Tank Tips for Season 10 Tanks Mains 🍺, Deathball, and Blizzard's Balancing

General Discussion
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These are tips that I have learned as a tank main in Plat Rank. I do not speak for all ranks, only my experience, but please feel free to share your own tips and advice to help support those tanks in your ranks. We tanks must share our knowledge and how grow/adapt. This thread attempts to do just that.

Video Version:

Written Version:

If you plan on solo queueing this season as a tank main, these are my tips for you:

  • Don’t run Reinhardt without Briggy. Just don’t do it. The moment you try and run Reinhardt you will quickly realize you are missing the key components to get a successful deathball going mainly because you will not be enabled to pressure the front line and take the space needed to enable your team. It’s like trying to ride a bike with 1 flat tire.
  • Orisa. If your solo queueing, and nobody on your team picks Briggy, but your team needs an anchor tank. Take Orisa!! The added spam damage and the ability to zone out the enemy team (whether they are running dive or deathball) becomes crucial. You can still use Halt to push the death ball back or slow it down to keep pumping in damage and you still have fortify to save you when things get in close or to save yourself from a RIP TIRE.
  • Zarya is an excellent choice paired up right now because she takes pressure of your healers, and help to enable Rein/Briggy to get the deathball momentum going. Also because there is a low of brawling, she has her ult up much faster than in previous metas allowing your team to create a snow ball effect cycling your teams ult economy between earthshatters and graviton surges. It works very well
  • Winston can still be run in the off tank position but he is situational. Often you can pick him if you see the enemy team has a good Widowmaker and you feel your team is best served switching off Zarya to counter, or if you want to bring added pressure to an enemy team running a Genji. But keep in mind, you can’t play him as aggressively, he is best behind the shield as a bodyguard who is enabled once the enemy teams cooldowns are gone and the deathball has full moment so you can go for the counters.

Keep in mind you will struggle mid/late fight if against Briggy’s Rally ultimate; feeling almost worthless. Hopefully the counters you are diving (like widow) will not be near the rally).

  • D.Va, same situation as Winston but probably still more viable in the off tank spot. She is great for those maps where you want to contest the high ground better against an enemy Junkrat or Hanzo. Again, like Winston, she has to pick her moments, she can’t be played as aggressively unless you see golden opportunities to bully a counter or hero on the high ground, or dive a healer. I still feel she is great to run in the Off-tank against an enemy Moira so she can eat orbs and hunt her down after she fades.

Also She combos well with Rein earthshatters if you want to save your teams dps ult economy and alternate between the two. (depending on the map).

  • Road Hog. Poor hog, probably the THICCest victim to the deathball. His kit is entirely countered by Briggy’s Bash and his gun doesn’t hold up well against armor. He gets snowballed easily when the enemy teams deathball gains momentum.

Even so, tank players have to be able to identify ways to best enable their teams, and often that may mean identifying the best player on the enemy team. If the enemy team is running a good tracer who is avoiding your teams Briggy and doing damage, you might find yourself switching to Hog to go for a clean hook while pumping spam into the from line and hooking the threat in the backline.

Death-Ball Meta
I explain in my video above how this version of deathball is enabled and gains momentum, and also the best option to bring if the Randomness of Match Making finds you without a Briggy of your own. The time on the video that shows this is @4:21
You can watch it, or follow these basic steps:

  1. Reinhardt pushes forward shield up (at this point teams will be throwing their CC abilities at each other, Reinhardt will just have to take it). His job is to give the space needed to contest/engage the enemy team.

  2. Briggy is enable by Reinhardt’s space allowing swinging away and stunning crucial targets. Ana anti heal actually works really well here to destroy the front line (a little helpful tip for those that haven’t figured that one out just yet).

  3. Now that Briggy is enabled, this enables Reinhardt to lower his shield to swing away. This builds his ult charge and gets a huge increase into the momentum of the deathball, also contributing to the mid/late game where you can do a Stun Earthshatter combo.

  4. Now that Rein is enabled the team follows up (dps were pumping out damage to begin with, but with the enemy teams shields down, the picks start to commence.

This last part isn’t a step but more of a helpful tip to all the supports in the game. It is crucial that you realize that teams are aiming to kill the main tank because killing the main tank slows down the teams ult charge gain, which can in turn slow down the death ball momentum, allowing for a better chance to win the team fight, or gaining the upper-hand in the next team fight.

Healers! You have to be prepared to dumb a ton of your healing economy into the main tank. Don’t even wait for Reinhardt to lose his armor because then it might be too late. Keep the main tank up (and Briggy) and your death-ball has a greater chance of succeeding.

