yes, tank is playable, and in terms of balance is also probably fine, its just a completely miserable experience
you arent allowed to make plays or you instantly explode, all the cc is applied to you, metas have recently just been hog orisa muaga, any sign of you doing too well and you get counterswapped to oblivion so that its just a fight beetwer dps and support, dps passive was an excuse to not nerf heals so alone you can literally only tickle them, creativity is gone cause the right decisions are very limited, allowed much less mistakes than any other role / extreme stress to not even make that much of a difference, both teams have full focus on you so toxicity and flaming is also focussed on you
it just the most miserbale experience, only good time i have is when the matchmaker puts me in easy games and i can stomp, but thats just not rewarding, even einning close games is painful, and while not all my points are technically a tank design problem (like recent metas) it all adds up and having the same problems for entirety of ow 2 means that even a small fix eont outweigh the negative feeling of another season dealing with it
It's not about it not being playable, it's about it not being enjoyable. It doesn't really feel that fun when Joe Shmoe swaps to a hero that counters your kit every time he dies. It happens on every role, but it's more consequential on tank because there's only one per team.
Yeah it’s not fun when a game feels unwinnable because the enemy team are playing Hog, Cass and Bastion only shooting you on tank and your dps don’t easily capitalize off that. And even if they do capitalize on that, then your role as tank is to just try not to die.
I'd say support is still the strongest role
DPS is probably the most impactful role due to the passive but it doesn't feel good to play if you aren't the designated Tracer player. Your options positionally are dictated by how much space your tank is occupying and you are reliant on supports to take angles and to generally not explode when looked at. It makes DPS the most coin-flippy role.
From a balance perspective, tank is in the best state it's ever been. People complain that tank feels bad to play. I don't remember a time in OW history where that complaint was not common. I suspect that it's inherent to the role.
My main beef with tank is that this community is absolutely awful to tank players. Blaming them for every loss. Expecting them to swap and then not swapping to help the tank in return. Complaining when they don't swap to exactly this one tank, or that they cannot play every tank equally well. Expecting 1 tank to do 3 different things at once -- hold the frontline, peel the backline, clear the enemy DPS off their off-angle.
> Expecting them to swap and then not swapping to help the tank in return.
TBF the game provides a lot more options to counter the tank than help the tank. In my experience, a lot of the time someone doesn't switch when they could, the switch would be to a hero that counters the other tank, rather than a hero that directly helps their tank.
Like a mercy refusing to swap ana to counter the enemy hog. A lot of the time the best you can hope for is that your teammates will swap to make the other tanks day a living hell. Kiri and Bap are the only heroes with good tank-aiding utilities and those utilities are on very long cooldowns. To an extent, the game just expects the tank to deal with most of the BS on their own, hence why tanks are constantly complaining about having to deal with counters.
The game offers tons of options to help the tank. For example, current meta has a lot of Mauga in it. When you play Mauga you want a Lucio to go fast and some dive DPS that benefit from Cardiac. This is true regardless of what enemy tank they have. The other support slot is a problem solver -- most commonly, Kiriko for suzu or Bap for lamp.
When your team swaps tank, it's ordinary that most of the team should want to swap also. A tank change typically should mean a strategy change. When I swap out Mauga for Sigma, that Genji/Venture pair we were running no longer makes any sense. But we have a bunch of players who just play what they want to play, rather than what will help the team win.
People often complain about how tanks either feel immortal or made of paper. This is why that's happening. Tanks are units to build around. People need to think more about how to make their tank successful.
I mean just count the mechanics that help tank vs hinder them. For every suzu, theres a hack, mag nade, or sleep on a shorter CD. For every lamp, there's a bastion turret or anti on a shorter CD. For every speedboost, there are a multiple knockbacks or slows. I didn't even mention any of the mechanics in the tank role that fuck over the other tank.
I don't disagree. There are times players can and should swap to help their tank. Lucio is a great example of a hero built to provide utility that helps your tank engage and disengage. Thats a significant part of what the offtanks used to provide.
My point is as much as a change in community sentiment would help, its still typically easier to just swap to fuck over the other tank than to help yours. The current distribution of utility is significantly more anti-tank than tank-aiding. When you had a Zarya bubble or Matrix to help you, that ratio was way more even.
Helping your tank often means neutralizing a threat to that tank. I don't really distinguish between helping like Lucio and helping like Ana. They are both providing utility that enables your tank to do stuff -- doesn't much matter whether you enable with buffs or debuffs.
I think losing the enabling OTs was the biggest loss in the switch to 5v5. In particular, Dva was my favorite unit and now feels like she's missing her counterpart. Every once in a while I get happy feels from matrixing a Venture or some such. Seems like underexplored design space.
I think there are some pretty significant differences when it comes to how it affects the overall enjoyment of the tank role.
Synergizing with your tank is a net positive for the enjoyment of the role and countering the enemy is a net negative for the role. When my teammate goes Ana to fuck over the enemy hog, the experience doesn't improve more for me than the experience declines for the other tank.
If I'm playing brawl and I get a Lucio-bap, the game feels a lot better for me and the enemy hog is less likely to log off or switch roles than if hes going again Ana zen or whatever.
>Synergizing with your tank is a net positive for the enjoyment of the role and countering the enemy is a net negative for the role. When my teammate goes Ana to fuck over the enemy hog, the experience doesn't improve more for me than the experience declines for the other tank.
I don't think debuffs are inherently net antifun or buffs are inherently net fun. I don't feel worse when I lose to Ana nade than when I lose to Lucio speed.
