Why the tanks of this game are overpowered?

The aim of this game’s balance is not to create a diverse tournament meta that caters to less than 1% of the player base. Because it’s simply stupid. These players are so good they make almost no mistakes, therefore even the slightest adjustment in power level can change the meta.

Bastion for example is fantastic in lower leagues, despite being a severely underpowered hero. Brigitte is also completely dominating lower leagues despite being on the decline on the high level meta.

So he’s being picked more than 2 other tanks that would strongly suggest he’s more meta than them. Just because he’s not the go-to meta pick doesn’t mean he’s not viable. You need to seriously try and think about the message you want to send here: Are you asking for Roadhog to be viable, or are you asking for Roadhog to replace Reinhardt?

Win rates are really difficult to go by, because the statistics you’re quoting include everything such as games where he’s not played with a favorable composition. Let’s say Hero A has a win rate of 55% on average, but doesn’t offer anything unique to any composition. Now let’s say Hero B has a win rate of 45% on average, but jumps to 60% when played together with Hero C.

Do we buff Hero B to be equal in average win rate with hero A or do we allow the designers to create heroes that require more strategy and divert from simply playing a standard Reinhardt composition?

Which brings us to the next point,

You’re just quoting statistics but you’re not actually using them as an argument. Because right before you said it was a problem that Roadhog was slightly below the average win rate, and here he’s above.

“But it’s lower than the other tanks–” But the game isn’t designed purely around roles as a whole. You’re not limited to a certain number of tanks. And a positive win rate at higher leagues, much like Widowmaker, suggests that if you know what you’re doing, you can win with Roadhog.

On another topic I’ve suggested what Roadhog needs isn’t just tweaks or buffs but likely a smaller rework. His kit suffers from what’s called the “feast or famine” type of design. Either he hooks people in and instantly kills them and he’s great or his hooks are constantly blocked by shields and he can’t do anything. There’s almost no in-between. You can read more on these thoughts if you’re interested:

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There’s so much burst damage and stuns being thrown around now you need tanks to soak them up. 200hp heroes melt instantly. Power creep is real

No, but what is used in tournament play and upper ranks (GM/Masters) is what defines what is META. What happens in Bronze does not. You opened the door by saying:

By which using high level play that argument was easily disproven because he is not part of the meta nor is he common in Goats. Goats btw is named specifically after a Contenders team.

Yet, he’s more popular than Roadhog in professional play. And at no rank (not even Bronze) is Bastion good. He’s in the bottom 4 picked heroes at every level of play.

Nobody is saying that Wrecking Ball or Orisa are meta. They aren’t. Reinhardt, Zarya, and D.Va are the most meta tanks in ranked. Winston/D.Va is still meta professionally. Roadhog is not meta anywhere.

As a tank main, I would never pick Roadhog as my off tank. He’s the least viable tank in the game. Not just the least meta, the least viable. He can work, but he struggles with a lot of things in the game. He’s getting a buff, so the devs are aware of this problem and are planning on addressing it.

He pairs best with Orisa. Orisa is not popular. This affects his pick rate, but not his win rate. Orisa has a significantly higher win rate than Roadhog even though they synergize.

Actually, he’s not. 51.81% is not above the average win rate in GM. There are only 4 heroes with a lower win rate than Roadhog in GM (Pharah, McCree, Bastion, and Mercy). Every hero in GM has a win rate over 50%. 20 heroes have a win rate of at least 53% and 15 have a win rate of at least 54% in GM. So, he’s on the low end.

Again, EVERY hero has a positive win rate in GM. His is one of the lowest and not just amongst the tanks.

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thank you, pretty much in goats its rein, zarya and d.va roadhog is simply not involved in goats despite it being a comp which is meant to have a tonne of sustain so hog should be good in it but he isnt the optimal choice and that is in the comp he should be the most powerful in

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Hammond: He says Hi.

Not even close to the truth. The truth is there’s many different types of metas and it ultimately depends on how good players are at adapting to strategies and punishing their opponent’s decisions.

For example, this is why Pharah is meta on consoles because it’s much harder to shoot her with hitscan heroes using a controller. It’s why Bastion is always a good pick on lower leagues despite being underpowered.

