They are, but specifically Front line shield tanks. We only have 2 and Rein outshines Orisa in every way. If we have more options, then so much emphasis wouldn’t be put on Reinhardt.
Fingers (and toes) crossed that the next hero is a shield tank to rival Rein.
Top 4% isn’t masters though.
I think it is very well established who hates “no-skill” heroes, and why. I don’t think there is a single “no-skill” main who has not gotten an earful from flankers/snipers at some point as to why their hero should be nerfed out of relevance.
All a Brig can do is stroll up to you. She has one movement ability which is on a longish cooldown, which is also a stun that she needs in order to effectively combo. If you have any movement capabilities at all on your hero, you can put distance between you and her.
You cannot juke her mace in mace range just like you cannot juke Reinhardt’s hammer in hammer range. There is a limited zone in front of Brigitte where you should not be standing, and if you let her get that close without at least breaking her shield, then you have pretty much lost your opportunity to deny her value. And yes, she has teammates, and so do you, and you should collectively be able to figure out how to kill or at least move away from the pain range of the easily visible paladin clattering towards you. See also: Reinhardt, who deals much nastier damage than Brig does.
This is flatly untrue, though. Mercy’s kit sounds rock-stupid if you describe it in terms of aim. But Mercy has to not just be able to keep her beam on people but to survive better and better opponents as she climbs. There has been nothing “exploitable” about climbing with Mercy since the Huge Rez SR thing got ironed out, and Brig has been nerfed to a very tiny niche of usefulness.
When an “easy” hero climbs into higher ranks, that player has to be able to survive and to not get shut down against players of increasing skill. If a Bronze Mercy who never learned anything besides “put yellow beam on friends” somehow manages to get out of Bronze, she will be smacked back down to it as she doesn’t know how to keep herself alive, how to triage her team, when to use her blue beam, when to use her pistol, when people can actually manage to shoot her when she tries to rez, etc. etc. etc.
A Brigitte who gets away with “Lol, I just W+M1 and everyone just lets me wade into them” will not climb beyond the tier where people stop letting her get away with that.
If a GM Tracer does not know to use two blinks to nearly instantaneously get out of Brigitte’s dangerous range, then the GM Tracer deserved to lose that duel.
If you put a lot of effort into studying for a math test, and get an A on it, and Johnny puts in a creative writing paper, and gets an A on it, it doesn’t matter how much easier you think creative writing is than math is, if Johnny did well on his actual assignment, he deserves credit for it.
None of the heroes are just easier or harder versions of exactly the same thing. Even within the same category! Mercy doesn’t need to work as hard as Ana to patch up injured teammates, but Ana can drag somebody back from the brink of death and Mercy can’t. Ana can take out gigantic threats on the enemy team, and Mercy can’t. Ana can interrupt or deny ultimates with two different cooldown abilities, and Mercy can’t. Mercy does steady healing; Ana does burst healing. They do not have the same job, and there’s no reason that Mercy should be artificially punished for being really good at a simple kit that she can effectively make use of at a high level.
Also note that healers, and to a lesser extent, tanks, both have kits that are designed to eventually be overwhelmed by good DPS; which is why the lion’s share of “hard” heroes are DPS and most of the tanks and healers get mocked for being “easy”. Demanding strictly equal mechanical difficulty out of tanks and healers would be making them “work just as hard” mechanically for a much more severely capped output potential, which would be unfair.
This is part of what makes high-skill heroes, well, high-skill. Widowmaker’s skill floor means she has a high likelihood of missing her shots. Tracer’s high skill floor means that if she gets hit by almost anything, she’s likely to die from it. Genji’s high skill floor means that if he misjudges a dive and blows all of his cooldowns to make it, he’s a squishy sitting duck. Difficult heroes by definition have a tiny margin of error. Easy heroes by definition do not. The tradeoff is that the difficult heroes have lots and lots of tools at their disposal to force the fight to happen on their terms, and if they misuse those tools (whether by poor planning or by failing to successfully achieve a mechanic), they will lose the engagement. That’s what makes them hard.
In return, they have very high impact. See: Ana’s ult-denying abilities; Widow’s reliable 1HK; Genji’s chain-dash/combos; Tracer’s ability to dodge almost anything (and a literal undo button when she doesn’t); McCree and Ashe’s ability to 2-tap all squishies without any help; etc. etc. etc.
There is more to this game than winning duels.
Logically speaking, lower skill heroes should thrive in these ranks.