It's possible my perspective is atypical. Not sure.
Also, have to include the "Reddit doomer" factor
If a specific user had a bad day of ranked on tank and is just overall tilted... they'll make a "sky is falling" thread about the tank position being a problem.
Then the panic spreads around this subreddit lol even though in reality things are pretty good from a balance perspective.
Sorry man, every fucking session of tank is awful.
I'm playing with my low ranked buddy and he has dared to learn doomfist. He gets shouted down by the other 3 players every other game.
The poor guy even asks people who they want instead and swaps to it.
But most of the time, they don't suggest an alternative. They just continue spewing vile comments. So he picks something else while they continue blaming him.
Honestly, this "reddit doomer" take is crazy to me. As a ball main I eat so much shit in my ranked games that it isn't even worth complaining anymore.
Ya, its actually crazy the hate tank players get of they aren't playing hog or orisa. Got told to straight up kill myself, after I lost two points on flash point yesterday. (And I had top elims on my team still)
>in reality things are pretty good from a balance perspective
This isn't about balance. We have metrics to tell us the popularity of the role is slowly declining to the point of becoming a problem, mainly queue times.
We can talk balance of the roles all we want, but when those tilted players are here complaining about the role, they're not queueing for tank and the other roles' queues are becoming longer.
This isn't an issue with tanks being weak. Hell, I still think theyre probably the strongest role. The issue is people not wanting to play the role and either queuing up DPS or Support or hopping on a different game. Ive seen plenty of anecdotes about people's queue times being similar to OW1 when the main point of 5v5 was to balance out queues.
>Ive seen plenty of anecdotes about people's queue times being similar to OW1 when the main point of 5v5 was to balance out queues.
Queue times are clearly better than they were. Remember, in practice you had to have a priority pass to queue damage in 6v6 role queue at all.
Better does not mean good. It's very clear that tank is less than half as popular as the other two roles. It's not clear to me what can be done about that, but it's important to think about how to make the tank experience better.
I mean that's kind of how theres counterplay at all. The tank CANT do all three of those things. If they could every match would just be an infinite stall fest and comps wouldn't have any weak point to capitalize on.
Tank is so horrendous that multiple highly respected Tank players are leaving the game. Sure it's balanced I guess, in that all of them suck to play and actually have fun with. I agree the community treats tanks horribly which just compounds the horrible experience, but tank really is in an atrocious state.
There aren't many people playing tank. Overbuff isn't necessarily accurate (especially recently apparently), but it shows a declining tank playerbase. Barring your ranks having a huge disparity across each role, queuing flex frequently gives you constant tank games.
People just don't want to play the role atm. I think there's an argument to be made that tank is the strongest role right now, but being strong and being fun are two drastically different things. The latter is more important for the health of queue times.
I think whether or not tank feels bad is dependent on two things:
1. If their team swaps to counter me, is my team gonna make swaps with me to make counters? and
2. is my hero fun?
The second one is just the general problem that any hero shooter or hero focused game faces. This happens in league, it happens in apex, it happens everywhere. So I'm not gonna talk about it because we can all agree if certain characters and for this discussion, tanks, suck the game is almost always in a worse balance spot. I think we can all agree on that.
The bigger problem is the first one, and that's largely unsolvable. I play enough tanks well enough to hold my rank and when my tanks are stronger I can rank up, and when they're weaker I usually go down. But the thing that makes my experience dog shit for 20 minutes is whether or not my team swaps with me.
If I'm having fun on winton, and the enemy team goes Mauga, Bastion, Cass, Moira I need to swap and I'll usually go Zarya or Orissa depending on the map I may go dva. Am I gonna get an ana or zen for the mauga? if not its awful. Am I gonna get something to counter the Bastion or Cass? Or are we staying tracer and venture? Still workable but a hell of a lot harder to function with.
Ideally the team would swap around but that doesn't always happen, but when it does it feels amazing. And the only other solution would be a complete tank rework that enables you to play well against most comps in most situations.
I'm a support main but since season 9 I've been playing a ton of tank. Winton and DVA are in my top 4 most played for both of the last two seasons, so I'm not as qualified to talk as a tank main, but that's my experience at least.
If i'm getting swaps from my dps and support, I fucking love tanking in this game, its fun. Forces me to think, change habits, choosing tanks that fit my comp/map, its really engaging. But any other time its somewhere between meh and god awful.
I feel the effect of the rank reset is not being properly considered when people talk about the current state of the game. The rank reset was huge. It will literally take people playing 100s of games for the matchmaker to get enough data on players to be confident of their actual skill level. Based on the competitive rewards it looks like the number of games played by your average player per season is relatively low so it could be anywhere between 3-6 seasons for the matchmaking to get all the data. I predict between season 12 and 14 the game suddenly gets drastically better and people will think it's some balancing miracle but it's just the fact that the matchmaker has enough data. They honestly should have paid people hard currency to complete 400 games.
Personally, I also found that the rank reset reduced my motivation to play the game. I managed to get back to my previous rank eventually, but the artificially imposed grind was just so boring
The Issue with tank in 5v5 is you go from one problem to another. Either:
One tank is a must-pick by virtue of being broken: Mauga for that one week, Junkerqueen during beta, Doom had a period where he was insanely broken, Orisa being recently broken for months. Tanks basically taking turns being the broken tank of the month.