You’re trying really desperately to use the high end 1% players as an example of why you can’t play Roadhog. Sorry, but that’s never gonna fly. You can pick most heroes in the game and win consistently by learning how to play them well, and how to execute strategies with them.

Most likely you can climb extremely high playing Roadhog in goats. That is to say, you would need a team willing to play goats consistently and not just blindly pick Roadhog into a random team, much like how other picks don’t always execute as well into just any composition.

Every single hero in Bronze on Overbuff (except pre-rework Torbjörn and Symmetra) has a negative win rate. Every. Single. One.

How is that possible? …How is it mathematically possible for two teams going up against each other to both have less than 50% win rate each?

Sometimes a hero’s win rate can reflect on the hero being picked in the right situation, but you still need at least 6 different heroes on each team for the game to even be playable. It’s simply not physically possible for every single hero to be losing more than they’re winning as one side always wins.

The statistics are inaccurate.

Overbuff cannot generate precise statistics because it’s not a Blizzard tool. It cannot read private profiles, and there’s a fairly strong chance that most players in Bronze don’t care or know you can set your profile to public for Overbuff to scan.

When I say Bastion is overpowered in Bronze, I don’t say that lightly. It’s a well-known fact. Because players in Bronze do not punish Bastion well. We have dozens, hundreds, thousands of videos of Bronze players running into a Bastion like lemmings. And we’ve all been that new player running into a Bastion.

But this is not a Bastion or Bronze discussion. The point was that heroes work differently depending on the skill level. And the higher level you get, the better your opponent becomes at punishing your choices.

At this point one might throw your hands into the air and ask, “But if statistics aren’t the key to balance, then what is?” (And this part of the response is not written specifically to you, but to anyone interested in how the Overwatch team actually approached balance.)

The team has a triangle:

  1. The statistics (their statistics, not Overbuff).
  2. Player feedback, both high and low.
  3. Their own opinion.

You should know by now that Blizzard’s definition of what’s balanced is very different from yours. And that Blizzard’s actual statistics are very different from Overbuff. For example, on the topic of Mercy:

  1. Blizzard’s statistics suggest “Mercy is fairly balanced.”
  2. Players hate Mercy’s current state.
  3. Blizzard thinks Mercy is in “a fine place.”

Therefore Mercy is not getting changed, because the other two parts of the triangle aren’t lining up. So if we then look at Roadhog:

  1. Official statistics unknown. Third party statistics suggest pick and slight win rate issues.
  2. Roadhog mains think he’s underpowered.
  3. Blizzard thinks he needs to be “tuned.”

All three ends of the triangle align towards problems with the hero. Therefore Roadhog are getting some tuning changes on the next PTR.

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I cannot take you seriously if you actually believe this. Bastion is barely used in Bronze. He’s, even in Bronze, a very easy to counter hero.

Not even close to what I’m saying. One, I can play Roadhog. I am just better off playing another off-tank most of the time. I’m actually a D.Va main. Roadhog is theoretically supposed to be good against D.Va, but he’s not right now.

And even in Bronze, Roadhog sucks. Balancing from the top is considered by many people to be the ideal way to balance, but he’s just bad at every rank.

See, I think if this is your position then we are not going to be able to continue this conversation. Of course private profiles mean Overbuff has less data than before, but it’s the best data we have access to and therefore the only objective facts we have.

My personal experience and the Overbuff data say the same thing. But you are rejecting both the objective facts I am trying to use and my own personal gameplay observations. So, there isn’t much to talk about.

Well, I actually tend to align pretty closely with what Blizzard does. I like most of the changes they’ve made this year personally.

And Blizzard seems to agree with me about Hog as they’ve already announced that they are buffing him. That’s the “tuning/balancing”. It missed this PTR cycle, but I expect it to be on the next one. So, they think he’s underpowered too. And I agree with them that he doesn’t need a rework.

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In the same video I linked, earlier, it’s also echoed by a high end player. It has been frequently mentioned on the Bastion topic whenever buffs for him comes up. It’s hardly an uncommon let alone unsupported point of view.

Believe me when I say I stopped taking you seriously a long time ago. So let’s not talk about respect because you won’t like my honest opinion of your position.

Let's resummerize your posting.

We never were. You’re still largely ignoring most of the context in my posts, my actual opinion on Roadhog and you necroed an older thread (to which there have been developments on since it was originally posted, as I concluded in my previous post—which you also ignored).

