Tank Rework Ideas and my take on Overwatch Design Philosophy

General Discussion
1

The recent Season 9 patch and tank patch are steps in the right direction, but we need to push much further. Otherwise, unfun elements like tank counter-swapping will not be fixed at the current dev team’s pace.Even the Creator Arcade Patch will next fix that.

(I’ve been an Overwatch player since beta 1. I switched from playing DPS in Overwatch 1 to tank in Overwatch 2, now ranked mid-Master (technically top 500).)

Listen my words first.

In my ideal game design, Widowmaker doesn’t even exist (sorry for not mentioning that).

Each team should either focus on shooting tanks to win the long-term resource fight or find a squishy target to eliminate.

Spamming shouldn’t be able to kill anyone if players have basic intelligence in a health-buffed patch. It’s similar to how spam alone can’t win games (high-rank players understand why double hitscan doesn’t work).

We need to discuss the fundamental design flaws of Overwatch first by exploring why tank players always feel they are getting counter-picked.

Reasons Why Tanks Always Get Counter-Picked?

My unbiased answer: Tanks Are Too Oppressive:

  • Tanks actually have the best tools to “counter” most situations:
    • Mitigation
    • Superior stats
  • Examples of Tank Strength among average players(!!):
    • Reinhardt defending the choke, only shield-breaking heroes can interact with a 1600 HP shield.
    • A good Wrecking Ball can roll over 85% of DPS and Support picks.

What Enemy Responses:

  • Forced to swap to even more extreme than superior stats and mitigation.
  • What can beat superior stats? Even more extreme superior stats or “cheat” abilities.
  • Examples of extreme counters: Bastion, Reaper, Mauga, Roadhog, Zenyatta, Ana, Sombra, Cassidy, etc.

These heroes are obviously problematic, but the fundamental reason players pick them is that tanks are too oppressive. So, we should overhaul the tank role first before addressing the problematic designs of other roles.

Healthy Tank Design Philosophy:

  • Remove excessive kill threats and uninteractive mitigation from tanks.
  • Tank gameplay should not overemphasize holding space. Why?
    • Not intuitive for average players
    • Discourages active gameplay.
  • Overwatch’s primary gameplay should be simply hitting your buttons. That’s all.
  • Taking MOBAs as an example: you wouldn’t play a 5000 HP champion with zero active abilities—that is a tower/turret.
  • Tanks should fulfill their role naturally by actively using and hitting their abilities.
  • Tank gameplay should not focus on constant survival.

Proposed Changes:

The numbers are just rough ideas; the underlying logic is what’s crucial.

  1. Increase Tank Health Pool (+50%) and 50 of total pool in armor
  2. DPS passive against tanks: -35% healing received and duration is 10 seconds
  3. Faster Objective Capping Speed (+30%)
  4. Tank Passive: (Domain Expansion?)
    A huge aura that slows enemy capping speed by -35% and increases your team’s capping speed by +10%

- Wanted Result:

  • Tanks won’t be bursted down by any means but will eventually be out of HP over time.
  • Average tank players can choose to never die if they want to; they can just run away from the battlefield when no armor(a simple indicator for average players).
  • Losing the objective is the punishment for retreating too much.
  • Dying feels worse than losing the objective for average players.
  • Not dying is a huge stress reducer for tank players.
  1. Reduce Tank Primary Damage (-40%) - other damage can be adjusted.
  2. Other roles + 50 HP
  3. Tank ult charge gained by just hitting abilities, not only damage
  4. More powerful tank ults that can guarantee kills
  5. Remove or tone down most of the tank mitigation abilities
  6. Rework tanks to have at least two fun abilities with in-depth playful elements
  7. Add depth to the tank abilities likes two forms of one abilies

** -Wanted Result:**

  • Nerfing primary damage and buffing other roles’ health is the way to make tanks less oppressive in kill threats.
  • Rework unfun mitigation, add more fun abilities with depth to tanks to build up good and fun tank game loops.
  • If shooting tanks is intuitive and fun for average other roles, just let them shoot. Let it be part of the game. Shooting a buffed target is still better than shooting a shield.
  • To compensate for the solo carry potential of a tank, more powerful ults with faster ult charge are the way to carry.
  • Tanks can now do whatever they want at the start of the fight. (Free gameplay is a crucial fun factor.)
  • Tanks can focus more on strategic plans rather than constant survival.
  • Tanks can’t solo kill enemies’ tanks anymore. No more harsh tank counters.
  • All change priority to help average level (below master) tank players’ gameplay experience.