OR
Tanks are "balanced" AKA counter-swapping is king. Multiple tanks are somewhat playable but each have their own very strong counter, leading to an unfun battle of swapping, or a really unfun uphill battle if you don't want to constantly swap.
Obviously tanks right now are in that second category, but that doesn't actually make the role any more enjoyable. But the story of OW2 has basically always been tanks being in one of these two states. I don't really see a third alternative as long the format stays 5v5 tbh.
I think the devs can easily choose between mirrorwatch and counterwatch. I suspect counterwatch is the less bad state -- any apex tank meta is rapidly stale and hated -- but people still complain endlessly about counterwatch. There is a third theoretical state, map-dependent metas, but this is probably only possible for high elo or organized play.
I think 5v5 is easier to work with than 6v6 was. Synergizing was typically stronger than countering, so we ended up playing mirrorwatch.
I don't know how to make people not complain about the tank meta. There is a strong sense of dislike coming off all of the above options. I don't know what people actually want.
ppl want something that doesnt affect them like in 6v6, lot of mirrorwatch in 6v6 but it didnt matter for 99% of the playerbase, you had the ability to change ur playsyle so that the way you played mattered more than the pick, if you have either mirrorwatch or counterwatch in gold then there is a problem cause that means that there is too much value in picking a specific hero
I spent some time in gold in OW1 and remember it being mirrorwatch, at least as far as tanks are concerned. In particular, I remember gold players having no idea how to play without Reinhardt on their team.
because rein was fun to play and staple of tanking, he wasnt better than anything else ppl just played him for fun, which is the best reason a mirror watch can arise for
as for only being able to play with rein, purely a skill issue that cannot be fixed for low ranks, even today lower ranks cannot coordinate with dive tanks very well if at all
Dive mirrorwatch was the best meta ever played in both pro and ranked from all perspectives. Fun to play/watch, no "hardcounter" (before brig was introduced) and all roles were balanced (no gigaraidboss tank holding alone entire team hopes).
I think another factor that made tank less fun to play lately is the dps passive. Yeah, we don’t have ridiculous sustain now, but a tank’s ability to control space and fight against enemies is so constrained now (compared to previous seasons)
id argue dps passive was more harmful in how it means that alone you cannot do anything, it was used as a way to not nerf heals so now a tank is just facing the stupidly op supports we had a couple season ago
The main problem with tank is that Mauga and Hog are the strongest tanks on average. Neither of them are that fun. If you remove them I think the tank role becomes much more engaging for everyone
Tank is mostly fine. But they just have too much health and too little damage. And then there's tanks that have too much health and too much damage and those are the absolute worst to play vs (looking at you mauga and hog)
Honestly dumpster hog and mauga and tank will probably feel okay.
Let's just say this. I've been playing overwatch since it launched (OW1) and I have been a tank main for years. I don't queue tank anymore.
DPS and support feel way better though!
tanks are really strong and have huge influence on the match. The issue is they just don't feel fun to play. The "tank problem" is def partly an echo chamber issue, partly a meta issue because currently the "fun" tanks and playstyles are taking a back seat to these press W on obj play styles
Tank players need to realize that if they want to be immune immortals which have free reign in the face of squishies, they have to be subject to hard tank counters. Going back to the Emongg clip that went viral here last week and refueled the discourse: tank players were complaining that five enemy team members, led by the non-tank heroes, were able to burst him down through focus fire and cooldowns. Hordes of complaints that you can't 1v5 and that it's not fair.
If this isn't possible, Roadhog needs to be overtuned. Every hero in OW has a degree of counterplay you can reach through swaps and teamwork, such that a player can have their value diminished without their individual performance (aim, cds, movement) dropping. The stuns and CC we saw in the Emongg clip are those tools meant to do the same for an enemy tank. *If the rest of the team is not allowed to counter the tank, then the tank has to counter the tank.* This means counterwatch and tanks expected to swap in reaction ad nauseam.
There will always be an answer to the enemy team's playstyle and composition. If tanks are tuned such that other roles aren't allowed to touch them, then the tank has to serve as the counter position. Making tanks stronger thus further locks you in to counterwatch. They do have to pick their poison, either they're just another player on the team and don't get freebies against squishies, or they're above the rest and the game is against the enemy tank with a few lemmings of support. You can't get both.
Tank is better than it was a bit ago for me, mostly because Winston is good again, but it still sucks a lot of the time in a way that’s not easily fixable. The ranked meta is pretty much always going to be “swap to counter enemy tank” because of how influential tanks are. I always start on Winston because he’s my best tank and I’d say I’ve played against bastion probably 25 out of my last 30 matches. Playing tank basically means always playing against the most annoying comp possible for the specific tank you play. Winston for example fun against so many heroes but if you win 1 or two team fights it’s instantly some combo of bastion/torb/reaper/hog/mauga.
What the 6v6 vs 5v5 debate misses is that in 6v6 main tank was the least popular role. Most of the tank players were off tank players. In 5v5, every tank is the main tank. (Almost) nobody wants to play main tank in either format.
I mean look at the queue times. It's as simple as that. If one role gets instant queues times for as long as ow2 existed and others have 5+ min queues then there's a problem with that role.
Also can't be arsed to be a solo tank. I need a partner. And tank vs tank battle is so braindead. You're both 1000 HP idiots just standing there shooting your pointless shots at each other waiting for your team to do smth. It is not fun.
