This absolutely nails it.
Thing is, Tracer is a hero that has not only a HIGH skill entry to be good (literally put a Master’s Tracer against a Top500 Tracer, the difference is insane in skill), and not only that, has an infinite skill ceiling. Brig does not have a high skill entry to be good, Golds and Plats (and even some Silvers) one-tricked her to GM within one season to the point it became a meme. She also doesn’t have an infinite skill ceiling.
Blizzard’s main issue is that they do not understand risk vs reward. Tracer is very high reward if played right, but over 70% of the cast can one shot her one way or another, whether it be directly, or through damage boost.
That is fair. A higher risk hero should get high rewards.
What’s not fair is all these heroes that have very low risk attached to them to perform certain abilities or do a certain amount of damage, while gaining significant rewards. Tracer wasn’t the problem. The devs are the problem.
This is all that needs to be said. The problem is 90% of this forum want every hitscan to be nerfed or removed from OW and for the game to be Mercywatch. Too many OW players refuse to learn how to step out of their comfort zone and try other roles and heroes.
How do you balance matchups?
There are different ways to balance the game, but they all have issues.
Lets take Tracer. Should a support have a even chance against her? (I don’t think they should, but, I want to hear it from you, and why) - this will lets us nail down what you are trying to get our of balancing.
So, the supports should be altered to be high risk for her? You want them to be a more even matchup?
How would you do that? Because giving them the same level of mobility and damage would make them OP as hell.
This is how Moira + Brig was created, to make Genji/Tracering into supports higher risk.
Goats, shields, and pirate ship comps make this game blah. Sprinkle in the long que times and it is abandon ship.
Sure but Tracer didn’t drive away millions of players, Brig did
Tracer being OP doesn’t excuse the fact that Brig ruined the game in a lot of ways and OW never fully recovered from it
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Why should supports be a 1:1 even matchup for Tracer? They aren’t DPS. You either want the support role to be homogenized like every other game does it or you don’t. You can’t expect for them to let you healbot while also giving you DPS like quickness and damage. There has to be compromises with that role.
This all goes back to why RQ shouldn’t exist. Blizzard catering to support one tricks really did kill this game starting with Brig.
Right, so you need them to have their own way to influence the games outcome, which is what support powers do right?
DPS want to spend their time DPSing. They don’t like shields.
Tanks want to spend their time Tanking, They don’t enjoy CC.
Supports want to spend their time supporting, they don’t enjoy having to fight flankers all the time.
Ow2 lowered the shields so the DPS had a more fun game, and the CC so the Tank had a more fun game, but indirectly made the flankers stronger. One less Tank, less CC, and maps which have better flank routes do that for a game.
They reworked the Shield heavy tanks to be different. They reworked the CC heavy DPS to be different.
They will either rework the flankers to be something else, or make them a lot less strong.
Anyway, lets get back to matchups.
If the supports are meant to lose the matchups with the flankers (and they are) - it means you have to limit the amount of times that matchup happens.
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That’s unavoidable against good flankers. The solution is turn on a mic and let your team know you need help like the game intended. Either that or play a mobile support like Moira or Lucio. Or learn to hit your sleeps. Or throw up immort.
They reworked Cree so he now requires even more skill than he did before. It’s harder to deal with close range targets without a stun. You don’t see Cree players crying about it.
They had to because they removed 1 tank. Do you want to solo heal?
Doubt. They are going to have enough trouble getting new players to wait 15 minutes for a match as is. If they nerf the most appealing heroes in the game like Tracer and Genji then they can go ahead and shovel the dirt over OW2 themselves.
Supports just need to have better awareness and communicate with their team.
You have the direction wrong, If they nerf Tracer / Genji, then you get more support players willing to queue more often, and leave less. So the queue times get better - so it is better for DPS.
Your fix is getting queue times down.
The game can be altered to make it harder for the flankers to get to the supports to engage. It isn’t unavoidable, you just wouldn’t enjoy the changes.
