The Tank label itself has never had a stigma. Tank was a fairly popular role to play before they got nerfed into oblivion during the rush to kill GOATS.
Nobody goes “Tank? Ewww hell no”.
But they DO say that for “Support”. It happens in EVERY game where Healer/Support is a thing.
Idk, in TF2 people usually are content with picking defensive/support classes.
I’ll take your word for it. I never played TF2.
But if you’re right, that should be an interesting case study.
Because it’s included in core design, that pure healer called Medic is just that powerful. Both for individual teammates and for team in general.
So you won’t have to shoot enemies for the most part, unless you got careless and ended up stranded away from team.
Tbh that’s because Medic is the only Merc with an ult. For good reason mind you… but yeah… it’s only Ubercharge.
I’m gonna say I have a ton of experience in the opposite of that.
That’s very short term memory if you think Tanks have always been as they are now.
There was plenty of people freaking out about “What about TRUE Tank Mains, wow that label matters so much more than gameplay”.
Other classes also have items with “ult”. Like Soda Popper for Scout, that allows multiple air-jumps.
Or Soldier backpacks with buffs. Or that flamethrower, that gives 100% crit for few seconds, once you activate charge.
Medic originally was only class with chargeable ability, but over time more were added.
As a support main i’d say this.
I don’t want to kill people. If that’s what i wanted, i’d play a DPS.
I want to heal and you know… support the team.
The problem is two fold.
One, most flankers will melt you before you have a chance to do much. You’re not going to out DPS a class that’s designed to do DPS, and you shouldn’t. And even if you manage to get them down, most have so much mobility that they just flit away, heal up and come back to try again.
Two, most people don’t peel or defend their supports. And even if they try, unless they’re right next to you, you’re dead before they can help… see point one.
What i’d like is the ability to survive or evade flankers and give my team enough time to actually help me.
You have to remember, DPS and tanks spend their entire time looking for red names. Healers have to face the team in order to see who needs healing as well as actually heal them. If you’re constantly looking backwards to see that flanker, you’re not paying attention to heals.
What you’re talking about are people who idealize a specific type of Tank. But the role itself (while never as popular as DPS) has always been somewhat popular in the hypermasculine gamerspace because lots of people like to see themselves as the hyperstrong megachad who takes the punishment for the people he loves.
Support, on the other hand, has almost always been considered a “lesser” (some would even say “effeminate”) role. Even in old school D&D, it’s a meme that nobody wants to play Cleric and Clerics are misanthorpes who don’t want to heal their dumb teammates.
From my memory there are items that have a cool down (jarate, sandman, and chargin targe come to mind)… but I don’t recall any with as big or impactful effects as any of the Ubers.
Mini-crits or crit-immunity + 50% resistance to sentries to yourself and nearby allies are quite big.
There are chargeable items, that require doing certain actions to be used. For example, one of guns for Scout slows him down, but he gains more speed with damage he deals, up to certain amount. Backpacks of Soldier require dealing certain amount of damage, before they can be activated. Flamethrower with critical hits also requires dealing certain amount of damage, before you can activate charge.
Sniper has sniper rifle, that allows you to shoot without unscoping between shots and with faster charging rate - it’s also effect of charge, that you activate.
There are also items, that gain not charge, but only limited number of shots, that also quite powerful. Spy has revolver, that gets 1 critical shot for each backstabbed enemy or destroyed building, Engineer has shotgun, that gets 2 critical shots per each kill sentry makes, as soon as sentry is destroyed. Two of those shots can put down almost anyone.
completely agree. never ever in any game have I had such a bad experience playing support. You are just thrown in games completely random with people who have no idea how to play their roles and end up against a 5 stack
I think those expectations you’re describing do not come from the Class Based Shooter genre.
In all these Class Based Shooters, Supports are less lethal, but still very lethal.
Team Fortress Classic
Apex Legends
Valorant
Gundam Evolution
Paladins
Dirty Bomb
Enemy Territory
BattleField
Hawken
Warframe
Destiny 2
PlanetSide 2
The Division
Team Fortress 2, is more arguable, but given the speed, and midcombat regen, and the low health of scouts/spies or unpocketed Soldier’s. They can pretty much duel any class 1v1 or escape reliably.
I’m going to say again: I don’t think this will help.
At this point, I have like 50+ hours on Ana and Kiriko this season, and have boasted many games with deaths totals as low as 0 - 3, with almost (or even over) 20k healing over the course of a full match.
And it didn’t matter.
No amount of healing was enough to win on its own. It wasn’t until I switched to DPSing by default and healing only when someone was making a risky play that I actually started seeing my winrate and rank improve. What made the difference in team fights was whether or not I could land an opening headshot, or better yet, a pick. Fights where I was forced to healbot and pump every resource into my teammates to save them from whatever bad situation they were in were usually lost causes.
Again, I’m just speaking from my own anecdotal cases, but I’ve watched enough OW2 coaching vids at this point to see that this experience is almost universal. The reason supports (and especially Mercy) are suffering at the moment is because they find it harder for pure healing to make as much of a difference as it used to, because opening picks are so much stronger in this game.
That stereotype applies to those games as well.
Which is why, when playing The Division, I often were only player with medical bags.
Yes, but there’s a pretty big difference between 10-20% less dueling capacity, and 50% less dueling capacity.
Those do all sound quite strong. However, I feel like those aren’t on the same level as Stock Uber… possibly not Kritskrieg’s either. However I also feel like we’ve strayed very far off topic. So if you’re good with letting this side convo drop, I am.
Sure, though anti-crit backpack blocks Kritzkrieg.
I can only speak about Division, but my dueling capacity was very low, as boosting your “tech” stat(which is used by medical items, turrets, etc.) means sacrificing your other stats, such as health and armor. Also specialised medical set, that allows to use all 3 variants of medical bag at once(usually only 1 can be chosen at a time), which isn’t very tanky.
What Cleo said. Even in Valorant, (from what I’m able to see) most of the least popular Agents in that game are Initiators. Skye is the perennial favorite, but it seems like the other three roles are far more favored.
Well I played most the games on that list, but I haven’t played Destiny, Division, or PlanetSide 2 (but was heavily involved with PlanetSide 1)