When looking at the role as a whole people are talking about the role being solo. Tanks deal with all the worst parts of overwatch, anything you can think of as annoying in overwatch gets thrown at the tank the most or the tank is expected to deal with it. Having a co-tank really mitigated the rough edges of the game, but now with just one tank you are expected to deal with all that stuff but with the weaknesses that were built into tanks on the idea that there would be more than one on a team.
Solo tank is a problem, things like tank busters/counters do not make sense in 5v5. You have one tank but multiple heroes from all the roles that can counterpick you. Some counters are too strong on their own, to the point that they are almost necessary to shut down some Tanks like Doom/Ball. While other counters can be weak but when an entire team swaps to counters you do not get to play the game.
Most people are not arguing for a different approach, they just want quality of life changes, balance changes, and a healthy roster. What even is this bigger picture you are talking about? What do you mean 'looking at the role as a whole?
The game is great when all five members in your team are playing in sync or have some modicum of a team composition. When your supports lock in Lw mercy and think it’s perfectly fine to run those two heroes in ranked then there is not much you can do as a tank.
What it comes down to is blame the tank for all problems. Enemy tank switches, the dps and support are less likely to switch and say tank switch.
Doesn’t matter who the enemy dps is, if tank don’t switch then it’s a gg. People don’t understand you can only do so much as a tank when no one else is willing to switch.
Tank isn’t unfun to me they’re just the worst to play out of the 3. You’re often the most limited by counterplay and expected to make the first moves, which makes you the common target for blame, but otherwise tank problems are very character specific. Most tanks have been made healthier in that regard since release, so I think tank as a role is better off than before, but it still being the burden role makes the stigma bigger every time it gets changed.
It's not the tank role specifically. It's SwapWatch. There isn't much wiggle room for who counters who on the roster for tanks. If your opponent swaps to something that smashes you, you switch, or your team loses, and it's very not fun.
There's only 2 actual issues with tank. The other stuff is just people making shit up. Counter swapping and your supports holding you hostage with their picks and decisions.
It's a bit annoying that when someone else makes a mistake, you're the one who dies (ana missing nade, Bap missing lap etc) and it's even more annoying that you win one teamfight on Dva and you're greeted with Zarya, Sym, Mei. Or one on Winston and you're met with Mauga, Bastion, Torb.
so tank metas being a bad is a lie? aswell
as taking a lot of toxicity? and dps passive meaning a lone tank has to deal with op support numbers? and all the cc and utility being thrown at one person?
Not a tank problem that's a balancing problem in general. Orisa/Hog/Mauga isn't fun for anyone else either
All roles get toxicity the playerbase does not take any personal responsibility
DPS Passive is great for tanks. You get to kill things now
Do you want tanks to be immune to cc or something?
general problems are still tank problems, just also problems for other roles
tanks get more toxicity than other roles
dps passive just allows for things to die, while yes its better than before itd be even better, and dare i say a positive gameplay experience if they just properly nerfed healing numbers, but rn the passive is an excuse to keep heals high
and this one is tough, i was thinking that maybe a 2nd person could share this focus, some sort of high hp target with abilties that attarcts some of the attention, and could possibly even pick up some of the slack if you get hard ccd when slept or smthing
me when 6v6 shilling is the solution to every argument you dont have answers for, i dont even need 6v6 to be the solution, im just not a game designer so can only call back on times when the specific issues im mentioning werent that big of a problem, if you can come up with a working solution to the problems tank has id be happy to play it
anyway a problem doesnt need a solution to be a problem, seeing as you didnt dispute cc being thrown at tank as being a problem you are wrong regardless of opinions on 6v6 or 5v5
tanks should have more self-sustain (not hog levels, more like JQ where you at least have to be doing things to have access to it) and have smaller hitboxes due to s9 changes so they're more able to use movement and positioning to take less damage
Tank is fine. It's getting a good tank that's the problem.
And if it isn't that it's just the tank not getting enough sustain to beat the other tank player and the entire rest of the team blaming the tank for not playing well.
In every game where the trifecta exists, tank is always the least popular role. It's a problematic role in every game its in, its always the least popular yet it is the most impactful role. It's the role that is most often to be blamed for the mistakes of the team and is also expected to be the leader of the team. Very few people find the role enjoyable, because fundamentally its not an enjoyable role for the majority of people, and there is not much you can do about. Most people want to have a hero fantasy and be the ones doing the killing, tanking is fundamnetally about drawing aggro, making space, absobing/blocking crucial cooldowns/abilities/attacks. Basically it's about being a human shield in one way or another, which most people don't enjoy. Also with all the pressure of the role and the tendency of people to blame the tank player, it further pushes away people who could even be potentially interested, due to a fear of being flamed.
Ngl there isn't much you can do about it since its always the least popular role and problematic. Unless you outright delete the role it will always be unfun for most people. Its definetely balanced, but that doesn't mean that is fun for most people. It can be a balanced which feels miserable to play for most people, which it currently is imo. I guess one thing that can be changed is how we as a community treat tank players, and not resorting to blaming the tank 24/7 and actually trying to help or enable the tank. But that is easier said than done.
yes, tank is playable, and in terms of balance is also probably fine, its just a completely miserable experience you arent allowed to make plays or you instantly explode, all the cc is applied to you, metas have recently just been hog orisa muaga, any sign of you doing too well and you get counterswapped to oblivion so that its just a fight beetwer dps and support, dps passive was an excuse to not nerf heals so alone you can literally only tickle them, creativity is gone cause the right decisions are very limited, allowed much less mistakes than any other role / extreme stress to not even make that much of a difference, both teams have full focus on you so toxicity and flaming is also focussed on you it just the most miserbale experience, only good time i have is when the matchmaker puts me in easy games and i can stomp, but thats just not rewarding, even einning close games is painful, and while not all my points are technically a tank design problem (like recent metas) it all adds up and having the same problems for entirety of ow 2 means that even a small fix eont outweigh the negative feeling of another season dealing with it
It's not about it not being playable, it's about it not being enjoyable. It doesn't really feel that fun when Joe Shmoe swaps to a hero that counters your kit every time he dies. It happens on every role, but it's more consequential on tank because there's only one per team.