Blizzard’s Balance Decisions
This is an option read; it’s just my personal opinion.

Nobody was more excited to see death ball come back more than me, but like I’ve said in previous threads, it came back at a heavy price, and one that might not be too healthy for the game overall.

I discuss this in the video above @9:04

To summarize. I don’t want Mirror Match Ups, and because Death ball is such an easier way to play the game (currently) it becomes the “go to” option for mostly everyone running in the randomness/chaotic-ness of Match Making.

Death-ball is not a hard concept to understand.
Not only this, Overwatch is a game of Space & Time.

Space meaning you have to contest the objective, move the objective, or capture the objective (or defend it). Time being every game has a Game Clock (or % timer) that is ticking away. You WANT to get the better time at the end of a round so your team is set up to win! Deathball is a great way of both getting a better time (if the enemy team isn’t set up with their own death ball to slow it down)
and a great way to contest the burning Game Clock by defending with Death-ball.

And because Blizzard dropped a hero that single handedly crushes both Dive Tanks and Dive Dps heroes, the “go-to” option to opt out of dive and just run Death-ball becomes OVERWHELMING appealing (especially if you solo queue in match making).

This leaves really the only variation/counter play being left up to:

  1. The dps slots
  2. The Burst Healer slot

Everything else unfortunately looks to be a mirror.

I don’t like this. My dream (and maybe this is too much to ask for) is to get the game balanced in a way that Death-Ball AND Dive can both be viable options and neither one dominates the other.

WHOA is that Possible?! Yes I believe the game can eventually evolve into this, but it’s going to take a lot of dedication on Blizzard’s part to get it there.

But this game would be a GLORIFIED SENSATION if people that love dive can run dive and people who love deathball can run deathball, and neither would feel like they are entering the game with a heavily weakened team composition, or that their entire strategy can be completely under-minded by ONE hero.

Notice I say 1 hero, because if you take Briggy out, Dive is viable again.

I’m saying this as someone who loves deathball… Blizzard shouldn’t have killed entire viable team composition with ONE hero. Teams should be required to switch out multiple heroes (across the roles) to counter act another teams composition. Otherwise two things happen:

  1. Less viable team compositions (which in lends it to…)
  2. Mirror Matchups (or half Mirror matchups).

I think Blizzard can do better.

TL;DR
I made a video if you don’t want to read :beers:

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Nothing for Orisa :disappointed_relieved:

Orisa: I guess I’m never “META”

eh its ok Orisa we laugh at meta

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Oh I appoligize, I had her in there, but I made a typo and I put Briggy’s name in there instead of Orisa. She is in there now.
I do think good Orisa players that know how to zone out the deathball and have good time/experience on her can actually stand toe to toe against it. Also she is still great on her niche maps for Environmental kills.

Thanks for spotting that mistake. It’s corrected.

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after watching the video, I feel like making an orisa guide for this season. I feel like she is a dark horse for this meta and people dont realize how good she actually is right now until they try her on their team.

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Lots of good points RichC!

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I agree 100% You should make an Orisa Season 10 Guide, because I think you are right. Orisa has always been my 2nd main tank next to Reinhardt, but that doesn’t mean I don’t play her (as you saw in the video) She is actually outstanding, and with enough coordination and shot calling with Orisa I think she is a sleeper.

But I think it harkens back to my point about the current deathball being so damn easy to run. It’s like comfort food. It’s easy to understand, easy to apply, and easy to execute.

That isn’t to say there aren’t better options, I think you and I both know Orisa’s major potential in this new season 10, but people just haven’t caught on to “how” to play “with” her to best contest the death-ball momentum.

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I am going bookmark this, because I said this season I am going still play Mercy and Sombra, but I want to also play the two tanks that I solely enjoy

Zarya and Orisa, Wish me luck!

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Good choices! I would recommend playing Zarya when your team picks up Rein and Briggy to help compliment the deathball, and playing Orisa if your team doesn’t pick Briggy.

That’s the strategy I’m using currently and it’s working very well.

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Glad to see someone mention the elephant in the room, the rank difference between actual gameplay win requirements, and what the team has to do to advance to the next rank up.

The system dropped me down to mid gold from mid plat for no reason. My placements were good, and my win rate was solid the season before, which was if I remember right nearly 70%. Not only that, but I ended that season at my season high of around 2650.

My win conditions in gold, were LITERALLY TO KILL EVERYONE EVERY GAME. I kid you not. You saw my Roadhog, and I just, rampaged the world with that Roadhog. Then when we had actual players that could tank, I’d keep them alive with Moira and kill everything anyway.