Each tank change: (noted that all tanks have -40% primary damage and -25% headshot damage taken)

Winston: 1000 HP

  • +15% damage of primary fire when single-targeting.
  • Alt fire is nerfed like the primary fire nerf and bounces (chains) between enemies.
  • Bubble has two forms: Defensive and Offensive. The first 1 sec when the bubble is placed will act like the current bubble. The cooldown will be counted after the transformation.
    • If the bubble range doesn’t have any enemies within, it will be a defensive one and just like the current one with a 7 sec cooldown.
    • If there are any enemies within the bubble, it will be an offensive one. The offensive bubble will collapse quickly. It will deal damage, minor CC, and gain 50 overhealth per enemy. Cooldown 3.5 sec.
  • Primal Rage: Primary damage 50.

Add more tools with different styles to help Winston players build a fun gameplay.

Mauga: 1000 HP

  • Remove lifesteal passive.
  • New passive: Add a piece of armor with many scales that cover his whole body, including his head. Shooting the scales feels like shooting the minefield from Wrecking Ball. Each scale counts individually and blocks a maximum of 60 damage. The scales recharge by burning enemies with gun or colliding with enemies with Overrun.
  • Overrun has two versions.
  • Rework Cardiac Overdrive to a buff that:
    • Lowers weapon spray (allowing long-range poke).
    • Changes Overrun to a second form that is more controllable, faster, increased range, 4 sec cooldown but no big leap.

Add tactical decisions to maintain sustain for Mauga.

Zarya: 800 HP

  • Alt fire is nerfed like the primary fire nerf and the projectile speed is 100% faster.

  • Bubble no longer targets an ally. Barrier health: 150 HP(nerfed 50). Bubble now has two types and shares the same cooldown. Absorbing damage still gains energy.

  • Double bubble (cast second bubble when the first bubble is still active) will have different effects based on different combinations.

  • Bubble 1 (red): Primary and alt fire can slow the enemy by 15%. Gain energy by damaging enemies by tickes (max 45 energy).

  • Bubble 2 (blue): Primary and alt fire rate +25%, +25% speed (scales with the bubble health, lower buble health will be lower speed).

  • Double red bubble: Refresh red bubble effect and create an aura that reduces 30% damage taken by allies. (If Zarya bubble is destroyed, all the effects will be gone.)

  • Double blue bubble: Refresh blue bubble effect and create an aura that speeds up 30% to all allies.

  • Blue + Red bubble: Gain both single-bubble effects.

Can cast a second bubble when bubble have no charge. But will be disabled for all abilities for next 10 sec. Gain 35 energy (overheat) after this action.

Make bubble management more dynamic. Let the enemies against Zarya intuitively shoot the bubble.

Roadhog: 1200 HP

  • Replace Pig Pen with Concussion Mine (Junkrat like).
  • Take a Breather: Keep the heal regen but less damage reduction.
    When taking 1/5 amount of breather, it will enhance the next abilities. It can be stacked up.
    • Enhanced Hook: Range will be 45m, but only pull 1/4 from Roadhog to target.
    • Enhanced Concussion Mine: Bigger knockback effect and damage. If knocked yourself, deal damage and slow to enemies when landing.

Add more combos to Roadhog’s gameplay. For example, jump up to gain a better angle for hooking enemies. Hook enemies into Concussion Mine. Knock people out from cover and then hook them. Slam targets after super hook.

D.Va: 1000 HP

  • Matrix can now block beams, 1.5 sec duration, cooldown 5.5 sec.
  • Rework Missiles to a long-ranged projectile that does 240 damage max with 2 sec cast time and locked in the air while casting.
  • Boosters: 3 sec and gain ult charge by hitting.
  • Self-Destruct: Default with a cast direction that overrides the boosters. It will pin enemies if it collides but without hard CC.

Matrix not working against beams is just low-level Pokémon weakness design.

