They often needed to and the shield tanks having ways to murder anything that came close/not losing close range fights, despite being poke tanks, meant that supports couldn’t be reasonably threatened. Still, the point was that supports were extremely safe all the time in OW1. In OW2 due to loss of the off tank, less stuns, more open maps etc that’s no longer the case. The skill floors were raised a lot due to this but also due to being aggressive as support not being much more necessary. I’m really not sure why saying skill floors are higher regardless of flankers is even debatable.
No. Dive is strong because it blows up squishies regardless of defences and why when a hero like Brig was introduced, who could stop that initial kill, the comp died. Without a tank going in with both dps there isn’t enough pressure. It’s definitely unfun. It’s definitely the most skill demanding situation for the supports. Both made players leave. It’s not 1 or the other.
Besides if it was the skill FLOOR being changed it would be the lower ranked supports leaving.
It was the high ranked support players bailing out. So it has nothing to do with skill floor.
Right, they had to make a support which diving was too painful to do against.
See what changes they are doing now.
But as OP says, it is the support players leaving. Seriously, being able to bypass the front lines without a problem was not making DPS harder to play.
Not when it applied to the floors of every rank. The increase was that much. Then you remember that flankers have very high skill floors themselves so only really became awful to face in masters/gm. It was an exponential increase for supports.
Then the lower ranks would have left MORE, and the bell curve shift would go in the other direction.
Remember it is the Masters / GM’s leaving at a higher rate than other ranks. It isn’t a skill floor problem.
Otherwise lower ranked supports would be leaving in higher numbers than GM…
I can tell you for a fact they were god damn awful to play against in mid as well. OW2 is what made me leave support, and take up Mei / Sombra full time.
Before that I did a mix.
Now I don’t even play that with PvE off the table, and I think a LOT of support players more than ever will be dropping because PvE is going away.
But that would make it NOT A SKILL ISSUE right? Making the game way way way harder for high ranked support players is not a skill issue, it is a game design issue.
Tracer/Genji only become truly threatening in the top ranks due to the mechanics requirement. Genji still has his ult which is why he’s so good in low ranks but we’re talking flanking. A Moira has always been enough to scare away a low rank Genji.
The skill floor increase wasn’t the same for every rank. It was more.
There’s a different skill floor for every rank though. Being gm still requires a minimum skill level for that rank.
Now imagine going against a gm Genji with 4k hours on the hero. While still getting used to 5v5. The Genji situation was unfun. The 5v5 situation made it worse as the supports had to rely on their own skills more. It’s both
I’d argue that it was merely bringing supports skill requirements up to match that of tanks and dps. As I keep saying I do agree that’s a very unfun experience.
Right, you have to balance in role by win / pick rates etc… But the in between role balancing basically come down to “do we have enough of each role for this to work”
Not in mid. It is WAY WAY WAY easier to DPS in mid.
low ranked Genjis are garbage with their ults. It is that low ranked players can’t hit them is why they are so strong.
Except, as we are seeing, the answer is “no there is not” since the floor is dropping as the higher ranked supports leave.
If you removed the top 50% DPS, you would then have GM filled with previous gold DPS. It isn’t that the skill floor was made harder, it is that you have removed the players from there.
If you removed all of the support players above Gold. Supports would still win 50% of their matches, and a chunk gold supports would go up to GM, and most of the rest would be in diamond / masters.
It is a curve with percentages of the player base of each role in.
If you are complaining that people who USED to be in lower ranks are now in GM, it means the previous GM support players have left.
It is like having a bowl of water, and deciding to drink out of the right hand side. you end up with a bunch of the water from the left hand side filling in the gap.
GM isn’t a “skill level” it is a “top percentage of players in this role” thing.
Support in mid ranks is literally just don’t die. That’s all you need to do. It may be an unpopular take for the forums but support is autopilot until masters/gm.
There is…That’s why threads like this are being made. Support diffs are brutal in high ranks. It’s an autoloss if your supports are below a certain skill level in gm.
Yeah and when those new dps are then teamed with the remaining gm players they’re going to be useless as they aren’t good enough. See: Matchmaker complaints.
The terminology isn’t the issue. Genji, Sombra etc were very strong with supports needing to deal with those flankers. Sure, it wasn’t a dive meta but it did contain a lot of flanking. Which is the point.
Ok, so, you make it so flankers have free access to the back line. This makes it a lot harder right?
It is a bad take.
You are talking about an autopilot which plays better than 99.5% of the playerbase. That isn’t an autopilot.
Right, but the answer to that is change the game so you don’t lose your support players right? If you have some of the old support players, which are REALLY good there, and a bunch of the newly GM support players because the old ones keep leaving, then you need to fix the reason they are leaving…
But you complain when they do so.
If the game is bad for them, you can’t blame them for “skill issues” to fix the problem. You have to ACTUALLY fix the problem.
You can’t blame your playerbase or insult them as “it is just autopilot” your way out. None of those fix your issue.
If you don’t find a way to keep your high ranked support players queuing, the problem just will get worse.
Blaming or insulting your playerbase doesn’t fix your game.
So what would you do to fix it? because Blizzard is like “lets buff them until flanking is not as much of a problem”
Yes. Along with less shielding/more open maps etc making supports more vulnerable to everything and not just Genji, Tracer etc.
It’s really not a bad take. Support is just easier and requires less than the other roles until the very top.
That’s assuming that I think the problem is fixable. I don’t. The damage was done with the switch to 5v5 itself, the poor initial balance etc and can’t be undone because as you’ve explained, bell curves.
It can’t be fixed for any roles now and yes I do think this applies to all roles but supports are currently the main example. The skill difference, especially gamesense, between OW1 high rank players and OW2 is just too much. Yet they’re now in the same games.
If you keep losing the support players, it won’t be fixed. You have to find a way to keep them playing. You need those current high ranked support players to stick around long enough that they end up around the same skill level.
Sounds like you just lost a game and its most definitely the support’s fault for sure bro. Ranting here won’t change anything, but hopefully your feelings were validated.
Lets focus on supports though and say they find a way to stop losing supports. You’re still in the situation of players with wildly different skill levels being in the same games due to inflation.
Influx of new players+Frustrating core metas for multiple seasons+A stale in role “Pick these two/three heroes bc two are the only team applicable counter to each other and one can give a DPS a OHK” scenario since s2+One of the universally most loved Supps having a role-wide passive cancel a prime source of his value+Easily completed season long content+Disappointing news about the game’s future+Bizarre in role balancing.
Hmmmmmmm, gee, no idea why people would get bored and call it quits. Nope.
None at all.
A true mystery.
Which is why support is the main example right now. The other roles have the same problem but not to the same extreme.
When I have an OW1 plat support now in gm going 1-10 and they have an OW1 gm Ana main the skill difference is a canyon. Stopping them leaving won’t fix this.
I suppose they could sacrifice queue times, add a new rank and greatly tighten the matchmaker. That would solve the high rank matchmaking but at quite a large price.
Why will they learn? Most players get stuck at certain skill levels. They’re the best of the players who can’t play in gm and without more players won’t be replaced.
I don’t see Blizzard adding more players especially highly skilled ones. The damage can’t be fixed.
