I see a lot of questions and opinions in the forums, a lot of them repeat themselves.
Some about heroes like Moira,Mercy,Brigitte & Mei that count as too strong or too weak
Some about one shot abillities being unbalanced.
Some about dps role compared to other roles and much more things…
Believe it or not but all the problems in the game come from one spot…
Shields.
In this post I will explain how the state of shields effected each hero and how excacly it connects to every problem.
'Underpowered' heroes-Bastion,Symmetra,Junkrat,Mercy
~This peragraph will focus especially on the effect of the recent shield nerf~
Some heroes in the game count as stronger while other count as weaker.
how all 4 heroes I mantioned in the title connect to the shield sega?
All heroes I mantioned count as amazing shield counters.
but how does it make them underpowered?
After the recent shield nerfs shields bacame too easy to break and since role queue was added it meant less big targets to hit in a game.
because of that heroes like junkrat and bastion has much less use since most heroes can now break shields and fight tanks as well much better.
and heroes like mercy that usually paired up with heroes from the role see much less use as a burst damage medium-long range enabler.
also because of this change heroes that were previously weak to shields see more play countering even more heroes Mercy is good with like soldier countering Pharah for example or widow countering Junkjrat.
Of course it doesn’t neciecierly mean that stronger shields=much more use for the heroes in term of viability but that connect more to the “one shot problem” and the “dps role long queue” both show different parts of problems created by shields…
'Overpowered' heroes like Moira,Brigitte,Reinhardt& Ana
~This peragraph will focus especially on the state of the tank category~
If you look at all heroes in the list you probably don’t notice anything that connect all 4 heroes. heroes that I could have added to the list before the nerfs were Mei & Doomfist.
The thing that unite all 6 heroes is the way they deal their damage/utility.
Shields are a HUGE part of the tank category and because of that not a lot of different utilities exist for tanks and the ones that do exist are underpowered.
Just for example If we look at Ana, sure all of her abillities don’t go through shields but using an anti nade above a shield can bring HUGE value.
you’d expect defense matrix or bubble to be the answert for the abillity but unlike shields that can just block most things efficiently without letting any damage go through, matrix is usually not fast enough in order to block the nade and bubble only works for 2 players at a time, not to mention the ability has an extremely long cool down making it sometimes a waist to use bubble on a nade.
The tank category is focused especially on shields and because of that every other abillity is usually reffered as an offtank since it’s not as strong or useful compared to shields overall. That results in the fact that heroes that ignore shields completely or at least can get value even with them in the way gets much more value from themselves compared to others since there’s no real way to block them or at least much weaker defense against their abillities.
as a 2nd example I want to give Moira. both her ultimate and orbs go through barriers and while you can theoretically speaking block the orbs with deffense matrix it’s not always possibility and in a lot of times it will already get value before consuming it, not only that but also Moira’s ultimate goes past every possible abillity in the game except for Mei’s wall making the abillity uncounterable by an abillity- she gains it fast so most support heroes don’t get ultimate to block her ultimate and she moves fast enough to ignore most stuns.
The one shot problem fits Doomfist,widowmaker & Hanzo
some players complain about the fact some heroes are capable to one shot squishies while all other heroes can be stopped or at least have smaller impact.
the biggest reasoning for that complain is the fact most heroes require a counter. and the reward to risk values should be equal.
and it is the case most of the time for these heroes as well.
Doomfist for example can be easily killed using roadhog or Bastion but can also get a free kill without any problem.
I believe the biggest reason for these complains is the lack of different protection ways and/or lack of heroes that get countered by the different protection ways.
recently I hear less and less about widow and hanzo being problematic since both dive getting more play and sigma getting added to the game but even today people STILL complain about doomfist and I feel like this complain just come from the fact hog doesn’t see enough play of countering.
alot of players pick him for extra damage and get quick hooks but it just feels like they don’t understand the use of the hook in a deffensive way.
The can be due to 2 reasons,
- since shields are the main protection way hog becomes more a 3rd dps instead of 2nd tank that protect with interruption and survivability
or
2.simply hog kit embrace every hook use and not a smart one.
either way Roadhog doesnt feel like a real tank compared to rein or orisa for example
Dps role long queues
We all know the dps role has the longest queue for many reasons.
but in this time I want to focus one specific reason- the impact of each role.
because the strength of shields compared to other roles taking a shield tank became a must do. because of that every match has similar heroes. combine that with the lack of tanks and you’ve got a role with no unique ways to contribute to the team.
Sure Zarya can be nice against Reaper or picking hog for Doomfist, but even then the tank category doesn’t really provide any special choice for the user to bring totally different tools unlike the support class or the dps class.
for example if the enemies run a lot of spam? both lucio and brig can be helpful.
your team has snipers? mercy and zen
push forward with a brawl comp? Ana-lucio
a lot of combinations can be made but in the tank category you’d usually pick similar picks with similar tools.
Zarya and hog while having their difference usually have similar impact.
you’d always go for a shield and an offtank that his job is slightly different and really deppends on the composition.
because of that not only you make the category more boring but also make the matchups less impactful. the enemies will always run similar compositions and you’d usually get the same problems from the tanks category while support heroes can be used for multiple uses in a much different way.
Both the facts that the role becomes boring and use of the heroes provides similar protection utilities makes the role much more boring and makes it so most players would pick dps>tank.
(Ofcourse most players would prefer dps>support since dps still has more heroes in it and damaging usually count as more fun than healing)