Junker Queen: 800 HP

  • Shout has two versions: Big Shout and Small Shout. Shout has 0.5 cast time. If you hold the button, it will be Big Shout; otherwise, small. Small Shout just costs half and does half and only speeds herself.
  • Hitting any abilities will shorten the cooldown of Shout. Nerf the shout impact on allies.
  • Jagged Blade: it (nerf 20 thrown hit damage compare to current), 4.5 sec cooldown, and infinite range.
  • Carnage: (nerf 20 thrown hit damage compare to current), -1.5 sec cooldown if interrupted.
  • Rampage: Casting time will be unstoppable and have no direction limit, including vertical (Alternative: Having two charges of ult dash).

The gameplay may speed up to gap close to Jagged Blade and Carnage to enter the cooldown reduction loop.

Orisa: 1000 HP

Rework Fortify to a movement ability:

  • Target an area and then charge there. Just like a combination of Shadow Step (Reaper teleport) and Meteor Strike (Doomfist).
  • 2 sec cast time.
  • Deal damage on the path. Deal damage and slow in the destination.
  • Have the current fortify effect during casting time and last 1.5 sec more.

Rework Javelin Spin:

  • Two swipes that deal AoE damage in an arc.
  • The first swipe will block everything in front.

Ultimate Rework: Enhance the next ability casted

  • Enhanced Energy Javelin: Deal AoE stun and damage.
  • Enhanced (Reworked Fortify): Pin the path of enemies. Deal more damage.
  • Enhanced (Reworked Spin): Bigger radius, more damage. Second swipe pushes all enemies.

Encourage orisa to have active action.

Reinhardt, Sigma, and Rammettra are particularly challenging to rework due to their emphasis on holding and controlling space.

Wrecking Ball and Doomfist have a different challenge,
as they already have complexity and active gameplay mechanics.

I don’t have ideas for them now.Here is my draft.

Reinhardt: 1000 HP

  • Primary attack will get faster up to 50%, just like the mirror watch passive.
  • Shield: 700 HP but regenerates 33% faster, decreases movement penalty.
  • Absorbing 350 damage will gain an additional firestrike charge outside the original cooldown.
  • Firestrike projectile speed will be 33% faster with 110 damage (-10 damage) and +12% movement speed when on-hit.
  • Charge only goes 15m. Allows some kind of vertical movement at the end of the charge.

Sigma

  • Primary attack will get faster up to 40%.
  • Kinetic Grasp: Gain attack speed instead of overhealth.

I still have many DPS and support rework ideas, such as an ability to replace Mercy’s damage boost. However, this is already lengthy , so I will stop here for now.

Hopefully, the devs will take a look at my suggestions, even if they think they may not work at all. Overwatch 2 is currently in a precarious state, as shown by OWCS and Twitch viewership. No one care much about overwatch anymore.I strongly believe Overwatch 2 needs a substantial patch to initiate its uphill comeback. While making significant changes carries risks, it’s preferable not to let Overwatch to continue as a mid-tier game that die slowly. Overwatch 2 is just not enough new content for old players to invest . Moreover, there are still some unfavorable problems in the current gameplay.

If the devs see merit in my ideas, they may even consider hiring me. I have a deep passion for Overwatch and am committed to its improvement.

2

This is disgusting. You are just afraid of us pinning you off the map. Let Reinhardt fly free!

3 Likes
3

What’s the point of playing Rein if you can’t charge in 1v5

3 Likes
4

What do you think a tank’s job is?

The entire point of tank is map control

5

PFffft.

No. At the very least, I can say nobody is picking Reaper because they think he’s a good counter to anything. People pick him because they find it fun to go “blam blam” with a shotgun.

The reason he’s become problematic is because the devs shoehorned him into a tank busting role (which they gutted last patch, leaving him with no real playstyle). He will never work in 5v5 because he was designed specifically for 6v6.

…
They’ve done this twice before since the start of OW2… This would solve none of the issues that make tank’s oppressive and instead just make them more oppressive. In fact, this would just make their presence to other roles x10 more annoying by always being in the fight.

Ah yes… because this worked so well the last time.

6

Frontline design tank will never “fun” for everyone.
Tank gameplay will just interact enemies tank for the most part of the game.
It is so boring like wall vs wall.

