The Relevance of Main Tanks

General Discussion
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Tanks are very much a crucial (and powerful) aspect of Overwatch. However, with the recent inclusion of 2-2-2 something’s really caught my attention, something I think is very pertinent in today’s meta: the importance of Main Tanks.

The way I see it, there are really only three Main Tanks in Overwatch at the moment: Reinhardt, Orisa, and maybe Sigma. These are safe, reliable picks people use when they want characters that are literally designed around the notion of protecting others. (I’ll talk about Winston in a second… Sigma too.)

The other Tanks are what’s been commonly described as Off Tanks. Zarya, Roadhog, D.va, and Wrecking Ball don’t have as much impact on pure “protection of teammates” as Orisa and Rein do, which makes them immediately un-viable, get this… as long as there isn’t a Main Shield Tank to cover for that weakness.

On the subject of Winston and Sigma, starting with Winston. In this meta, Winston has simply become too niche of a Tank to be considered a “Main Tank” anymore… outside of Dive. In Dive, he’s a force of nature and totally Main Tank-worthy, but when your team doesn’t revolve around that specific playstyle… yeah, he doesn’t work as a Main.

Then there’s Sigma. Sigma, Sigma, Sigma. He’s got a huge 1500-Health Shield, so that MUST make him a Main Shield Tank, right? …Well, in the right hands, perhaps. Overall, even though Jeff himself has confirmed that Sigma’s meant to be a Main Tank, I have serious doubts; his Shield, while powerful, is hard to use as reliably as, say, Reinhardt or Orisa’s. Having only 400 Health makes him surprisingly squishy too; while Zarya can bubble herself with Particle Barrier to negate all incoming damage, Sigma’s Kinetic Grasp (a.k.a. Defense Matrix 2: Electric Boogaloo) is easily worked around and is far more punishable than Zarya’s Particle Barrier. If you ask me, there are too many work-arounds to his kit that make him more Off Tank material rather than Main Shield Tank… but hey, he’s only been out for a little while now in the grand scheme of things. Who knows? With proper optimization, he might just be a great Main Tank.

As someone who plays quite a bit of the Tank category, I’ve noticed recently that team comps simply refuse to work unless there’s the presence of either a Rein or an Orisa. Not a Sigma, mind you; just Orisa or Rein. This has made me limit myself to what Tanks I play depending on what the other Tank player chooses. If they choose an Off Tank, I go Rein. If they choose Rein or Orisa, I go Roadhog. And if I choose an Off Tank before the other person… well, then I just get badgered to “switch to a Shield Tank.”

So what do we take from this? Well, basically, the selection of Main Tanks is becoming slimmer and slimmer in today’s meta. Even if you don’t do Bunker, there’s no denying just how much impact Rein and Orisa (Orisa more than Rein tbh) have had on players’ insistence for Main Tanks that put down Shields and cover other players. It’s a reality I find interesting, albeit a bit worrisome, and I’m both nervous and intrigued to find out what this will mean shaping the meta going forward.

2 Likes
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Sigma is like Mercy 2.0 run him or you lose the game. Orisa is too strong. Others are fine. We need nerfs in this game, not buffs.

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Hammond is more often than not an MT, just like Winston.

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Sigma is main/off tank hybrid imho. Which role he can fill depends heavily on the other tank pick and his team comp.

For example I think Sigma can replace Rein in Rein/Zarya deathball comp. Depending on the map he can cover crucial angles much better than Rein while still having some range and good damage.

Sigma/Hog or Sigma/Dva on the other hand is a big no. That kind of comp really feels like you’re running two off tanks.

1 Like
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I thought this was just me. everyone says this combo is viable but I feel even less protected than usual when I play w a sigma

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Btw in double shield comp of Sigma/Orisa I don’t think Sigma is the off tank. To me that comp is double main tank comp.

It might be semantics but it feels similar to playing double main support which is pretty common comp these days.

It just feels like you’re doubling down on that main tank utility.

7

There’s a lot to unpack here but first of all Winston, WB, and Sigma are 100% MT’s.

This can be said pretty much every MT. Every set of tanks will naturally have dps that synergize with their playstyle more. It doesn’t make them any less of a MT. It’s just a bad combo to run.

Unless you play in M/GM+, metas for the most part aren’t that relevant. Your selection of tanks is really up to you and the hero’s your team can effectively play.

I’m a flex tank player and due to the stupid hours I have one WB and Winston I’m extremely good with them. I regularly beat double barrier and Sigma comps because Dive tanks just wreck these strats. The problem is the community in a lot of ways.

I hold my rank as a WB main quite easily and yet every other game I get moans from the team when I pick WB because A. They never bothered to learn how to play without a barrier or B. They assume all WB is bad due to some past experiences.

He hit this right on the mark. Sigma/Orisa double up on MT tools and thus have very little high damage burst/peel which makes them extremely weak to Dive tanks/heros.

The thing is people have forgotten how to play Dive and also may not be good with the heros it involves. Countering double barrier with Dive takes a lot more skill then running double barrier.

People take what’s safer and more consistent.

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I’m not sure that I agree that Orisa/Sigma are extremely weak to dive. Halt and rock might not be as consistent as something like hook but they can still inconvenience dive quite a bit.

And Sigma straight up doesn’t care about Dva which is intergral to dive tank line. She can’t eat rock, she can’t bypass the ultra mobile barrier so you can pretty much solo Dva as a Sigma.

And then there’s the fact that supports and DPS have plenty of answers to dive. If a dive is a problem you don’t really have to switch your tank line to deal with it.

I personally think that deathball is much better answer to double barrier.

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Rein, Sigma, Orisa, Hammond, Winston are all main tanks. Just because they don’t have huge shields does not mean they can’t create space.