I’m not the BEST Roadhog mind you, but it was more than enough to completely obliterate all competition and end up back in Platinum with little to no effort. Moira really helped too, as nobody seemed to figure out how to fight her.

Me taking advantage of slow teammates just shows I didn’t belong in this rank to begin with, and yet the system dunked my SR for no reason that season, and I climbed out like it was a joke entirely.

However, I had to quite literally change the way I had to play, just to manage this escape. I had to LEARN AN ENTIRELY NEW WAY OF OVERWATCH, just to climb.

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Thank you! I wasn’t sure if I should throw that into this video. But I just can’t stand some of these big youtubers talking about the lower ranks like they “understand” or “know” what they go through.

A lot of these youtubers (I don’t want to name names) live in a dps Masters/GM Bubble, and in many cases, lack the empathy or capacity to understand how the game is actually played differently depending on the elo.

It’s not always super fast/easy ranking up as a Support or Anchor tank specialist. You are very much tethered to your teams ability to work together, and match making can be a poop shoot.

They often attempt to apply their dps filter onto other hero classes and it just doesn’t work. And a lot of them, what they won’t tell you, is if they are going to rank up on an alt account playing ONLY main tank, or ONLY support, they are getting their friend to make an alt account to help them climb up. Otherwise it would take a LONG time to get up there.

But thanks for understanding this point in the video. I wasn’t sure if I should have said it, but I’m happy I did now.

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There were quite literally a few matches where I had to just KILL EVERYTHING as a hitscan, because nobody could kill Pharah.

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Is lucio really preferable in higher leagues of play? Been having a lot of lucio in the lower ranks presently (cant judge them wallriding made easy is just too fun) that having to sacrifice a dps or tank slot just so we can have brig+ heavier heals often tends to be bad. Lucio kit isn’t much useful Atleast for me when I rien because the game enabled hanzo and reaper mei a little which doesn’t allow me swing freely unless I have the cc backing me up. Though the speed boost sounds nice on paper.

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Thank you so much RichC and thanks for inviting to this thread, I love it mate!

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I think you are very much onto something here with Lucio and the lower ranks. I think Lucio is certainly one of those heroes that works very well in higher ranks where teams have strong unity and organization.

I’m almost certain Lucio is a lot like Reinhardt where his value and usefulness is going to different depending on the rank.

I did talk about this in the video above when I talked to how a Bronze Reinhardt player plays differently than a Plat Reinhardt player. I’m sure certain heroes picks in the lower ranks are much more valuable than others (like Bastion being such a good pick in the lower ranks with a shield).

That’s why I will never tell anyone who is in a lower rank what they are doing wrong, because I think the win conditions vary in the ranks. They know the player base in those ranks better than anyone. They know what there healers are capable of, what their dps are capable of, what their tanks are capable of. Their win conditions are probably a lot different than my own.

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Lucio usually takes zen spot as an off healer/third healer in higher levels of play. In GM, it’s usually Rein and Zarya as tanks, Hanzo as dps, and Brig, Mercy, and Zen as healers. Zen is basically a dps in that level due to players in GM having really good aims. Discord orb is good at melting down tanks and armors that Brigitte provides. Transendence is still one of the best defensive ultimate in the game. These reasons are why Zen is usually a better pick than Lucio. Although Lucio is usually a better pick on KOTH maps or when fighting against an Orisa.

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…can someone explain what Deathball is; I’ve heard the term a few times before, but just joined Overwatch last December.

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No problem.
I explained it twice in my original post with that big section that says:
Death Ball Meta
I also explain it via video here:

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Trust Rich to be the saviour of the tank mains and helping them understand that this meta may be a bit of a pain but it’s fun in the right ways, from one tank gai to another Rich, cheers for the help :smiley:

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’ Poor Hog, he is the fattest victim of the deathball meta.’

He is not fat, he is THICC !

RichC, I was expecting better of you …

That aside, lovely guide !

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Thanks for summoning me!
There are some solid advice in the video, I really appreciate it.

About Orisa, she feels… weird. Her gun always felt wonky when it comes to killing stuff, and now because of Brigitte’s ult, it feels like everyone is unkillable if you don’t have a DPS helping you.
Idk, maybe it’s just me, but it used to be much, much easier to frag out with her.

I wish it wasn’t that hot outside, my PC likes to overheat, I already lost 50sr because of that, kinda takes away any motivation to play if you know it can randomly happen again.

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