When a wall-like tank interact with squishies, squishies just die or run.
There is no fun back-and-fore interaction between this relationship.

Engaging and disturbing should be what tank do.

Just give more opportunities for tank to interact with squishies.

7

I disagree with this on so many levels.

But instead of going over every idea I hate I will explain what I find fun about the game.

I look at Overwatch like an fps game with fighting game decision making.

Yes you can improve at the raw mechanics of an fps the way you would learn combos in a fighting game, but the fun for me is being able to win by out smarting my opponent.

High healthpools/immortalities/high healing dumb down the game by making it harder to punish bad decisions or score a kill by surprising the opponents so the most effective path to power on every role is now raw mechanics.

Making everything more tanky and nerfing tank damage only makes that problem worse.

I hear what you are saying about uninteractive mitigation, but that is what hp is. You just have to shoot them more it doesn’t have anyway to interact with it besides spamming more damage into a given target, something easy to do on a hitscan if you have good aim.

If we want tanks moving back and forth playing footsies they need to be actually killable, and actually able to kill.

Hot take when supports and dps complained about how broken tank was they should have just nerfed tank hp, rather then buffing everything else.

If tanks have less hp they will actually have a reason to try and kill each other instead of just gunning it for each other’s supports

2 Likes
8

I disagree with you on so many levels.

If you just want to win a fight at first sight, like in CS
, there are truly no tactical decisions but only a reaction game.
The fact is the longer the fight lasts, the more important a long-term game plan becomes. That is why many chess games, like Go, are considered more tactical than other board games. U just being delusional .

Cold take: you’re definitely not a tank enjoyer. Why do players like you want to kill tanks so much when tanks are the core of the game? If a tank falls in either Overwatch 2 or Overwatch 1, the match is over. People like Samito always want an easy way to kill tanks. Let’s be real, you just want to win the easy way.

If tanks are killed so easily while being the core of the game, it discourages active gameplay for tanks. It turns the game into a battle of losing fewer resources than the enemy tank, rather than engaging in proactive and strategic plays.

9

You don’t react to instant death, you stand somewhere they don’t kill you. You be unpredictable.
You coordinate with you backline. “Ana hit anti, lucio hit speed boost I walk in and kill people.”

You understand the threat these abilities impose and avoid them.

In chess pieces don’t come back. Cs:go is more like chess in that sense.
If we want this game complicated like chess we delete supports from the game.

That is a terrible idea because I fundamentally like playing around supports.

I just don’t like mitigation being strong.
Especially when it’s mindless like raw hp, immortality, hog breather, fortify etc. You can walk around reins shield what do I do about the stuff i mentioned?

1 Like
10

It is just if there is a widomakers. Being a support suddenly turn the whole gameplay to a hide and seek game. My whole game play become so anti-active aka less fun.

If the punishment of one abilies(ana anti) is that high, it just discourage people to make play and get in. Everyone playing the most defensive way isn’t the fun way.

This is why I think adding to the tank pool while lowering healing creates room for tanks to play tactically in the long term.

11

I hate widowmaker too.

What do you consider this meta if not a defensive one? How is increasing health supposed to make the game more offensive? Why would people play offensively when it is risky and doesn’t earn a kill? Why wouldn’t people just play widow more so they can sit on the otherside of the map and headshot instead of engaging anything up close on genji? Or Alternatively play soldier, sojourn, ashe, or even pharah and junk and just spam at people from so far away you can’t touch them?

Please get into the nitty gritty of what team fights look like in your world.

Because it just sounds like more people just running circles around me and hitting me with e every cooldown.
Except now I don’t do damage so they may just kill my team while I exist cosmetically just to take 10 seconds to kill once my team is dead.

In simpler terms: your changes sound like more spam and more hitscans in my games.

12

Listen my words first.

In my ideal game design, Widowmaker doesn’t even exist (sorry for not mentioning that).

Each team should either focus on shooting tanks to win the long-term resource fight or find a squishy target to eliminate.

Spamming shouldn’t be able to kill anyone if players have basic intelligence in a health-buffed patch. It’s similar to how spam alone can’t win games (high-rank players understand why double hitscan doesn’t work).

