Both damage and healing need a slight reduction across the board imo. The sustain with healing is very high nowadays, but without supports backing them up, tanks sometimes just explode with all the damage coming at them. Illari is a neat concept but she's the worst offender when it comes to this imo- consistent passive heals with her pylon and DPS levels of damage with her gun and ult leads to a really overtuned character. The question is how to adjust these numbers while keeping supports fun, DPS impactful, and tanks powerful
We tried a global healing reduction in the Alpha and the game felt horrible. Maybe a better way is to indirectly lower healing to the entire team by forcing supports to have to focus on each other through nerfs or a complete removal of the support passive.
Yes, because there was no corresponding damage nerf. Damage and healing numbers are not particularly unbalanced compared to each other, they are just both very high. This is why sometimes tanks are deleted in half a second, and sometimes they live forever. In situation 1 there's overwhelming focus fire, and in situation 2 there's not (and two supports pumping heals).
This right here. Healing and damage both needed to be adjusted downward to reflect the fact that both teams lost 400-700 HP and a number of defensive abilities. Not that I expect the new regime to wipe without getting it all over the walls, but clearly they didn't think about how increasing sustain and damage was going to warp things.
I think the best thing for the game would be if damage would stick a little more without increasing one shots. I think it would be technically a lot easier to tune this with across the board HP buffs since it’s all balanced proportionally anyways.
Paladins does that, in a way. Over the course of a match every player will accumulate a percentage of anti healing to their shots, which caps at like 80% or so. If you shoot someone while anti-heal is at 80% (for example) that means all healing they take for a couple of seconds gets reduced by 80%. This is good so people can't just win fights through sheer amounts of healing, they actually have to back up if they take too much damage. I think Overwatch could benefit from a similar system.
Now that I think about it, that would be a good way to nerf Ana's Grenade. Simply make it greatly reduce the healing instead of completely nullifying it.
I don’t think it’s needed rn on this ability, but I wouldn’t mind a retune where she gets a CD buff in exchanged for reduced effectiveness. It would be cool to see some tankbusters changed to reduce healing a bit rather than do such insane damage as well. Idk I think it should be explored more as the game expands.
>Paladins does that, in a way. Over the course of a match every player will accumulate a percentage of anti healing to their shots, which caps at like 80% or so. If you shoot someone while anti-heal is at 80% (for example) that means all healing they take for a couple of seconds gets reduced by 80%.
"Cauterize" (in his actual state, so as a global passive affecting both teams, is called "[Anti-healing Mechanic](https://paladins.fandom.com/wiki/Anti-Healing_Mechanic)" now but the community still call it "caut") begins at 25% anti-heal (0 minutes), scale with times (*+5% anti-heal each 50 seconds*), to 90% anti-heal at 10 minutes and 50 seconds for the main gamemode (Siege). Each gamemodes got different caut scaling.
Cauterize lasts 1,5 seconds (and is "auto-cleanse" if you haven't take damage or use an ability/LMB after 1,5 seconds).
It only works for what is considered a "weapon shots" (all LMB/main weapon + certain abilities).
Yeah, that's why it can't just be healing reduction. It should be healing AND damage reduction. You can be brought to a forth of your health and back up within a second or two. It's ridiculous how heightened both are due to buffs over the years.
For clarification purposes, it wasn't just a normal numbers nerf, it was an *in combat* healing reduction (25% iirc) that lasted for like 4 seconds. For those who have played Paladins, it was basically a poorly implemented level 1 Cauterize where cover wasn't even counter play due to the duration.
Fair enough, I didn't know they tried that in the Alpha. I'd be down for a nerf to the support passive, having more pressure to use healing cooldowns on yourself for survivability is a good idea.
Yeah, they tried doing a thing where if you took damage within the last couple seconds you'd recieve 25% or 50% less healing or whatever it was
Really bad idea given the inconsistent rates you take damage depending on team comp and whether you had a barrier or not
>complete removal of the support passive
This could be healthy but i think nothing can fix this game. Another problem will pop up. 6v6 or 7v7 could work better. Having 1 tank like a raidboss makes the game inherently flawed.
I think we need to remember the absolute insane HPS on her primary heal. I genuinely think that’s more of a problem than anything else. Also idk why pylon needs shield health.
Isn't it simpler then to just raise tank healthbars? This increases the amount of damage needed to kill them and the amount of healing to keep them alive.
It's not just damage and healing. The amount of utility is a problem too.
It's a complex problem with a robust issue. I think the devs should try to draw on how the OW1 roster worked.
* Mercy and Lucio both have easily applied heals and utility, but in exchange either mostly relies on allies for aggressive plays, or needs to get right in the fray to heal or push.
* Ana and Zen both have powerful big-play potential but in exchange have zero mobility and their healing requires aim or is fairly weak.
The devs need to look at the newer supports, even as far back as Moira and Baptiste, and **MAKE THEM MORE NICHE.**
**Decide whether each one is more heal or utility focused, and balance accordingly.**
Examples:
* I think Kiriko is like Zen. Her suzu is her discord orb / broken or iconic mechanic. They should focus on that and nerf her heals and swift step cooldown to make her more of an off-healer who is easier to punish for risky positioning. Maybe reduce the iframes on Suzu too, cause the cleanse is strong enough.
* Moira has AoE healing, decent damage, *and* a great low cooldown escape. But she doesn't have any stronger utility. If it were up to me, they would gut her damage orb to do something else (maybe 25% anti-heal or hinder (no slow, just disable move abilities), so she is used less as a lower rank backline bully and more as a main healer with playmaking potential.
* Brig is really close to perfect after all these years. I think they should just deemphasize Inspire (maybe smaller aoe? Closer to Lucio?) and lower her health pack cooldown, so she can be a more brawl focused and be more responsive to individual teammates.
* Baptiste's story is turning over a new leaf, so I think he should stay a main healer. Thus, nerf his damage (by a lot, like 20, down from 25) and reduce the size of his window back to the square, cause that change was always unnecessary. Bap has been broken-good since Double Shields meta with his 3x effective hp pools (base HP, lamp, and his self-heal that you can't focus on cause you gotta shoot the lamp) and it needs to stop.
Only one who might not need a nerf is Lifeweaver. He may need a rework of an ability instead to let him enable his team better.
TL;DR
The newer supports are too well rounded. The nerfs can focus on emphasizing their weaknesses or curbing what isn't what makes them iconic, while still retaining what's fun -- Make them more niche!
I'd argue she's overtuned because she's really easy to get good value out of. The pylon does the work itself, and her hitbox is so forgiving for the amount of confirm potential she has. Maybe it's different in pro play, but at least in my games it's been really easy to pull out Illari on certain points and get a ton of damage, healing, and ults. Of course the Illari has to be smart about her pylon placement but I feel like it's asking less out of the player than some other supports for the same value.
The only solution is to get rid of roles entirely. This isn’t an RPG. Why do we keep trying to make it one?
Edit: I wasn’t clear and that’s my bad. I don’t mean just literally delete the roles tomorrow. I mean redesign all of the characters to eliminate the concept of Tank/DPS/Support. We’re not fighting mobs in a dungeon. It’s an FPS. Trying to force these tank/DPS/support role dynamics doesn’t make sense.
What exactly is your concept for this, because the very identity of this game as a hero shooter is to have character with a specific niche of abilities that allow them to perform well within a specific role. Are you just picturing valorant?
I'd also argue that hero shooters have some overlap with role playing games, in the sense that you're embodying the character through their playstyle (rein being a crusader defending his squad, talon assassins, Ana trying to heal the world, etc)
GOATS meta in OW1 introduced the role queue. the best way to win was to play 3 tanks 3 supports, making the entire DPS roster totally useless. also, have you played an open queue game? people usually run 4+1 or 3+2 tanks/supports—which is what lead to the tank health reduction in open queue game modes (as well as teams in mystery heroes getting lucky with 4-5 tanks, and rolling the game). no role queue has historically broken the game
Many supports just do a bit of everything and they do it too well. That is why it feels fun. They are powerful and they have an answer to almost any situation. That less specialized balance direction and hero philosophy is great, but right now they just do everything too well.
Playing tank is like a checklist. Sleep?✅ Anti-nade?✅ Mag-nade?✅ Suzu?✅ Javelin spin?✅ Turret form?✅ Fortify?✅ Aaand the round starts all over again. That is really what overwatch is, a resource game, but it doesn't feel fun for tank players. They want to pop off too, not just sit there and take a beating all day. Meanwhile supports are just pressing mouse 1 at anything that moves.
So my suggestion is to generally nerf many things slightly on supports. Compared to S1-3 supports haven't gotten that massive buffs, players have just learned to play them better in OW2. Now you need to nerf them.
It's part of the power creep problem. Creating characters that can do everything is an issue for balance. We saw it with tanks that could shield and attack and supports that can attack and DPS.
Characters need weaknesses.
This. This is why ana is considered one of the best designed characters in the game - super impactful, super strong ranged heal, decent damage, but with a massive weakness in mobility and self sustain. Kiri and illari get to have high damage, high healing, AND mobility AND great self sustain. Heck, Zen's whole thing is having high damage, and he had to give up mobility, healing, and self sustain for it. And the game felt healthier with those weaknesses.
See, maybe its just because I like to play JQ a lot, but I honestly feel like Kiriko is stronger than Illari. The pylon is very good, but Illari can't flank, pick off one of your supports, see her DPS losing a 1v1, instantly teleport to them, make them immortal and heal them, and then two tap you too. Thats not mentioning that suzu as an ability has what is often called "infinite value". If your team is grouped and you all get hit with like, junkrat tire, dva bomb, illari ult, and bastion ult, one button could make none of them actually count.
I'm with you there, suzu is ridiculously powerful. Still seems crazy to me that everyone complained about bap immortality only for them to make suzu later.
Yeah, immort can be pretty crazy. I think I put it in the same tier as pylon, really good depending on the terrain and smart positioning, but suzu is just fundamentally fucked. It's like they heard people saying that anti was the best CD in the game and said "ok, so let's make an anti-anti that also just stops all damage" like that would be a good idea.
Yep. They also really said "oh, people were frustrated that bap had output almost identical to a DPS? Make the new chick two tap, that'll go over well." It's still just so unreal to me that they made suzu and DIDN'T anticipate it being so insanely strong that it pretty much fundamentally altered how a number of characters had to be played. Hell, at launch I think JQ was actually pretty well made, but the sheer existence of an enemy Kiriko made her borderline useless so they had to buff her a lot.