I would love to push the discussion forward, I’ve pushed it forward in other threads since then but it’s my honest impression you just want to prove one point and I’m never going to agree with it because:

They never were objective facts. Just because they’re the closest thing does not make them facts. My only interest in taking this discussion with you is because it’s become an actual trope for posters to refer purely to balance discussions by Overbuff stats to the point where they will ignore large and obvious statements with misrepresented inaccurate statistics.

Don’t misunderstand me. I know that your objective and goal is to draw a real conclusion: And for that you need facts. And having Blizzard deny you the real statistics to make an accurate conclusion is incredibly frustrating, especially because the likely reason they do it is because they don’t want players drawing their own conclusions based on their statistics.

Which brings us back to the balance triangle: The sole purpose of the forum is player feedback. Which means the only reason to post here should be your feeling on the game, and how you perceive it. Trying to deny how players perceive it with (I’m sorry for constantly using this word) inaccurate stats deprives it of that purpose.

Point being, just argue using logic. You can supplement your arguments with statistics, but they don’t make an argument of their own. I posted some pretty sound logic that you’ve actually yet to challenge, such as how you’re perfectly able to play and carry with Roadhog regardless of his Overbuff statistics.

For example, players on the forum love to say Mercy isn’t viable anymore at the moment due to her lower Overbuff win rate, but my win rate with her remains positive and I’m able to carry just fine with her. She’s a viable pick. How she is doing in terms of power level might be a relative discussion, much the same for Roadhog, but people tend to misuse the word “viable” as to argue for immediate change.

They didn’t say that, as in ruling out the possibility of a rework. And if these changes fail to do what they’re meant to do, there might be a very strong possibility of a rework waiting down the line.

It very much depends on new hero releases and how they change Roadhog’s role in the game. Maybe there’ll be a new hero that synergizes well with him, or maybe there’ll be another shield tank that makes it even more miserable to try and land a hook.

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I don’t want to turn this into a Bastion discussion per se, but I think it is worth stating because the opinion you are giving is of a higher end player looking at the lower brackets. The video you linked you are saying is “echoed by a high end player”. These are people who don’t play in the lower ranks.

I’m not a high end player. I will likely never be. At the ranks I land in, Bastion is not good. He’s easy to counter. I have no problem dealing with an enemy Bastion.

Yes. I want to try and be objective about things. I try really hard not to be one of those players that comes onto the forums to ask for nerfs because someone wrecked me and I didn’t know how to deal with it. Or someone that is screaming for buffs on their main because they aren’t performing well. I see that far too often. I like a good gut check. I think it’s important.

On the rare occasion that Jeff does release information about pick rates or win rates to the forums. They have always aligned perfectly with Overbuff. That’s correlation and doesn’t mean that Overbuff is gospel, but they have always matched closely when compared historically. I would prefer that Blizzard offer their own stats to us, but I do think Overbuff is a reasonable thing to look at.

Human memory and experience is biased at the best of times. We are all unreliable observers. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t provide perspective, but that is why stats are there as part of that triangle. Sometimes the players are wrong, or at least some of them since they don’t all share the same opinions.

For my own perceptions about Roadhog, stats aside, I do think he’s weak. And even though I main tanks, if I were being selfish about it, I’d say leave him that way. Because I main D.Va anyway and don’t need the counter. But that wouldn’t be very fair.

If we are to run Goats, the best way is the traditional one (Rein, D.Va, Zarya). That’s the best version of Goats.

Where I would use a Roadhog is with an Orisa usually, but even then I am going to probably just run D.Va in most cases.

I don’t see Hog offering enough guaranteed value. His hook cooldown is too long. If you mistime your reloads, you can get no value out of it at all. And if Brigitte is on the enemy team, you aren’t going to get hook value because he can’t reliably kill anyone when there’s that much armor floating around.

And to be honest, stats aside, I don’t see Roadhog that much these days in my games. My point is he’s not meta and he’s not that good right now. Not just at the pro level but at my level. The stats back me up, but even if we throw them out, my that is still my personal perception and a sentiment I see echoed a lot on the forums right now.

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This is what we call anecdotal evidence. Just because you’ve learned how to counter Bastion does not mean Bronze players as a whole have learned how to deal with him. Also I am really confused by this statement, are you proclaiming to be a Bronze player here?