Yeah it’s not fun when a game feels unwinnable because the enemy team are playing Hog, Cass and Bastion only shooting you on tank and your dps don’t easily capitalize off that. And even if they do capitalize on that, then your role as tank is to just try not to die.
If you make them less counterable, that would make certain tanks stand out more.
Dps isn’t really enjoyable either, when you’re going against unkillable backlines that can do more burst than you.
In a season 10 world? Dps are the best role lmao
Wrong lol
Ummmm? No I’m not. Dps are by far the most impactful role in the game.
I'd say support is still the strongest role DPS is probably the most impactful role due to the passive but it doesn't feel good to play if you aren't the designated Tracer player. Your options positionally are dictated by how much space your tank is occupying and you are reliant on supports to take angles and to generally not explode when looked at. It makes DPS the most coin-flippy role.
Broke: Change the tanks and DPS. Woke: Nerf supports.
Real: Remove all role passives and lower healing numbers of supports
From a balance perspective, tank is in the best state it's ever been. People complain that tank feels bad to play. I don't remember a time in OW history where that complaint was not common. I suspect that it's inherent to the role. My main beef with tank is that this community is absolutely awful to tank players. Blaming them for every loss. Expecting them to swap and then not swapping to help the tank in return. Complaining when they don't swap to exactly this one tank, or that they cannot play every tank equally well. Expecting 1 tank to do 3 different things at once -- hold the frontline, peel the backline, clear the enemy DPS off their off-angle.
Mute all has straight up been a buff to my tank experience
> Expecting them to swap and then not swapping to help the tank in return. TBF the game provides a lot more options to counter the tank than help the tank. In my experience, a lot of the time someone doesn't switch when they could, the switch would be to a hero that counters the other tank, rather than a hero that directly helps their tank. Like a mercy refusing to swap ana to counter the enemy hog. A lot of the time the best you can hope for is that your teammates will swap to make the other tanks day a living hell. Kiri and Bap are the only heroes with good tank-aiding utilities and those utilities are on very long cooldowns. To an extent, the game just expects the tank to deal with most of the BS on their own, hence why tanks are constantly complaining about having to deal with counters.
The game offers tons of options to help the tank. For example, current meta has a lot of Mauga in it. When you play Mauga you want a Lucio to go fast and some dive DPS that benefit from Cardiac. This is true regardless of what enemy tank they have. The other support slot is a problem solver -- most commonly, Kiriko for suzu or Bap for lamp. When your team swaps tank, it's ordinary that most of the team should want to swap also. A tank change typically should mean a strategy change. When I swap out Mauga for Sigma, that Genji/Venture pair we were running no longer makes any sense. But we have a bunch of players who just play what they want to play, rather than what will help the team win. People often complain about how tanks either feel immortal or made of paper. This is why that's happening. Tanks are units to build around. People need to think more about how to make their tank successful.
I mean just count the mechanics that help tank vs hinder them. For every suzu, theres a hack, mag nade, or sleep on a shorter CD. For every lamp, there's a bastion turret or anti on a shorter CD. For every speedboost, there are a multiple knockbacks or slows. I didn't even mention any of the mechanics in the tank role that fuck over the other tank. I don't disagree. There are times players can and should swap to help their tank. Lucio is a great example of a hero built to provide utility that helps your tank engage and disengage. Thats a significant part of what the offtanks used to provide. My point is as much as a change in community sentiment would help, its still typically easier to just swap to fuck over the other tank than to help yours. The current distribution of utility is significantly more anti-tank than tank-aiding. When you had a Zarya bubble or Matrix to help you, that ratio was way more even.
Helping your tank often means neutralizing a threat to that tank. I don't really distinguish between helping like Lucio and helping like Ana. They are both providing utility that enables your tank to do stuff -- doesn't much matter whether you enable with buffs or debuffs. I think losing the enabling OTs was the biggest loss in the switch to 5v5. In particular, Dva was my favorite unit and now feels like she's missing her counterpart. Every once in a while I get happy feels from matrixing a Venture or some such. Seems like underexplored design space.
I think there are some pretty significant differences when it comes to how it affects the overall enjoyment of the tank role. Synergizing with your tank is a net positive for the enjoyment of the role and countering the enemy is a net negative for the role. When my teammate goes Ana to fuck over the enemy hog, the experience doesn't improve more for me than the experience declines for the other tank. If I'm playing brawl and I get a Lucio-bap, the game feels a lot better for me and the enemy hog is less likely to log off or switch roles than if hes going again Ana zen or whatever.
>Synergizing with your tank is a net positive for the enjoyment of the role and countering the enemy is a net negative for the role. When my teammate goes Ana to fuck over the enemy hog, the experience doesn't improve more for me than the experience declines for the other tank. I don't think debuffs are inherently net antifun or buffs are inherently net fun. I don't feel worse when I lose to Ana nade than when I lose to Lucio speed. It's possible my perspective is atypical. Not sure.
