Tank Balance was Perfect 6 Months Ago (with stats)

General Discussion
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So, everyone knows the current problem with 2-2-2: Nobody wants to play tank. It’s a problem people predicted, but a problem nonetheless.

Why does no-one want to play tank? Well, there’s several reasons, but one of the big reasons is that only 2 tanks are viable. If you don’t happen to enjoy playing Orisa or Sigma and picking any other tank is basically throwing, why would you bother playing tank at all?

The especially annoying thing is that 6 months ago, we were enjoying one of the most diverse tank metas this game has ever seen!

“What?” you ask, “Wasn’t GOATS the meta 6 months ago? Surely if not GOATS, then Orisa/Hog!”

Actually, no. Here are the GM tank pick and winrate stats from exactly 6 months ago:

Pickrate Winrate
Orisa 4.51% 56.94%
Reinhardt 4.51% 56.26%
Zarya 3.65% 53.20%
Roadhog 3.50% 54.52%
Wrecking Ball 4.89% 51.86%
D.Va 4.92% 50.57%
Winston 4.96% 52.89%

This is about as close to perfect balance as you’re ever going to see in Overwatch. Sure, some things are clearly a little stronger/weaker than others, but on the whole it’s pretty damn good.

…and then Blizzard went and ruined it all by trying to ‘fix’ GOATS, which clearly wasn’t a problem in GM (or the rest of ladder) anyway.

Now, obviously we have 2-2-2 now and Sigma has been added - so even if every balance change from the last 6 months was reverted, we probably wouldn’t see the same results but I think this demonstrates pretty clearly that the first starting point to fixing tanks (and getting people to pick Tank again) is to revert some of the GOATS nerfs.

Frankly, I don’t know why it’s taking them so long.

TL;DR: Tank balance was almost perfect about 6 months ago. Blizzard messed it up by trying to fix GOATS which wasn’t even a problem outside of OWL. The steps to fix it are pretty obvious but Blizzard seems clueless.

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Did you mean to post this in 6 months?

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It’s done now :wink:

20char

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Actually I think the main problem is player mentality, people thinking they have play those heros. Which is not true at all. You can pick litterally any hero and make it to high masters.

If we solve that issue which its probably impossible, the game would be better.

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For some reason I one-trick and don’t follow metas.
I know what I’m worth when I play my main.

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I play tank. If the other team is running Orisa+Sigma, you have to mirror or you lose.

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I would love to see where u got those numbers from. Cuz I have never ever seen the tanks be anywhere near that balanced. And cant possibly imagine winston was the most played tank.

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Unless your GM, no you really don’t. You should just play your best hero.

One of my best heros is Solider, if I drop rank into plat and im against a double sheild. I can guarantee you I will rip them apart.

Honestly I wish we couldn’t see pick and win rate stats. It would naturally balance the game out more.

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Sources:

There are pick/winrate stats going back 6 months. The pick/winrates were like that from around the beginning of this year through April when Blizzard started with the anti-GOATS nerfs.

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I dont think its very fair to look at one specific day that happens to be the oldest, and draw balance conclusions from that. Rein for example 4.51% but if it were just like 3-5 days later, it says 7.56%, which is a massive difference. Oldest i see dva at is 5.45% then a few days later 8.76%.

This was a period where people were playing goats much less, and finding out what the new ladder meta was gonna be. Which a month or 2 later was running orisa and hog. And no big changes happened to the tanks in that time, people just figured out it was the best and easiest comp to run. The tank balance didnt suddenly change in those couple months, people just learned what the new meta was, and played it more.

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Unfortunately the stats are no longer on the site, but they were actually pretty consistent for the first few months of the year. I had been meaning to make this post for a while and finally got a around to it because the stats I needed were going to disappear.

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I really don’t think it was them trying to fix goats, the reason the tank meta got messed up is because they released Sigma who happened to pair well with Orisa and on top of adding a new character 2/2/2 was released making it so games were more consistent.

Rein Zarya are also Viable so its really just D.va Winston that need buffs.

Hammond requires a lot of skill but is also viable, and Roadhog is hard to get value out of with double shields but can still be played.

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That was right after global armor nerf and the first time Orisa was playable, let alone viable. They weren’t balanced, they depended on each other a lot. The only thing that changed is 2-2-2 got introduced, and it was a fatal mistake from balance perspective - and tanks prove that. Hammond is a good solo-tank but a bad second tank; Rein needs two more tanks to really shine; Winston and D.va are good as two tanks but are bad into two DPS, they are good vs spread up comps aka >3 dps; hell, Orisa is a great solo-tank but is absolutely busted in 2 tanks environment.

6 months ago was the time when people in GM finally started playing something other than GOATs, maybe because Clockwork Vendetta shown them 3 months prior it’s not the only good comp. As of “balanced”… statistics never show you the true picture. Look at Moira in the current meta.

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GOATS was dead on ladder even before the global armour nerf. Unfortunately, the stats are no longer available. I had been meaning to make this post for a while but it seems I’ve left it too late.

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One of the devs straight up admitted a few weeks ago that they had been trying to nerf GOATS.

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What I mean is that 2/2/2 was in development for a year, even though a dev admitted they were attempting to nerf goats the ultimate thing that shifted the meta was 2/2/2 because before the meta was 3/0/3.

So regardless of their attempts to nerf goats, is it really relevant to the meta shift? No, brigs release made goats possible and 2/2/2 made it impossible to play. The tank meta shift likely has more to do with the power of Sigma vs any changes relating to goats.

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If they knew they were gonna do 2-2-2 and we’re working on it I honestly don’t even understand why they did all those changes.

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Six months ago from this date puts it around March 14th, or around the time Baptiste came out. By this time, the armor changes had already been out for two months and had not dulled the popularity or effected the GOATS meta too much.

Additionally, D.va saw a downward tweak to Defense Matrix, Reaper’s lifesteal was tuned down to 40% percent, McCree’s FTH damage was tuned downward to 50, and Discord’s debuff was changed from 30% to 25% (with a two damage increase).

Largely, over the course of the year, there were no changes to Tanks other than a movement speed buff to Orisa and a Defense Matrix downward tweak for D.va. Tanks remained the same.

So whatever you’re getting at this viability issue clearly isn’t true, and just further proves the point about how irrelevant non-Tanks and non-Support heroes are. GOATS would’ve continued had there not been a switch to a forced 2/2/2 team composition.

Winston’s popularity has been very high and very critical to the GOATS meta, generally, if they weren’t picking D.va to swallow projectile Ults, they were picking Winston due to his LMB’s ability to hit multiple targets and ignore barriers.

In fact, up until more recently, Winston has always been a popular pick for a tank in all ranks and all play since Overwatch started. He doesn’t require much work to pull out lots of damage on targets and still gets a nice barrier and mobility.

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Would argue 56% winrate isnt balanced, since that was what brig sat at and people campaigned for her nerfs.

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It depends on how popular the character is before you look at the win rate. Generally being close to above or below 50% is pretty close to being balanced. If the character has a disadvantage towards particular style of play, or team composition it’s NOT necessarily a sign of imbalance, but more of a calculated weakness.

When it comes to Blizzard games and in particular games like Overwatch which tend to feature very diverse skill sets, having some classical weaknesses towards particular characters is intentional and a sign of some level of balance. Genji’s deflect, for example, while it can deflect a number of projectiles back at targets, it suffers against beams and sprays. Thus, Genji’s weakness towards beams is an intentional and a sign of good balance.

That said, having a high pick rate or a certain level of popularity with the playerbase and a strong win-rating does not necessarily mean that the character is overpowered or is breaking the game.