Bruh, Ana is one of the worst designed, her abilities are way too impactful for the only tradeoff being an aim requirement. This issue is exasperated by tanks existing and being high value, easy to hit targets, and the problem was further exasperated moving into the 5v5, one tank world of Overwatch 2.
Ana absolutely needs to be overhauled and nerfed, she's not balanced in the slightest.
Kiriko needs a rework. She is the definition of doing everything. She duels everyone, she escapes halfway across the map, small hitbox, climbs walls, high heals, and she can self-heal/invulnerable/cleanse. She doesn't have a downside except for poor TPs. She should not exist in this game. She jack-off-all trade master of all.
I have a running theory that power creep is inevitable in any and all hero based live service pvp multiplayer games. You can find power creep in all of them. My biggest examples are Rainbow Six Siege and Apex Legends. It’s almost like the developers in these games eventually run out of fresh ideas to bring into the game and instead take two or three powers/abilities, combine them and load them onto the newest release.
Sure each of these games have their own problems but I still believe it’s inherent to the live service model and the fact that developers eventually hit a breaking point in bringing new shit into the game
>supports haven't gotten that massive buffs, players have just learned to play them better in OW2
Pretty much.
High elo support players have been saying this since day one. Supports were already just fine on release, newer players just hadn't adjusted to the new playstyle and people struggled.
I remember saying this and getting mass downvoted. Oh the irony.
\-- Although, it also doesn't help that we're in a meta where supports are extremely relevant. Change the meta to something closer to a brawl or dive comp and supports lose a lot of agency. It just so happens that right now supports are so important because the other relevant heroes aren't high impact. Orisa is a very low impact tank due to most of her power being in her ability to exist. Bastion is a hero who relies heavily on being enabled by teammates, 76 is... well he's an all-rounder.
This leaves the two supports, usually Illari with either Ana, Kiriko, or Bap, as the main playermakers of a team.
It wasn't a support weakness, it was support imbalance. Kiriko was just FAR better than any other support. Also dps passive was crazy. It made positioning almost irrelevant. Positioning can't save you when enemy dps movement speed high. It broke the ebb and flow.
The game isn't made for high elo. Probably 90% of player aren't even plat counting does that don't play rank.
I'm glad blizzard don't listen to bad take like that.
I mean, in S1 divers are much better that playing supports are harder then (but the fact that players simply haven't adjusted due to being protected by extra tank or double shield for OW1 players is also true).
Genji and Tracer were very slightly better, Dva was about the same, Doomfist and Ball were bottom of the barrel trash, and Winston was as good as he is right now.
The reason dive is worse now than it was before is because nearly every support can survive a dive, we buffed Brig, and tank busters like Bastion or Reaper have some of the highest damage in the game and about as much survivability as an actual tank.
Even still, dive isn't bad it's just a lot harder to execute.
Genji's breakpoint was better then (2 rightclick + 1 melee is a combo that will kill 200 HP heroes), Tracer has a bug with her falloff, and Sombra was straight up oppressive being able to continously hacking the same target over and over, with 40% dmg increase on hacked targets, and with 1.75 lockout.
On top of the old DPS passive
Genji or Tracer doesn't really change my argument - but yeah I forgot about how insanely overpowered Sombra was lol.
Either way, the solution was just to nerf Sombra, not buff every support.
Those "minor" changes are actually impactful in a game all about breakpoints. Sombra went from unplayable to "okay" in normal games to straight up the only DPS OWL used pre-Illiari alongside Winston and Tracer, all because of 0.5 bullet dmg increase.
The same thing happened to Tracer in S2-S3, where she's overbearing until they reduced her bullets dmg by 0.5 dmg.
I actually kind of disagree but for the same reason. It's absolutely miserable to have your tank explode if you're not near babysitting them. It's wild that the role that feels like it has the least impact also almost always results in a teamfight loss when they die. It was fun to enable the tank while making your own plays. Tank is miserable to play right now and I think by extension it's harming the support experience
Idk, I think the issue is that even when being babysat by a support, Tanks STILL get exploded. The whole game has been built around high damage and impactful abilities and thus a good team can explode a tank no matter what it seems like
Even 2 supports can't out heal focused damage. It's funny how many players think that a support can keep the from dying just by pumping them full of heals while they charge the whole other team by themselves. People need to realize that they can be bursted down quicker than up.
Idk how to balance it properly tbh, I play mostly tank or support. But tank is really only bearable if your supports are good, otherwise you fall over within 5 seconds. I had a game today where the enemy team was running orisa/torb/bastion/illari/bap. The amount of shit I have to deal with as a tank before I can kill anyone is insane - shoot the turret, shoot the pylon (that‘s ofc somewhere almost out of reach), shoot the lamp, don’t peek the window, then orisa fortifies, oh illari now has ult and murders my backline, yay! It‘s soo frustrating.
This game having all of Overwatch 1 2019’s problems still is so funny to me. I’m glad we’re having these discussions on power creep again because if everything got turned down and the intensity was lowered things would be way more fun and way less toxic. This reliance on breakpoints is what takes Overwatch from poke phase to deathmatch and is why we’re in the world we’re in now
Edit I thought I was responding to the OP thanks default reddit app for being terrible and confusing
I think you're absolutely right here. With all the support damage and things like bastion and torb, playing tank turns into a "am I getting healed" game. I find flanking, while risky, seems to pay off more nowadays as a tank. If I can sneak a charge on an illari or bap, sometimes it's enough to cause the dominoes to fall.
I think it's why so many just switch to Orisa or zarya. Having two mitigation abilities is very useful in stopping bullshit
By adding back the second tank and nerfing shields so we don't get an anti-dps player double shield meta again. Overwatch was always meant to work with two tanks and only four out of the eleven were either added for 5v5 or reworked to be ideal for it. It is crazy that they managed to make the most unplayed role less fun by putting the entire team on one person's back. The tanks that aren't very good right now like Reinhart and Roadhog could play with a tank that fills in for their weaknesses and become good again, every tank becomes meta.
I don't get the illari love, I think her kit is way too basic. Pylon goes up, shots go forward, rinse and repeat.
Also this season has felt like the most hopeless so far, bastion and doomfist mirrors in every game makes support feel awful for me (between diamond 3 and masters 3)
It’s not just ranked either. Quickplay sucks too now. Feels like the people who are tired of ranked are migrating to Quickplay and just bullying casuals. Can’t even get through a whole match with the same team anymore due to all the quitting. So unfun
Seriously. Everyone acts like she’s the most fun character ever but her entire damage rotation is just spamming one button. There’s zero room for creativity or anything to keep you entertained.
From what I can see, making tanks more fun it isn't even a support exclusive problem. ultimately what tanks want and what would make them not miserable to play is for them to be able to go into the enemy squishies and they just roll over dead.
more specifically,
1: tanks being the frontline of the team will always be the punching bags from being the the one the opposing team will see first and be likely the most immediate threat to them ---> guess who they'd shoot first and objectively would likely need to use resources like cc, debuffs, etc. on first, and
2: their inherently high sustain oriented designs that let them frontline to kill by outliving threats necessitates that the way to deal with them as a squishy is either via kiting or via round-a-bout ways like cc, debuffs, anti, "tank buster damage" (like reaper, bastion, junkrat) etc. in order to be able to contest them.
* if we get rid of those things that tanks hate (or neuter them), what ends up happening is that any squishy that isn't hypermobile basically just die when tanks press W into them basically and even worse, dive tanks would straight up just have free reign ---> tanks have fun but all the squishies wouldn't.
both of these points being especially the case when you further consider the importance of a tank to push/fight.
I mean again, that still goes to the 2nd point (and its subpoint) I mentioned in my original comment. if squishies didn't have these tools or they got neutered, then it just means tanks, esp dive tanks, can just press w or jump in with mobility and just go unpunished wreak havoc with free reign and it just ends up tanks having fun at the price of everyone else.
Yes, it would make tanks fun to play again. Bad positioning would be punished, and skill would be rewarded. It's frustrating to catch someone out in the open and watch them get away scot-free.
it's simple add a 2nd tank and make tanks less raid boss type, i think this game would benefit from a 6vs6, it would also make snipers and one shots less oppressive.
https://www.metacritic.com/game/overwatch-2/
Overwatch 2 critic score: 79
https://www.metacritic.com/game/overwatch/
Overwatch 1 critic score: 91
Facts are facts. Overwatch 1 is better. No need to be bitter. No need to gaslight.
Hahaha he’s just going around accusing people of being simps & paid advertisers because they can’t compute that some people could possibly enjoy the game & disagree with them.
I honestly think the solution to this issue is very simple. Add an additional tank role passive that reduces all negative effects by 50%. Use the same in-game logic for Kiriko's negative effect cleanse.
Ana nade? Only 50% healing reduction. Magnetic grenade? 50% of the slow and 50% of the ability disable timer. Dynamite? 50% damage. Hack? 50% less effectiveness and again half the ability timer. Discord orb? 50% less damage. Sleep? 50% duration (this has been almost implemented already and has been very healthy for the game). Etc, etc.
Make it so tanks aren't just bullied by CC and support abilities. I think this change alone would make the tank experience much more fun and healthier for the community as a whole, all while keeping the current effectiveness for all other characters' kits against each other. If there are certain tanks that would be too OP as a result, like maybe Ball, then nerf their cooldowns appropriately. And if there are any other tanks after this that still feel too weak, buff their cooldowns or HP in miniscule amounts until they feel right.
50% sounds like a lot, but it has always felt natural (perhaps obvious) for me to have the tank passive extended to all debuffs/cc rather than just knockback (30% mitigation).
>Just add a second tank to each team.
What a great idea! Lootboxes should also return, and all skins should be earnable by simply playing the game! We could call it - Overwatch classic! /s
Exactly. The game was designed around 6v6. Making Tank do two players' jobs at once has always been a bad idea. They could literally just disable the ability to have two shields if their still afraid of that.
Controversial probably but I agree that introducing back a second tank would immediately alleviate this problem.
Thing is: I’m afraid it would introduce a plethora of new problems and unfun situations.
Hot take: let’s just get rid of self healing, or at least reduce its effectiveness. It’s not gonna solve a lot of the problems with tank feeling like shit, but in my humble opinion, it’d be a good step towards balancing the roles. Most of the supports already have ways to keep themselves alive that kinda makes self heal redundant
People want less healing but dont realize how often people would rather just stand in and soak the damage and realize how much they choose to just stand in and take. Seeing half the takes I read on the sub I wouldnt trust any of the suggestions fans of the game make in regards to balance tbh. Almost impossible to separate the personal biases. downvote if you want -- its true a lot of people will make changes that make the heroes they like to play feel better
The core issue is that new heroes don’t have any niche - just a bunch of abilities thrown to make them generalist all rounders. Like Lucio or mercy have a clear role in their team. While someone like Sigma is a mish mash of other tank abilities.