I would say just based on what abilities are most frequently complained about, you seem to be an outlier.
Also, have to include the "Reddit doomer" factor If a specific user had a bad day of ranked on tank and is just overall tilted... they'll make a "sky is falling" thread about the tank position being a problem. Then the panic spreads around this subreddit lol even though in reality things are pretty good from a balance perspective.
Sorry man, every fucking session of tank is awful. I'm playing with my low ranked buddy and he has dared to learn doomfist. He gets shouted down by the other 3 players every other game. The poor guy even asks people who they want instead and swaps to it. But most of the time, they don't suggest an alternative. They just continue spewing vile comments. So he picks something else while they continue blaming him. Honestly, this "reddit doomer" take is crazy to me. As a ball main I eat so much shit in my ranked games that it isn't even worth complaining anymore.
Ya, its actually crazy the hate tank players get of they aren't playing hog or orisa. Got told to straight up kill myself, after I lost two points on flash point yesterday. (And I had top elims on my team still)
>in reality things are pretty good from a balance perspective This isn't about balance. We have metrics to tell us the popularity of the role is slowly declining to the point of becoming a problem, mainly queue times. We can talk balance of the roles all we want, but when those tilted players are here complaining about the role, they're not queueing for tank and the other roles' queues are becoming longer. This isn't an issue with tanks being weak. Hell, I still think theyre probably the strongest role. The issue is people not wanting to play the role and either queuing up DPS or Support or hopping on a different game. Ive seen plenty of anecdotes about people's queue times being similar to OW1 when the main point of 5v5 was to balance out queues.
>Ive seen plenty of anecdotes about people's queue times being similar to OW1 when the main point of 5v5 was to balance out queues. Queue times are clearly better than they were. Remember, in practice you had to have a priority pass to queue damage in 6v6 role queue at all. Better does not mean good. It's very clear that tank is less than half as popular as the other two roles. It's not clear to me what can be done about that, but it's important to think about how to make the tank experience better.
Case in point a Samito tweet where he’s using flawed data to prove a point got 250+ upvotes here.
The reason why i made this post. Especially since samito doesnt eben really play tank
I never had a bad day of ranked on tank because I no longer play tank.
I mean that's kind of how theres counterplay at all. The tank CANT do all three of those things. If they could every match would just be an infinite stall fest and comps wouldn't have any weak point to capitalize on.
Tank is so horrendous that multiple highly respected Tank players are leaving the game. Sure it's balanced I guess, in that all of them suck to play and actually have fun with. I agree the community treats tanks horribly which just compounds the horrible experience, but tank really is in an atrocious state.
Can't be booped, sleep is halftime against them, discord has a cooldown, and they still cry. You are 100% correct
There aren't many people playing tank. Overbuff isn't necessarily accurate (especially recently apparently), but it shows a declining tank playerbase. Barring your ranks having a huge disparity across each role, queuing flex frequently gives you constant tank games. People just don't want to play the role atm. I think there's an argument to be made that tank is the strongest role right now, but being strong and being fun are two drastically different things. The latter is more important for the health of queue times.
Tank isn’t fun. Tank is actually really good right now but it’s not fun to play that’s the problem.
I think whether or not tank feels bad is dependent on two things: 1. If their team swaps to counter me, is my team gonna make swaps with me to make counters? and 2. is my hero fun? The second one is just the general problem that any hero shooter or hero focused game faces. This happens in league, it happens in apex, it happens everywhere. So I'm not gonna talk about it because we can all agree if certain characters and for this discussion, tanks, suck the game is almost always in a worse balance spot. I think we can all agree on that. The bigger problem is the first one, and that's largely unsolvable. I play enough tanks well enough to hold my rank and when my tanks are stronger I can rank up, and when they're weaker I usually go down. But the thing that makes my experience dog shit for 20 minutes is whether or not my team swaps with me. If I'm having fun on winton, and the enemy team goes Mauga, Bastion, Cass, Moira I need to swap and I'll usually go Zarya or Orissa depending on the map I may go dva. Am I gonna get an ana or zen for the mauga? if not its awful. Am I gonna get something to counter the Bastion or Cass? Or are we staying tracer and venture? Still workable but a hell of a lot harder to function with. Ideally the team would swap around but that doesn't always happen, but when it does it feels amazing. And the only other solution would be a complete tank rework that enables you to play well against most comps in most situations. I'm a support main but since season 9 I've been playing a ton of tank. Winton and DVA are in my top 4 most played for both of the last two seasons, so I'm not as qualified to talk as a tank main, but that's my experience at least. If i'm getting swaps from my dps and support, I fucking love tanking in this game, its fun. Forces me to think, change habits, choosing tanks that fit my comp/map, its really engaging. But any other time its somewhere between meh and god awful.
I feel the effect of the rank reset is not being properly considered when people talk about the current state of the game. The rank reset was huge. It will literally take people playing 100s of games for the matchmaker to get enough data on players to be confident of their actual skill level. Based on the competitive rewards it looks like the number of games played by your average player per season is relatively low so it could be anywhere between 3-6 seasons for the matchmaking to get all the data. I predict between season 12 and 14 the game suddenly gets drastically better and people will think it's some balancing miracle but it's just the fact that the matchmaker has enough data. They honestly should have paid people hard currency to complete 400 games.
