To my knowledge ‘main-DPS’ just means ‘hitscan damage heroes’ and ‘flex-DPS’ just means ‘projectile damage heroes’. Why aren’t they just automatically, universally referred to as this? Do the damage types of Hitscan and Projectile just naturally serve two seperate roles, if so how is this the case? Aren’t the different roles of DPS more like: area-denial (Junkrat, Pharah, Widowmaker), flanker (Tracer, Sombra) etc… I’m sorry if this is all just a ramble, but this is the one part of Overwatch terminology I really just don’t grasp. I get what a Main and Off Tank is, I pretty much get what a Main and Off Support is. What is Main and Flex DPS. HELP.
never seen someone use those terms that why tbh
I think you got it wrong, main is what you most good at, flex is what you can also play, but not as good as your main. Like a hitscan main can flex to projetile heros, or a genji main can flex to hitscan.
‘Flex’ pretty much always refers to the position/player, not to the hero. A flex player plays a variety of roles. A flex-tank plays a variety of tanks, and flex-dps a variety of DPS; or it means they also play other roles in addition. In OWL, ‘flex-tank’ and ‘flex-support’ are the support and tank player that can also play DPS if the team decides not to play pure 3/3, but that terminology is really specific to the current meta and will hopefully be forgotten in a year. I don’t know the context you’re using flex-DPS in, but if it was used in contrast to main-DPS it would mean a player who plays other roles vs. a player who only plays DPS. (I’ve also heard flex DPS to mean playing both hitscan & projectile heroes in the context of hitscan vs. projectile though.)
Hitscan and projectile don’t serve different roles, but do have different aim requirements, so it’s more likely for a player to specialize in one or the other. Reaper and widowmaker are both hitscan, for example and couldn’t be more different. On the other hand, most projectile DPS do tend towards spamming damage as hitting with them is really unreliable (at least at high level where players actually, y’know, evade) but still, hanzo and junkrat aren’t really filling the same role in any other way besides both being good at spamming a chokepoint.
Flanker/Sniper/Mid-range is one way you can divide most of the DPS. Area-denial, choke-spam, shield break, sustained damage, burst damage, etc, are all also ways to describe DPS. They aren’t mutually exclusive (Bastion is both area denial and shield break), and you aren’t always using a character that is good at one of those things for that thing.
A main DPS player is defined by his best DPS players. That said, pretty much any decent DPS could flex which is being able to play other heroes then his best ones on the same or well close to the same level. Off-role is when you flex to heroes outside your hero pool.