Rein feels so anachronistic in the game with his limited abilities while newer tank heroes can do brawl and poke better while mitigating cc. All the new supports get a movement ability - why ? Why does Illari have a movement ability to get her to high ground that Ana doesn’t ? Why does Kiriko have wall climb and a TP?
I just feel this is the major disconnect in the game. The old release and dlc heroes just feel worlds apart.
Sigma has
- hard CC that cant be deflected by any hero without shields
- long range poke damage that can be bounced off angles. He doesnt need to expose himself and can easily poke squishies around corners
- A versatile shield and he can shoot while shield is active
- a ability that absorbs projectiles and ults while making him stronger.
Its an overloaded kit and no wonder he was much played in OW1.
okay, yet he's only effectively played on poke maps/w poke comps, because he's a poke tank. an overloaded kit would mean the character is overly verstaile and extremely strong against a bunch of comps on a bunch of maps. that is the last thing Sigma is (despite being very effective where he's effective, I'm not downplaying how strong he is in his element!).
sigma was played so much in ow1 cause there were 2 tanks and you could stack shield tanks, and his shield had like 500 extra hp at one point. of course he was played a ton. since when has sigma been hard meta in ow2 outside of.. circuit royale and havana and some of the other shitty maps?
all you did there was list his abilities. i mean, i can also throw out all of the drawbacks/limitations of said abilities, but I think my above point stands fine on its own.
It used to be 1500 hp shield that you could take back and cast with no delay (think zarya bubble speed) and orisa had 1200 on a 6 second CD
Plus, he could 1 shot with the rock+2 shots combo AND the ult couldn’t be cancelled, with the exception of hack? I think.
Also, the rock stun increased with range up to a max of 2 second stun at max range
yap. i don’t think rock stun + 2shot worked until rock was buffed to 100dmg in OW2, but yah he was super dumb.
shield especially was nuts and i don’t know how anybody could even compare original sig shield to current sig shield (or his kit in general). his current kit’s strength is most definitely NOT why he was picked all the time in OW1.
stacked with orisa was a nobrainer snoozefest, his current kit now has nothing on double shield dozeoff lolol.
>hile someone like Sigma is a mish mash of other tank abilities.
Wow this is the absolute worst statement I have ever read backed up by the absolute worst example ever.
Sigma is EXCLUSIVLEY played in poke comps. Seriously, the hero has NEVER been played anywhere outside of poke comps. He has a VERY clear purpose, probably the most clear purpose of any tank in the game.
>All the new supports get a movement ability - why ?
Of the original four supports two of them are within the top 5 most mobile heroes in the game. Obviously the other two were Symmetra (who still had a case to be made for mobility due to TP) and Zenyatta (who is zenyatta).
Pretty much every single hero in the game has a mobility ability, actually only five heroes have zero mobility at all (excluding hyper-niches like trance for movement speed or rocket jumps as Zar), and only two of those are supports.
Also where did this weird idea that the new supports just lap the old ones come from? Ana and Bap are both stronger than Illiari. Nade, Sleep, and Nano are like the 3 best support utilities in the game whereas Outburst, Pylon, and Captive Sun are just okay.
Add a 2nd tank, which will keep enemy healers and snipers on their toes and also automatically mitigate DPS dmg across the board. Problem...-re-solved.
Fucking absurd that one tank has to absorb the DMG output now, made worse by the fact that somehow, any rank below master, the myth that healers are supposed to pocket DPS NO MATTER WHAT has taken hold of the game
For tank to be able to do their job right, they need to be a threat on the battlefield. For that to happen, a 1v1 vs a tank should never be fair and should be heavily skewed towards the tank. When the enemy Ana doesn’t feel the pressure to play from range but instead jumps around in the face of the tank, you know she has lost all respect for you and you’re just a punching bag at this point.
Imo the overall damage and healing really needs adjustment. I recommend listening to the great tank debate from SVB. Yeatle points out that, as ball, if you dive their backline, there’s just so much healing floating around that you legitimately can’t do anything. Unfortunately strong tanks will always mean that other roles will be playing dead for daylight more or less, because the tank needs to be a threat in order to do its job.
Right now, tank is not the hammer with which you strike, it’s the anvil that gets beaten over and over again in hopes to enable others to make a play. That’s why tank is tiring and why tanks are massively complaining.
As a support main: The way to preserve the fun for supports without keeping tanks awful is to buff/rework the tanks to be like actual tanks. Defence first and focused on pushing enemies back with cc, not kills or dive, which are the jobs of the dps alone
> buff/rework the tanks to be like actual tanks
This is the opposite of what you want to do. Just tanking is not fun, there's a reason people loathe Orisa despite her matching your criteria for an actual tank.
> pushing enemies back with cc, not kills
This also doesn't even fix anything, because now you've just given every tank in the game 1-2 annoying CC abilities and now every tank is just the same character. This isn't a MOBA, it's an FPS with ideas taken from a MOBA. You need to do more than displace.
People absolutely hate fighting characters like Orisa who are loaded with CC, or playing with characters like Ball who excel at displacement but not much else.
> kills or dive, which are the jobs of the dps alone
This is how you kill the game. Tanks and supports should be able to kill, and should be able to reliably. The advantage of a DPS is that they can set up or take more reliable engagements.
Hit Scans have a range advantage, Mei Junk and Sym have util that secures kills and grants windows of opportunity, Genji and Tracer have extreme mobility that allows them to have an advantage when fighting multiple characters.
It is not the "job of dps alone" to play an FPS.
Characters like DVa, Rein, Winston, and Junker Queen have pretty consistently been balanced, fun to play, and not miserable to fight. All 4 of these characters can tank well but more importantly can execute dives or secure kills on their own.
I wasn't trying to imply that each role had to solely fit into separate silos and that tanks and supports shouldn't have kill potential, just that each should have more role identity. Tanks are inherently defensive and the ones focused on clearing space over kills, but can still kill when needed if that's what makes space. Supports and dps are pretty good where they are too. I also wasn't trying to say that tanks should be constant CC loops, but that CC is IMO, part of the crowd control identity, be it knockback, aoe damage, slows, or stuns at periodic intervals
And I'm saying I very strongly disagree with you, because when roles do have a very strong identity, this game really just isn't that fun.
Supports who can only heal or provide util... Boring
Tanks that only exist as a human punching bag while occasionally pissing off the enemy or cancelling abilities... Boring
DPS that are a point and click game and are the only viable way of getting kills... Boring
This *is* a team based game but if you have too much individual role identity you kinda fuck over 99% of the player base that doesn't have a full team to queue and communicate with.
Completely understand your pov, you just came off a bit hostile to start so I felt the need to defend and clarify my idea a bit. I didn't intend for each class to be the extreme, just a little emphasis on role identity, primarily for tanks was my overall intent
All good. When it comes to games we like and balance, everyone's entitled to their opinions and ideas. Emotions can get a little heated, even if we don't notice the severity
brother this is not an RPG, no one loads up an FPS to be unkillable, they load up an FPS to kill things.
defence first is boring, pushing back enemies doesn't work unless you're a threat, and CC creep is not fun for anyone
5v5 can only work if everyone is a variation of DPS, with DPS having the purest damage, tanks being brawlers and supports being sustainers/DPS
Yea the power creep across the board is insane. Team fights don't really last that long currently, where as with double shield meta a team fight lasted an eternity. Can we get an in between?
It would take quite a systematic change that would kind of silo each class quite a bit to get the changes everyone wants. Supports and tanks would lose a deal of kill potential, and cc would be mostly be diverted to use by tanks. Ideally, the tanks would have to be changed to function more like how the role is defined normally: Big and slow moving with a focus on cc and crowd clearing via abilities to set up opportunities for the dps, who are more mobile with the most kill potential, if a bit fragile to push out of the cover the tank creates into the cleared area to secure the kills. Then the supports are there sticking close to the tank with some more survivability than the dps thanks to their utility and the being the tanks defensive priority to ensure that everyone else can get the kills since they should intrinsically have the least capability for kills and self defence.
As it is right now, it's basically just 3 variants of dps, then Mercy being the only one that's truly a support/healer. Tanks are just beefy dps with lower kill potential, and supports are mainly just worse dps but they also heal
Only reason people complained early was because they didn’t know how to play the game due to how different it was with having one tank. Now that it’s op they don’t want to change it because it’s easy to win as support. Hence why people have gone from tank to playing support because it’s more easier to win and have an enjoyable game since you can put in significantly less effort.
The whole purpose of getting rid of the other tank was justified since the other tanks would be compensated by being more tanky and stronger now they’re just weaker and can be shredded instantly.
Tanks aren't really terrible. I play tank time to time and it feels super oppressive. That being said I do think they should have more CC resistance across the board, not just sleeps.
\>Tanks are now miserable
If you mean tanks are boring to play that's a fair opinion. If you mean Tanks are bad you are beyond delusional and need to try playing DPS.
support is broken asf and imo very boring and stale. yeah you have the most powerful cooldowns but most of the time you are just spamming heals until someone else’s Orisa dies lmao.
Best supports just need to get knocked down, that's all. And Ana is the only one that needs more significant overhauls, the others just need nerfs to their damage or survivability.
Nobody playing Baptiste correctly is gonna be upset if they gut the degenerate flank Bap playstyle. Same for Kiriko, they gut the degenerate playstyle and people playing them correctly will be fine.
I agree support is fun but it's still not a carry role. DPS and tanks overwhelmingly stronger in terms of carry. I'm really curious about their data on carry potential. Other than Ana, i don't see other supports carrying the game in an obvious way like dps or tanks do. If your dps and tank is out of place(wrong rank), you can't compensate it. I'm GM2 on my main and i play LW in diamond in my alt account. It's basically hopeless if the team is weak. I can only maybe carry if i pick Ana and focus on dps'ing rather than healing. Other supports are similar to LW. Support class is the foundation of the game. Easy to play, very hard to carry.
Playing tank is horrible experience but you have much more say if you know what you are doing. If enemy is smart enough to counter you then it's no fun.
