And yet goats was impossible before brig. Brig came out in march of 2018 and by the end of the year goats was completely dominant. So if the tanks were responsible, what are the changes that did it?
Rein got a bugfix to projectiles sometimes hitting him through shield, and then a fat nerf to shatter in late 2018. I donāt see how these made him suddenly OP. Maybe it was another tank then?
Dva got a nerf to missiles and fly damage in 2018 and a nerf to dm in Jan 2019. Yeah, I donāt see that causing goats either. What about zarya?
Aug 2018 grav radius nerfed and energy drain got a buff. So was goats caused by zarya being able to keep charge longer?
Obviously not. The simple truth is that tanks, things with bigger health pools and more defensive abilities, scale better with healing. When healing is very strong, the thing that is better at surviving long enough to get healed and that can soak up more of that healing will become stronger. But healing numbers had been getting stronger since ana was released, so then why didnāt goats happen until brig? Why no ana goats in 2017?
Because that healing is only useful to the tanks if the support is able to keep providing it. Get a single flanker to go duel ana and suddenly she has to make a decision of do I turn and fight this person or do I keep healing my teammates. And the worst player on earth will eventually kill you if you ignore them long enough. Moira had less of that issue with aoe and heal over time on the spray, but it was range limited. Jump on a moira and shoot her and she had to leave, now sheās out of range of her team and if she comes back thereās no fade to save her again. The key is to have exploitable weaknesses so that things canāt just scale until theyāre unkillable. Most supports had that. The tanks had that, with resource limits and cooldowns on their abilities.
Brig didnāt. It was easier for her to heal her team if someone tried to duel her because of how inspire procs, and sending armor packs was easy since you can just flick to the general area of your teammate then flick straight back to whoever youāre fighting. Meanwhile she was also purpose built with a stun combo to quickly force out any flankers going for the backline, and the shield also made her difficult to deal with from out of her range.
So suddenly the one thing checking the weaknesses of a comp like goats could be shut down hard. You had to play slow and win the resource trades or you were usually going to lose. In tournament play, replace usually with every time. And dps just donāt scale well in that environment.
This is why tank nerfs did nothing to stop goats, nor did buffing anti-tank dps.
Yes, if we delete all tank abilities as a concept, then in a situation where simple damage numbers are bigger than simple healing numbers things will die. In that environment, you run as many dps as possible with maybe 1-2 supports to play mobile health pack and try not to get shot. But if healing numbers ever become bigger than damage numbers, you just take the things with the biggest health pools and pump them with healing and, so long as your heal batteries canāt die easily, youāre back to the war of attrition goats playstyle.
All the damage mitigation abilities do is modify that exchange to make healing vs damage more interesting than just bigger number wins.