As a support main who originally was intending to be a DPS main but decided to swap to support due to queue times, I could never understand what motivated people into maining tank and sticking with it instead of other roles.
Doesn’t having the largest hitbox in the game and having to rely so much on healers to keep you alive put you off from the role? Or how you have to rely on your DPS to counter the enemy DPS? Or when you have to go rien or sigma in long-range maps to enable your DPS and supports but they end up not killing anything anyways?
for me statistically beating any dps or supports in a 1v1 as dva i don’t have the issue with my supports normally since i’m a gm support i know the point of view of my supports and know where to position to make it easy for my supports to heal me and dps wise i can complete that role as a tank really so it’s not that big of a worry the only annoying part i find about tank is not getting a main tank as your second tank
It started off as my friends and I needing someone in the group to fill tank… no one ever wanted to play it so I was like “screw it… I’ll be that guy”.
The more I played them the more I realized “hey tanks are kind of an interesting blend between support and DPS” and started maining them because at that point my aim was trash so there was no point in me playing DPS, and we had better support players in the group.
As for the large hitboxes? I dunno… I always group with friends who main support, so they have no problem topping off my HP, but we also understand eachothers’ playstyles… so that takes a lot of the guesswork out of it. Plus it feels good playing tank when you have a good support on the team backing you up… there’s a cool feeling of synergy I don’t get with DPS heroes.
At the end of the day, if I die as a tank, then 9 times out of 10 it’s my fault because I was likely overextended. I try to only ever blame myself as that affords me more opportunities to improve my gameplay, rather than writing it off as someone else’s problem and acting like I have no need to improve.
Tank is super fun. Helicopter parenting the tiny squishy teammates and sending their poorly behaved friends on the other team back to spawn is really satisfying.
When there is two tanks it is so much fun you try to work together to push as well as trade off protecting teammates, once 5v5 hits tanking is going to a massive chore and gonna see tank leave the role, like i will
The only tank I like playing on a regular basis is zarya because she’s the most closest to DPS. But even then, I still prefer to regularly play support heroes like ana instead since she moves faster and is more versatile whereas zarya isn’t as good in all situations. And when zarya isn’t good to use, my only option is to go other tanks which to me aren’t as interesting or fun to play.
Good point. I can see playing tank being more tolerable when you play with friends who you can rely on. Unlike tanking in solo Q where you never know who you’re going to get matched with. Pretty much all of the friend request I’ve received in the past have been from tank mains.
The min-maxing of supporting your tank duo, protecting your backline and enabling your dps, knowing that most of times you can only choose one at a time, and making the decision of what is best at that moment.
Also eating ults, that and peeling my backline is my ideal reasons to play dva. I also love dming and bodyblocking for my dps when they’re in invulnerable spots. When my Pharah ults, I use all my dm on her and even fly towards her so I can bodyblock the damage thrown at her.
I only played Tank because I was serious about the game. I didn’t play tank for fun, though I had over 800 hours on shield tanks alone, I played because I thought overwatch would actually be something one day, and my game sense would be so good from playing all three roles equally.
Yeah what a joke that turned out to be. This game was a big waste of time. Playing tank was a monumental waste of time after the shield nerfs took all the experience I gained and trashed it. Ground it to dust.
Nope in the end the dumb one shot mechanics beat everything. Hog is number 1, DVA is probably number 2, idk haven’t played the game since they told everyone they were deleting a tank slot.
No respect for tank players, no respect for their time, no respect for their sacrifice.
I used to be a bit of a tank main before the deluge of nerfs, and what drew me to it was being able to make space and play OW in a manner that the other roles couldn’t. It was like playing an FPS as a MOBA, to me. It felt really rewarding to be able to outplay the opponent through clever strategy and movement/abilities alone.
Nowadays, tanking feels like “don’t get melted first” mostly. It’s gotten to the point where the optimal playstyle of tank is just fat DPS (i.e. Hog and Ball). I can’t blame people for not having fun in the role because Blizzard deliberately sledgehammered it. And by the looks of things, OW2 isn’t going to be solving any of those issues.
Thanks… I know I sound like a broken record here in the forums because I’m always telling people to make friends and group up, but it really does make a night and day difference in terms of fun.
I met the best group I’ve ever had last year, and when the game died, I knew what was coming. Totally worth it, but you’re absolutely right, it’s the exact same feeling as choosing tank in open queue was.