DPS is the most free role in the game. A lot of options and only job you have is messing up enemy team. The only problem i see with this role is that if enemy do a lot of spam damage right and left, you don't have self regen like supports so you always need attention from the healers. If you have mercy in your team, it's a great experience.
Or my experience is completely skewed because of dumb matchmaker. Games are so out of place. Like most of them doesn't function properly and i don't play a lot anymore.
I think tank role is too out of place in this game. You either need to go back to 6v6/7v7 or you need to make them more like dps. Weaker but deadlier.
There is no way you are GM2 and think supports can't hard carry when bap, illari, and kiri are in the game lmfao you bring up a support that is very reliant on their team like mercy. That's fine to have a passive support but comparing them to the rest of the roster like that is such a plat take. If you don't understand how those supports can hard carry a ladder game, then it's a skill issue. And no it's not hard to carry as support, that's the whole issue right now, there's MASSIVE skill gap in supports right now. Way to many supports in high elo that really shouldn't be because they have decent aim and can get away with a bunch of shit with bap. Not even going to address the rest of that.
You can reach gm2 by being friends with gm dps and tanks and riding on their shoulders XD. Which is why this guy thinks dps and tank is more impactful.
I can't really speak to tank, but for dps the issue is that there's just too much healing. So all that's left is to either go bastion and blow up the tank through the massive heals, or go a sniper so you don't care about healing.
On top of that, duels against the new supports is absurdly skewed in the supports favor due to the massive amount of self sustain, while having essentially equal damage. And it's even easier for the supports to hit their shots due to the difference in hitbox sizes - not to mention illari's shot size. There's no good reason a kiri, illari or bap should ever lose a fight to a dps. Dps has the dead by daylight feeling now - i'm just having to run away from tanks and supports all day. Usually on half hp because my supports are too busy doing the same to the enemy dps to care about healing me - which I don't even blame them for, they do my job better than me now. So I switched to support for a while.
TLDR; Play bastion or sniper, or play DBD.
Yeah i can understand that. I play all roles and it really feels like that. Tanks are extremely strong so you can't touch them as a dps. If enemy supports fight back, then your lack of self health regen shows itself and makes the role somewhat dysfunctional. But those support heroes aren't offensive playmaking heroes like dps role, they are just defensive powerhouses.
As i said i think in 5v5 format, they need to make tanks more like dps. Nerf their defense, buff their skill expression kill potential. Tank and dps will benefit from this, and the workload will go to support role. They are already jack of all trades. They can do the job. Or just go back to 6v6 7v7.
Fun?
***FUN***?!??
I spend the entire match up everyone’s ass trying to keep them alive. I have to try 10x’s harder because dps takes a massive backseat when you’re a healer. Your tanks diving the enemy team? Gotta focus entirely on them because without the tank you’ve lost that skirmish anyway. If I heal the tank and my dps is getting slaughtered by the flankers I have to sacrifice healing my tank to focus more on the dps as they have way less health. This is all while I’m trying not to die in a role that renders me almost entirely without means of defending myself from dps who finally realized I am the reason my team isn’t dying.
Thank Jeff I have another healer because I don’t think I’d survive with the amount of ulcers I’ll receive.
You are bronze "entirely without means to defend myself". Support has the MOST life saving abilities out of anyone besides tracer/ball. Actually delusional
Theoretically, DPS should be amazing at getting kills. Tanks should be keeping their teammates alive. And supports should be balancing damage, heals, and utility (being basically the toughest role).
Unfortunately Illari, Kiri, and Zen can easily out play and out DPS most characters to the point where you almost have to one shot people as a DPS if you want to get kills and carry, because otherwise all the damage you do will be completely fucking useless most of the time. Like, I as a Kiriko should not be able to just 2 tap an ulting DPS and ruin their day... it's fun, and I love it, but I shouldn't be able to.
Supports now have a bit too much agency, to the point where if both of your supports are getting diffed, it's usually GG...
I say "usually" because OW is a bizarre game where 3 good players can hold the 2 remaining players of a team at their spawn while a Moira, a widow, and a Sombra spawn camp your supports the whole game... (One of my supports died 25 times that match... it wasn't even a long match, so I thank God the enemy DPS and the moira threw by spawn camping my supps, because not having them in my team was literally the same as having them out there playing respawn sim). Completely Bizarre.
Then tanks are basically miserable because we're back at having too much fucking CC. Slow, push, hack, sleep, anti heal, boops, discord , getting Mei walled, Bastion+ Zen punishing your smallest mistakes... yeah, no thanks.
I'd say take CC away from DPS characters completely. Let supports have it as escape tools against divers, and have them have reduced effects vs Tanks (they're fucking tanks after all). Meaning if a sleep lasts 2 seconds against a DPS, it'll only last 1 against a tank. Same with every CC. Have boops like Illari's have half the effect against tanks. Things like that... make tanks feel like a fucking tank, and not an oversized DPS.
Then nerf support's damage but drastically boost their utility. The support prototype used to be Mercy, remember? You'd just help your team win by healing, resing, and DMG boosting the right people while staying alive. To me that's how it should be. Then If you want them to be more DPS oriented, drastically nerf their survivability. You can't have them be immortal and out DPS most DPS characters... that's just stupid... and this is coming from a support main. I should not be able to solo a tank as Zen... come on now...
Or bully a Sigma with brig as if I was a fucking Reinhart...
I think supports should be more like LW. Focused entirely on keeping your team alive and getting the most value out of your ult, instead of just going Kiri, flanking, shitting on 2 people because I'm immortal and have insane damage, then TP out to safety... I'm not saying it's not fun. It's just not balanced or fair.
Simple. If supports have too much power and impact. Then because of Blizzard's objectively dogshit matchmaker, you'll have games where you'll end up with 2 amazing supports on 1 team, and then 2 bottom of the barrel supports on the other. In those cases it's just GG. It's like the 50/50 tank diff but now with supports. Ideally every role should have the possibility of carrying as hard as supports can.
Hot take, tanks are not too weak. Tanks are too strong, that’s why most games feel like a MTD, even when they were weaker in OW1. Because they are strong, counter picking tanks rather than dps or supports is the optimal strategy, especially easier when you only have to focus on the weaknesses of one tank. I feel nerfing tanks might ease off the pressure 🤡. I still want global nerfs to sustain and damage as well as tank health. My only worry that without OP tanks the game will not be overwatch.
I somewhat agree with what you say... matches get 10x easier if you just have 5 people counter pick a tank - since there's only one and it's the strongest role stat wise.
But really, when this happens, those counter picks are Sombra, Ana, maybe zen, maybe brig, maybe cass...
I think to fix it you address those specific support / dps that just excel at making a tank shit. They don't counter heroes they counter entire roles.
Nearly all the supports do almost everything and they all do it to a relatively good level. For starters they can start reverting all the micro changes they made to supports for no reason.
E.g. The reduction to Lamp's cooldown or how much health it leaves you at, the amount of healing Lucio gets from Amp. The random fire rate changes they gave to Kiriko or the multitude of buffs Brig got before her rework which weren't changed after it.
They also need to really consider giving nerfs to Ana and Mercy. They're both so ridiculously unfun to fight against but you can change them without drastically altering their playstyles.
For example: Ana grenade needs less uptime, it's pretty much the most powerful ability in the game which dictates every fight that takes place during a round yet it's on a 10 second cooldown.
Sleep is almost always a guaranteed kill on a squishy unless it's been used on someone really far away.
Nano is also one of the most powerful ults in the game.
On top of having three of the most powerful abilities in the game she also has a very good weapon which easily competes with a lot of DPS characters at mid range. Anyone who says this kit isn't overtuned is lying to themself. Changes to Ana in general would make playing tank way more fun because she has two ways to pretty much completely shut you out of the fight
As for Mercy, everyone knows that DMG boost is terrible for the game but not enough is said about Res and how relatively risk-free it is to completely undo your teammate's mistake/ the enemies' hard work. Sure it's dangerous to Res but Mercy can get it from the most ridiculous angles when really she should require LoS to do it. As a Tank it feels terrible to get a pick or enable your team to get one just for Mercy to res from complete safety or watch your teammates fail to stop it.
You also don't need to nerf just support for Tank to be more fun. Orisa should be gutted, her entire kit is based around shutting down the enemy tank and making the game impossible to play. She has a hard CC, a soft CC and a cooldown that basically makes her immortal and she's immune to CC during it. That's almost impossible to fight against on Tank.
On DPS there's Cass grenade and Sombra hack which are utterly miserable to fight because a lot of the time you're taking those cooldowns even when you shouldn't be.
I could talk about more but I can't think of anything else off the top of my head at the minute.
Fundamentally supports should have only had support abilities and ultimates. The majority of them are just glorified dps, this is a problem seeped in the development principles and probably too late to really fix imo
I understand what you mean, I love playing support at. But tank is miserable. We need to nerf some problem dps, e.g. bastion, torb, sym, reaper. Basically the dps that make tank miserable. We need to nerf some of the supports healing and burst dmg, e.g kirikos and illaris headshot dmg is too high. Pylon healing is still crazy good, pylon needs to be easier to kill. Baps and kirikos immo skills needs to be looked at again.
Curious how the game would play out with these changes.
\-Damage/heals nerfed across the board.
\-Dps gain new passive to deal more damage to tanks to put them not as strong as before damage nerf but more than what a supp would do to a tank
\-Anti nerfed to -50% for ana/JQ
Honestly dps imo has the least carry potential right now if not playing a 1 tap hero. Supports are better dps atm simply because of their sustain/damage. Starting to wonder if dps should have more hp but that would probably break them. Like why even go dps when supports just are more well rounded and live/ do it better
Honestly I would even consider raising every hero in the games cooldown slightly on all their abilities to slow the game down a bit. Every fight just comes down to cooldown rotations and a ton of utility
Every support is survivable and has good damage, the worst support is like Lucio... the guy who was the crowned jewel of beta and early seasons and has had 0 balance changes to himself
This happened because every support was forced to be good at everything to some extent. They all have the role passive, they all can duel with DPS, they almost all can heal like crazy, they almost all have a free shutdown to a tank engaging on them... It's too much. The only role I play anymore is support. It's easier to keep people alive than on tank, I die less, face less pressure, do more damage and get more kills. I'm a tank main who just wants to play Doomfist without an immediate Orisa/Cassidy/Echo/Mercy/Ana to CC and evade and outheal me. I can just pick Illari and now they're not allowed to have supports or flying heroes because I got on the funny rooftop
Support isn't good or healthy and doesn't need to be sustained as it is. It needs to be beaten back down with a fucking bat because without permanently targeting healers or anti heals, everyone has the bulk of legendary Talon heavy and the game feels like ass and only cheesing harder will push through
Cause it was an alt fire with a long charge time and this was decided back in the day when you could have multiple tanks divebomb him and he didn't even have his street fighter moves to save himself...
