Thank god. This has been necessary for years, since OW offers exponentially more sustain than any other comparable pvp action game.
I disagree. Paladins offers more sustain, even when going through cauterize.
8 Likes
Heck paladins has a tank that can heal its team mates, something ive been wanting in overwatch since launch
1 Like
I feel like they’ve lost all vision of what this game’s identity actually is and are entirely disconnected with what the actual players wanted. I’m disappointed in all I’ve seen and heard so far. And as someone who plays OW daily, with 2200 hours in the game, I never actually thought I’d say that.
26 Likes
Right there with you Trilly. I am stunned with the direction they are going. Seem to be just trashing the game to be just like all the other games.
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I don’t really agree with you. There aren’t many other games like OW at all, even taking the forums complaints about what could happen in OW2 to their most extreme.
Right, there aren’t any other games like OW. This is why I like it.
The direction they appear to be going with OW2 is generic FPS respawn simulator. Just like all the games I hate playing.
What little we have learned about PvE sounds awful too with the lazy skill tree mechanic that seems to be in every game these days. Like they went to the bulk store to get game design ideas on the cheap.
8 Likes
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
If I wanna tank, I want to be a guardian, not a damage sponge or fatter dps.
If I wanna support, I want to support and enable my team and help our longevity, not be optional mini-dps sidekick thrown to the wolves.
I just realised. Isn’t it funny how the most played characters in this entire game, Dva and Mercy, are exactly like these archetypes? Isn’t Reinhardt a guardian archetype as well?
Seems like playing a guardian and an enabler is very appealing to the playerbase as a whole, even if their entire roles aren’t appealing to the biggest demographic.
17 Likes
Everything died too fast in the demo because Sombra is broken. Outside of that outlier it doesn’t.
Exactly. OW1 let’s tanks and DPS have sway power and Supports while they rarely have direct power outside of niche moments, they can help sway the other 2 roles’ power in your team favor in subtle ways (hence the UGH supports feel like boring healbots mindset of the community).
In OW2 however, it’ll be 100% strictly the DPS. If you get queued into a game where the enemy team DPS are better, it doesn’t matter past the loading screen.
Your tank can’t go off and get their backline DPS or Snipers without making your team stranded to play hide and seek all game.
Your tank can’t peel flankers off your backline cause they need to be at the frontline 24/7 until they die or the other team’s tank dies.
Supports wont have a chance to have any sort of impact anymore because they will be too occupied hiding all game or just dying.
It’ll come down to DPS every game and the other roles will just feel helpless and feel like fodder all game.
I like playing OW because it forces you to play out in the open and face to face with the other team. I’d go play Valorant or Apex if I wanted to play hide and seek poke and peek.
Oh btw…something that would never nor would have ever happened because OW is the first game like this I have played. Prior to OW I had never played any online multiplayer games that were team vs team based…sooooooo yeah let’s just take that away from the community that made your game a success in the first place…a community filled with A LOT of people like me in that regard. Probably almost as many as those who came from other online multiplayer games.
9 Likes
This sounds awful. I’ve never disliked an Overwatch balance idea more than I dislike this one, and there’s no remotely close second place. I think it will make most supports feel terrible to play.
I don’t want more utility. I don’t want more damage. I’m happy with where they are. I want to be able to keep people alive. That’s the support class fantasy, and that’s not going to happen with this change.
I don’t buy the devs claim about less incoming damage. You’re usually not trying to outheal the entire enemy team’s damage output. Healing is comprised of a bunch of small interactions. You’re trying to keep your Ana alive when she’s being dove by a Genjji, or primaled by a Winston. You’re trying to keep your Ashe alive when she’s dueling the enemy Pharah. You’re trying to keep your Winston alive when he jumps into the backline and is fighting the enemy dps and healers.
I don’t buy that there’s a need for a global healing nerf. A nerf to burst healing? Sure. A nerf to healing cooldowns? Probably. A nerf to tank healing? Maybe. A global nerf? No. There’s no reason why Zen needs to heal less. What Super is describing here is much, MUCH, worse than what I thought it would be.
When put together with the other Overwatch 2 news, it sounds like Blizzard are not taking support player’s experience into account. They’re obviously putting a lot of thought into dps players, and they’re making significant changes to the tank role, but support feels like it’s not a priority at all.
Being a support player is a bit like being the team mom. In Overwatch 1, you take your kids to the playground. They run, they get into mud, they might quarrel with other kids, they need snacks, etc. It’s tiring, but it can be fun and you can do it. Overwatch 2 sounds like you’re taking the kids to the MEGA AMUSEMENT PARK where all the rides are EXTREME, all the foods are deep fried and have double the sugar they usually do, and there’s a pack of robot dogs with laser eyes running around. It might sound exciting for the kids, but it sounds awful for the parents.
I hope I’m wrong. I’ve been playing Overwatch since closed beta and was really excited about the new iteration, up till recently.
