Why don’t they all just have a cookie-cutter barrier for protecting allies.
They can even operate differently.
It would have solved so many balance issues between off-tanks and main-tanks and left room for work on their individual secondary abilities and ults.
Right now we have a major barrier-shred going on and if it continues the giant AOE abilities are going to be too strong. Then what? Are we just supposed to try and dodge the hitscan??
Matrix and barriers have gotten the nerf bat and the direction this game is going is kind of scary. The damage going out in droves is insane.
yes, that is kind of the point, play tactically around the map geometry instead of relying on a barrier to give you a window to kill from.
but barriers was too strong so they had to nerf it, likewise with other defensive measures, it’s less about resource management and more tactical use of these abilities they have to save their team or themselves from specifically enemy abilities and ultimates.
This answer is still kinda silly to read. You have a shield in the game, so that means you have to hide behind a rock instead of a shield to protect you from death?
Could you imagine a shooter where you used a gun to only activate traps to kill targets? It might be fun, but it’d be stupid in Overwatch.
I mean, you shouldn’t ONLY have to rely on shields, but saying “instead of relying on shields, hide be a wall”! Instead, shields should be a good idea without being the ONLY idea and vice versa for the map geometry.
No shields should be held up to protect people from damage. Especially spam damage. Its dumb to have shields in the game that you can’t use as shields. The only reason you have a shield is to hold it up and deny damage. Saying “You have to use it tactically, to save team members or deny ults!” is loaded.
Ideally, you should be able to do that while denying spam damage too.
In practice, you have sigma’s shield where some people only quickly flick it out to block one thing, then they put it away again. Using the shield more like Mario’s cape from Smash Brothers instead of like a shield.
Again, ideally, both should be viable. The blocking spam damage and blocking tactically. Not only one or the other.
Yeah it’s something only a tank player can understand…sometimes i think about it and it’s scary…
Maps right now don’t quite allow for that … what are you supposed to do for example in the second point of Rialto? just give them free 100m untill they are below the bridge?
so what’s the inverse of this? unbreakable barriers? allways able to block anything?
people got tired of the resource war of barriers as all you did was “shoot barriers”
that’s the other alternative they could be looking at, and at that point you have to bypass/outplay the barriers that the enemy team have instead.
i did not choose this nerfing of barriers, the devs did.
currently orisa has as much barrier health as brigs old barrier, does that seem like it should be able to eat spam damage?
I believe I already answered this. Using shields should be a good idea while not being the only good idea. Ideally, this would work if we buff shield counters.
I know you didn’t, nor did I accuse you of doing that. I only said my opinion that, in a game where shields exists, they can’t be used to block damage for any length of time would be stupid.
We aren’t there yet in Overwatch, but I don’t want us to get to that point either.
that’s an oversight from the devs, they build maps like arenas and not lots of nooks and crannies in the arena to hide in so you get artificial chokepoints at the entrances of these arenas and people have to manipulate the crannies that exists in the perimeter of the arena.
if you’ve seen an OWL game you can see that they move along the edges because it provides more cover than the centers of the arena when they get through the choke point.
i honestly think the best idea would be to make barriers stationary and make them invulnerable but also on a long cooldown, this way they can’t just reposition them and you get more of an opportunity to play around the barriers.
this way to block or negate big ultimates etc isn’t up to the tank but it’s a collaborative effort from the entire team to be mindful of their positioning instead.
now you can artificially build a cover in the arena that’s allways so barren of protection and both teams have to play around an ever evolving space to fight in.
however with this change you could still have these weak barriers to potentially block abilities and ultimates to a degree and nothing but those.
it’s a crazy idea but i think it’s a solution to what we have now because i don’t think anyone is willing to go back to strong barriers like we had before.
not in a classic fps, they don’t have tanks. it’s an evolution of the genré that has happened pretty recently, but you can’t for example say there’s a tank in
quake,
or in counterstrike
or in unreal tournament
or doom
or soldier of fortune,
not even tribes ascend can’t you really say they have tanks,
and in battlefield the tanks are actual tanks and is not really a character.
apex legends don’t really have tanks either, not PUBG or H1Z1 either.
if you want to point to an actual fps tank i would like some examples to compare it to overwatch and see where they actually differ.
You know, I think we should just give this to Orisa and remove her original shield.
Like, if this shield change happened to everyone, Reinhardt would never get picked again even if his shield only had, like, a 3 second cooldown time and a 10 second up time. Rein dies so fast without a shield that he’s likely to be killed while he’s trying to activate it.