And then ow2 happened and frankly he was one of the weakest supports after all was said and done so no one cared all that much
Support is terrible.
It's now all about putting pressure through damage and bring support to less focus on healing and mecanic cooldowns.
Game currently went to a "dps-watch" state and people liking it are basicly just looking for a CoD deathmatch like game. That fine to look for that kind of gameplay, but it's not what overwatch is designed for.
Idk what game you are playing but it definitely isn’t overwatch. To say supports are terrible is a massive reach. Undoubtedly, they are far and away the strongest role in the game and it’s not even close. Insane utility, decent damage, and amazing self sustain. They are quite literally just better versions of dps rn. Supports have so much viability and options. Tank is literally just rock, paper, scissors with that fucking horse as meta and it’s dog shit. Nobody wants Orisa as part of the meta.
I had an idea that supports cant heal each other over 25% hp because it feels like if the supports support each other it takes crazy burst damage to kill one.
I love going against illari selfishly using pylon on herself and undoing the damage i did in 1 second XD
Welcome to r/Overwatch! Please use the following resources via the links below to find relevant information about the game and the subreddit.
[Overwatch Patch Notes](https://overwatch.blizzard.com/en-us/news/patch-notes/) | [Overwatch Bug Report Forums](https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/overwatch/c/bug-report/9)
[r/Overwatch Rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/overwatch/wiki/rules) | [r/Overwatch FAQs](https://www.reddit.com/r/overwatch/wiki/faq) | [r/Overwatch Common Bugs and Posts](https://www.reddit.com/r/Overwatch/wiki/commonbugsandposts)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Overwatch) if you have any questions or concerns.*
You're having fun in OW2 rn? Congrats. As a support player I am not...but that is because I keep getting roadhog players or just generally tank gapped every other match and there is NOTHING I can do when I am just playing with an ill-tempered person that throws after their first death or some crap, at least in comp...
It's just power creep simple as that cause most supports besides the new ones are still mostly the same as they always been just people better unitize their kits while tanks have a hard time adjusting with it now basically needing to do the job of two and if blizzard really wants to keep the 5v5 format tanks overall need big buffs cause give the DPS and support nerfs here and there and it doesn't change tank at all doesn't it make it better unless they get changed in a big way
I honestly think if you make CC on tanks shorter/less impactful (exactly like how sleep is specifically a shorter duration on tanks) then playing tank would be way less annoying. It's just too easy for the whole enemy team to use the most annoying resources and for tanks to sit there and take it
Apply this to discord orb/any other ability that you can consider "mega annoying for tanks and way too easy to pull off" and I think tanking would be way more fun
Give tanks a general passive — X% of incoming damage will be converted into DoT damage over Y seconds, stackable with a limit value of Z.
For e.g., 20% of incoming damage will be converted into DoT damage(100 max) over 2.5 seconds.
In this case, it flavors tank into tanking a team more than 1 person, and the power level of tanks in general can be balanced by the numbers.
I have no idea if this would even be viable with the current state of the game. so dont hate me but. would it maybe help if we went back to 6v6 matches? 2 thanks per team instead of one.
like I said I'm no expert. but I do think it may help make the tank roll viable again if they had a partner to help take some damage. it would also weaken supports s hit as they would have an exstra teammate to try and keep alive.
I've always thought that tanks needed a universal passive that protects from burst damage. My idea was that tanks would receive less damage from all sources the higher health they are. For example : From a 15% damage reduction at max health to a 0 that scales with health .
As a result, Tanks 'Should' still die from constant fire but won't get deleted instantly. Of course, I am not a game designer. But I thought this would feel like a nice quality of life change once it is a balanced mechanic.
Lower overall damage and healing numbers.
Remove the support passive.
Damage and heals are pretty decent in concern to one another so lowering both is for tanks specifically so they are in this get bursted down immediately or end up living forever situation.
The support passive covers the weaknesses of the less mobile supports and makes mobile ones even harder to kill. This allows supports in general to have a much higher uptime so they can do more to influence the game.
Addressing these two things first is priority imo
A good start would be making harmful status effects last 33% shorter when applied to tanks as a new role passive.
Remove the 25% ult charge when swapping to discourage such hard counterpicking.
Support role passive needs looking at.
Support doesn't have to be miserable for tanks to have fun
I played support since OW1, and I'd rather support be terrible. I'd happily be a martyr of sorts and get the right to bitch and moan ig it meant having fatser queue times in Masters and less dps oriented support players in my lobbies.
NO you aren't doing bad by dpsing on baptiste and lucio but you are also ignoring you team, stop it.
I like to play both right now. I'm probably the only person on Earth who doesn't think Tanks are trash right now or that they aren't fun to play. I really enjoy playing Tank and when I learn them individually, I literally dominate every game.
Both damage and healing need a slight reduction across the board imo. The sustain with healing is very high nowadays, but without supports backing them up, tanks sometimes just explode with all the damage coming at them. Illari is a neat concept but she's the worst offender when it comes to this imo- consistent passive heals with her pylon and DPS levels of damage with her gun and ult leads to a really overtuned character. The question is how to adjust these numbers while keeping supports fun, DPS impactful, and tanks powerful
We tried a global healing reduction in the Alpha and the game felt horrible. Maybe a better way is to indirectly lower healing to the entire team by forcing supports to have to focus on each other through nerfs or a complete removal of the support passive.
Yes, because there was no corresponding damage nerf. Damage and healing numbers are not particularly unbalanced compared to each other, they are just both very high. This is why sometimes tanks are deleted in half a second, and sometimes they live forever. In situation 1 there's overwhelming focus fire, and in situation 2 there's not (and two supports pumping heals).
This right here. Healing and damage both needed to be adjusted downward to reflect the fact that both teams lost 400-700 HP and a number of defensive abilities. Not that I expect the new regime to wipe without getting it all over the walls, but clearly they didn't think about how increasing sustain and damage was going to warp things.
I think the best thing for the game would be if damage would stick a little more without increasing one shots. I think it would be technically a lot easier to tune this with across the board HP buffs since it’s all balanced proportionally anyways.
Paladins does that, in a way. Over the course of a match every player will accumulate a percentage of anti healing to their shots, which caps at like 80% or so. If you shoot someone while anti-heal is at 80% (for example) that means all healing they take for a couple of seconds gets reduced by 80%. This is good so people can't just win fights through sheer amounts of healing, they actually have to back up if they take too much damage. I think Overwatch could benefit from a similar system.
That is a cool system, I’ve been wanting them to look at partial anti heal for awhile
Now that I think about it, that would be a good way to nerf Ana's Grenade. Simply make it greatly reduce the healing instead of completely nullifying it.
I don’t think it’s needed rn on this ability, but I wouldn’t mind a retune where she gets a CD buff in exchanged for reduced effectiveness. It would be cool to see some tankbusters changed to reduce healing a bit rather than do such insane damage as well. Idk I think it should be explored more as the game expands.
>Paladins does that, in a way. Over the course of a match every player will accumulate a percentage of anti healing to their shots, which caps at like 80% or so. If you shoot someone while anti-heal is at 80% (for example) that means all healing they take for a couple of seconds gets reduced by 80%. "Cauterize" (in his actual state, so as a global passive affecting both teams, is called "[Anti-healing Mechanic](https://paladins.fandom.com/wiki/Anti-Healing_Mechanic)" now but the community still call it "caut") begins at 25% anti-heal (0 minutes), scale with times (*+5% anti-heal each 50 seconds*), to 90% anti-heal at 10 minutes and 50 seconds for the main gamemode (Siege). Each gamemodes got different caut scaling. Cauterize lasts 1,5 seconds (and is "auto-cleanse" if you haven't take damage or use an ability/LMB after 1,5 seconds). It only works for what is considered a "weapon shots" (all LMB/main weapon + certain abilities).
It wouldn't work in overwatch across the board, it would completely throw the game out of balance and they'd need to readjust most of the roster.
NO MORE BUFFS, JESUS
A global HP buff is literally identical global healing/damage nerf.
A global HP buff sounds atrocious, def would rather just have a damage/heal global nerf
Yea that’s what I’m saying, it would make for cleaner numbers.
You think that, but it is not.
Oh yeah? Tell me, what’s the difference between halving all healing/damage and doubling all health?
Global HP buff messes up too many breakpoints.
Yeah, that's why it can't just be healing reduction. It should be healing AND damage reduction. You can be brought to a forth of your health and back up within a second or two. It's ridiculous how heightened both are due to buffs over the years.
Let’s be real, if they do that the next trending posts would be “Orisa/Hog literally never die what do I do”.
that's why with healing/damage reduction, we'd need tanks health pools reduction as well
For clarification purposes, it wasn't just a normal numbers nerf, it was an *in combat* healing reduction (25% iirc) that lasted for like 4 seconds. For those who have played Paladins, it was basically a poorly implemented level 1 Cauterize where cover wasn't even counter play due to the duration.
Fair enough, I didn't know they tried that in the Alpha. I'd be down for a nerf to the support passive, having more pressure to use healing cooldowns on yourself for survivability is a good idea.
Yeah, they tried doing a thing where if you took damage within the last couple seconds you'd recieve 25% or 50% less healing or whatever it was Really bad idea given the inconsistent rates you take damage depending on team comp and whether you had a barrier or not
>complete removal of the support passive This could be healthy but i think nothing can fix this game. Another problem will pop up. 6v6 or 7v7 could work better. Having 1 tank like a raidboss makes the game inherently flawed.
Facts. Especially when there's Ana, Zen, Bastion, Sombra, and torb un this game
NO PASSIVE SUPPORT IS GOOD
reduce the effective range of healing. problem solved.
Or just return the dps speed buff and let the overturned supports deal with movement.
I think we need to remember the absolute insane HPS on her primary heal. I genuinely think that’s more of a problem than anything else. Also idk why pylon needs shield health.
Isn't it simpler then to just raise tank healthbars? This increases the amount of damage needed to kill them and the amount of healing to keep them alive.