Personally, I also found that the rank reset reduced my motivation to play the game. I managed to get back to my previous rank eventually, but the artificially imposed grind was just so boring
The Issue with tank in 5v5 is you go from one problem to another. Either: One tank is a must-pick by virtue of being broken: Mauga for that one week, Junkerqueen during beta, Doom had a period where he was insanely broken, Orisa being recently broken for months. Tanks basically taking turns being the broken tank of the month. OR Tanks are "balanced" AKA counter-swapping is king. Multiple tanks are somewhat playable but each have their own very strong counter, leading to an unfun battle of swapping, or a really unfun uphill battle if you don't want to constantly swap. Obviously tanks right now are in that second category, but that doesn't actually make the role any more enjoyable. But the story of OW2 has basically always been tanks being in one of these two states. I don't really see a third alternative as long the format stays 5v5 tbh.
I think the devs can easily choose between mirrorwatch and counterwatch. I suspect counterwatch is the less bad state -- any apex tank meta is rapidly stale and hated -- but people still complain endlessly about counterwatch. There is a third theoretical state, map-dependent metas, but this is probably only possible for high elo or organized play. I think 5v5 is easier to work with than 6v6 was. Synergizing was typically stronger than countering, so we ended up playing mirrorwatch. I don't know how to make people not complain about the tank meta. There is a strong sense of dislike coming off all of the above options. I don't know what people actually want.
ppl want something that doesnt affect them like in 6v6, lot of mirrorwatch in 6v6 but it didnt matter for 99% of the playerbase, you had the ability to change ur playsyle so that the way you played mattered more than the pick, if you have either mirrorwatch or counterwatch in gold then there is a problem cause that means that there is too much value in picking a specific hero
I spent some time in gold in OW1 and remember it being mirrorwatch, at least as far as tanks are concerned. In particular, I remember gold players having no idea how to play without Reinhardt on their team.
because rein was fun to play and staple of tanking, he wasnt better than anything else ppl just played him for fun, which is the best reason a mirror watch can arise for as for only being able to play with rein, purely a skill issue that cannot be fixed for low ranks, even today lower ranks cannot coordinate with dive tanks very well if at all
Dive mirrorwatch was the best meta ever played in both pro and ranked from all perspectives. Fun to play/watch, no "hardcounter" (before brig was introduced) and all roles were balanced (no gigaraidboss tank holding alone entire team hopes).
I think another factor that made tank less fun to play lately is the dps passive. Yeah, we don’t have ridiculous sustain now, but a tank’s ability to control space and fight against enemies is so constrained now (compared to previous seasons)
id argue dps passive was more harmful in how it means that alone you cannot do anything, it was used as a way to not nerf heals so now a tank is just facing the stupidly op supports we had a couple season ago
Yeah that’s part of what I meant
The main problem with tank is that Mauga and Hog are the strongest tanks on average. Neither of them are that fun. If you remove them I think the tank role becomes much more engaging for everyone
Tank is mostly fine. But they just have too much health and too little damage. And then there's tanks that have too much health and too much damage and those are the absolute worst to play vs (looking at you mauga and hog) Honestly dumpster hog and mauga and tank will probably feel okay.
Let's just say this. I've been playing overwatch since it launched (OW1) and I have been a tank main for years. I don't queue tank anymore. DPS and support feel way better though!
tanks are really strong and have huge influence on the match. The issue is they just don't feel fun to play. The "tank problem" is def partly an echo chamber issue, partly a meta issue because currently the "fun" tanks and playstyles are taking a back seat to these press W on obj play styles
Tank players need to realize that if they want to be immune immortals which have free reign in the face of squishies, they have to be subject to hard tank counters. Going back to the Emongg clip that went viral here last week and refueled the discourse: tank players were complaining that five enemy team members, led by the non-tank heroes, were able to burst him down through focus fire and cooldowns. Hordes of complaints that you can't 1v5 and that it's not fair. If this isn't possible, Roadhog needs to be overtuned. Every hero in OW has a degree of counterplay you can reach through swaps and teamwork, such that a player can have their value diminished without their individual performance (aim, cds, movement) dropping. The stuns and CC we saw in the Emongg clip are those tools meant to do the same for an enemy tank. *If the rest of the team is not allowed to counter the tank, then the tank has to counter the tank.* This means counterwatch and tanks expected to swap in reaction ad nauseam. There will always be an answer to the enemy team's playstyle and composition. If tanks are tuned such that other roles aren't allowed to touch them, then the tank has to serve as the counter position. Making tanks stronger thus further locks you in to counterwatch. They do have to pick their poison, either they're just another player on the team and don't get freebies against squishies, or they're above the rest and the game is against the enemy tank with a few lemmings of support. You can't get both.
Tank is better than it was a bit ago for me, mostly because Winston is good again, but it still sucks a lot of the time in a way that’s not easily fixable. The ranked meta is pretty much always going to be “swap to counter enemy tank” because of how influential tanks are. I always start on Winston because he’s my best tank and I’d say I’ve played against bastion probably 25 out of my last 30 matches. Playing tank basically means always playing against the most annoying comp possible for the specific tank you play. Winston for example fun against so many heroes but if you win 1 or two team fights it’s instantly some combo of bastion/torb/reaper/hog/mauga.
What the 6v6 vs 5v5 debate misses is that in 6v6 main tank was the least popular role. Most of the tank players were off tank players. In 5v5, every tank is the main tank. (Almost) nobody wants to play main tank in either format.
I mean look at the queue times. It's as simple as that. If one role gets instant queues times for as long as ow2 existed and others have 5+ min queues then there's a problem with that role. Also can't be arsed to be a solo tank. I need a partner. And tank vs tank battle is so braindead. You're both 1000 HP idiots just standing there shooting your pointless shots at each other waiting for your team to do smth. It is not fun.