I think Sigma would be mostly fine with this, but unlike Reinhardt, Sigma would only be losing his identity as a tank and not be completely ruined.
But for Orisa, the tank who’s main thing is making sure she can’t be moved by the enemy, I think she’d manage just fine if she had a massive and strong shield on a long cool down. And if not, we could try to buff her fortify a bit to make it work.
Rofl… That is a good one, Battlefield has literal tanks. No denying that.
I am not saying it is common, g. I am just saying there are plenty of fps games that offer that dynamic nowadays. I would consider that huge dude with a shield a tank from Apex. He is obviously more of a soft tank than what we get in Overwatch. And he is not as swag as a real tank from Battlefield. But that sort of style exists nevertheless and it is because Apex borrows from the hero shooter genre which is where 90 plus percent of tanks from shooters come from. The rest are Battlefield tanks. Lul.
all of the games problems are due to blizzard’s unwillingness to balance the easy heroes that are marketed to women. sorry, but its true. and its kind of offensive, considering I know women who are good at video games and dont want to be babied.
and gibraltar what he does have in common from overwatch is that he has barriers, a big dome like winston and a small front facing self-barrier that only covers his upperbody, his hp what i remember is still the same as everybody else.
so not really a tank, he just have some defensive utilities i don’t really classify him as a tank.
however as some inspiration is gotten from TF2 and i have no clue how that game works at all, so there could be something of the sort there, but i have no clue.
That’s kind of the point though – if we are talking about how they originally designed this game, then the idea wasn’t for players to pack behind the barrier guy. I sometimes wonder how the game would have been if they hadn’t had a barrier at launch.
Barriers are cool but I don’t think they should have ever been a necessity. Having a roster of Tanks all carrying some “cookie-cutter” barrier would have been a very boring and limited design choice.
Just like DPS brings different choices when it comes to securing kills, tanks should have other options when it comes to making space for their team.
This is partly why I wish I could have seen an Overwatch where Reinhardt was introduced later rather than at launch. Players are too acclimated to the idea of having a window to shoot from. People that say “only tanks understand this…” are often times talking about Reinhardt and no one appreciates whatever a Roadhog or Wrecking Ball can bring because it isn’t as obvious as Rein.
I’ve been hoping for new tanks since launch and in the end, we got two more barriers. Wrecking Ball was a breath of fresh air but his rise felt long and people still feel like he only feeds.
With Reinhardt, I am perfectly fine with him being the lone Barrier god. He can’t attack and block, his only range is a pretty decent ability. Design wise, he should have a good barrier that blocks “spam”.
The issue to me though is when we continue to nerf any counter to his design. We can’t have him being hacked, we can’t have him being booped, we can’t have him being stunned. Players are so against any form of utility or (dare I say) CC that could be thrown against him because in their minds him holding the barrier is a staple of Overwatch and taking it away without breaking it is simply unfair.
As someone that loves playing Rein, I totally get feeling like a big target once your counters show up and take advantage of your kit. When I whip out Sombra to settle down a Doomfist that is popping off, I get a front row seat to a hero who only had abilities in a shooter to carry them. I’d be happier though if my team didn’t just melt behind me once my barrier goes down and if proper positioning (not just staying behind the barrier) was a thing we all did outside of OWL.
This right here is what I want most from the devs and I think they get tunnel visioned on the heroes. Fix Overwatch’s mechanics, change the maps (like they did with Eichenwald/Horizon). So many heroes fall short simply because they aren’t designed to make the most from the maps they are playing on or cannot keep up with the direct charge to the point.
There should be more elements on the playing field. There should be more mobile pieces like platforms in strategic locations for heroes like Bastion to consider using (pits near the point are an indirect buff to heroes like Lucio/Roadhog but the idea of an environmental buff for slow/immobile heroes is crazy). There should be more hazards near the point (what are the cars in Oasis for besides decoration?) and structures to hide behind. Flanking routes should be expanded upon and health packs looked over again.
The game as it is now just encourages packing behind a barrier and building ult for that big ult-play rather than getting picks in the middle of battles. So much of the map goes unused - I only ever see parts of it when trying to find a spot to hide a translocator in MH! The point is always a big empty box (unless Ilios) so heroes holding the strongest barrier will always make the rest of their class look inadequate.
The next big mode coming in OW2 seems to be another “team pushes onto the point” game mode but I do hope that the devs have more planned for later that breaks away from this. Like what if we had 2-3 points to secure? What types of heroes would take advantage of that type of game-mode best? Is it even possible with 2-2-2?