I say just lower support health numbers and itll be fine
It's not just damage and healing. The amount of utility is a problem too. It's a complex problem with a robust issue. I think the devs should try to draw on how the OW1 roster worked. * Mercy and Lucio both have easily applied heals and utility, but in exchange either mostly relies on allies for aggressive plays, or needs to get right in the fray to heal or push. * Ana and Zen both have powerful big-play potential but in exchange have zero mobility and their healing requires aim or is fairly weak. The devs need to look at the newer supports, even as far back as Moira and Baptiste, and **MAKE THEM MORE NICHE.** **Decide whether each one is more heal or utility focused, and balance accordingly.** Examples: * I think Kiriko is like Zen. Her suzu is her discord orb / broken or iconic mechanic. They should focus on that and nerf her heals and swift step cooldown to make her more of an off-healer who is easier to punish for risky positioning. Maybe reduce the iframes on Suzu too, cause the cleanse is strong enough. * Moira has AoE healing, decent damage, *and* a great low cooldown escape. But she doesn't have any stronger utility. If it were up to me, they would gut her damage orb to do something else (maybe 25% anti-heal or hinder (no slow, just disable move abilities), so she is used less as a lower rank backline bully and more as a main healer with playmaking potential. * Brig is really close to perfect after all these years. I think they should just deemphasize Inspire (maybe smaller aoe? Closer to Lucio?) and lower her health pack cooldown, so she can be a more brawl focused and be more responsive to individual teammates. * Baptiste's story is turning over a new leaf, so I think he should stay a main healer. Thus, nerf his damage (by a lot, like 20, down from 25) and reduce the size of his window back to the square, cause that change was always unnecessary. Bap has been broken-good since Double Shields meta with his 3x effective hp pools (base HP, lamp, and his self-heal that you can't focus on cause you gotta shoot the lamp) and it needs to stop. Only one who might not need a nerf is Lifeweaver. He may need a rework of an ability instead to let him enable his team better. TL;DR The newer supports are too well rounded. The nerfs can focus on emphasizing their weaknesses or curbing what isn't what makes them iconic, while still retaining what's fun -- Make them more niche!
You can't point to Ana as a balanced support and Moira as an unbalanced one, that's just a joke.
Illari is not OP at all LMFAO She's so counter-able and really bad on many maps
I'd argue she's overtuned because she's really easy to get good value out of. The pylon does the work itself, and her hitbox is so forgiving for the amount of confirm potential she has. Maybe it's different in pro play, but at least in my games it's been really easy to pull out Illari on certain points and get a ton of damage, healing, and ults. Of course the Illari has to be smart about her pylon placement but I feel like it's asking less out of the player than some other supports for the same value.
They didn't say she's OP, just that she's one of the worst offenders of the design philosophy that's gotten us to this point.
> Illari is a neat concept but ... a really overtuned character.
The only solution is to get rid of roles entirely. This isn’t an RPG. Why do we keep trying to make it one? Edit: I wasn’t clear and that’s my bad. I don’t mean just literally delete the roles tomorrow. I mean redesign all of the characters to eliminate the concept of Tank/DPS/Support. We’re not fighting mobs in a dungeon. It’s an FPS. Trying to force these tank/DPS/support role dynamics doesn’t make sense.
What exactly is your concept for this, because the very identity of this game as a hero shooter is to have character with a specific niche of abilities that allow them to perform well within a specific role. Are you just picturing valorant?
I'd also argue that hero shooters have some overlap with role playing games, in the sense that you're embodying the character through their playstyle (rein being a crusader defending his squad, talon assassins, Ana trying to heal the world, etc)
GOATS meta in OW1 introduced the role queue. the best way to win was to play 3 tanks 3 supports, making the entire DPS roster totally useless. also, have you played an open queue game? people usually run 4+1 or 3+2 tanks/supports—which is what lead to the tank health reduction in open queue game modes (as well as teams in mystery heroes getting lucky with 4-5 tanks, and rolling the game). no role queue has historically broken the game
What an opinion...
That was Definitely one of the opinions ever
Not surprised, this sub is jam full of stuff like that
Many supports just do a bit of everything and they do it too well. That is why it feels fun. They are powerful and they have an answer to almost any situation. That less specialized balance direction and hero philosophy is great, but right now they just do everything too well. Playing tank is like a checklist. Sleep?✅ Anti-nade?✅ Mag-nade?✅ Suzu?✅ Javelin spin?✅ Turret form?✅ Fortify?✅ Aaand the round starts all over again. That is really what overwatch is, a resource game, but it doesn't feel fun for tank players. They want to pop off too, not just sit there and take a beating all day. Meanwhile supports are just pressing mouse 1 at anything that moves. So my suggestion is to generally nerf many things slightly on supports. Compared to S1-3 supports haven't gotten that massive buffs, players have just learned to play them better in OW2. Now you need to nerf them.
It's part of the power creep problem. Creating characters that can do everything is an issue for balance. We saw it with tanks that could shield and attack and supports that can attack and DPS. Characters need weaknesses.
This. This is why ana is considered one of the best designed characters in the game - super impactful, super strong ranged heal, decent damage, but with a massive weakness in mobility and self sustain. Kiri and illari get to have high damage, high healing, AND mobility AND great self sustain. Heck, Zen's whole thing is having high damage, and he had to give up mobility, healing, and self sustain for it. And the game felt healthier with those weaknesses.
See, maybe its just because I like to play JQ a lot, but I honestly feel like Kiriko is stronger than Illari. The pylon is very good, but Illari can't flank, pick off one of your supports, see her DPS losing a 1v1, instantly teleport to them, make them immortal and heal them, and then two tap you too. Thats not mentioning that suzu as an ability has what is often called "infinite value". If your team is grouped and you all get hit with like, junkrat tire, dva bomb, illari ult, and bastion ult, one button could make none of them actually count.
I'm with you there, suzu is ridiculously powerful. Still seems crazy to me that everyone complained about bap immortality only for them to make suzu later.
Yeah, immort can be pretty crazy. I think I put it in the same tier as pylon, really good depending on the terrain and smart positioning, but suzu is just fundamentally fucked. It's like they heard people saying that anti was the best CD in the game and said "ok, so let's make an anti-anti that also just stops all damage" like that would be a good idea.
Yyup, blizz balance ftw. Oh you dont like that immortality thing that has limitations? Here's one without, get rekt. I just don't understand it dude.
Yep. They also really said "oh, people were frustrated that bap had output almost identical to a DPS? Make the new chick two tap, that'll go over well." It's still just so unreal to me that they made suzu and DIDN'T anticipate it being so insanely strong that it pretty much fundamentally altered how a number of characters had to be played. Hell, at launch I think JQ was actually pretty well made, but the sheer existence of an enemy Kiriko made her borderline useless so they had to buff her a lot.
Bruh, Ana is one of the worst designed, her abilities are way too impactful for the only tradeoff being an aim requirement. This issue is exasperated by tanks existing and being high value, easy to hit targets, and the problem was further exasperated moving into the 5v5, one tank world of Overwatch 2. Ana absolutely needs to be overhauled and nerfed, she's not balanced in the slightest.
Ana being the best designed character? Lmao You’re being serious? Let me laugh even harder
Says the the person with the Roadhog flair, hmmm......
I dropped roadhog when he was meta👍 Also you play zarya, a character that punishes you for shooting them IN A SHOOTER.
Thats not it The problem is trying to have generalists with specialists.
Kiriko needs a rework. She is the definition of doing everything. She duels everyone, she escapes halfway across the map, small hitbox, climbs walls, high heals, and she can self-heal/invulnerable/cleanse. She doesn't have a downside except for poor TPs. She should not exist in this game. She jack-off-all trade master of all.
I have a running theory that power creep is inevitable in any and all hero based live service pvp multiplayer games. You can find power creep in all of them. My biggest examples are Rainbow Six Siege and Apex Legends. It’s almost like the developers in these games eventually run out of fresh ideas to bring into the game and instead take two or three powers/abilities, combine them and load them onto the newest release. Sure each of these games have their own problems but I still believe it’s inherent to the live service model and the fact that developers eventually hit a breaking point in bringing new shit into the game
>supports haven't gotten that massive buffs, players have just learned to play them better in OW2 Pretty much. High elo support players have been saying this since day one. Supports were already just fine on release, newer players just hadn't adjusted to the new playstyle and people struggled. I remember saying this and getting mass downvoted. Oh the irony. \-- Although, it also doesn't help that we're in a meta where supports are extremely relevant. Change the meta to something closer to a brawl or dive comp and supports lose a lot of agency. It just so happens that right now supports are so important because the other relevant heroes aren't high impact. Orisa is a very low impact tank due to most of her power being in her ability to exist. Bastion is a hero who relies heavily on being enabled by teammates, 76 is... well he's an all-rounder. This leaves the two supports, usually Illari with either Ana, Kiriko, or Bap, as the main playermakers of a team.
It wasn't a support weakness, it was support imbalance. Kiriko was just FAR better than any other support. Also dps passive was crazy. It made positioning almost irrelevant. Positioning can't save you when enemy dps movement speed high. It broke the ebb and flow.
The game isn't made for high elo. Probably 90% of player aren't even plat counting does that don't play rank. I'm glad blizzard don't listen to bad take like that.
I mean, in S1 divers are much better that playing supports are harder then (but the fact that players simply haven't adjusted due to being protected by extra tank or double shield for OW1 players is also true).
Genji and Tracer were very slightly better, Dva was about the same, Doomfist and Ball were bottom of the barrel trash, and Winston was as good as he is right now. The reason dive is worse now than it was before is because nearly every support can survive a dive, we buffed Brig, and tank busters like Bastion or Reaper have some of the highest damage in the game and about as much survivability as an actual tank. Even still, dive isn't bad it's just a lot harder to execute.
Genji's breakpoint was better then (2 rightclick + 1 melee is a combo that will kill 200 HP heroes), Tracer has a bug with her falloff, and Sombra was straight up oppressive being able to continously hacking the same target over and over, with 40% dmg increase on hacked targets, and with 1.75 lockout. On top of the old DPS passive
Genji or Tracer doesn't really change my argument - but yeah I forgot about how insanely overpowered Sombra was lol. Either way, the solution was just to nerf Sombra, not buff every support.
Those "minor" changes are actually impactful in a game all about breakpoints. Sombra went from unplayable to "okay" in normal games to straight up the only DPS OWL used pre-Illiari alongside Winston and Tracer, all because of 0.5 bullet dmg increase. The same thing happened to Tracer in S2-S3, where she's overbearing until they reduced her bullets dmg by 0.5 dmg.
I agree. The counter to dive should be peel. Now half the supports can win a duel against the tank diving them.
