Tanks are NOT supposed to be the same power level as DPS

I’m sorry what? You’re joking right?

8 Likes

Yeah? From what I’ve seen they mostly cleaned up the fights.

Personally I think metas are born out of more factors than just “this character in this role is really strong”. Yes, that’s definitely part of it, but other parts include character synergy, the state of characters that are able to effectively counter said strategy, and other factors. Going back to dive as an example, the whole focus of dive was to kill targets one-by-one before they could react. with insane TTKs. D.Va was a powerhouse at the time, but needed some way to mitigate damage while dealing damage herself. Winston’s bubble was great for that, providing plenty of space for divers, but his damage, while reliable, wasn’t very good. In addition, Zenyatta’s Discord Orb made targets crumple like paper, and his Harmony Orb was great at healing divers from a distance while they did their thing. Zenyatta needed protection, though, so Lúcio’s ability to peel was greatly appreciated. And then hypermobile DPS such as Tracer and Genji were able to capitalize on the space made by Winston. As for counters, Mei was essentially a throw pick at the time, and her wall was rather easy to circumnavigate with heroes this mobile. Roadhog was equally dumpstered at this time and was essentially zero threat. There weren’t many other hard stuns at the time, and the ones that did exist were able to be played around. The point is, however, it’s the combination of all these factors that leads to one immensely powerful meta, not just “tanks are strong”. That may be part of it, but it’s never that simple.

If that was true, you could just get heroes that can bypass/shut down Defense Matrix and boom, you countered Dive. The reason why that didn’t work was Tracer.

1 Like

What is with these absurd hyperboles as if the DPS do like nothing at all? This is why hardly anyone takes a lot of dps mains seriously. Like no, the dps were actually insane at that time. Especially tracer. You think she’s strong rn? Think about the game without brig, moira, buffed cree, baptiste, etc.

And no she didn’t make “monkey immortal for 4 seconds” ? ? You can still have beams, melee etc go through them and she couldn’t fire while DMing, also a big part of dive she had her missiles, which is when she had 2s DM.

12 Likes

It literally took 3 supports to even make it feasible, though. One of the reasons that GOATS was nigh-impossible to get rid of was because 3 healers and 3 tanks was just way more efficient. GOATS utilized three of the lowest-healing Supports in the game: Lucio, Zen and Brig (at the time). You can’t argue that healing is the problem when it literally takes three of them make it work.

The reason you can’t triple up on DPS is because they have no other utility.

3 Likes

And it also took 3 tanks? 2 later on because one was replaced by Sombra.

Also, healing is not the only way Supports give sustainability.

1 Like

I have no idea what point you’re trying to make.

Then what exactly are you speaking of? Brigitte’s Armor? Her Stun? Lucio’s Speed Boost? Zenyatta’s Discord Orb?

Winston’s Barrier + D.Va’s Matrix was a combination that stopped any form of damage except melee. Beams go through matrix, but they won’t stop shields. Some projectiles may go through or break shields, but they won’t go through Matrix.

That was the reason Brigitte was created as a melee character.

3 Likes

This mentality is what led to GOATS.

They are no where close to that, and it’s unlikely they ever will be in Overwatch (OW2, however, is a different story).

You’ll end up with a cycle where in order to kill Tanks, everything needs to be more powerful in order to kill Tanks. Currently, we have thousands upon thousands of damage negating barriers, healing, armor and other abilities that dramatically cut down damage output.

Except this isn’t happening. What we’re seeing constantly and consistently is a lot of mirror match-ups or overly similar picks between to teams. Part of this is because of the lack of choice in the Support and Tank roster, part of this is also because how many outliers remains, and part this is also because how powerful Tank combinations are with Supports.

Except this is largely false. While certain metas were not always driven by Tanks, others were driven by strong or outliers in the Support group.

In a competitive game where you are free to pick between several roles, if the roles aren’t balanced in terms of value, then the roles that yield the most value will always be picked over the others. Hence why Blizzard had to go to 2/2/2; hence why GOATS happened; hence why meta compositions are still being dictated by Tank and Support roles.

It isn’t because the Damage-role isn’t viable, but it’s largely irrelevant because it just doesn’t contribute in terms of team value.