For example, I’ve seen high gold teams get completely wiped by a Bastion behind an Orisa shield on Temple of Anubis simply because it required a level of organization that was simply above their pay-grade. This is also why you can climb faster out of Gold by climbing with a friend so you have some means of organizing against simple strategies.

Yeah… no.

Link said examples, prove it’s the case and if it’s still relevant after the introduction of private profiles which was the nail in the coffin for Overbuff.

I don’t think you really comprehend how bad private profiles are for Overbuff. Profiles are private by default. Users have to manually choose to make their profile public. Already in that decision you have thrown off any hope of accuracy. Already the Bronze win rates goes to show how incredibly far off it actually is.

The only times I can recall Jeff post win rates is in relation to map imbalances, and those were usually pretty well documented without Overbuff already because all you really had to do was count your wins and defeats on attack and defense. Those were literally the easiest statistics in the world to track.

In the beginning of the post, you seemed to proclaim that you were, in fact, Bronze. Or “not a very high level player.”

Here’s the thing: GOATS is a real solid composition that’s easy to play and execute as long as you have a team that understands it and wants to work together. It exploits the fact that most DPS heroes are squishy as hell and easy to pop. Overwatch is an objective game, and being able to quickly win fights makes it easy to steamroll a game.

Yet… I rarely see GOATS run in my games too. Therefore Roadhog doesn’t have as much impact in my games either (in comparison to Reinhardt—a good Roadhog main can still carry as hard as a D.Va main in punishing bad positioning).

But just because my random butt team doesn’t care for organizing, doesn’t mean it’s not super powerful. So when I post my opinion, I take into account that it is possible to play the game in other ways than how the typical random team runs it down.

And I remember that most of the time when a team does tend to organize, they also tend to be incredibly successful and stomp really hard in random matchmaking. I recognize that sometimes, you have to put a team effort into making some heroes work, and not just one-trick Sombra into every single type of composition.

So I’m gonna be careful about calling heroes “not viable” and “not meta” based on random matchmaking. And that’s where I think posters in this thread come from. They use statistics to verify their experience, but those statistics are also mostly based on players not running the composition either.

I would be much more interested in statistics from players that have consistently run GOATS with stats such as, how much did you win with Roadhog compared to the other tank choices and on which maps did Roadhog perform better. Even an Orisa composition’s performance would be interesting to see, especially through different tiers to observe the drop-off.

Those would be statistics that would interest me, and I suspect those are the ones Blizzard is making most of their judgement calls on (obviously they’re not balancing by overall win rate as evidenced by Sombra, Mei and other niche heroes).

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And this is why we are going to, in the end, just have to agree to disagree. Because if you don’t accept stats from Overbuff, and you don’t want to consider pro play, you pretty much are just left with your own experiences which are anecdotal. So, if you eliminate anecdotal evidence too then you’ve at that point eliminated pretty much all information with which to argue an opinion.

Every example I’m thinking about was before private profiles. I understand private profiles are really bad for stat tracking, but we don’t have anything else to go on other than anecdotal experiential statements. So, until Blizzard does provide us with something better, it’s the best we have.

This is why I included the tournament stats for Roadhog. I don’t see him in my games. And when I do he’s usually not doing so well. So, I look at organized play where things are different. And in organized play, he’s also not doing well. Pros and top 500 players do not run Roadhog right now. He’s not part of Goats in high level play.

Those stats are not subject to the same problems you bring up with Overbuff. He’s just not used at that level of play either.

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You’re starting to get the point.

Which I’ve already mentioned earlier:

And it’s not that anecdotal evidence or statistics aren’t meaningful attributes to the discussion, it’s that…

You’re trying to “overrule” logic with statistics that you cherry-pick to suit your opinion. And when confronted with that fact, you argue there’s no better alternative—but ultimately you’re still avoiding the main criticism: the purpose of your cherry-picking was never to state objective facts in the first place, but to further your own point of view.

We all know that balance is a much more complex discussion than what you’re boiling it down to, that there’s lots of elements that contribute to a strength of a hero (e.g. the addition of Brigitte made Hanzo stronger because she countered his counters, and as such a better shield breaker or synergy heroes would make Roadhog stronger).