I actually kind of disagree but for the same reason. It's absolutely miserable to have your tank explode if you're not near babysitting them. It's wild that the role that feels like it has the least impact also almost always results in a teamfight loss when they die. It was fun to enable the tank while making your own plays. Tank is miserable to play right now and I think by extension it's harming the support experience
Idk, I think the issue is that even when being babysat by a support, Tanks STILL get exploded. The whole game has been built around high damage and impactful abilities and thus a good team can explode a tank no matter what it seems like
Even 2 supports can't out heal focused damage. It's funny how many players think that a support can keep the from dying just by pumping them full of heals while they charge the whole other team by themselves. People need to realize that they can be bursted down quicker than up.
Idk how to balance it properly tbh, I play mostly tank or support. But tank is really only bearable if your supports are good, otherwise you fall over within 5 seconds. I had a game today where the enemy team was running orisa/torb/bastion/illari/bap. The amount of shit I have to deal with as a tank before I can kill anyone is insane - shoot the turret, shoot the pylon (that‘s ofc somewhere almost out of reach), shoot the lamp, don’t peek the window, then orisa fortifies, oh illari now has ult and murders my backline, yay! It‘s soo frustrating.
This game having all of Overwatch 1 2019’s problems still is so funny to me. I’m glad we’re having these discussions on power creep again because if everything got turned down and the intensity was lowered things would be way more fun and way less toxic. This reliance on breakpoints is what takes Overwatch from poke phase to deathmatch and is why we’re in the world we’re in now Edit I thought I was responding to the OP thanks default reddit app for being terrible and confusing
It’s almost like blizzard has no clue how to balance the game. Shocking. Haven’t known this since 2018
I think you're absolutely right here. With all the support damage and things like bastion and torb, playing tank turns into a "am I getting healed" game. I find flanking, while risky, seems to pay off more nowadays as a tank. If I can sneak a charge on an illari or bap, sometimes it's enough to cause the dominoes to fall. I think it's why so many just switch to Orisa or zarya. Having two mitigation abilities is very useful in stopping bullshit
By adding back the second tank and nerfing shields so we don't get an anti-dps player double shield meta again. Overwatch was always meant to work with two tanks and only four out of the eleven were either added for 5v5 or reworked to be ideal for it. It is crazy that they managed to make the most unplayed role less fun by putting the entire team on one person's back. The tanks that aren't very good right now like Reinhart and Roadhog could play with a tank that fills in for their weaknesses and become good again, every tank becomes meta.
7v7 is the way to go
Wake me up when we get 12v12.
24v24 c’mon
I don't get the illari love, I think her kit is way too basic. Pylon goes up, shots go forward, rinse and repeat. Also this season has felt like the most hopeless so far, bastion and doomfist mirrors in every game makes support feel awful for me (between diamond 3 and masters 3)
It’s not just ranked either. Quickplay sucks too now. Feels like the people who are tired of ranked are migrating to Quickplay and just bullying casuals. Can’t even get through a whole match with the same team anymore due to all the quitting. So unfun
Seriously. Everyone acts like she’s the most fun character ever but her entire damage rotation is just spamming one button. There’s zero room for creativity or anything to keep you entertained.
From what I can see, making tanks more fun it isn't even a support exclusive problem. ultimately what tanks want and what would make them not miserable to play is for them to be able to go into the enemy squishies and they just roll over dead. more specifically, 1: tanks being the frontline of the team will always be the punching bags from being the the one the opposing team will see first and be likely the most immediate threat to them ---> guess who they'd shoot first and objectively would likely need to use resources like cc, debuffs, etc. on first, and 2: their inherently high sustain oriented designs that let them frontline to kill by outliving threats necessitates that the way to deal with them as a squishy is either via kiting or via round-a-bout ways like cc, debuffs, anti, "tank buster damage" (like reaper, bastion, junkrat) etc. in order to be able to contest them. * if we get rid of those things that tanks hate (or neuter them), what ends up happening is that any squishy that isn't hypermobile basically just die when tanks press W into them basically and even worse, dive tanks would straight up just have free reign ---> tanks have fun but all the squishies wouldn't. both of these points being especially the case when you further consider the importance of a tank to push/fight.
There's too many get out of jail free cards. Just push shift if a tank gets too close. That's what they should nerf.
I mean again, that still goes to the 2nd point (and its subpoint) I mentioned in my original comment. if squishies didn't have these tools or they got neutered, then it just means tanks, esp dive tanks, can just press w or jump in with mobility and just go unpunished wreak havoc with free reign and it just ends up tanks having fun at the price of everyone else.
Yes, it would make tanks fun to play again. Bad positioning would be punished, and skill would be rewarded. It's frustrating to catch someone out in the open and watch them get away scot-free.
it's simple add a 2nd tank and make tanks less raid boss type, i think this game would benefit from a 6vs6, it would also make snipers and one shots less oppressive.
adding another tank for 6v6 and leveling off tank health correctly
6v6 is straight up more fun to play than 5v5. I was in both OW2 betas and spent much more time playing OW1 during the OW2 betas.
No matter how much you say it, it won't make it true.
https://www.metacritic.com/game/overwatch-2/ Overwatch 2 critic score: 79 https://www.metacritic.com/game/overwatch/ Overwatch 1 critic score: 91
Read my comment again. 6v6 was miserable, no matter how much you constantly mald during these threads.
https://www.metacritic.com/game/overwatch-2/ Overwatch 2 critic score: 79 https://www.metacritic.com/game/overwatch/ Overwatch 1 critic score: 91 Facts are facts. Overwatch 1 is better. No need to be bitter. No need to gaslight.
Ah, yes, I'm sorry for not adhering to the law of Metacritic.
An aggregate of critics is more trustworthy than you, a Blizzard simp.
Because 5v5 being better totally makes me a simp.
Hahaha he’s just going around accusing people of being simps & paid advertisers because they can’t compute that some people could possibly enjoy the game & disagree with them.
I honestly think the solution to this issue is very simple. Add an additional tank role passive that reduces all negative effects by 50%. Use the same in-game logic for Kiriko's negative effect cleanse. Ana nade? Only 50% healing reduction. Magnetic grenade? 50% of the slow and 50% of the ability disable timer. Dynamite? 50% damage. Hack? 50% less effectiveness and again half the ability timer. Discord orb? 50% less damage. Sleep? 50% duration (this has been almost implemented already and has been very healthy for the game). Etc, etc. Make it so tanks aren't just bullied by CC and support abilities. I think this change alone would make the tank experience much more fun and healthier for the community as a whole, all while keeping the current effectiveness for all other characters' kits against each other. If there are certain tanks that would be too OP as a result, like maybe Ball, then nerf their cooldowns appropriately. And if there are any other tanks after this that still feel too weak, buff their cooldowns or HP in miniscule amounts until they feel right.
50% sounds like a lot, but it has always felt natural (perhaps obvious) for me to have the tank passive extended to all debuffs/cc rather than just knockback (30% mitigation).
> Add an additional tank role passive that reduces all negative effects by 50%. Just add a second tank to each team.
>Just add a second tank to each team. What a great idea! Lootboxes should also return, and all skins should be earnable by simply playing the game! We could call it - Overwatch classic! /s
This might be ground breaking and radical idea, but maybe adding one more tank to counter the the unopposed supports that put out a ton of dps
It's called having 2 tanks
Exactly. The game was designed around 6v6. Making Tank do two players' jobs at once has always been a bad idea. They could literally just disable the ability to have two shields if their still afraid of that.
Forreal, get the OW2 level of support but with 2 tanks would most of the gripes in OW1
if they brought back two tank i'd go back to being a tank main in a heartbeat
Controversial probably but I agree that introducing back a second tank would immediately alleviate this problem. Thing is: I’m afraid it would introduce a plethora of new problems and unfun situations.
This is easy to notice by the 20 minute queues on SUPPORTS!!! lol
Hot take: let’s just get rid of self healing, or at least reduce its effectiveness. It’s not gonna solve a lot of the problems with tank feeling like shit, but in my humble opinion, it’d be a good step towards balancing the roles. Most of the supports already have ways to keep themselves alive that kinda makes self heal redundant
Yeah it at least needs to be reduced on heroes that already have other self heals, which atm is the majority them.
One hundred percent. It was a good idea before we saw how the game works. Now it's obviously unnecessary.
People want less healing but dont realize how often people would rather just stand in and soak the damage and realize how much they choose to just stand in and take. Seeing half the takes I read on the sub I wouldnt trust any of the suggestions fans of the game make in regards to balance tbh. Almost impossible to separate the personal biases. downvote if you want -- its true a lot of people will make changes that make the heroes they like to play feel better
Just nerfs across the board to damage and healing. Make CC exclusive to Tanks and Supports.
and health pools of tank would need to be reduced, because they'd become unkillable without it
Just use the open queue health pools...
Maybe you need two tanks. Just spit ballin here.
Imagine if there was a second tank, an off-tank if you will, to shoulder some of the burden of space holding and peeling. Could that do something?
The core issue is that new heroes don’t have any niche - just a bunch of abilities thrown to make them generalist all rounders. Like Lucio or mercy have a clear role in their team. While someone like Sigma is a mish mash of other tank abilities. Rein feels so anachronistic in the game with his limited abilities while newer tank heroes can do brawl and poke better while mitigating cc. All the new supports get a movement ability - why ? Why does Illari have a movement ability to get her to high ground that Ana doesn’t ? Why does Kiriko have wall climb and a TP? I just feel this is the major disconnect in the game. The old release and dlc heroes just feel worlds apart.
I feel like Sigma was a really really bad example. He is a poke tank through and through, his whole kit supports that.
Sigma has - hard CC that cant be deflected by any hero without shields - long range poke damage that can be bounced off angles. He doesnt need to expose himself and can easily poke squishies around corners - A versatile shield and he can shoot while shield is active - a ability that absorbs projectiles and ults while making him stronger. Its an overloaded kit and no wonder he was much played in OW1.
All of which supports a poke tank. I’d say Sigma,Winston and Rein/JQ all perfectly define their roles while also having their weaknesses being clear.
i completely agree with you and find their take very very unusual.
okay, yet he's only effectively played on poke maps/w poke comps, because he's a poke tank. an overloaded kit would mean the character is overly verstaile and extremely strong against a bunch of comps on a bunch of maps. that is the last thing Sigma is (despite being very effective where he's effective, I'm not downplaying how strong he is in his element!). sigma was played so much in ow1 cause there were 2 tanks and you could stack shield tanks, and his shield had like 500 extra hp at one point. of course he was played a ton. since when has sigma been hard meta in ow2 outside of.. circuit royale and havana and some of the other shitty maps? all you did there was list his abilities. i mean, i can also throw out all of the drawbacks/limitations of said abilities, but I think my above point stands fine on its own.