2 Likes
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I know people on these forums don’t care about low ranks, but I’d like to add to your statement Varukiri. In bronze/silver/gold Sigma is must pick. Any team not running Sigma (well I mean Sigma/Sym/NewBrig) basically auto loses to the other team if they ARE running that.

Personally I would change Orisa so that her shield cooldown is higher. That means when her shield is up it’s supposed to be strong, but when it breaks you have a “window” to abuse her. That’s how I would imagine Orisa.
Sigma is the other way. I think his shield movement is amazing, but his shield health is far too high.

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I can assure you Dive 100% counters double barrier. Both Orisa’s Halt and Sigma’s boulder are way too slow to actually be a real threat.

I also think people misunderstand how Dive is played and I kinda see it in this post.

Dive tank’s don’t actually go for tanks. They kill your team. That lack of peel I mentioned is important. Sigma and Orisa are slow and immobile which allows Dive tanks to collapse on backline targets with little or no way for Orisa/Sigma to do anything worthy of preventing it. cleave damage ignores their barriers and their cc is weak and slow.

WB can attack the tanks but it’s often to displace and Winston will tickle the tanks to build ult and apply a little pressure but not actually commit to a kill. (although WB can combo a full HP Sigma, usually it forces out Kinetic Grasp but it’s a weak counter since it works using delfect rules)

D.Va is kinda weak though

This goes back to my safer and consistent thing. It is safer to use this method but Dive is far more effective if people know what they are doing.

1 Like
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I know that.

But supports and DPS have their own answers to dive. Diving on top of Reaper/Mei/McCree is not ideal. Moira can eascape easily and Moira will generally be played closer to the tank line as well.

And these heroes are very common these days.

Then there’s the big question which comes with playing dive comp. When you dive what happens to your own backline? Because I have an answer to that. Doomfist happens to them.

Not only do you have to play dive well. You also have to play it so efficiently that you manage to wreck their backline faster than they wreck your own backline all the while they are running a comp which has much better sustain on individual heroes and the team in general.

I’ve watched OWL and it was very obvious that dive is not the answer to double shield. Every time someone tried it it failed.

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It’s the same in other ranks. He’s mercy 2.0
Run him or lose.

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Certainly there is heros who aren’t ideal for diving but that really hasn’t been much of an issue from my experience. No support can outrun dive tanks. Evade for a little sure but not forever (except maybe Lucio lol)

It takes tanks to counter tanks effectively. What I mean is that they need to play a part in preventing a Dive. This is why I love Orisa/Sigma over Orisa/Hog because Hog has the damage and burst and synergy with Halt to prevent and outright delete a Diver. There is no such threat from the barrier duo.

That’s the thing though. Dive teams often dive 2gether. You often don’t have a backline to defend. Your front line is also your backline.

You might run a Widow or a Zen sometimes but they often play way back where either someone has to chase them down (you have the mobility to turn and peel for them if needed and delete the out of position person gunning for your support/dps) or they have a sniper of their own which is most likely currently getting wrecked by the dive tanks.

I haven’t watched any official matchs with Sigma in it so I’m not sure what that meta is but what applies to pros isn’t really applicable to anything below M/GM.

15

It’s always been like that. One DPS shooting at Orisa breaks her shield faster than she can place one down. Two breaks it in four seconds. Focus fire breaks it in two. Break the shield and you instakill the Orisa behind it, even her fortify is negated by shooting at her massive critbox.

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The answer to double barrier seems to be another double barrier and then having Pharah/Doomfist get picks. Dive was barely played and when it was played it usually lasted for one team fight where they got wrecked and it was back to double barrier.

There were more successful Bastion/Sym comps than dive comps. Now that makes one think.

Also, you’re kinda proving my point. You say that dive takes much more skill/coordination to play than double barrier to be able to beat it. Well, pros certainly have better coordination than all of us here and yet they still don’t run dive into double barrier. So what chance do the rest of us have?

If you have to outplay the other team to such a level then you can run a deathball and you’ll beat them as well without all the fuss with diving.

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The playerbase, from top to bottom, has all gotten worse at surviving and rely too much on barriers to block damage for them as opposed to just coordinating around non-shield play. The height of Dive was only one barrier (Winston), and the healers were the ones with the lowest actually HPS, Lucio and Zenyatta.

At the same time, players have generally gotten better at aiming with heroes like Widowmaker and such, meaning they can hit more shots. This necessitates having one shield tank on the team. I bet you even if Brigitte, Moira, and Mei didn’t exist, Dive would still be weak simply because enemy players on Widow and Hanzo can hit more reliably than they did 10 seasons ago.

1 Like
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I have issues with this statement.

My biggest issue with it is that Rein is a steaming pile of crap and worse than Sigma in nearly every way. Secondly, Sigma/Zarya is the only semi-legitimate tank line that isn’t Sigma/Orisa. You really underestimate Sigma I feel. His low HP is not a big issue when combined with the damage dealer/healer meta.

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i never run double shield everytime i did i lost to be honest i refuse it and i got reported for it … because often you end up having a doom on the enemy team and sombra or a pharah … i always prefer to have a hog orisa, hog sigma zarya sigma, reinhardt zarya and so on but never 2 shields … when i think of double shield i think of all the damage that could have been done and the peeling

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The heroes that make up dive just largely aren’t viable. Winston’s been powercrept hard, Hammond is pretty good but can be made basically unusable by an attentive Mei, and D.Va got gimped just because of a meta that isn’t even possible anymore. All this in addition to Lucio’s speed nerf and the fact that a few dive staple DPS like Genji don’t fare well vs barriers and, well…