Nerfing Reinhardt is only part of the solution. Orisa needs a lot of buff, Sigma and Wrecking Ball need some, and maybe even Winston. But Reinhardt does need that nerf.
Right now, if I were to rank main tanks from 1-10 with 5 being the intended power level, I would say they are:
Reinhardt: 7
Orisa: 2
Sigma: 3
Winston: 3.5
Wrecking Ball: 4
So everyone needs buffs, but Reinhardt is still too good even if they were buffed to the right level.
BarrierTank shouldn’t be so boring for people who like to queue for Roadhog, and other OffTanks.
They wouldn’t be if Barrier tank didn’t hard equal to Reinhardt. Winston is fun, Sigma is fun. I even think Orisa is fun. Reinhardt is completely unappealing to tons of players who would otherwise be happy to tank. He’s the Mercy of tanks - a few people love him but loads of people hate playing him and will avoid the entire role if they think they’ll have to.
To be fair, the entire team needs to know what your doing. For example if you play Zarya+Hog on Valskaya you cannot play choke. You have to play way closer to choke and hug those corner hard core. Force the enemy to walk down the sight lines and turn corners into you.
Of course if any of the roles are not on board then your likely to lose people really fast and auto lose the point. I honestly think that form of defense tends to have more control since barrier choke holding comps feel less in control over what happens. But that’s just cuz I know how you should defend with certain comps.
God I hate people who pick Orisa on Lunar Colony defense and sit directly on point. Ok so you give them the entire map for free AND you give them a high ground advantage and multiple angles to kill you from? Nice.
I’m tried of people who dont play barrier tanks playing barrier tanks. I swear I often have to take Orisa/Rein from players because they are so bad they are essentially throwing, even if that tank isnt the best to face the enemy I will take it JUST to have this god awful D.Va/Hog main fumble their way to the point as Rein only to die half way because they dont know how to block site lines, barrier management, and how to bait the enemy into engaging .
Play what you are good at. It’s 100x better then picking a barrier tank just to have one.
Personally, I’m on the fence about the Rein nerf. At the very least, I felt we should have started with 40% Steadfast, instead of going all the way back down to 30.
But, putting that aside for a moment, you seem to be one of the few people that will even acknowledge the duality of this problem.
I can’t tell you how many threads I’ve seen on here, in the last month or so, that just scream for Rein nerfs and nothing else.
I don’t know if people are just that oblivious or that dense or what. But, they seem to think just nerfing one of the few viable tanks left, will suddenly fix the problem. Spoiler alert, it won’t. And, for some reason, people, as a whole, on here, don’t seem to understand that.
Also, I’m not really fighting for that much of a Rein nerf. I want 30% steadfast and a reversion of the movement speed increase. That’s all.
If that’s not enough I would like Earthshatter to be nerfed, but honestly that’s more QOL than anything. Earthshatter is incredibly oppressive, it’s by far my most hated ult in the game.
And nerfing Reinhardt doesn’t fix everything but it sure would help. Like, if you bring Reinhardt down to 5 on my chart above, suddenly Wrecking Ball’s 4 doesn’t look so bad. Winston’s 3.5 isn’t that bad either. Maybe you can even get away with Sigma’s 3.
Well, I did come up with a way to buff both the barriers and probably a bit of damage on Orisa and Sigma, (and damage for Rein/Winston)
That allows for DoubleBarrier, but makes DoubleBarrier counter-able by Deathball and Dive.
Honestly, I think Sigma will either have to be 100% reworked or they really will have to make a special rule to nerf double main tank. The problem is that main tanks get their incredibly powerful barriers without the rest of their hero being made correspondingly weak so people want to play them, so main tanks that are capable all around like Orisa and Sigma will always be better than off tanks.
The idea I had was that if you make Sigma and Orisa have a lot worse selfsustain/selfpeel at close range, then Deathball and Dive could ignore the barriers and just jump into close range.
Eh, that would make them feel awful to play, particularly with bad teamwork.
I’d rather just have a hard rule, no picking one if you pick the other. Artificial? Sure, but then both can be good. Double barrier is just going to come screaming back the second we get another barrier tank anyway.
Nah, not interested in subsidizing the zarya/dva/hog one tricks. It’s also a game design problem, not my problem, that people think you need a shield.
The issue with this list is you are not taking into consideration what the tanks on the list are supposed to be good at, and what they are supposed to be bad at.
Reinhardt is a 7, but not really.
Reinhardt has always been a 5 unless he is melee range which makes him a 10. Reinhard is a base line, middle of the road, average tank.
Orisa is a 2 now because Blizzard nerfed her into the ground due to double barrier. She is supposed to be good at applying ranged pressure and static tanking on an objective. Without another tank who covers her faults she cannot be played well.
Sigma is a 3 because of the same reason Orisa was nerfed. Low and behold, he has the same issues as Orisa and fills the same pro’s and con’s list. When stacked together Sigma was able to cover Orisa’s faults and his vice versa.
Winston is a 2, unless all the other tanks are 1’s. In that case, you pair him with D.Va and you play team death match for every team fight. Low and behold you get Dive META.
Hammond is a 4 until the enemy team picks Mei, Reaper, or Sombra, then he becomes a -5. His weaknesses are too great for him to not get hard countered into the ground.
I like how you missed D.Va, Roadhog and Zarya though. D.Va and Zarya both excel at assisting other tanks in various ways, and really cannot exist on their own…but…it isn’t for people wanting them to do so. Blizzard just won’t make it happen.
Roadhog isn’t really a tank. Blizzard says he is, but in 4 years I haven’t been convinced, don’t think its going to happen any time soon.
Well, it would make it so having a teammate OffTank with Peeling abilities would be a lot more beneficial.
Where as lower tiers could just enjoy the beefy barriers, really extended poke phases, and a bit of extra firepower would help with their dueling.
And dueling is a lot more fun than “I pressed a button, now you can’t kill me for 4 seconds”
Steadfast at 30% or 50% are pretty much the same thing.
Revision to the movement speed “fix” not buff is out of the question. There should never have been a time in the game where the melee tank should be vulnerable in melee range. You want the movement speed gone, make it so players who stick their weapon through Reinhardt’s shield get a double damage from melee debuff.
And I want Earthshatter to be fixed. It is far more broken on the side of not hitting people it should versus the hitting people it shouldn’t variation.
Main tanks are not needed to win games, it’s a lie.
In most cases they are but not always
The only place where it could actually have a significant impact is in high level play, other than that it’s about the players not the heroes. If the tank players in my match have no clue how to play main tank then I prefer that they don’t play it, it’s way better for them to play what they are good at, that is how you win games. Stop drinking the forum cool aid, and you will see it for what it is.
I posted this after getting steamrolled multiple times because we didn’t have a shield when the enemy did and I’m in gold!
Trust me, it didn’t have anything to do with not having shields.
Sounds to me like Blizzard needs to nerf tanks more.
Which simply means, nerf tanks more.