In fact if you just nerfed Reinhardt’s shield and buffed Orisa, Roadhog might also rise since he combos better with Orisa and it’s easier for him to play around the Orisa shield.

Tournament stats and organized play are not the same bucket. E-sport players are players that practice for hours on end every day to maximize their performance. These represent an incredibly small percentage of the game’s population.

In every single gaming community you will hear this repeated: Tournament metas are different from ladder metas. First of all because in a tournament meta, players expect their opponents to run specific counters and as such you get a much higher “rock paper scissor” element in your games.

Players in tournaments also do not experiment as much as they do in organized play and ladder. It is incredibly risky to experiment in a tournament and this is one of the reasons fans often criticize Overwatch esports as “5 minutes and then it’s back to GOATS” because all teams ultimately turn back to what they know works the minute they can’t afford to chance it any longer.

And the more I explain this, the more I hope you can hear the primary reason why these are bad examples for a balance comparison: The goal of Overwatch balance never has and never will be to satisfy that kind of meta. The point should be that you can pick a hero that you like, get good with it and win games consistently.

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This is in part because ladder is almost entirely solo queue. True organized play is limited almost entirely to a handful of people in the upper ranks and pro play.

This is not true. They try all kinds of things in scrims and pugs, just not in the actual tournament. They know what works optimally because they try it out in advance.

Except that isn’t accurate. Goats is run less than 20% in Overwatch esports currently. It is being run, but it isn’t the most popular composition.

Honestly, no. I hear you, but I disagree with you. Our positions are not getting closer.

Let’s just agree to disagree.

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I would say that wrecking ball may need some buffs as well. One of the most frustrating things in the game is that his Wrecking Ball can be body blocked to prevent building up momentum. Plus his size also isn’t in his favor either so I say that in ball form Wrecking Ball can pass through enemies. Maybe making it so he can use his shields in ball form and immediate activation would also help. Upping his ammo and fire rate could also be benficial for him. 90 ammo at 30 rps. Lastly being able to grapple the ground but only for 3 seconds.
With these changes he could be a really great tank. Whst do you guys think?

Not since the addition of LFG. And you have, honestly, always been able to queue with friends. Not to mention those people that are just good communicators. People skills is a strong attribute in a team game.

Which were the ones you posted stats from?

The scrims, or the actual tournament?

I’m not sure what we actually disagree on. I posted several suggestions for Roadhog buffs, which you’ve chosen to not discuss. I posted the news update for his upcoming tweaks, which you didn’t apparently know of before reviving this thread.

The only difference between our positions seems to the usage of the word “viable” and “meta.” My definition of viable is that you can pick the hero and win consistently by getting good at playing the hero. My definition of meta is that there exists strategies in which you can win consistently with the hero.

If you can’t agree to those terms, then I guess we agree to disagree.

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Ghost comp sounds hella spooky.

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Reinhardt needs no buff tbh. Orisa is almost balanced, but hog, hog is far from being a good pick.

I’m not sure why. I’ve only quoted the part we disagree on 2 or 3 times by this point. We disagree as to whether Roadhog is meta or part of goats. I say he is neither.

Two things. First I mentioned that before you posted it, so clearly I did know about it. Second, I didn’t revive the thread. Someone else did and I jumped in too.

I disagree with this definition. Meta is the game within the game. It’s the most effective strategy available.

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Presently hog sits at a 2.38% pickrate in GM this week.
Orisa’s is 1.64%
Both of these are really poor - indicating the heroes are underpowered.

Rein’s DPS ~ 75 a second.

D.Va’s DPS (without abilities) = 132 DPS (This is higher if she uses burst abilities, naturally)

76’s DPS: 171, BUT he can do this over a much longer range than the pair of them.

Hanzo (PER ARROW) = 125 damage.

I can go on. If you were to look at the DPS per hero for everyone, you’d notice D.Va’s base damage is just above average, and rein is below even Mercy.
I’m sorry, but if a DPS is failing to keep their damage up against those two (Unless it’s someone with a low(er) DPS like Sombra or Mei) then they’re not playing right.

I wouldn’t call wrecking ball fine.

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The issues lie with the DPS class not tanks. Most DPS only deal damage. Only the DPS with the highest damage will reign supreme in most cases (Only exceptions are Mei, Sombra and Symmetra).

The DPS would need added utility to prevent themselves from being removed from the team comps constantly.

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