What do DPS provide that Tanks don't?

Their upside is higher and more consistent damage, compared to tanks.

That’d be fine if they actually had it.

They do have it. Even Zarya with her possibly insane damage loses it over time, if her shields are being avoided.

What they do not have is enough survivability: one hit and DPS is dead or very close to it. There is only one healer, who can heal dead players, and only one healer, that can, for a very short time, make DPS more tanky, without using ults.

It’d be nice if the survivability and damage of tanks and DPS was balanced.

DPS do not have even close to the damage advantage that tanks have in survivability.

As I explained earlier, it’s because of healer’s inability to compensate for DPS weakness.

Tanks have some weaknesses, like short effective range, not most impressive damage, and being big target. But, healers have ways to help them with it: speedboost helps tanks evade damage and close range, and discord helps them hit harder.

But, when it comes to DPS, healers don’t have much to offer them. Healing doesn’t help, when DPS gets killed in single hit; increasing damage doesn’t help, as tanks still won’t die from one shot; and speedboost isn’t big bonus for heroes, that already have good mobility.

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Yeah. I think part of the problem is that damage creep has pushed DPS over the border of not being healable - they die before they can peel or healers can get to them. That’s why I’ve suggested buffing all DPS and supports by increasing HP, to compensate for power creep and lower TTK.

That being said I do think some tanks have improved offensively to the point where they should lose some of their survivability advantage, relative to DPS, as they are simply too close to being DPS themselves.

More interesting solution would be giving all supports ability to buff teammate’s health, that inversely scaled with health(higher health of the hero = smaller buff).

Or, to put it simply, DPS with healer come close to health of the tank.

Eh, I’d rather it be permanent. To be honest 200 hp is kind of ludicrously low for most heroes these days, that’s like two hits to many things or one to snipers. If we did raise everyone’s HP it would also cut down on the one shots in the game. I don’t think Hanzo should have one.

A tank’s job is to pull aggro and make space to enable DPS. Since we can’t have a threat mechanic that works on humans, we have to make tanks that have abilities and ultimates that make you want to stay away from them.

Tanks that can’t insta-gib a squishy who is out of position are useless tanks. All you have to do is keep shooting at them until they die. Unless of course you’d like tanks to be pylons with 1200 HP who can only sit on a point/payload to enable/prevent capturing…

You’re supposed to need a team effort to take out tanks.

The problem is, if tanks are ‘boss monsters’ that have to be teamed up on, they’re just stronger than the ‘squishies’ are. And a team made up of them will just be better.

It’s not impossible to go that route (which, bluntly, is where we are) but they need to be limited if we do.

I also don’t think Tanks have to be that way. Rein would be useful for his shield even if he wasn’t so threatening personally.

Otherwise you can just walk through his shield.

No, his teammates would kill you. That’s how Orisa works now; she’s not really supposed to be the biggest threat in the area, she just has a shield that enables her to protect her team while being basically a semi-static gun to prevent teams from setting up to take her out trivially.

Usually it’s not working like that, and tanks have to defend themselves. Just like healers are supposed to be protected, but in reality have to fight off attackers themselves.

Honestly I think the tanks/supports having to rely on the team was a better paradigm than what we have now. If they’re too independent, they just do away with the actual fighting members of the team… as we see now.

Orisa can take very good care of herself, thank you very much. I enjoy melting “yolo solo” tracers and genjis on the regular :wink:

There is no team, there is supports/tanks team and DPS doing their own thing :cold_sweat:

Ah, well, you can outplay anyone. I solo killed a Genji today as Ana but she’s not exactly a killing machine.

Well, it might help if tank mechanism were better for actual tanking. Most tanks are basically hybrids with great damage but pretty wimpy tanking abilities.

Too true!

I feel like 95% of people (not saying you’re one of them OP) who start these complaint threads are cranky Genjis who think they should be able to 1v6 the whole hero roster…

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To be honest I was a support main or flex player most of the history of the game. The last couple of months is the only time I’ve ever actually been good as a DPS, and that’s only because Ashe has nearly 100% skill transference from Ana and because Ashe is OPAF.

I don’t like how DPS players have been treated on this forum, though (like they’re the enemy, bluntly) and the Goats meta to me is a very severe problem - we have a whole unused role. Like, that contains most of the game’s heroes. That’s a huge problem - probably the worst balance problem the game has ever had. But people don’t seem to like to acknowledge how screwed over DPS are by it because they have a grudge against them.