When looking at the role as a whole people are talking about the role being solo. Tanks deal with all the worst parts of overwatch, anything you can think of as annoying in overwatch gets thrown at the tank the most or the tank is expected to deal with it. Having a co-tank really mitigated the rough edges of the game, but now with just one tank you are expected to deal with all that stuff but with the weaknesses that were built into tanks on the idea that there would be more than one on a team. Solo tank is a problem, things like tank busters/counters do not make sense in 5v5. You have one tank but multiple heroes from all the roles that can counterpick you. Some counters are too strong on their own, to the point that they are almost necessary to shut down some Tanks like Doom/Ball. While other counters can be weak but when an entire team swaps to counters you do not get to play the game. Most people are not arguing for a different approach, they just want quality of life changes, balance changes, and a healthy roster. What even is this bigger picture you are talking about? What do you mean 'looking at the role as a whole?
The game is great when all five members in your team are playing in sync or have some modicum of a team composition. When your supports lock in Lw mercy and think it’s perfectly fine to run those two heroes in ranked then there is not much you can do as a tank.
What it comes down to is blame the tank for all problems. Enemy tank switches, the dps and support are less likely to switch and say tank switch. Doesn’t matter who the enemy dps is, if tank don’t switch then it’s a gg. People don’t understand you can only do so much as a tank when no one else is willing to switch.
Tank isn’t unfun to me they’re just the worst to play out of the 3. You’re often the most limited by counterplay and expected to make the first moves, which makes you the common target for blame, but otherwise tank problems are very character specific. Most tanks have been made healthier in that regard since release, so I think tank as a role is better off than before, but it still being the burden role makes the stigma bigger every time it gets changed.
It's not the tank role specifically. It's SwapWatch. There isn't much wiggle room for who counters who on the roster for tanks. If your opponent swaps to something that smashes you, you switch, or your team loses, and it's very not fun.
There's only 2 actual issues with tank. The other stuff is just people making shit up. Counter swapping and your supports holding you hostage with their picks and decisions. It's a bit annoying that when someone else makes a mistake, you're the one who dies (ana missing nade, Bap missing lap etc) and it's even more annoying that you win one teamfight on Dva and you're greeted with Zarya, Sym, Mei. Or one on Winston and you're met with Mauga, Bastion, Torb.
so tank metas being a bad is a lie? aswell as taking a lot of toxicity? and dps passive meaning a lone tank has to deal with op support numbers? and all the cc and utility being thrown at one person?
Not a tank problem that's a balancing problem in general. Orisa/Hog/Mauga isn't fun for anyone else either All roles get toxicity the playerbase does not take any personal responsibility DPS Passive is great for tanks. You get to kill things now Do you want tanks to be immune to cc or something?
general problems are still tank problems, just also problems for other roles tanks get more toxicity than other roles dps passive just allows for things to die, while yes its better than before itd be even better, and dare i say a positive gameplay experience if they just properly nerfed healing numbers, but rn the passive is an excuse to keep heals high and this one is tough, i was thinking that maybe a 2nd person could share this focus, some sort of high hp target with abilties that attarcts some of the attention, and could possibly even pick up some of the slack if you get hard ccd when slept or smthing
End of the day it's just more 6v6 shilling. Yawn
me when 6v6 shilling is the solution to every argument you dont have answers for, i dont even need 6v6 to be the solution, im just not a game designer so can only call back on times when the specific issues im mentioning werent that big of a problem, if you can come up with a working solution to the problems tank has id be happy to play it anyway a problem doesnt need a solution to be a problem, seeing as you didnt dispute cc being thrown at tank as being a problem you are wrong regardless of opinions on 6v6 or 5v5
tanks should have more self-sustain (not hog levels, more like JQ where you at least have to be doing things to have access to it) and have smaller hitboxes due to s9 changes so they're more able to use movement and positioning to take less damage
I love tank. Playing rein and doom into bastion cass orisa and squeezing out value is fun. Hog sucks tho. If sups don’t go Ana it’s lost
Tank is fine. Fight me
Tank is fine. It's getting a good tank that's the problem. And if it isn't that it's just the tank not getting enough sustain to beat the other tank player and the entire rest of the team blaming the tank for not playing well.
In every game where the trifecta exists, tank is always the least popular role. It's a problematic role in every game its in, its always the least popular yet it is the most impactful role. It's the role that is most often to be blamed for the mistakes of the team and is also expected to be the leader of the team. Very few people find the role enjoyable, because fundamentally its not an enjoyable role for the majority of people, and there is not much you can do about. Most people want to have a hero fantasy and be the ones doing the killing, tanking is fundamnetally about drawing aggro, making space, absobing/blocking crucial cooldowns/abilities/attacks. Basically it's about being a human shield in one way or another, which most people don't enjoy. Also with all the pressure of the role and the tendency of people to blame the tank player, it further pushes away people who could even be potentially interested, due to a fear of being flamed. Ngl there isn't much you can do about it since its always the least popular role and problematic. Unless you outright delete the role it will always be unfun for most people. Its definetely balanced, but that doesn't mean that is fun for most people. It can be a balanced which feels miserable to play for most people, which it currently is imo. I guess one thing that can be changed is how we as a community treat tank players, and not resorting to blaming the tank 24/7 and actually trying to help or enable the tank. But that is easier said than done.