16 Likes
The idea of healing less during combat sounds horrid. I’ve been a GM support player for the last 4+ years and the idea of that makes me shudder. Super himself said that it felt horrible for supports, that “Mercy is the most useless hero in the game in Overwatch 2”, and talked about how fragile Ana is with her nerfed sleep CD and nerfed nade heal, which only will heal her for around 40 if she was damaged within the last 4 seconds…
When Mercy was nerfed to 50 HPS 2 years back, she entered a year long period of being garbage. People on your team complained if you picked her because she didn’t offer them nearly enough sustain. Pros and casuals had to complain for months that she needed an HPS buff before Blizzard finally caved. I have no clue why the Devs are so stubborn on certain things. Now imagine how trash she will feel for both her teammates and the person playing her when she’s nerfed to 50 HPS for 5v5 and doing a measly 37 HPS to her Zen who is being zapped by Winston and shot by Tracer. What will be the point of even healing anyone during combat? What will be the point of playing supports with a focus on healing and not on damage? Zen and Bap will be the only supports who feel fine because they all do a load of damage and have good utility to boot.
If fights are lasting too long (and I genuinely doubt they are, if I am being honest), why not just reduce healer’s HPS by a little bit (-5 HPS to everyone, for example), and then make heal stacking less effective (If two supports are healing someone, the lower healing source is 25% less effective. So for example, if Mercy was healing a Rein for 50 HPS and Zen had a 25 HPS orb on him, the Orb would only heal 18.75 HPS). I’d much rather this route than them flat out gut Support’s ability to sustain people in combat.
The Devs do realize that players don’t dislike long fights, they dislike SLOW fights. There is a difference. Fights during dive meta were still long. I’d be healing my Zenyatta while they dove him, and juking their flankers, while my team did the same to them. And engagements would last a good 20+ seconds many times. But they were jam packed with action.
People disliked GOATs and Double Shield because they were long and boring. You shot shields for 40 seconds while Bap and Brig AoE heal their entire team if you try to dive them. You walked into eachother and pressed M1 with 3 tanks and 3 supports in GOATs. It wasn’t exciting. That was the key difference from dive, not the duration of fights. Fights lasted forever but nothing happened. No progress was made. No enemies were shot or killed.
The BEST, most exciting fights in Overwatch are the long engagements where people are constantly scrambling to regain the upper hand. When each team is getting picks and multiple ults are coming online at different times and everyone is holding their breath waiting to see who finally comes out on top. THAT’S what makes me log into Overwatch every day for the past 5 years. People don’t want to play a respawn simulator where fights last 5 seconds (like they did in the OWL 5v5 Showcase this weekend) and then they all respawn and run back to point and rinse and repeat. That’s BORING.
Also, I’d rather the Devs remove Support’s auto-heal role passive and just let us be responsible for sustaining one another, and keep their defensive abilites strong. Don’t gut Ana’s nade and sleep in exchange for giving her an auto heal, let her defend herself if she uses her skills/CDs correctly. Don’t lower the skill floor of the heroes whilst also making them less effective in general. That’s boring.
Super said on stream yesterday that in his playtests, Tanks and Supports felt extremely low on the power scale compared to DPS. That’s not how you fix queue times.
Edit:
“Tug of war fights” is a great way to describe what we love:
20 Likes
I think the design team needs to consider that the specific intricacies of this change aren’t the issue, but rather the design philosophy behind them conflicting with the class fantasy of support players.
13 Likes
Genuine question - How does OW2 compare remotely to a game like CoD, Halo, Quake, Battlefield, etc?
OW2 compares far more directly to one of the few games that is actually like Overwatch, Paladins. Even with all these changes, it’s still not going to be remotely like a generic respawn shooter.
Please pass onto the dev team that there are actually people out there that enjoy OW1 and 6v6 gameplay. Please don’t delete OW1 with OW2. Some of us don’t like the new direction and while a new direction is fine, it isn’t really fine when you are deleting the original game.
2 Likes
does that mean aim or not?
because i’m psure ur going to have to start aiming.
mercy 1tricks that can’t kill 1hp tanks because the pistol and fps micro mechanics just aren’t part of their repertoire, don’t deserve to keep their boosted rank season after season (lol@noresets)
Yes! I informally call these fights ‘tug-of-war fights’. They are my favorite moments in Overwatch whether you win or lose them. In the OWL showcase, fights were stomp or be stomped and very quick. Now that we know about this healing debuff, it’s kind of obvious why.
7 Likes
Truthfully as a support player, this game is seeming less and less appealing the more we find out about pvp changes.
Andy, I appreciate your honesty and your presence lately, but can I ask, do the developers play support and tank characters?
The changes coming in OW2 feel like they’re all made exclusively with DPS players in mind.
If I’m going to continue to play support, I need to feel like I’m making an actual impact on the game.
If the role of a support diminishes to “slightly extending the life of my teammates by an extra second or two”, you can count me out.
13 Likes
I’m a Mercy main who’s been GM for 4+ seasons and I’d LOVE if they gave her impactful skillshot abilities that required aim. If her pistol was turned into a hitscan weapon with higher damage like Cree, I’d be the one on my team killing every flanker and Pharmercy that we went up against. If she had a projectile ability that burst healed a target, I’d be hitting every one.
Many Mercy players I know want more things like this in her kit, or more management such as to make Rez require charging up a resource meter. The problem is that the Devs refuse to do this because they don’t want to make her “too complicated”.
5 Likes
I’m just gonna echo this here.
3 Likes