Firstly, I appreciate what appears to be a fairly candid, pointed, and elaborate reply. That’s something that’s been absent from Blizzard for a while, and it’s refreshing to have some actual, substantive communication from Blizzard.
That said… I have to disagree with a lot of what you’re saying. I understand you’re the messenger here and a lot of this message may be philosophy being pushed down from higher ups, so please understand my frustration isn’t targeted at you. To put it frankly, I really don’t think Blizzard has a clue when it comes to Tanks, and I think the direction they’ve chosen is not going to work out with the shining success that’s being promised.
Tank synergy is a massive part of what people enjoy about tanks. That’s going away with 5v5. I don’t really need to play it to understand that. To me, for Blizzard to utterly do away with that highly characteristic facet of the game is foolishness, because, in seeking to “fix” the issue with the Tank role, it’s taking away one of the few remaining enjoyable aspects of it. That’s a very bad note to start on, and it’s, as I’m sure you’ve realized, one of the biggest reasons that a lot of players hold 5v5 in low regard without even having played it.
Ostensibly, sure, if the upsides of this change are big enough, they’ll offset the loss of tank synergy, but I’m unconvinced. For example, as I’m sure you know, one frustration people have is with tanks being “vaporized” in the current game. In 5v5, with a reduction in defenses, that’s going to become an even larger problem, especially since beefing up tanks’ offensive power is going to mitigate the loss of damage from removing a tank. Now, sure, Supports might be able to focus on healing a single target more (even though that, as a player, sounds more like a downside–spending a good majority of the game shooting healing darts up the tank’s behind doesn’t sound like a good time), but this “upside” neglects that tank rotations currently mean Supports can put a little more emphasis on healing the whole team, which is a good thing. With a tank hogging the healing resources, that means DPS and Support partners are going to be more pressured for healing, which is going to promote more stop-and-go, peek-style gameplay similar to what we had several months ago (and which, despite accolades from a handful of people, was not overly popular). Nevermind, too, that burst damage and weaker healing means it’s extremely easy to overpower non-ult healing and shred through health bars, which would require a huge numbers overhaul to fix, meaning a lot of characters are going to wind up very different if Blizzard intends to actually get a semi-balanced, enjoyable game (and, if Blizzard hasn’t learned this by now–people don’t like their very unique, signature characters being utterly upended. Just ask Symmetra, Brigitte, & Mercy mains).
On top of that, I don’t particularly trust Blizzard playtests. Blizzard has made a lot of claims about what goes on in their playtests; very few of those claims have translated to the actual game. Jeff Kaplan even talked about that at length (I believe in the 1-3-2 or Tank redesign posts from Reddit? Don’t remember exactly), expressing how what Blizzard experienced in their internal gameplay was considerably different from the live game because Blizzard has a specific idea about how to play the game in their minds, and the playerbase has a different idea. Blizzard, too, I think, has overly invested themselves in designing a game that’s fun & functional for extremely high level players (i.e. OWL) without giving adequate consideration to how that impacts ordinary players, or they misconstrue how that will impact ordinary players because of the internal/pro bias. Blizzard needs to think outside the relatively small box of their office to understand the ramifications changes like these may have for the game.
So… again, thank you for the communication, but it does little to reassure–it honestly makes me even more apprehensive of the changes coming in OW2. While I dislike the overuse of the comparisons to CoD, Valorant, Apex, etc., it does legitimately seem like Blizzard is chasing the high of those games with these changes, and… well, sorry, but I’m just going to go play those games. Overwatch had something special. It’s far too late now, but my advice would be not to squander that unique nature.