Support and tank play are fundamentally different, and so I don’t think many support players would thrive in the tank role given how the positioning is wildly different and how weak Damage Mitigation has become overall.
Are you suggesting that players would jump ship from one neutered role right into another? Or something else entirely? I’m not sure I fully understand your post.
I do understand what Jeff said in that interview with the ice cream analogy though:
Tank is the least popular role. (Strawberry)
Damage is the most popular role (vanilla)
“Why waste time trying to convince people to try another flavor of ice cream? We need more vanilla!” (I’m paraphrasing here.)
Yo, are you actually annoyed that I ratio’d the OP?
Well I’m certainly not suggesting they invent new players out of thin air.
But what I’m suggesting here though is that the premise that you might lose some players in the Support role, is less important than the players you’d lose from bad queue times.
And that until you reach a point where the Support Queue is shorter than the Tank queue, losing a few Support players is not really a top level concern.
I’ve expressed my thoughts and opinions on the state of brig multiple times over, and have been playing her largely successfully since launch. Feel free to search “Brigitte” and posts by me to see some of my musings.
I won’t deny that, conceptually, Brigitte’s design is quite powerful; however, the execution, constant reiteration, and blanket nerfs in response to whatever whining is vogue…it leaves me wanting.
Don’t lump me in with whatever your preconceived notions of “poor gameplay” are just because my opinions don’t line up with yours.
my point is, is that brig is still strong it is just a bad meta for her (rush)
which is allowed to be a thing
she has been weak for a few months after dominating the meta frequently and everyone is freaking about about it
That’s a very valid and fair point, but I would posit that the Support and Tank roles are heavily dependent on one another, and the state of one of those roles will (perhaps drastically) impact the state of the other. Changing how the support role feels to play (perhaps for the worse) may have a ripple effect that drives players from both roles away…
I’d argue that the idea that fixing queue times has downsides, and not fixing queue times has zero downsides, is wreckless, dangerous, and ignorant.
And they a failure of being able to compare those downsides shows a lack of judgement and seriousness towards just how problematic queue times are.
Not fixing queue times could easily lose 5-20% of the playerbase.
ALL Support players in GM/Masters are probably only 1% of the playerbase, and you’re concerned about less than 1/10th of that quitting.
Heck, all GM/Masters Brig players is only 0.03%
These are entirely different scales of magnitude.
I agree, the goal should be the fewest number of people quitting possible. But the idea that it has to be zero, or we do nothing, is not taking this issue seriously.
thats the thing if they do quit at means theres going to be longer que for people queuing up for dps and tanks since it will be hard to find support players
Unfortunately, at the same time, blizzard can conveniently hide behind the excuse of, “well, we told y’all what would happen if we implemented forced 2-2-2, and y’all still wanted it!”
Queue times will always be a “problem” because this is the game environment that the majority demanded.
When it comes to player population I do understand that Blizzard typically follows a top-down balancing approach as well as applying nerfs to whatever’s being whined about the most, but I’m more concerned about the experience of the average player.
Without casuals to keep the numbers up, what’s the point of keeping a live-service game going aside from the millions invested into the eSports scene?
because i doubt that balance changes except for overwatch 2 ones like tanks being more brawlers would bring more tanks in there was 20 minute ques for dps even when tanks was the most dominate role which was orisa sigma meta the og one with moira lucio reaper mei
As the least popular role, I think more emphasis should be placed on diversity and availability of heroes within the tank role instead of making sweeping changes without much consideration to the other roles until “the numbers level out.” IMO, that’s an even more reckless approach. You wouldn’t burn a village to accomplish what a targeted strike would achieve, right?
I don’t think that there’s anything that can be done until Overwatch 2 injects enough new players into the game to make faster queue times a reality due to sheer population.
The populations of players who want to play certain heroes/roles is just irreversibly disproportionate. This was made abundantly clear before 2-2-2 was implemented.
Imo the “fat dps” route for tanks will do more harm than good, but players of this game will never be happy.
As the saying goes, “you can’t always please everyone at once.”
Probably fewer people quitting over that than those quitting over bad queue times.
Furthermore, what makes you think the average Support player would dislike it if Brig and Bap were buff/nerfed to be worse at blocking a composition they don’t play against, but better at self-reliant solo-q friendly playstyles?
Brig pickrate barely exists for the average support player. But they would love it if she was self-sufficient frontline brawler.
And Bap, if he got something like a better selfheal in trade for ImmoField being worse against close range attacks? Great. Good deal.