Close, but not quite hitting the mark. Value towards the team is incredibly important. Supports are valued because they provide team healing, and utility options. Most Damage do not provide anything beyond damage - something that Tanks and Supports can do just as well, if not better.

Exactly.

Unfortunately, it’s often better for Reinhardt to be aggressive in general. Passively tanking as Reinhardt won’t yield as much reward as an aggressive and offensively minded one.

Especially true with certain combinations of co-Tanks, and Supports.

110 per shot. Not over time. DPS is only used in terms of averages; moment-to-moment gameplay is where it counts.

Overwatch obsfucates so much of it’s systems that it’s generally difficult to get a sense of what’s strong and what isn’t. So for the majority of the gaming population; they don’t really care or are completely ignorant of the level of power behind the roles.

There’s also something to be said about the reward for playing Damage. The feeling and level of accomplishment versus the difficulty of eliminating a target as a Damage-role hero is substantial and generally worth the effort/reward/dopemine kick. You don’t get that kind of feeling as a Tank or Support in much the same way.

Most of this is false. There’s no multi-tasking for a Damage-role hero, they’re only capable of doing one thing; killing targets. Mobility varies, but the most mobile heroes are found in Tank and Support groups (Wrecking Ball and Valkyrie Mercy and Lucio, respectively).

To a certain extent this is true, but we’re also dealing with a competitive game here; if one or two roles are imbalanced, it affects a lot of things and numbers have to be built out towards dealing those intentional imbalances. (Complaints about damage or healing being really high is largely because it’s necessary, otherwise Tanks won’t die).

Tanks aren’t weak enough that they truly need substantial buffs in order to compete. A current and consistent problem with 2/2/2 is that it was band-aided onto the game without consideration for the current game’s balance. As a result, there’s a ton of outliers, mostly related to Tanks. Until those outliers are tamed and brought down to reasonable considerations, there will always be this misperception that some Tanks are weaker than others. It’s not that unplayed Tanks are weaker, it’s that the ones that are being played are too strong that they’ve become outliers.

You’re missing the forest for the trees. The point of GOATS was due to the way objectives are constructed in Overwatch. All them require guarding and controlling space. Whether that space moves (like a payload) or a controlled point. The sustain granted via Tanks and Supports plays extremely well to that, to the point that no other role is needed or required for it.

GOATS was more than just about the power and value of the composition, it also about how well it played towards the objectives.

Quoted for correctness.

The Supports that were being played were on the bottom end of the healing pool. Zenyatta, Ana, Lucio were low-rated healers that did not create the healing creep (Ana did, but not to the degree in which Moira or Brigitte would do). Lucio wasn’t even brought in for healing as much as he was for speed-boosting and crowd management.

Brigitte was eventually replaced by Ana, and Brigitte back then was a stronger healer than Ana. A lot players still don’t understand that armor’s value is double that of pure healing.

To be more clear; damage-role heroes don’t have anything to offer beyond damage to the team. And when everyone on the team can provide damage, and some form of utility, well then, damage ends up being very low in terms of value.

Sure, Soldier can do 120 damage every six seconds. But Reinhardt can do 100 damage per target every 6 seconds. He can also produce a barrier that can withstand 1600 points of damage. Something that Solder cannot do. Immediately, Reinhardt is the more valuable pick; and we haven’t talked about their effective ranges.

4 Likes

Yes and he has a slow rate of fire, hence “73 dps”.
I am not denying he has a higher dmg per 2 shots, but you cannot deny he has a lower dps.

Melees go through both bubble and matrix. Some other sources such as mercy healing beam goes through both also.

Soldier does 171 dps, Rein does slightly over 85 I think.

No it wasn’t. Team GOATS not having a Widowmaker is what led to GOATS.

Remember, at the tail end of GOATS, Tanks were in the worst state they had been in the entire game. Tanks were painful to play. So much so that the moment GOATS disappeared, most of the nerfs that they had gotten during that meta had to be immediately reverted.

Brigitte was NOT a “stronger healer” than Ana back then. At that time, Brigitte was considered the worst healer in the game without a dedicated GOATS comp. She was the least-picked healer on ladder by the end of GOATS because she simply did not work unless you had 2 other healers backing her up.

