After their first round of nerfs 1 week into S10, every last bit of hype or talk about Venture disappeared. I barely saw them being played in their own season - now it’s dropped to every 50 matches at best. Their kit is hardly even original, it feels like a reimaginening of Reaper to fit into OW2 better.
So what was the point of creating yet another DPS to pile onto the ever-growing heap of DPS, just for them to hardly see any playtime? We could’ve had another support to add a fresh mechanic and spice up the game in a meaningful way. At minimum they could’ve switched the release of Space Ranger and Venture around to make support not feel as stale.
P.S.: Same story with Echo. She was supposed to be a support, but they couldn’t work her ult out to function as a support ult, so they made her a DPS… with… a relatively low pick-rate (aside from pro play and pre-S9 at least).
I barely saw Lifeweaver after the first 2 weeks of him being out does that mean Support did not need another hero? I barely saw Ram for months after his release can you say Tank did not need another hero?
Basically you do not see heroes who are not very good. Venture is fine but there is nothing particularly drawing one to play them. They do not do anything particularly noteworthy, they do not have a personality that draws people to them, they just do not have anything that really makes people feel the need to dive in.
I think you forgot that Lifeweaver and Ramattra were unplayable on release, which took months to correct and have been getting more playtime now (at least Weaver has). That isn’t the case with Venture. Illari is also being played a lot.
So what’s the point? Why give DPS a meh hero when tank and support are sorely lacking?
Because Support are not sorely lacking. Meanwhile Illari was not played for about 3 seasons, not because she was awful, but was astoundingly mid. Ram was also not awful, there were just better options. LW they had to make very overpowered just to get anyone to be willing to play.
Basically it does not matter whether they are Tank, DPS, or Support, no one is going to bother to learn a mid tier hero who does not offer anything needed when the heroes they can already play get the job done just fine.
Support is still extremely lacking. There are 18 dps heroes and only 10 supports. Support is lacking until those numbers are even.
One of the reasons we have support heroes with bloated kits (Ana, Bap, Kiri, etc.) is because there aren’t enough support heroes to swap to, so a smaller number of heroes need to be able to counter a lot more scenarios.
By that logic DPS was extremely lacking at the start of the game and there should have been bloated DPS kits at the time but there were not. There was also not bloated Support kits at the time either.
Then again I have also never heard anyone call Ana’s kit “bloated”. She has 2 abilities and no movement tech whatsoever. They are both very good abilities but 2 abilities and no movement whatsoever is not bloated.
There is also nothing particularly unique in what Illari does. I use her as an example because she is the latest support so presumably they are running out of unique things that are needed in the role and now we get redundancy. Even the newest Support (Space Ranger) is implied to have Lucio’s speed boost (though it technically could be a Suzu replica the context makes it seem more like speed boost).
Again though in either circumstance it implies that we are past the “unique” stage and now more to the giving different heroes the key abilities needed which means we are sorely lacking in anything and now can just add heroes as needed to keep the game fresh for everyone who plays it.
Where have you been? People have been asking for nerfs to nade or sleep for years. The reason she’s never dropped below A tier is because she has two mini-ults as abilities on cooldown.
DPS has always had significantly more heroes than supports since forced role queue was implemented.
Objectively speaking, support is lacking. That’s not something you can argue with, given they have almost half the number of playable heroes as DPS.
DPS were comprised of two roles (offence and defence) that were merged into one, but with essentially the same purpose. Bloated DPS kits have definitely existed since inception, Genji to name as an example. However, on average, DPS kits are more straight-forward because of them having less responsibilities and due to there being so many of them that each hero is a solution for another problem.
This isn’t the case for supports (already cooldown-heavy heroes). Supports have bloated kits because there are so few of them that they can’t be spread out. Kiriko was the first new support in over 3 years, hence why Suzu does so much - they needed to alleviate fundamental 5v5 problems with one character. I also refuse to believe that they have run out of unique ability concepts after only 10 supports.
She has dropped below A tier numerous times. Again though that is not what you said though. You said she had a bloated kit. Being overpowered and being bloated are not the same thing. Cassidy is overpowered but has one of the most simplistic kits in the game.
That brings us back to your other point which you again have moved the goalposts on. First you said Support was lacking mechanics and it created bloated kits but as demonstrated that is clearly not the case.
Now we have shifted to hero counts and variety which brings us back to my original question: “was DPS lacking variety at the start of OW” because I would say no. However there is a fundamentally contradictory nature to your argument and it can be shown really shortly. By the end of this year we will have gotten 9 new OW2 heroes: 4 Supports (Kiriko, Lifeweaver, Illari, Ranger), 3 Tanks (Rammatra, Queen, Mauga) , and 2 DPS (Sojourn and Venture). I bring this up to illustrate that the variety and newness you seek for yourself you want at the expense of others. You want new heroes for your own role but want the others just play the exact same things they have played for 5 years with nothing new. Hypocrisy aside, that is a game killing argument.
People will only pick something they find boring if character is notably strong. Balanced but boring characters often see low pickrates. I think Reaper is quite viable right now, but there is only one way to play him and a lot of people don’t want to do this constant tele flank maneuver.
Among balanced characters, more one fun ones will always dwarf oddball choices.
I agree. I am telling you Ana is overpowered because she has a bloated kit. She needs sleep or anti completely removed and reworked to not be so powerful.
It’s OK, I can repeat myself for you. Bap, Ana, Kiri all have bloated kits (Illari too). High DPS, AFK healing, and an incredibly powerful ult.
I didn’t shift to hero counts. Supports having less playable heroes than DPS was my original point. That’s the entire context of this conversation.
And Supports still need 8 new heroes to catch up to DPS. Again, that’s the literal point here.
I would argue this mindset is what ruined Overwatch. Not to say you aren’t making sense. Its the fact that traditional FPS players will never be satisfied with Overwatch because it can’t be like a traditional FPS.
They should have done more to court an audience that would like characters like Venture.