I envision a game with dynamic team fights where tanks need to engage the enemy team as the “ideal” play (to gain ult charge and opportunities), while squishy targets are primary objectives if either team wants to break the ice.

13

Ok widow doesn’t exists sure. But playing other hitscans and playing offangles will still just be the best play.

Tanks will close the distance, but everyone else will just avoid them to the best of their ability.

Yes you can’t kill with spam alone but if you get the. Low and create a cross fire they will just die. And the counter play of diving the relatively isolated target will be worse because everyone is Tankier.

If it takes me more then 3 seconds to kill you everyone looks at me and I leave or die. So what is the point of playing close range characters, when I could play ranged ones and take 10 seconds to kiol instead of 8 but not risk being walked on.

This removes all individual play making and makes this game more of aim gods shooting you from 2+ angles.

Their is no reason to play anything else if they can’t blow you up before you can react. That is just high risk no reward.

14

your concern is not that relevant as

You still don’t understand the idea of why double hitscan won’t win games in current patch or even in every patch overwatch 1 and 2.

Let me explain it to you. (I guess you are not a rank player).
Ranged hero sure have tons of damage outplay. However people can just hide in a corner if they get poked to low health. Thats why ranged hero do not have the power to elimate anyone if enemies team have a stable form ( everyone on their postion).

That is why flex hero is played even they got much less damage output
flex hero can chase you down that you have no place to hide. ( or other thing that they good at)
So flex dps is needed to truely elimate a target .

Not to mention the ultimate diff.

There must be a room for flex-hero that even to ranged hero.

15

A crossfire/killbox is a position when no matter where you go you are getting shot at.

Like yes tracer might still get played, but I don’t see genji being touched. He’s too commital. Comps would only exist to create the kill box and finish people.

Everyone having the same gameplan. Why play Reinhardt here? Reaper? Venture? Zarya even?

All the nuance of team comps and their individual playstyles is gone. Dive doesn’t exist. Rush doesn’t exists. If everyone kills slow you just play poke comps and try to put each other in
a killbox. Because you are just trying to deal more damage then you take to win off ults, or kill in neutral with the killboxes. Teams will have plenty of time to peel any rush or dive so what is the win con of a non poke comp here?

Consistency is already king, this makes that worse. You don’t need flex heroes to create a kill box and if they are toothless the inherent inconsistency of their kits makes people not play them. They by design need to be close or make prediction s to get value. And hitscans can play off angles too. You don’t need flex dps. Double sniper has been meta, double hitscan less so because tracer. And I would argue torb serves the same purpose of hitscan but tanky. And sym hps rush comps with tp so never played

16

First Anything can be tweaked . It is just a primary text.

I think many people from the West underestimate Genji too much. Genji is played in OWCS by Korean teams that have beaten every non-believing Western team. Moreover, Genji is the safest flank hero not to die in the poking phase, meaning Genji can survive until the best timing to engage. Genji provides the most stable and reliable burst damage among flex heroes. These strengths show that Genji is still effective in his role.

Also, in my patch, ultimate abilities are more important. Therefore, I plan to buff Genji’s blade damage to fulfill every Genji main’s dream of becoming a blade bot.

My plan is all try to save those heros!!! Those hero have nothing to interact if enmeies is far away. If we encourge either tank engaging deep to each team. Those hero won’t have trash time in the game play !!!

That’s a really bad insight. I disagree at all . I just pick one point to discuss to save my time. The only time double sniper is being played because tanks are not engaging hero but heroes with holding space.

17

But I don’t kill them as rein because I do 45% less damage. If I just farm ult, immortality field and life grip still exist to cancel my value out.

Ranged characters sit back and shoot, close ranged ones run circles around me. No reason to even interact with the tank if they are not able to kill you. They also have over 1000hp before calculating mitigation so why bother? It takes too long.

If people think they can kill me, they are willing to take a risk to finish me off.
But if I don’t kill and don’t die, why am I here?

Characters like orisa, hog, and mauga all have ranged damage, and can either chase you around a corner, trap you in a corner, or both. They are consistent. They don’t need to take risk to get value. If nobody kills, why not play them every game?

Reaper same thing you farm ult, it gets mitigated. You go for kills, it gets mitigated. Sustain has not been nerfed and everyone has more health.