This is an oversimplification because it ignores the fact that Reinhardt required Lucio in order to do that much damage. That’s the reason Lucio was the one Support that was irreplaceable in GOATS – it simply did not work without him, because without him, Reinhardt and Brigitte could not get in melee range. And if they couldn’t, Rein did no damage, Zarya got no charge, and Brigitte did no healing or damage.

I already mentioned melee. And Mercy’s beams are irrelevant, since we were talking about damage.

7 Likes

He’s referring to their cooldowns.

If everything is that much cut and dry then take away Soldier76 healing, cuz DPS should not be able to heal an entire team right?

Meanwhile i partially agree with you. Tanks in recent history were almost all nerfed as tanks and buffed as DPS. Starting with D.va, why does she have rockets again? Cuz her DM was gutted. Rein got an unnecessary damage buff, while melting in nanoseconds. The list goes on.

And also its hilarious that Zarya is a more consistent DPS than Symmetra, but thats not Zaryas fault.

1 Like

Exactly why Goats never should have been a meta composition in the first place… You don’t bandaid your least popular role by making them the strongest, you should design the game around the fact that they’re less popular. And accomodate for the fact that most people simply don’t want to play tank.

Bruh both teams are literally forced to run 2 DPS heroes now. There is no reason why Tanks should be 1v1-able anymore. Why be a tank when you can be a DPS who burns through 600hp in the same amount of time a Tank burns you back for 150-199 and then you just die, have to flee last second, or spend 4 years being healed back up?

Tanks should be the strongest role hands down as they make/create space, lead the team, and frankly are in charge of the entire game’s pace and flow. That is a lot of responsibility which is why the role is not liked. Another reason is DPS being able to 1v1 them and force them to retreat when Tanks have 2.5-4x as much effective health.

Tanks should be the strongest and should dictate metas as they are literally the role that (is supposed to) frontline and initiate at every point in the game. Tank role being so weak these days has resulted in them having to spend more time hiding and barely getting healed and its an awful experience.

And as much as people make act otherwise or say otherwise, when the tank role is bad, the entire game feels HORRID on all 3 roles. The game is not fun when supports feel like sitting ducks because tanks are weak. DPS feels terrible when tanks cant initiate well and provide team protection. Tanks feels terrible cause it feels like you can’t do anything significant.

EDIT: There is nothing Blizzard can do to increase the popularity of the Tank population short of eliminating the role and moving them all over to DPS as large hitbox medium damage DPS. At that point, they would probably be exclusively played (ironically) as they would be the beefiest DPS picks while still all maintaining damage presence.

What Blizzard CAN and SHOULD do is STOP nerfing tanks and make them much stronger again like they used to be so that they can RETAIN the Tank player base that actually likes to consistently pick Tank over the other roles.

NOTHING good comes out of nerfing the tank role. Nothing. All it does is make the Tank player base smaller and smaller by driving them away (mostly to DPS or flat out quitting the game), which only worsens queue times and match quality.

And like I said previously, Tanks being the strongest role really doesnt matter anymore as DPS are forced to be selected on each team, meaning Tanks can’t push DPS out of use.

Tanks will always dictate the meta (as they should) due to the fact that they lead the team and control the game’s pace. Making them weaker and weaker won’t change that. All it changes is which tanks are the 2 LEAST BAD tanks after a certain point. A point we hit a long long LONG time ago.

11 Likes

True, but melees still go through both.
And even if we consider this, their uptimes are very short. Dive was played as an aggressive, not a sustain comp. Winston had 600hp bubble at the time which gets shredded, plus d.va had her matrix which can be stunned out of, beamed, melee’d, etc and it only lasted 2 seconds. Plus the dive tanks didn’t have much damage, Winston especially has low damage.

The reason dive was so strong was because of how strong flankers were, like tracer. The tanks enabled space for a short time and the DPS just destroyed everyone.

1 Like

DM at the time of Dive meta has a 4 second max uptime for uninterrupted use and also couldnt be turned on and off at will with no CD between uses.

Not saying your principle/point is wrong, just trying to clarify before the child responders come in and attack you and say you are flat out wrong and your “life has no meaning and anything you say is invalid” cause of that minor detail error.

1 Like

Yep that’s fair. Tho she did have 2s DM for a decent period of the dive meta and she could be stunned out of dm. Everything else you said is correct though.

This is why we have 222. Also dps have better agency and obviously smaller hitboxes

1 Like