Except Tracer, Widow, Hanzo, and Ashe aren’t that good in Gold, but excel at higher ranks exactly as you demand. You just have a weirdly skewed idea of what average is.
It’s a rough estimate. I know there was a dev post about it a few years ago. I just don’t remember the exact number.
EDIT: Competitive Mode Tier Distribution
It’s actually 3%
We have plenty of tanks and tanking styles. Rein and deathball shouldn’t be the only way.
How does Rein 2.0 help Orisa, Winston or Hammond?
Except they’re not too viable as seen by the actual stats. They perform on average worse to their easier counterparts. If you’re actually arguing that they should actually be bad everywhere else than higher ranks then it sounds like salt.
You have no valid reason to be complaining about Ana or other supports viability in the gold.
Last I’ve seen Master is around top 3% and Grandmaster is top 1% so you’re not far off at all.
So my estimate is incorrect to you’re estimate? See what the problem is? No one agree’s where the high skill heroes should start being the best, so either its bullcrap and high skill heroes are OP in lower ranks,(which they shouldn’t be), or high skill heroes are only OP in the truely top ranks. Its not a black or white issue, its very much grey. So how about lets just make everyone equal instead of people telling me Mcree should be best in platinum.
If you want you’re ‘skill’ hero to be the OP heroes, you should earn it. It shouldn’t be given to you.
Mine isn’t an estimate, Goat just posted the actual breakdown.
Goat’s wrong. Masters is far to forgiving to start throwing away half the roster.
It doesn’t, I mean we can balance the tanks in their own individual ways. I meant that besides Orisa and Rein, there are no other front line shield tanks, which are huge in this game. Rein does almost everything better than Orisa, so he’s almost always the popular pick. If we had other options, like a new shield main tank, similar to Rein, but with different abilities, it could mix things up and make the game much more interesting & fun and less emphasis would be put on Rein.
It’s the top 3% …
Then what’s the point in them existing? How do people even clinb if they can’t play heroes at all ranks to start out? There has to be some progression and tapering.
Else we’re literally playing different games.
Masters is 3% of the playerbase and even then there’s no hero that is doing well at all other ranks that is “thrown away”. The top 3% of players are just going to gravitate towards higher output heroes because they’re that good.
Huh, today I found out I’m top 3% 
, Good to know lol
We could play comp together 
This illustrates the point, but not in the way you think.
A project has a measurable rubric you have to abide by to achieve an A, just like a game has measurable rules to achieve a win condition.
If the project was to draw a golden retriever, it doesn’t matter that yours is a photorealistic pencil rendering while the other person made a crude sketch of Dug. The condition to achieve an A was to draw a golden retriever. The teacher, although they might be impressed, is not obligated to bend the rules for you either (that’s how it was at SCAD at least; you either passed or failed your major project on the basis of completion, not whether your short was more Pixar-ready than someone else’s). The effort is a reflection of your own passion.
Similarly, I don’t care about the effort I put into my games so long as I win, inasmuch I will be happy to help achieve a team kill or simply backcapping by myself. A win is a win according to the game’s binary measurement of how much of an objective was captured compared to your opponent. It doesn’t care the effort I put in between start to finish.
If all you’re concerned about in a game that is too primitive to make a meaningful difference between the effort you think you should be tangibly rewarded by somehow, you’re always going to be angry, always going to be salty, always going to be jealous of other players who are simply out here trying to have a good time on characters that spark a light in them, which does absolutely nothing to step on your toes. Seriously, it’s not about you.
You should want to improve on your character for the sake of improving your character and having fun, not just so you get some meaningless, non-transferable bit of points. Unless you’re trying to get paid to play Overwatch, this is all objectively meaningless.
I practice my rollouts in custom rooms on Lucio not to show Brig mains that I’m better than them. I do it because it’s simply fun to wall ride, to discover interesting pathways, and to bite and remix others Lucio mains’ rollouts. I was really proud when I accidentally shaved a second off of someone’s Lijiang Garden rollout. The game doesn’t give a damn. This community doesn’t give a damn since they can’t see a non-recorded moment. But who cares. I did something cool.
In short, stop caring about the triviality of skill in a game that is asymmetrical by design. It’s harmful to the community as a whole.
No, front line shields only feel huge because Rein is overtuned. We just had 2 years of dive showing they’re not that necessary at all.
Dive wasn’t prédominent on ladder, but it was certainly a viable option. Not so much now.
What? You are literally claiming that Ana should only be played in league matches and that’s it.