If you have a hitscan you can maybe play sombra or tracer just because they can escape easily. But he doesn’t so he might die. Has less range, and mobility. The compensation is blowing people up fast, and you took that away. Why play him?

You could force these characters into a poke play style sure, but why not just play poke heroes?

Genji, and venture are good at blowing up hitscans on off angles, as a consequence of them being dive heroes. Raising health makes dive worse because there is a greater risk of you taking too long to kill, and they get peeled.

The play style you are describing just sounds like double shield. Which tanks hated.

Just trading resources on the front line while bap and brig invalidate rush and dive. Kills took a ton of team work to work through enemy resources, or get past the shields to kill as doom. Everyone tracking every resource and cycling together in formation. Double shield was a sustain comp and a poke comp.

Admittedly hitscans weren’t necessarily good then, but unlike back then it wouldn’t be shields, so hitscan can headshot something. There is a way past the defense to allow you to shoot! A minimum 300hp backline.

My first most played hero is rein, second most played is lucio, third most played is brig. I like to go in and have someone either die or back up.

I miss the ow1 footsies of going in with dm or bubble and then having to back up.

Furthermore, I miss the beta where I could play agro on any role and win 2v1’s. On Lucio, brig, moira, reaper, genji, ana sometimes, Reinhardt, sigma.

So much of the cast could just kill anything that wasn’t a tank. So footsies mattered. Positioning mattered. Cooldown management mattered.

High risk, high reward gameplay!

Now the game is slow, with teams cycling through cds, and things rarely dying staying alive is now brain-dead easy with the skill expression being hyper focused. The offense.

Again, longer ttks might be fine in a game without healing, but if all my work can just be undone, and every cooldown comes back on a clock. People can make mistakes and it doesn’t matter. I can outplay a team, and it won’t matter because they didn’t die, and the cooldowns came back, and the health came back. I can use my ult just to have it mitigated by a cooldown.

Where is the skill in whole interaction not mattering? In your actions not having consequences.

Lethality does not force passive gameplay. Survivability does.

You play agro on Ana to force her to anti-early and minimize the value. Cleanse doesn’t do anything offensively, so there is no rush to bait it out. And once it is used, you just have to wait for it to end.

If widowmaker holding an angle, you have to do something about it to get to the point. If immortality field was used, sometimes the best play is to wait it out.

If you don’t want to ever die, you can sit in spawn and lose. You have to go do something about an offensive option. Defensive ones you only need to react to. Raising hp slows down the game because it takes more setup to get a kill. Making the game more defensive…

I just don’t see how you think people would play anything other than hitscan and tracer sombra, or mei/torb as poke comp in this scenario.

I go in on jq and feed ultcharge and never kill when orisa can farm stats from the other side of the map.

Why be completely useless half the time so i can be slightly less useless sometimes.

When I can be almost useless all the time?

18

If you play aggressively against Ana alone, you’re just feeding! There is no way u can get out from ana.
If your whole team focuses on Ana, the Ana player will just swap. That’s Overwatch now! There’s no tactical depth here; it’s just life or death. Ana’s anti-heal is too powerful, making interactions between you and Ana very linear. It creates a similar situation between supports and Widowmaker. If the enemy has an Ana, tank gameplay instantly becomes a survival game where you can’t step up .If u step up ,u will be “outplayed” by a brainless, easy-to-hit, 4-second AOE anti-heal ability. You feels like get killed by the powser of the abily but not a good play from ana.

My patch aims to bring back the back-and-forth of cooldowns, encouraging players to use their abilities actively and create a constant cooldown loop between teams, rather than waiting for moments to completely deny the enemy.

In my opinion, high-risk, high-reward gameplay should never happen in Overwatch as an asymmetric game. Remember the cancer hero Doomfist in Overwatch 1 with his infamous 125 slam rollout? One player could kipnap the entire game, turning it into a coinflip scenario. My team wins because I got lucky; the enemies get a free kill because the rollout didn’t work this time. It’s an unhealthy design for a multiplayer game. It’s unfun for enemies to die because of a coinflip. There is only a 0.5-second interaction between you and Doomfist. There is not tactic involved!

