Tanks are split into main and off tanks.
Supports are split into main healers and off healers.
DPS are split into garbage heroes and non-garbage heroes.
As such, Tank and Support mains often have to specialize in main or off playstyles, which leads to lack of choices. It’d be nice if they could just add about 4 tanks and 4 healers right now, 2 main tanks, 2 off tanks, 2 main healers, and 2 off healers.
There are plenty of ways you could divide DPS heroes.
You have utility heroes, like Sombra and Mei
Med-long range hitscan, like Widow, Mccree and Soldier
Medium range projectile heroes, like Pharah and Hanzo
(these two can also just be called the medium range DPS)
Flankers/pouncers, like Genji and Doomfist.
Then you have specialists, like Bastion and Reaper (Reaper could also be classified as a flanker).
I’d argue that dps are split into a few different groups. Most of the DPS heroes are viable in pretty much every circumstance. Some of them are much better for certain things than others, but generally speaking I divide them into two groups: shield breakers and headhunters.
your shield breakers are heroes like Soldier, McCree and Pharah. Your headhunters are heroes like Widowmaker, Tracer and Genji.
A hero like Hanzo is both.
I play a lot of different DPS heroes for very specific reasons and I just don’t get that impression.
You take Hanzo if you need mid range burst and shield break.
You take Pharah if you need long range shield break, spam and a strong ult.
You take McCree if you need burst and decent shield break but also something to defend yourself with.
You take Soldier if you need more survivability and good shield break.
You take Genji or Tracer if your team’s pressure is good enough to cause the enemy team to break formation or if you are just insanely skilled and need squishy kills fast.
You take Widowmaker to get quick picks early on overly aggressive players with bad positioning and to exploit space not covered by really poorly placed barriers and just plain murder people who are out of position.
Like… if someone picks sombra and you pick widowmaker vs double barrier, unless your consistency is decent with widowmaker you’re gonna have a bad time. and even then, say it is, opportunities to secure your win condition are few and far between.
double shield break is always pretty decent, but double headhunter can be a nightmare to try to make work. So I guess I’d say Shield Break are main DPS and Headhunter are Off DPS. Like lol that dynamic totally exists in dps heroes in their team comp - it’s why 3 dps has always been a popular comp.
Eh I’d say 3 different categories.
Actually viable DPS
Niche DPS
and then the Garbage DPS
The first 2 are fine but with how slow balancing patches are the garbage ones stay garbage for a long time while the top ones stay up there, which is pretty irritating. Kinda like pre-Mercy rework supports and tanks but on a larger scale since there’s more DPS, but at the same time that’s how metas work.
Hitscan and projectile?