Remember the flankers are a small subset of the DPS. Having the supports queue more, would be good for almost every DPS player out there. It isn’t a tradeoff between DPS and supports, it is a tradeoff between 2 Flankers vs 15 DPS and support lineup.
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Good luck with that, most teammates don’t even have environmental awareness.
Personally, I think Supports need to lean more into utility – kills two birds with one stone: Supports get to have a defensive option without making them too oppressive, while also still allowing them play-making potential.
The queue times might get better at the expense of chasing off more DPS players. Nerf flankers and players will get frustrated that they can’t play the game they want to play.
OW is at its best when dive works and things die. No one wants to play or watch HealWatch.
Many already do. Ana has sleep, Moira has fade, Lucio has speed boost and wall ride to get away, Bap has IF, Mercy can fly to another teammate, Zen has a kick now.
That is only part of it, you have more supports and those supports would play more.
As you said, new players won’t want to wait for 15 minute queue times, but if you get them down, then the flankers will be replaced with other DPS players who won’t have to face those queue times, until we have enough that we achieve a new equilibrium.
But since it is limited less, because higher number supports queuing, then you have a higher player count.
This is why Blizzard will do it. Because a higher player count is useful for them.
The major issue with supports is that most supports are projectile based and most options are stall methods.
Healing Ana’s self to full hp means squat when you can’t aim your shot when its easier for the mobility heroes to hit you in return. Seriously, no one should think that Ana has an easier time hitting a genji/tracer in their face than the other way around. Except landing bioande. If I run into a gold ana that’s the one move I can except them to hit consistently.
Which is the main issue is that supports don’t have an easy to use ‘spam’ method. Tracer can spam in your general direction and get some damage output along with Genji at alt fire spam.
Moira/Brig are pretty much the only supports with ‘easy’ to use dmg and suddenly flankers are far less of an issue when you remove the one tool that keeps flankers alive. Evasion. Personally, the release of more diverse supports that get the weapon sets of other classes like say an assault rifle support would probably be pretty good compared to a Brig/Moira approach.
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You completely missed the entire point of my post, didn’t address the actual concern about what OW’s core demographic is and then responded with some word salad ending in an anecdote about Bastion. I’m not going to take the time to rebut this.
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How would you make that work against flankers, in a way which wouldn’t let the support murder everyone else?
Best post in the thread and 100% spot on. When you try to please everyone you end up pleasing no one.
The best games are the ones that know what they want to be and grow their playerbase organically while staying true to the fans that made them a success to begin with.
Honestly, just a numbers game. Keeping the dmg output of these supports low.
- Tracer does 240 DPS in 1 sec followed by 1sec reload animation. This gives her bursty 240 dmg, but 120 dps sustained on average.
- Ana has 87.5 DPS before reload. Ana can fire for ~10sec straight, so I won’t factor in reload.
- Baptiste hits 124 dps. He can fire for like 8.7sec before reloading. Won’t factor in reload for that.
- Zenyatta hits 150 dps /w discord. He can fire for 8sec before reload.
Zenyatta is like peak DPS. If we gave a support like S76’s weapon he’d probably need like 87.5-120 DPS total I’d say. If we are trying to ‘counter’ flanking specifically, but not other things the hero needs to have some pretty dramatic falloff. Probably a hitscan weapon that does 10-20 fall off. Makes them anti-flanker strong, but weak against ranged heroes. Then providing some type of method such as making the support evasive or some type of self sustain. Giving them a ‘fade’ type ability.
Moira has hitscan effectively, but her self heal sustain is kind of nutty. Making a support hitscan aim dependent on top of dropping the self-sustain lower from MOira would give a much more reasonable anti-flanker unit that feels more neutral against them and not so feast or famine with these huge bulky projectiles or slow firing rounds. To me would feel more fair to fight against.
Hey man. I was actually about to tag you when I saw you lurking. We may have had our disagreements in the past, but you’re all right, my guy. 
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This s Grey’s theory as well. Strong weapons with a massive falloff, I think you will just end up with Brawl being the dominate mode. If you have supports being super strong when they close, then your team comps will be around them closing.
They will be WAY more effective vs everyone except the flankers when they do so.