Let me say I’m a tank/support flex player. I have about 700hrs on tank and 650 on support. Meanwhile my DPS only has about 200hrs, with no one hero over 25.
Like all other tank mains here, I am simply over playing tank. And like many supports here, I’m over tanks who throw and rage, and DPS who can’t hit a shot.
So I’ve been hard core off-rolling since I’ve returned to playing this game.
DPS players have it made. Yes, literally everyone outside of DPS thinks this, but as I’ve invested more and more time into this role recently, I’ve accepted this to be true.
For starters, it is unquestionably and hands down the easiest role in the game from a game-sense perspective. Kill or be killed, no brain required.
As a tank player, one must constantly consider positioning for yourself (and thus your team), stressfully manage cooldowns (chiefly shields or mobility) so you don’t die, protect your teammates (via shields and peeling), control and contend the objective, choose the correct pathing for your team to engage, AND try and kill enemies.
Support players must protect their teammates (via healing), correctly time the most powerful cooldowns and ultimates in the game (or GGs and flamed by team), preserve their own life with intelligent positioning and cooldown use, AND kill enemies.
DPS? Well if I just take a nice angle past their defenses via high ground or flanking and kill them first, I’m good to go.
It really is that easy.
When you examine the raw stats DPS heroes have along with their high mobility the vast majority possess (yes I’m aware Ball and Lucio exist), it’s quite easy to see why it is the most played role in the community.
On top of their simplicity of playstyle and powerful kits, many of them have very high autonomy, something almost every tank is incapable of. Many of them need little input from their supports to stay alive. Even fewer of them need impact from their tanks to confirm kills.
Then there is the all powerful counter-play game available to DPS players. The DPS class has the most potential answers and agency in regards to shutting down an enemy who is carrying. The classic example is an enemy Pharah tearing through a hitscan-less team. Just a single swap to Soldier/Ashe/Cree and she’s likely finished. It saves tanks and supports the headache of having to swap to one of two viable heroes to contend the issue in the situation.
The bottom line here is that they have 17 options to handle a problem while supports have 7 and tanks have 8. The variety of kits available seriously enable the class to shutdown carry players and effectively carry their own team in doing so.
Enemy Tanks walking over yours? Mei, Doomfist, Cree, Reaper, Torb, Sym, Hanzo, Junkrat, Bastion, Pharah, Echo.
Enemy Supports chilling for free in their backline enabling their tanks too much? Tracer, Sombra, Genji, Reaper, Soldier, Doomfist, Widow, Ashe.
Enemy DPS shredding your team? Git guud. You are mechanically incapable of contesting them it would appear.
In summation the DPS class can most easily influence team fights. While they are mostly incapable of carrying the objective, they really can dictate the pacing and outcome of team fights more than any other class with a little bit of brain power invested into target prioritization. I think DPS players get tripped over thinking they can’t carry because they are incapable of playing the objective. But my argument is they can carry before the objective ever becomes an issue by killing everyone on the other team.
There’s no wondering why it is the most popular class in the game.
