The game in general was still in it’s honeymoon phase for many players at the time.
So our view of the game back then is still mostly through rose tinted glasses.
It was the first time players universally were able to recognise there was a general meta and in the beginning, didn’t villainise it because it merely proved there was an organised and competitive way to play the game other than the standard 2-2-2.
Anyone below masters was not playing true dive with communication and co-ordinated dives using hero synergy, it was just a ‘go fast’ comp so people didn’t really complain about it’s dominance for a long time.
Buit I can assure you even in the bowels of low elo youj saw lots of tracer and genjis.
The thing was even if there accuracy was meh they caused paranoia just from their existence. All they had to do was just poke supports all day and the tanks would fall and work was getting done. Dont forget genji and tracer are REALLY hard to hit in low elo even today.
Because you felt the need to rank shame and not actually discuss or detail anything.
So let me explain further. During dive, high end players had options to get around deathballs; just because it was mostly high end, doesn’t mean it was only high end and couldn’t be adapted or things taken from it at average ranks.
The problem we have is that GOATS or more overtly Deathball aren’t specifically high end strategies, Deathball has always been the default; they work at any rank. Having Dive was an alternative high end strat against that Deathball default which we could adapt and pick from. Having the top end strategy as just a variant on Deathball doesn’t leave us with much else to pick through. We can try dive, but you can see in the stats for Winston alone - it is seldom successful because it’s so easily countered - if GM can counter Dive easily with a Deathball; what chance do we have down here?
Games will always naturally speed up as people get better at them- this is why speed runs are a thing. Dive was the peak of this. The biggest mistake they ever made was to try to slow things back down.
It wasn’t. It was just there to stop people from coming in here and saying, but I’m lower rank and i hated dive arguments which happens quite a lot here. People here confuse dive with people running genji and tracer.
Poor supports they should be unkillable and needs a pause key so they can react properly even when zenyatta can 1 shot a Tracer with Discord and Ana can fight and kill any 200 hp hero if she lands sleep dart.
Supports always dictate metas.
Beyblade ? Ana
Dive? Mercy Moth
Goats? Brigitte and Lucio.
Nano blade? Ana
Ashe 1 shot? Mercy
And when we got a heavy counter to goats DF got nerfed to z tier.
There is survivability then there is being countered. During the dive meta there was no Brigitte or Moira to go to. Because of that EVERY support hero was countered by EVERY dive hero.
Think of it this way. How fun would it be to play dive if all there was to play against were heroes that countered dive? Now I then too could argue that what defined a good dive hero from any other was “survivability” just as you had. It’s an argument that cuts both ways.
No one wants to play a hero who’s ONLY purpose is to be a target for enemies with all the advantages against you yet leaving you with nothing or near to nothing against them. That’s what it was like to play support during the dive meta.
As a tank you could swap to DVA or Winston to fight back. As a DPS you had McCree. During the height of dive you only had Lúcio and Mercy. Ana and Zen were definitely not an option against dive.
My point is if you want to see dive return then there better be counterplay for ALL roles. It needs to be rock, paper and scissors. Once a person picks a role he shouldn’t give up hid role (like healing) entirely just to have a hero to play that counters.
That’s my point. Supports need heroes that compel dive to swap to something else just as much as dive heroes compel other heroes to swap.
The only way to have a paper scissors rock result, is not to have a meta or a variety of metas. In order to have more than 1 meta, we need more map dependent metas like the pirate ship. I believe it’s time to make some changes to the maps to promote different metas.
For example, just by removing 1 of the elevators in Hollywood the value of the heroes who have vertical movement increases dramatically. The exact opposite might happen if they add an elevator or any other fast way to climb to volskaya second point for the defenders and open a road at the right side (as defenders see it). With that you force more conservative defending compositions.
Anyways, I may comment later the support part because it’s really frustrating to write from the cell
Winston’s pickrate in GM was only around 50% while Rein had about 30%. At every other rank Rein was higher than Winston. Orisa and Hog had higher pickrate than they do now. Overall tanks were much better represented and games with solo Winston or 2 off-tanks were perfectly winnable (much less so than now). The noly ever-present was D.Va, but that was more due to her versatility and I’ve never seen anyone complain about having to pick her outside of OWL.
Contrary to what people on the forums believe, the dive meta was not just 6 heroes being used and everybody else in F-tier. It actually was one of the most diverse metas that we ever had.
In the original dive comp from season 5, the only “must-pick” heroes at the highest level were Winston, Zen, and Tracer. The other 3 slots were frequently swapped out. D.va could be swapped out for Zarya in certain circumstances. Lucio was usually king of KOTH maps, and ended up losing his spot to Mercy when she was reworked. The second DPS role was the most diverse of them all. Genji was the most popular choice, but he was regularly swapped out for Widow, Soldier, Junkrat, and Pharah.
It also didn’t completely alienate other heroes from the game, like GOATS has. Because dive took so much more coordination, the vast majority of the game hardly ever saw it. Rein was actually one of the most popular picks outside of dive, despite being completely off-meta at the time. Orisa / hog was a super underrated comp, and was really effective on maps like def Anubis, and Illios Well.
Overall, it just had the most options out of any other meta that we’ve seen.
I liked the game when Brigitte first came out, because that put dive at a standstill and the game became a combination of ground/deathball based comps or long range sniper comps, the ladder of which I prefer. Finally people weren’t giving me hell for playing Widowmaker, and for Widow/Hanzo to be an excellent pair, it was one of the most refreshing metas I’ve ever had, and it was the season where I hit diamond for the first time.