Yes I know the answer will be “let people have their fun and do whatever they want” but it genuinely completely ruins the mode and it’s extremely depressing. This used to be one of my favourite modes and the only thing I would play aside from competitive. Perfect to warm up or practice the mechanics of a hero without burdening your team or torturing yourself in quickplay. This is completely impossible to do when there’s at least 2 tanks in almost every match, and it’s usually Roadhog.
There is no “getting better” here. If you’re not playing a tank and have the misfortune of running into one (which you will. Even if you try to get away from them the whole game, the map is small and since there are so many you will just run from one into the arms of another) you’re just dead because they have the bigger healthpool. You could try to poke at them from a distance, but they will leave your LOS or just walk at you before you can kill them.
To make matters worse, their role passive is still in effect, so you can’t even knock them back much to try to get them away from you, and you won’t even get that much ult charge from killing them, which you absolutely should. It should be the downside to playing the characters with the biggest healthpool in the game mode purely about killing. And of course, add the global nerf to CC on top of everything else. They just have uncontested reign of the whole lobby with no way to punish them. In OW1 I could at least get some joy from going Sombra and following Hogs around and hacking them to try and ruin their 1v1s, now you can’t even do that.
Sure, you could try playing something like Reaper (is he even a tank buster anymore?) but what’s the fun with that? I’ve had more than my fair share of Reaper. I could cave in and play tank myself. But again, why would I want to do that? There’s no fun in curb stomping everyone in the lobby by cheesing it. I want to get better mechanically with other heroes, and fight other players that I know aren’t just guaranteed the win because of a sheer numbers game.
I really wish they could at least introduce a no-tanks variant. I know tryhard FFA is a thing, but you can’t do your weeklies with those custom games. I just miss this mode so much man…
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I’ve seen a fair few Doomfists get slaughtered by Hanzo or Bastion.
Tanks generally can’t last that long being such big targets. Even with mobility, they’re either focused down or kept away from by other players.
Tanks still need a team to be juggernauts.
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I don’t play DM modes or keep track of them so I just assumed that there was a non-tank variant. Weird that it doesn’t even exist, let alone that it’s not the default for while-you-wait.
I mostly see Hog which I don’t think needs an explanation. But other tanks have ways to protect themselves or mobility which will help them out in escaping or making 1v1s even harder. If they’re being insta-deleted from being focused down then they’re just awful players who are literally walking down the middle of the road and not much else.
Dive tanks like Dva and Winston are really good since harassing isolated squishies is what they excel at. Dva especially can do insane damage and can probably delete a squishy almost as quickly as Hog.
Orisa gets in your face and proceeds to shove you around before impaling you.
Junkerqueen is basically Hog if he was designed in OW2. Very good brawler with good sustain.
Sigma can just sit in some corner and poke you to death behind his stupid shield…
Ultimately, in the context of FFA, most tanks are just fat DPS with far more utility. I can at least respect Ball players since a lot of them just seem to want to practice combos, and Rein players since that’s obviously quite the challenge. Haven’t seen much of Zar and Doom, but last I’ve heard they were both pretty bad in FFA, but I don’t know since I barely play now.
Balance-wise, they’re pretty mediocre picks in the mode. Hog and JQ are the exceptions, but the rest generally have a harder time winning against competent players. Of course it’s possible that the guy in 8th place spends the entire game feeding his brains out to the Winston and you lose for no fault of your own, but they’re still not very good. The deathmatch leaderboards reflect this pretty well.
Fun-wise though, sort of agreed. I personally wouldn’t remove tanks, but I would introduce a nerf that speeds up the game while not making them feel worse to play. Ult charge is a good one, like giving extra for non-tanks attacking them so that a lobby filled with tanks won’t stagnate.
Because it’s not about not-dying. It’s about how quickly you kill.
Most often it is about stealing kills… Can´t count how many times I was about to kill someone and another player just steals the kills…
And on the subject at hand, I think it is fun that there is tank players in the mode. Op need to see it as practise.
Tanks got nerfed severely in deathmatch, and are now bordering on throw picks. Everyone will drop what they are doing and go after the weakened giant hitbox.
Hog is surprisingly common and have high winrate (often ends up in top 4)
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Not severe enough. You still can full blast on them and they survive with a sliver of health.
As a tank player I only play deathmatch “while you wait”. In deathmatch if I am playing dva I say hello to everyone and avoid killing, just emote and voiceline spam and be happy.
If I’m junkerqueen I will hunt people down but I make exceptions for anas, mercies, kirikos, illiaris, widows, tracers, and sombras, who I will wave hello to and emote with unless they shoot me.
I think JQ is fair to face. But generally, even on JQ, if someone says hello while I am tanking in deathmatch, I will wave hello back and not shoot them.
Try waving to tanks you don’t want to play against in deathmatch.
As for sombra, pretty sure she can handle hog still, even if hack does not cancel selfheal anymore.
Why do I tank in deathamtch while I wait? To keep warmed up.
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With the addition of Mauga, there’s guaranteed to be at least 5 tanks in the lobby now. The only way to really compete with them is to become a tank (which I hate playing because they’re boring to me). The mode is almost exclusively a tank vs tank battle royale with a few poor souls trying to encompass the beauty that the DM mode once was. I don’t care how well a non-tank is vs another tank 1v1. It doesn’t matter if there are 3 tanks all mobbing on the squishiest characters trying to nab the kill. In that instance skill doesn’t even play a role on either side. If you’re lucky enough to get away from the horde as a non-tank, then you end up running into another before you can recuperate and respawn just to have it happen again.
It just sucks the fun right out of the game and that all you’re going to see is just a bunch of tank on tank battles in competitive FFA.
Once in a great while I’ll encounter a game with 0-1 tanks and it’s like the harmony returns and everyone is able to let their skillset shine… until someone gets tired of losing and goes tank just so they can have the benefit of running over everyone else with ease.
Blizzard, a separate mode for tanks is all we’re asking for. We’re not looking for nerfs or reworks. We just want more fairness and stabilization on the FFA battlefield.
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