Why does Blizz despise the main tank role?

General Discussion
1

and if they don’t why do they continue to destroy the main tank role?
who in their right mind wants to play main tank right now?
Main tank has the most limited character pool to pick from.
Orisa is firmly out of the meta so each game is a choice between Winston for dive and Rein for everything else, with Orisa seeing very limited picks in niche situations.
Hammond does not work as a main tank in solo que or even lower level LFG.

When playing as Winston or Rein (but especially Rein) the game basically plays out as follows; walk forward with team and keep shield up. Get shield bashed. when shield bash wears off, get slept. When sleep wears off, get hacked, when hack wears off get Doomfisted across the map. Rinse, repeat. The entirety of main tank game play is just getting completely and utterly rekt by CC abilities.

“Just play around it 4head”

You can’t. you cannot both play the objective AND play around Brigitte/Ana/Sombra/McCree/Doomfist/Junkrat/Mei. If you are playing on the objective, so are they. This wasn’t as bad before, because at least with all of those heroes you can hold up a shield and avoid most of those abilities, save for Doomfist but at least he doesnt stun you he just moves you. With Brig? forget it. Game over. GG. Get shield bashed once and it’s over, after that it’s just a chain reaction of stun, sleep, stun, boop, stun, hack, stun, boop until you are dead and in the mean time you are contributing exactly nothing to your team.

Y’all keep giving Brig these little baby softball nerfs that do literally nothing to fix the issue. And then, almost like some sick joke, y’all throw in a shield bash highlight intro into an unrelated event. That just feels like a giant middle finger to the player base who is begging for something to be done about Brig.

Oh, and now Torb is a tank buster. Because obviously we needed to nerf tanking as a whole? What the hell are you guys thinking?

Me personally I’m done tanking until this gets fixed. I’ve been a tank/support flex since I started playing the game which was right around the time Ana got released. I’m done. It has never been this bad to be a tank player. I’m picking up some DPS heroes (because this game needs more DPS players, obviously) and I’ll flex DPS/support. Tank slot is an abysmal joke and it doesn’t seem like you guys are done making it worse.

4 Likes
2

Reinhardt is the most picked character in the game…

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3

Must pick doesn’t mean enjoyable.

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4

I know what you are getting at with the addition of so many anti-tank mechanics into the game lately. But the title reminded me a lot of another post where Jeff Kaplan actually responded. Here’s his response to that post.

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Yeah, because you HAVE to pick him. Like I said in the post, the choice of main tank falls down to two options and one of them works almost exclusively with dive, leaving Rein to be the go to for everything else. Of course he’s picked a lot, that changes literally nothing about what I said. Playing him right now is a miserable frustrating mess, and I didn’t even dive into the metric ton of bugs he still has.

6

I agree with OP that playing main tank isn’t fun, but it is required. Rein needs to be played because nobody else can do what he can do, but sadly one of the things he does well is become a beach ball and get thrown around like a toddler’s toy in a tantrum. I play a lot of Rein in gold/plat… I’m tired of bouncing around unable to do much and being Kited from my optimal damage range.

7

So maybe they should buff Orisa for more main tank options that are less affected by cc.

And buff Roadhog for less unpunished CC.

1 Like
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All that tells me is that they are aware of how miserable the main tank slot is right now and have done nothing to fix it, doesn’t really change how I feel about what I said and, if anything, frustrates me further that they refuse to do anything to change it.

EDIT: scratch what I said about doing nothing to fix it. It’s worse than that. They have actively made it worse to play tank with the addition of Brigitte, the Torb rework, and what seems to be a new focus on adding more CC to the game.

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9

I agree. I think a nerf to most CC, and maybe a nerf and buff in different areas to reaper to keep him tuned, would be well suited. Right now rein doing JUST damage and having no other effect is what lags him behind because Blizzard keeps adding these characters not based around just stuns but also around higher damage or broad damage and it’s not fair to those with large health pools who can’t move fast. Want to swap? You can’t because not playing Rein is throwing in this season. Enjoy being a bouncy ball.

1 Like
11

I know your pain. I too am a tank main. And I’m more than just a little concerned that Torb is going to cause major problems for tank players. He’s going to be good, possibly too good.

12

I’m up for an Orisa buff. She definitely needs it. I think there needs to be a reworking, rebalancing of tanks across the board. Maybe even CC resistance for all tanks in some form or another. At the very least Rein needs CC resistance of some kind because currently the amount of CC in the game, especially brigitte, makes doing reins job near impossible.

14

the thing about the Lindholms currently, is they do all jobs too well. Torb can now do un-deflectable dmg that is high and is on a cooldown, has an ability that throws him to unkillable for a few seconds, counters armor, and does long range. Similar to how Brig’s kit allows people to do whatever they want on her role.

1 Like
15

I don’t agree. Tanks are fun to play but are a pain because although you are the heaviest contributer to your win most games, it’s still very much up to the dps to score the kills you enabling. That’s just going to always be an issue.

Tanks are one of the most powerful picks in the game atm, even with the insane amount of tank busting potential out there. So how do you balance dps out more without breaking tanks?

Cuz I’ll be honest. I been a tank main for a while and I got tired of it and started playing support/dps but If I’m in one of those rank boost matches, I’ll make it known that I want to tank and ensure the win, because I know I can

Also I do it with Orisa. People do not use her right and thus think she is bad.

16

My tank brother, I feel your pain.

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I wish we could see more in this picture than just 5 tanks (no Orisa for example) but not a single comparison to other roles/heroes

18

You get hit. Your team isn’t. The entire point of tanks. Play Rein as he is or play something else if you don’t like him. You can’t eat the cake and have it.

19

I’m a little confused at the point you are trying to make. I never said the tanks job was to get kills, nor do I play for kills. I play the objective and I play around my team and try to enable them to win, which is exactly why I have such an issue with the current state of tanking. You cannot do your job effectively. I cannot enable my team when I can’t even hold a shield up. I cannot clear space for my team when walking towards the payload/objective means I’m getting shield bashed, slept, frozen, hacked, stunned, trapped, and killed.

Tanks are always going to be a powerful/integral part of the game because the game was built around the tank/dps/support synergy. My point is that main tanking is not fun anymore (for me at least, I’m glad you’re still having fun with it) because of the following reasons; extremely limited character selection, buffed tank busting, bugs, and most importantly Brig and the overwhelming amount of CC in the game.

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I think it is prudent to point out, she just got a buff today to make her damage more reliable.

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This isn’t WoW. The tanks job is not to just sit around and soak damage, it’s to create space and enable your team. Soaking up damage sometimes is a side effect of that, but it’s not the role. Not to mention, if the only thing you are doing as a tank is soaking up damage you might as well be playing Roadhog because all you are doing is charging enemy ults. You are of no use to your team as Rein if every fight starts and ends with you CC’d into oblivion and not able to hold up a shield or make space. Based on what you said I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of how tanking is supposed to work in this game

22

Did I say you do nothing but take damage for your team? It’s just your job. If you can’t do it while making plays you aren’t a good tank player.

Also if they invest so many cooldowns into you you create space for your team by getting rig of threats such as Shield bash or Sleep dart. If your team doesn’t go more agressive and win off of the lack of resources the enemy has blame the team, not game design.