The dev responses on the Discord rapid fire were pretty eye-opening. Some responses weren’t exactly what I was hoping to hear (Jeff’s response on Pick-bans) while others invited a different train of thought on the queue times that I didn’t think of before. For a long time, I’ve always thought that for DPS queue times to improve that we needed more Tanks in the game.
Jeff’s rebuttal about more heroes made me realize that the actual way to improve queue times for DPS is to make Tanks less team-oriented. Tanks are the most powerful of the 3 classes, but it comes at the cost of being the most punishing class of the 3. Despite Reinhardt’s insane power, he’s still a team-oriented Tank that can’t work without his team supporting him whereas a Tank like Zarya or better yet Roadhog doesn’t need the support of their team to have impact. It’s part of why DPS is the most popular role despite being the least powerful overall in comparison to Tanks and Supports. (certain exceptions in DPS exist, but overall Tanks and Supports have been the more impactful roles)
So from what I’m seeing, the only way to make Tanks more appealing to the DPS players or to players overall that aren’t Tank players is to make Tank heroes less reliant on their team to have impact. However, doing so might have to come at the cost of team fight power to exchange for personal impact.
What do you guys think? You think there’s some truth to it or just Fake News?
Basically, the only way to solve the problem, is to have Tanks and Supports play like DPS.
Like…hell no, sorry but as DPS player I don’t play Tank and Support expecting them to play like another role. I need a shift in mindset in order to play them and do my job, if you can’t handle that then sorry but you won’t climb and you won’t get good.
It sucks playing a role where if either your healers or your DPS don’t both coordinate with you at the same time, then your impact is greatly diminished.
A lot more than other roles.
As to how do you buff BarrierTanks without getting into excessive barrier problems.
It pretty much boils down to:
A. More firepower
B. Limit BarrierTanks to 1, and Lots of buffs of any type
I will always be against making roles more dps oriented or less team reliant. It may fix queues slightly. But what happens when they get buffed so much they break the balance of the game. They don’t need healing anymore. They don’t need damage dealers to get picks. They just play independently. At that point they aren’t tanks. They aren’t balanced. And they will not be fun to go against.
It’s not just DPS players however. Supports are the most balanced in terms of personal impact to the team fight ratio while not as powerful as Tanks. DPS players can find appeal in Supports because not only is there overlap with certain heroes in DPS, but also because they can get their own impact while still being a team player. The same isn’t said for Tanks because by their design, they require so much from their team in order to get effectiveness out of their kit. Not to say that the Supports and DPS don’t need help (Genji is one such DPS hero that is nowadays a team reliant DPS hero), but as me and others here have said, the amount of freedom is limited by your team’s cooperation.
I never said I want them to stop being Tanks. I only said that if queue times are to improve, then we need to have a shift in perspective on Tank play to make them more independent and less team reliant. Tanks in general need their team to even be effective. Without them, they’re just a ball of ult charge. Imagine playing Reinhardt without Lucio or playing Winston without Mercy or Ball to assist you.
I wish people would stop sacrificing balance for queue times. Making all tanks so broken they don’t need the team to succeed isn’t a good idea. That won’t make queues shorter in a healthy way.
Supports and dps don’t have much self sufficiency either. A dps not getting g support isn’t going to do well. A support that has nothing blocking the mountain of damage coming in is t going to have time to support through that damage. Tanks are the leaders of this pack. They are the frontline creating the space and deciding where fights can take place. But they shouldn’t be capable of that, and killing, and self sustain.
How about we just make the non team reliant tanks good enough to actually be played? We have them, Roadhog and Wrecking Ball. Imagine if that was an actual, functional composition you could play and not lose games on.
Where did I say that they need straight buffs for self-sufficiency? I said they’d need changes to their team fight factor to make up for individual impact improvements. (Not to mention that this is one way to go about improving queue times for all roles and not just DPS) Tanks are the most powerful role there is, but it comes at the price of being the hardest punished role there is and it gets harder with the fact of how team-oriented the role is overall.