The idea that there is a way to salvage the role when burdened with the stress of being the sole metric of your role for the team, the additional frustration of being the only role unable to “main” a favorite hero, due to the swapping requirement, and the heightened effectiveness of counterswapping against you, and the innate toxicity that is heaped and focused upon you is pollyannaish wishful thinking at it’s height.
Add to that the immense frustration that the now required, ultrabuffed tanks bring to other roles, as well as the loss of peels and backline protection brings, and it is nothing but obvious that the format cannot be salvaged.
It’s not like there is some demographic of “tank players” out there floating from game to game and Overwatch just has to hit the magic spot and they’ll flock like pigeons to a crazy old lady in central park with a bag of seed.
Most players wouldn’t object to playing tank if it was fun and wasn’t such a high stress, super spotlight experience that invites the scorn of your fellow players hyperfocused on them.
The single most important adjustment would be to dilute the focus among 2 tanks and stop stubbornly adhering to the wishful “if you buff it they will come” tripe which is going into its eleventh season and still hemmorhaging like a sliced artery in warm water.
FFS, doubling down is NOT working.
Especially when what you are doubling down on, making tanks stronger, is not what helps make tanks more fun. Having to constantly be naded, hacked, slept, slowed, booped, etc. and having you ults cancelled by hack, suzu, sleep, etc. because you are the easiest target, removes all the joy from tanking.
Even if you feel you are playing well, so many of your plays are just cancelled and all agency is lost. For the heroes I play, Ana and Sombra are the biggest problems, but plenty of other heroes have abilities that make tanking suck, and tanks themselves have abilities that make playing into them as other tanks such (for me it’s DVa matrix almost forcing a swap to zarya because of its uptime).
So many things take away from the fun of tanking, and so few things add to it. It’s a massive net negative experience.
blame OW for swapping to 5v5 without major tank reworks, leaving behind tanks that can one shot enemies and do otherwise crazy amounts of damage when their job should be tanking and zoning, not instantly deleting threats, and as a side effect also leaving them squishy enough to explode under coordinated burst damage / cc
As long as heroes like Ana and Sombra can pick on the single tank, I don’t think tanks are the biggest issues for tanks, although they are a major part of it.
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Tanks just exist sure there are some that can still solo carry off picks/pressure, but if both tanks are relatively competent it’s up to DPS to do something while supports keep them alive.
You’re right. And then the amount of times I’ve seen the enemy tank talk sh*t because our tank swaps to counter them is wild. It devolves quickly and suddenly the whole match is toxic af. We need an off-tank role.
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I do not care too much. They can have the win they are so desperate for and if my team decides they want it more, good for them? It is none of my business, I am just going to keep swinging my hammer.