Long-term game plans create a healthier gameplay loop. Team fights will eventually end as tanks’ health depletes over time. If the enemy team backs up, the objective speed compensates for it, as mentioned in my post. If one team insist, someone have to die.

Good long-term plays that stack up in ult-charge speed and objective capture will reflect your skill. I don’t understand why you think skill is not involved. Like in the chess game Go, every move matters. Every good move will stack up to a win.

If you want a single play to win a match easily, it’s like cheating with a one-shot.

I don’t think anyone playing Overwatch in the style of Widowmaker or CS
/Valorant feels satisfied winning a fight in 1 second because the opponent didn’t react in time.

19

In a chess game I take a peice it’s gone. I have said this. I can’,t blunder my peices and then play for stall to get them back.

Taking damage, and dying is your mistake. Healing, and immortality prevents the mistake.

All you are doing is making killing take a lot of work in exchange for losing the skill expression of staying alive.

You can play a moba and even there sometime people can setup scenario where you just die.

The skill expression is how you avoid that.

Overwatch is a game where every mistake can be undone by design. The only permanent thing is death. And even if you die you come back after 10 seconds. That is the skill. You can kill the enemy for standing somewhere as doom. But as the overwatch 1 tournament player I have talked too said before. (If you die to doom you’re bad. Just don’t stand in the places where he drops from the skybox to kill you.)

Why do you think killing someone fast is low skill? You chose to put yourself in the unsafe place, if you are there and you haven’t already traded for a kill you are feeding. That is you having terrible positioning and not understanding the game.

If I die I know I made a mistake, death is instant feedback that I suck. That I need to adjust. Farming ult is easy, doing it without dying is skillful,same with putting pressure out to make someone back up, that is just spam under a fancy name. Every fight would have a long drawn out poke phase as people work health bars down into a state where you can die. Poking without feeding isn’t hard, getting a kill is only possible with teamwork.

So much rides on that poke phase which used to be only half of the fight. It is now the most important thing.

And how do you succeed in poke? Have good aim. Be consistent in your ability usage. It is the least thoughtful part of the fight, because you don’t want to take risk you are just trying to trade up in health and ultcharge.

Risk, reward is the bedrock of any skillful game. The threat of losing something that it is difficult or impossible to bring back. Chess has that pieces are lost.

Go has that you can’t move pieces once they are placed.

In Overwatch health gets healed cooldowns come back ultimates get farmed used and farmed again in a cycle. And non of it matters until someone dies.

All that creates is a world where mechanics, stamina, and consistency win games. Decision making is risk reward calculation if there is no tangible risk, and the reward can be undone. Then mistakes matter less because I can just make up for it latter.
If I have great mechanics, but imperfect decision making no one will kill me fast enough to matter. Where as if it’s the opposite then I just don’t trade up in the poke phase and lose before I even made a decision. Without any obvious feed back other than open aim labs.

Fundamentally if you go this route you are making a game that isn’t overwatch, that invalidates all the stuff i have spent several years of my life trying to understand.

Those old skills still matter now just less, and this closes that up entirely.

before, they buffed ana to have 15 shots of primary, and a shorter reload time. and buffed healing, and uptime for supports across the board, bringing bap into the meta, and making brig better at pocketing with burst healing on repair pack, and adding kiriko with cleanse, and lw grip into the game. I could solo ult an ana and kill her. genji can reflect the sleep back into her. brig has a shield to block sleep. lucio moves unpredictably and can boop her to make her miss the cds. reaper has fade. tracer blinks around. dva can use dm and non of ana’s kit can do anythig. sigma has two defensive cooldowns to just eat it. and if you catch ana out of position, then even if she antied you sometimes you killed her anyway and traded.

she is only broken when you can’t just kill her.

she can kill me, i can kill her. it is a skillful exchange. some support players didn’t like dying so instead of doing a power shift taking away some of her lethality or healing output in exchange for survivability, they just flat buffed her in every aspect. and they did this to the entire support cast power crept the game, and made everyone misserable. they did the same thing to dps, and now they are doing it to tank just so they will need to do it to supports again someday.

let things die. have high risk high reward heroes like ana be good, and have safer more flexible heroes like Lucio, to compliment them. make sure that if they mess up they die fast so people have to play smart or lose.

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