I’ve played about 4 hours of Limit 2, and had some time to digest my thoughts on the mode. I played all roles but tank most of all.
It’s obvious in most situations that 2-1-2 is ideal. 1-2-2 can work as a map or situational pick, but most people’s eyes glaze over when you talk about map picks so it’s often better to stick to 2-1-2 even when it isn’t ideal.
Playing 2-1-2 the difference on tank is noticeable. The loss of being a “super-character” and having new breakpoints takes some getting used to, but is completely mitigated by the fact that you have way more ability to control space. In fact, the loss of the extra HP often works as an advantage since you can punish opposing tanks who try to ignore you, break the space you’re controlling, and just go for your backline. I often feel powerless to stop this in 5v5.
I do feel like the pressure of the solo tank has just been foisted on whichever role is solo though. Solo DPS can feel overwhelming juggling counter-picks and keeping pressure on without exposing yourself. Solo Healing feels somewhat worthless. There is also the risk of when one of your teammates silently swaps off a role (usually from tank or healing to DPS). It’s bad enough when it happens, but worse when you don’t realize and haven’t been given the opportunity to adjust accordingly. You’ll go out the next fight as tank, start to initiate, get all of the pressure, and then when you utilize cover to try and relieve that pressure you either get collapsed on or your squishies die because no-one can pick up the slack.
I think my experience can best be summed up by something I blurted out to a teammate during a match. It feels like GOATS, or at least the best of what GOATS was without being the worst of what GOATS could be. It’s still got problems, I still think 6v6 is a fundamentally better format, and the gamemode is still “fresh”, so I could still sour on it, but so far I’m liking it more than I thought I would and it feels like an improvement over the current base game.
One last thing I wanted to mention: Doom/Ball is disgusting, and that’s coming from someone who only played as it, never against it. I suck at Doom, and the person I was going in with wasn’t a great Ball either. But the ease of keeping the enemy team on the back foot was kind of gross, and they only managed to somewhat get us in line by entirely swapping anti-dive, by which point we’d already completed most of the map (on attack).
I feel the current problem with this test is the actual player base, and it surely comes out from replacing the Open Queue card.
In most of my games (wich curiously amount to a 50% winrate), the team that looses has usually afwul picks (single genji trying to play against a tank combo of Hog and Winston, for example; or a single healer using Zenyatta).
God forbid you suggest something, mainly because here you, YOURSELF, have the ability to change what´s “wrong”, but if you do so, you will get the usual “relax, its QP”.
Makes me think that sadly not everyone is taking it seriously, and that is awful when you are testing new modes and want to get actual feedback and data to base decisions from.
Actually that does remind me of something else I wanted to mention. The mode does really magnify the impact of someone just YOLO diving, and that early pick is way more important (like it was in OW1).
It’s even worse than it was in OW1 though when someone is ignoring the team game and just W-mouse-1ing, since their relative impact is higher.
Most games I’ve played are 2-1-2. This reinforces my confidence that people would play tank more should we return to 6v6. However, this could be confirmation bias, as it is just a nightmare to play DPS solo, and maybe players just don’t want to be bullied lol
It feels awesome to play as tank when you have a buddy, and it solves the tank focusing issue in regular 5v5.
I played some games as the solo DPS, and that felt awful. Pretty often you can’t pressure from another angle, since it just makes you an easy target. I’ve found that so far, Tracer is the best if running as a solo DPS. Everyone else is kind of mid on their own.
Support also feels great as you have some extra peel with another tank. I never felt like I was struggling to keep the team up, though it is pretty easy to accidently ignore your DPS, as they tend to play very passively without another DPS to back them up or take angles.
Open queue balanced tanks are way overpowered if you have 2 of them. They probably don’t need this much HP.
They would probably have to tune down the CC in the tank role as well.
2-2-2 would feel a lot better, even with this tank balance (as bad as it is).
I think there’s never a reason NOT to be running two tanks, so the only real variety is down to whether you have two DPS or two supports. I genuinely enjoy playing solo support just like I did back in the days before RQ, and I think it’s very viable as long as you get some peel, which is more likely with two tanks.
I think tank damage output needs to be addressed, though. Nerfing their HP isn’t enough. Doomfist still has full solo team wipe potential but now there’s another tank protecting the rest of Doom’s team. It can get rough.
I found Junkrat and Mei to both be very strong picks. I agree with the solo DPS having a hard time taking angles due to being easily isolated, but like I said, feels like GOATS.
I’d agree with that. My only input on moving it to 6v6 instead of 5v5 is that I reckon the two role limit should only be applied to tank and maybe support, but not DPS. We actually had a Limit 2 6v6 mode briefly back in 2019, and it made a lot of people upset because they loaded in last/backfilled, and only the tank slots were left. Forcing people to play tank is not cool.
I suspect that the min 1/max 3 6v6 version of this Limit 2 5v5 mode is going to be worse because it’ll be 303 all day, every day. Two really is the magic number when it comes to tanks, imo. I’ve been happy with both 221 and 212, although 212 seems like the stronger base composition for sure.
I’m a stickler for 2-2-2 role queue, if for no other reason then it makes balancing easier, especially as more and more characters get added.
When you start allowing more than 2 in any role, the power of potential synergies increases, and makes new characters especially hard to balance into the game.
But we’re getting into semantics now. Regardless, we both feel like there are good lessons to learn from the Limit 2 QP Hacked.
One thing I did notice, is that nobody even bothers to counterpick you when you’re a solo DPS, so you can kind of play whatever you like. It still feels a bit like DBD lol
I had a great Paraiso game where I played against one of my teammates from my GM team. I locked Hanzo and tried my heart out. We eventually won
I haven’t played a whole lot as the solo DPS, but for my part I did okay as a chunkier character like Torb or Mei. I see a lot of folk go Reaper, too. Bastions pop up, but I can’t say that I think he’s a good choice most of the time.
Actually yet to play a game with or as a Hanzo, so he was a big question mark on my “Limit 2” tier list so far. Ash is another one I’ve got a big question mark over.
I’ve kinda enjoyed it.
Tank feels way less… Feast or Famine, high stress? I’m failing to articulate exactly what I mean but I’ve been enjoying playing D.Va here and there. The potential for a second tank to help alleviate pressure or apply more has made the role feel more relaxed and manage-ably fun imo. It’s less of a sweat fest where you need to have a neutral to beneficial matchup vs the other tank(s). I’m pretty sure I’ve won and lost with almost every tank instead of there being clear “Oh this tank tends to win while this one tends to lose”, I’m sure prime strats aren’t developed and Zarya does feel on the strong side, but for basic health nerfs and no real adjustment outside of that I’m pleasantly surprised by how generally okay all the choices feel.
I did not like the 3 or so games I was forced into DPS as the sole player. I’m not confident in my abilities as a DPS player, so that could definitely be a contributing factor.
I didn’t mind and even enjoyed being the solo Support rounds. I’ve had a number of games as Mercy where I was the only Support and still ended the game with a W and under 5 deaths, they’re hectic and a bit more challenging but I haven’t had one close to the level of suffering I had as solo DPS.
I think the suffering of a solo support is more of the tanks than the support, but I get what you’re saying. A good tank should be managing resources regardless, but some tanks feel non-viable without the resources to support them regardless of how well you manage resources and space.
Let me tell you those Doom/Ball games I played I probably didn’t need the second support though.
i think its a completely unnecessary “event” given we’ve always had OQ…we’ve had PLENTY of time to digest what all the different comps available look and feel like
