knew what they were doing with Sigma; he’s an experiment to see how to go further in tuning tanks to be all more or less “off-tanks”. He’s a tuning anchor point for them, I suspect he may replace Reinhardt as the tank to balance against.
Which is bs. Say what you will about Rein: he is clunky and he is team dependent, but: he has something Sigma does not have, purpose.
Most tanks have this actually: and for all his problems, even Hog has purpose.
All of Sigma’s design revolves around being a hybrid (they were trying to make a tank be a hybrid while being more traditional, something they could not do with Hammond). And that’s why they are making both of his sides worse, instead of focusing on making him either a main or an off tank. But! Here comes the catch: take one of his sides and it loses all meaning of using him over Rein/Orisa or Dva/Zarya.
Call it what you will, it appears to be the new direction. Jeff is determined (and I think he is right) that converting all tanks to “off-tanks” is probably best for the game.
You’re getting Reins? I’m getting Hog/Zarya or Hog/Ball every game, and it’s actually viable.
See a lot of Sigma/Zarya, Sigma/Hog too…
That is not the point: if they made all tanks into off tanks, Sigma would still be messy due to not having a thing outside being a hybrid.
They just tried to make Hammond-hybrid, but with a traditional tank and failed miserably.
There is a reason why in Mmos tanks have an off and a main tank stance.
Well I can venture a guess based on my playtime with teams of…varied performances.
Sigma seems to do really well if you have skill with him. Despite all talk to the contrary, he does take a lot of skill to use and land shots with (I mean look at any replays from top-tier players and everyday peeps). So, if you have someone skilled with Sigma, they can get a LOT done.
The same can be said of Rein, but there’s a difference - the rest of the team. If everyone else is okay with more sporadic shielding, you can go Sigma. But if the team is either highly immobile or…I’ll try to be tactful here…more reliant upon non-natural cover (which may not be their fault, it may be the map or where the fights are happening), they may insist on a Rein.
So the better players who are just more skillful with Sigma can get more done with him, and more experienced teams less reliant upon shields are okay with him, so Sigma seems to be something that higher ranks would gravitate more towards. Because of equal skill levels, you’ll just get a lot more damage done and space created with Sigma than with Rein.
Like I said, just my guess.
Anything but the rooster ;-;
Rooster playable tank hero when?
One thing that bugs me about the meta is the fixation on Brigitte being considered a major problem, but while she was/is a nuisance to the 1%, she didn’t ruin the support roster the way Sigma did to the tank roster, which undoubtedly affects EVERYONE.
Honestly, if Sigma wasn’t designed to blur the lines of what make main and off tanks the way they are, this wouldn’t have happened in the first place.