Splitting the damage role?

General Discussion
1

I have this idea, and I have been brainstorming about it for awhile. I want all forms of opinions here.

My proposal… would it help the game as a whole to split the dps category again? Ergo, Offense and Defense? This was just an idea I was thinking about. Way back when, the defense and offense category was conjoined into one role, as blizzard no longer wanted that role to really exist.

However, in the modern day overwatch, I feel it may actually help the game a lot. By splitting the 2, there’s a few good things that are done.

  1. The dps queue times decrease.
    I don’t know by how much, but with 2 separate queues for defense and offense, queue times would inevitably decrease.

  2. More specific hero balance.
    Let’s face it; as much as we give the dps players crap for how many hero options they have, quite a few of their heroes are just bad. I feel like this is definitely due In part to the fact that blizzard can just ignore some of them. There’s so many dps its hard to know who to focus on and who stands out. By splitting the role, its possible that heroes in each role could get more attention.

  3. Less versatility.
    One very common balance complaint is how much versatility the damage role has than tank and support. Due to how many heroes there are and the lack of restrictions, the dps category has the ability to reliably counter basically every hero in the game, most of the time with their hard counter. This solution would help make damage more restrictive, so dps cant just switch to counter absolutely everything.

  4. Damage hero additions are more important.
    We all know the controversy; Why is echo a dps? Just another damage hero, right? Well, by splitting it into 2, echo will be a much more important addition, rather than “just another one”.

  5. Eliminates Certain Oppressive or common comps and slightly helps with burst damage.
    No double sniper. No reaper mei. No hanzo junkrat(insane burst damage).

However, there are downsides I can think of to this system. The main one is that there is even less unique compositions than now, and that it increases how easily certain heroes will outshine others. However, I would really like opinions on this. Would this be worth a try? Maybe for experimental? Why or why not?

Also, in case anyone was wondering…

Offense: Doomfist, Genji, McCree, Pharah, Reaper, Soldier: 76, Sombra, Tracer, Echo

Defense: Ashe, Bastion, Hanzo, Junkrat, Mei, Symmetta, Torbjorn, Widowmaker

Thanks for the feedback! Also try to keep it civil please and thanks :slight_smile:

1 Like
2

No. That’s not how it works.

The more fragmented it is, the slower it is.

As the matchmaker gets more easily bottlenecked.

4 Likes
3

Just ban 10 DPS Heroes every week.

It will reduce ingame Q time, increase forum Q time and even out the rosters.

2 Likes
4

It won’t change Queue times assuming we’d change to 1-1-2-2.

Plus the devs decided they weren’t fond of the attitude that came with “Attack” and “Defense” denominations. Can’t blame them, the vitriol I witnessed for people that dared pick Widow on attack or Genji on defense was astounding.

1 Like
5

They shouldn’t break the dps role, but they should reclassify them as “Damage DPS” and “Utility DPS” that just makes more sense to me. Not that it matters much.

4 Likes
6

Well… Mei was defense and Reaper was attack, but I still get why you’re going with.

I’d definitely want it to be an experimental card to try out 100%

1 Like
7

Here’s how you fix queue times.

  1. Have the matchmaker try to find a game of:

    • SingleBarrierTank-vs-SingleBarrierTank.
    • (I.e. 1 BarrierTank + 1 OffTank per team)

  2. If it the matchmaker can’t find enough BarrierTanks, instead it just does a
    DoubleOffTank-vs-DoubleOffTank game.

  3. With the goal of getting as much excess DPS players into the Bruiser Role as possible.

  4. And for simplicity sake, reclassify OffTanks to be “Bruisers”.
    ✅ [Brawler Role] DPS Queue Fix

1 Like
8

Maybe symm and sombra would see some use lol

2 Likes
9

I don’t really understand how this would decrease queue times.

If anything, it makes more sense to separate “main tank” and “off tank” because they probably impact the game the most, but that would still make queue times worse in favor of having at least one “main tank”.

10

I’m not sure. It’s an interesting idea. Maybe they could try it in experimental for a week and see how it would go…? I didn’t have Overwatch when they broke it up into offense and defense, so I don’t know how that works :sweat_smile: It’s always just said tanks, damage, and support for me.

1 Like
11

Defense and Offense had split roles at the start of this game for a reason, the heroes of the roles deploy different methods to winning the game.

A Mei is not the same role as a Soldier or Mccree.

12

It’s redundant. It won’t help with que times. splitting dps into two won’t suddenly make dps less versatile. It’s just an illusion.

13

The loophole to that is that if it can’t find a barriertank then it just does doubleofftank vs doubleofftank.

Since doubleofftank isn’t throwing, if both teams have it.

14

Back then one of the problems were players were only picking one character designed to hold defense parts of a map and always using it on offense games (like Torbjorn one-tricks). People were frustrated with that and others wanted viability for every character in almost every scenario. That’s why they got rid of the category and rebalanced some of them to be more offense oriented.

1 Like
15

Queue times will still exist for the sole reason that DPS in general is a popular role. No banning or splitting is going to change someone’s preference. You can ban all but one DPS and the queue times will still remain.

Making tanks and supports “more fun” will not change that either. Nor would adding more make a difference. It’s just how it is.

1 Like
16

Making the Tank roster even smaller by cutting it in half isn’t exactly going to make me want to play more Tank though.

2 Likes
17

It should.
The way I see having 4 equally viable barrier tanks, is far better than Rein Jail.

And being able to queue for offtank without fear of throwing, means you get to play a lot more variety of offtanks.

18

I don’t know why you assume that splitting the Tank roster somehow makes all Tanks equally viable, but I can assure you that it is not going to work out that way^^

19

It doesn’t. But it makes it a ton easier to pump other barrier tanks full of buffs, if you can’t double up on barrier tanks.

20

Great post… and great suggestion… but they are not even doing simple things… are they going to do that?