I understand that Sigma’s 2.5 Shield CD nerf is in a way, Blizzard’s attempt at nerfing the Double Shield meta.
Let’s look into it in this way, if they were able to introduce and implement 2-2-2 Role Lock, can’t they breakdown the Tank role into 1 Shield Tank and 1 Off Tank? Or, limit the shield tank to a max of 1 tank shield/team. This way, a team could still play 2 off tanks at the same time (since Double Shield is the problem).
I’ve been flexing a lot and most of the time I’ve been put on the Tank role, I don’t think limiting the shield to only 1/team will break the game in any way? This way we could somehow tone down the double shield meta without butchering tanks individually, like Rein, Sigma, D.va, etc.
The double tank meta started once we got 2 shield tanks that could be their own offtanks and peel for themselves.
If shield tanks in general were vulnerable once their shield was broken, and offtanks got a near-monopoly on strong peeling, then I bet we’d see “shield tank + offtank” enforce itself.
As it is, Sigma can just pull up kinetic grasp when his shield is broke, and Orisa can just immediately put down a brand new shield when hers breaks. Those are design issues that overload their kits and eliminate the need for a “dedicated offtank” in the team composition.
This would be a slippery slope towards 1-1-1-1-1-1 role lock, plus it would only worsen queue times.
Could be a solution, but feels quite arbitrary and is basically just a bandaid fix that ignores the actual problem.
The real problem is that shields are quite an overpowered mechanic, so in order to be balanced, they need to have significant drawbacks. For Rein and Winston this was also the case. Rein is obvious, he literally can’t do anything else when having his shield up. Winston’s shield is also balanced by the fact that 1) his shield has an odd shape which doesn’t make it useful to protect more people than himself, 2) his shield doesn’t last very long and 3) his playstyle makes that he 's often closer to the enemy than his team.
In come Orisa and Sigma who have shields that have basically no drawbacks on using. They can just plop them down, forget about them and they will provide value regardless. I don’t what exactly, but they need to find ways to add drawbacks to using these shields instead of just flat out nerfing their power.
Really need to stop thinking that Tank designs are built around this “off-tank” mentality. Blizzard didn’t design the Tanks that, still doesn’t the Tanks that way and won’t design Tanks that way.
There are no “off”-roles. Never have been, never will be.
Yeah, people have chained themselves to this line of thinking.
It needs to be understood that “main role” and “off role” are fanmade terms. They were popularized to give fellow community members guidance on what they should focus on when team building.
They aren’t hard and fast rules, merely templates to get you started.
Would you be surprised if I told you double shield did not, oddly enough, developed this latest patch and thus is not what is being nerfed in Experimental?
Give me 15 tanks and we can try that. Right now we have 8, they are already severely limited by synergies, we don’t need further limitations and more importantly, we don’t need tank player A determining what tank player B can play even more than they already do.
I wish we could have butchered it. Butchers are incredible artists, the knowledge and precision of the cuts, the sausages, how to take care of a kitchen’s blades, how to preserve a huge loin in salt with no freezer… It’s such an underated and underespected skill. So I say let us butcher it! And do it right this time. Call me the butcher of Blaviken!
The solution for double shield, be it in this patch or the dozens behind it, is incredibly simple and has been crystal clear to many ever since the shield revamp patch: Make Orisa-Sigma crumble when confronted in shotgun range by a rush or dive comp. Buff Lucio’s speed, nerf Fortify, nerf Orisa’s HP, buff Orisa’s barrier to compensate, nerf Sigma’s damage and range, boom, done, from living to plate, a perfect angus beef!
Blizzard’s insistence that “hur dur shields bad” mentality without understanding what actually made the comp tick is what lead us this way. 85 damage per Rein swing? Now that’s bad butchering, ruined the loins with the tail.
We had tanks with two strong shield before he was released yet it was never a problem, orisa and reins barrier has even more hp back then but it was balaced because rein cant do dmg while its up,
then came sigma who has overloaded kits that synergizes so well with Orisa, both can deal dmg while their barrier is up not to mention they can keep moving/deploying them almost anywhere.
They should have never given him the improved symmetra 2.0 barrier in the first place, in my opinion they should rework sig.
I think this is the reason blizz are hesitant to implement 1 barrier at a time because the result will be that people would advocate for 1 histcan per game as well
But what about the support role?, should we have one main and off healer per game as well?
too many restrictions will kill this game.
You can buff the shields back up and only have to apply this to GM’s. You can leave the rest of ladder alone since in the past year, double shield had never been a thing on ladder outside of GMs, and even the year before that before the shield nerfs, Orisa wasn’t even the must pick on ladder. Yet Orisa kept getting nerfed.
Since it was only the GM’s that kept abusing it, while the rest of ladder had no problem. Just apply the limit to GM’s only.
Shield and “main tank” are different things. Wrecking Ball have no barriers and is a main tank. The own main/off tank role for each hero may vary as Sigma and Hog can be used in both positions for example.
Or they could just make some heroes have a “shield breaking” role. (For example area damage have a bigger damage, like +50%, applied to shields, so Pharah, Junkrat, even Reinhardt would become better shield breakers. Abilities like Helix and Sticky Bombs could also be used to burst down a shield, but essentially the “not aim heavy” side would be the shield breaking side.)
This would induce a kind of “rock-paper-scissors” element to OW as shields usually are good against hitscans, hitscans are good against pharah, junk, sym, etc, and they would become good against shields.
Dps is the least impactful role. Dps is also the most versatile and I would argue that tanks have the most impact in the game. The tanks dictate the flow of the game. They’re dictating metas
Never forget that one patch that for a few weeks changed the meta to “let’s have our supports support our genji and everyone else keep the enemy genji away”.
To be fair Orissa barrier drawback is that she can’t replace it or move it to suit her need until cool down is done. Which in theory allows teams to reign an attack one way and then switch to her unprotected side.
Sadly with exception of control point mode, all maps have very obvious defence spots and flank routes are in general god awful meaning she make one barrier cover multiple avenues of attack
Also let’s not forget 18 months that changed the meta to “pick and abuse sigma because he is the most insane off tank and u can even play him as a main tank nvm u can basically play him everywhere” wait this actually happened.
I’m not arguing that tanks typically have the bigger word in the meta, just pointing out that it’s not exclusive. Just like when Genji or Hoggot overbuffed, which made the meta run around them.
i think a softer lock makes more sense like an interference phenomenon like if you have two shields in proximity they start bleeding HP from each other or they flicker allowing fire threw at random…
something softer like that … you can still use double shield but its less effective and they can tone it down as much as they need to make it less viable… without hard banning it.
that make it more likely that people will pick a off tank as second tank without nessesarily forcing people…
i mean the hero pool selection is bad enough as is on tank without limiting it even more…
Like if you do wanna run double shield maybe you do sigma + another but sigma has to work with kinetic grasp more until rein goes in to brawl then he can shield… that sort of thing… it limits the numbers of shields in play at once making it more of a tag team thing that way the tanks have to take turns and have a rythm they follow…