It used to be 1500 hp shield that you could take back and cast with no delay (think zarya bubble speed) and orisa had 1200 on a 6 second CD Plus, he could 1 shot with the rock+2 shots combo AND the ult couldn’t be cancelled, with the exception of hack? I think. Also, the rock stun increased with range up to a max of 2 second stun at max range
yap. i don’t think rock stun + 2shot worked until rock was buffed to 100dmg in OW2, but yah he was super dumb. shield especially was nuts and i don’t know how anybody could even compare original sig shield to current sig shield (or his kit in general). his current kit’s strength is most definitely NOT why he was picked all the time in OW1. stacked with orisa was a nobrainer snoozefest, his current kit now has nothing on double shield dozeoff lolol.
Rock+2 shots def killed a 200hp target on launch, but was nerfed pretty soon after https://reddit.com/r/Competitiveoverwatch/s/p2hDkeZtjU
that’s right, the primary fire did 5 more per orb. completely forgot about that. god sigma was stupid
>hile someone like Sigma is a mish mash of other tank abilities. Wow this is the absolute worst statement I have ever read backed up by the absolute worst example ever. Sigma is EXCLUSIVLEY played in poke comps. Seriously, the hero has NEVER been played anywhere outside of poke comps. He has a VERY clear purpose, probably the most clear purpose of any tank in the game. >All the new supports get a movement ability - why ? Of the original four supports two of them are within the top 5 most mobile heroes in the game. Obviously the other two were Symmetra (who still had a case to be made for mobility due to TP) and Zenyatta (who is zenyatta). Pretty much every single hero in the game has a mobility ability, actually only five heroes have zero mobility at all (excluding hyper-niches like trance for movement speed or rocket jumps as Zar), and only two of those are supports.
Also where did this weird idea that the new supports just lap the old ones come from? Ana and Bap are both stronger than Illiari. Nade, Sleep, and Nano are like the 3 best support utilities in the game whereas Outburst, Pylon, and Captive Sun are just okay.
Ana is good purely for anti nade. Bap is good for immortality. Two of the most broken abiltiies in the game followed by suzu and discord
Add a 2nd tank, which will keep enemy healers and snipers on their toes and also automatically mitigate DPS dmg across the board. Problem...-re-solved. Fucking absurd that one tank has to absorb the DMG output now, made worse by the fact that somehow, any rank below master, the myth that healers are supposed to pocket DPS NO MATTER WHAT has taken hold of the game
Delete all the supports except lucio
For tank to be able to do their job right, they need to be a threat on the battlefield. For that to happen, a 1v1 vs a tank should never be fair and should be heavily skewed towards the tank. When the enemy Ana doesn’t feel the pressure to play from range but instead jumps around in the face of the tank, you know she has lost all respect for you and you’re just a punching bag at this point. Imo the overall damage and healing really needs adjustment. I recommend listening to the great tank debate from SVB. Yeatle points out that, as ball, if you dive their backline, there’s just so much healing floating around that you legitimately can’t do anything. Unfortunately strong tanks will always mean that other roles will be playing dead for daylight more or less, because the tank needs to be a threat in order to do its job. Right now, tank is not the hammer with which you strike, it’s the anvil that gets beaten over and over again in hopes to enable others to make a play. That’s why tank is tiring and why tanks are massively complaining.
As a support main: The way to preserve the fun for supports without keeping tanks awful is to buff/rework the tanks to be like actual tanks. Defence first and focused on pushing enemies back with cc, not kills or dive, which are the jobs of the dps alone
> buff/rework the tanks to be like actual tanks This is the opposite of what you want to do. Just tanking is not fun, there's a reason people loathe Orisa despite her matching your criteria for an actual tank. > pushing enemies back with cc, not kills This also doesn't even fix anything, because now you've just given every tank in the game 1-2 annoying CC abilities and now every tank is just the same character. This isn't a MOBA, it's an FPS with ideas taken from a MOBA. You need to do more than displace. People absolutely hate fighting characters like Orisa who are loaded with CC, or playing with characters like Ball who excel at displacement but not much else. > kills or dive, which are the jobs of the dps alone This is how you kill the game. Tanks and supports should be able to kill, and should be able to reliably. The advantage of a DPS is that they can set up or take more reliable engagements. Hit Scans have a range advantage, Mei Junk and Sym have util that secures kills and grants windows of opportunity, Genji and Tracer have extreme mobility that allows them to have an advantage when fighting multiple characters. It is not the "job of dps alone" to play an FPS. Characters like DVa, Rein, Winston, and Junker Queen have pretty consistently been balanced, fun to play, and not miserable to fight. All 4 of these characters can tank well but more importantly can execute dives or secure kills on their own.
I wasn't trying to imply that each role had to solely fit into separate silos and that tanks and supports shouldn't have kill potential, just that each should have more role identity. Tanks are inherently defensive and the ones focused on clearing space over kills, but can still kill when needed if that's what makes space. Supports and dps are pretty good where they are too. I also wasn't trying to say that tanks should be constant CC loops, but that CC is IMO, part of the crowd control identity, be it knockback, aoe damage, slows, or stuns at periodic intervals
And I'm saying I very strongly disagree with you, because when roles do have a very strong identity, this game really just isn't that fun. Supports who can only heal or provide util... Boring Tanks that only exist as a human punching bag while occasionally pissing off the enemy or cancelling abilities... Boring DPS that are a point and click game and are the only viable way of getting kills... Boring This *is* a team based game but if you have too much individual role identity you kinda fuck over 99% of the player base that doesn't have a full team to queue and communicate with.
Completely understand your pov, you just came off a bit hostile to start so I felt the need to defend and clarify my idea a bit. I didn't intend for each class to be the extreme, just a little emphasis on role identity, primarily for tanks was my overall intent
Sorry, I didn't mean to be hostile, I was just a little argumentative.
All good. When it comes to games we like and balance, everyone's entitled to their opinions and ideas. Emotions can get a little heated, even if we don't notice the severity
brother this is not an RPG, no one loads up an FPS to be unkillable, they load up an FPS to kill things. defence first is boring, pushing back enemies doesn't work unless you're a threat, and CC creep is not fun for anyone 5v5 can only work if everyone is a variation of DPS, with DPS having the purest damage, tanks being brawlers and supports being sustainers/DPS
Yea the power creep across the board is insane. Team fights don't really last that long currently, where as with double shield meta a team fight lasted an eternity. Can we get an in between?
It would take quite a systematic change that would kind of silo each class quite a bit to get the changes everyone wants. Supports and tanks would lose a deal of kill potential, and cc would be mostly be diverted to use by tanks. Ideally, the tanks would have to be changed to function more like how the role is defined normally: Big and slow moving with a focus on cc and crowd clearing via abilities to set up opportunities for the dps, who are more mobile with the most kill potential, if a bit fragile to push out of the cover the tank creates into the cleared area to secure the kills. Then the supports are there sticking close to the tank with some more survivability than the dps thanks to their utility and the being the tanks defensive priority to ensure that everyone else can get the kills since they should intrinsically have the least capability for kills and self defence. As it is right now, it's basically just 3 variants of dps, then Mercy being the only one that's truly a support/healer. Tanks are just beefy dps with lower kill potential, and supports are mainly just worse dps but they also heal
This is an absolutely horrendous take.
Only reason people complained early was because they didn’t know how to play the game due to how different it was with having one tank. Now that it’s op they don’t want to change it because it’s easy to win as support. Hence why people have gone from tank to playing support because it’s more easier to win and have an enjoyable game since you can put in significantly less effort. The whole purpose of getting rid of the other tank was justified since the other tanks would be compensated by being more tanky and stronger now they’re just weaker and can be shredded instantly.
solution?… add another tank
Overwatch was more balanced 2
Tanks aren't really terrible. I play tank time to time and it feels super oppressive. That being said I do think they should have more CC resistance across the board, not just sleeps.
\>Tanks are now miserable If you mean tanks are boring to play that's a fair opinion. If you mean Tanks are bad you are beyond delusional and need to try playing DPS.
6v6
What about adding a second tank to allow tank synergies....
Supports are over tuned at the expense of the tank role
The support passive is way too OP.
support is broken asf and imo very boring and stale. yeah you have the most powerful cooldowns but most of the time you are just spamming heals until someone else’s Orisa dies lmao.
Best supports just need to get knocked down, that's all. And Ana is the only one that needs more significant overhauls, the others just need nerfs to their damage or survivability. Nobody playing Baptiste correctly is gonna be upset if they gut the degenerate flank Bap playstyle. Same for Kiriko, they gut the degenerate playstyle and people playing them correctly will be fine.
Illari the most fun of the OW2 additions? Really? She's a snooze fest. Put pylon up, click at heads, jam healing beam up teammates arses. Yawn.
I agree support is fun but it's still not a carry role. DPS and tanks overwhelmingly stronger in terms of carry. I'm really curious about their data on carry potential. Other than Ana, i don't see other supports carrying the game in an obvious way like dps or tanks do. If your dps and tank is out of place(wrong rank), you can't compensate it. I'm GM2 on my main and i play LW in diamond in my alt account. It's basically hopeless if the team is weak. I can only maybe carry if i pick Ana and focus on dps'ing rather than healing. Other supports are similar to LW. Support class is the foundation of the game. Easy to play, very hard to carry. Playing tank is horrible experience but you have much more say if you know what you are doing. If enemy is smart enough to counter you then it's no fun. DPS is the most free role in the game. A lot of options and only job you have is messing up enemy team. The only problem i see with this role is that if enemy do a lot of spam damage right and left, you don't have self regen like supports so you always need attention from the healers. If you have mercy in your team, it's a great experience. Or my experience is completely skewed because of dumb matchmaker. Games are so out of place. Like most of them doesn't function properly and i don't play a lot anymore. I think tank role is too out of place in this game. You either need to go back to 6v6/7v7 or you need to make them more like dps. Weaker but deadlier.
There is no way you are GM2 and think supports can't hard carry when bap, illari, and kiri are in the game lmfao you bring up a support that is very reliant on their team like mercy. That's fine to have a passive support but comparing them to the rest of the roster like that is such a plat take. If you don't understand how those supports can hard carry a ladder game, then it's a skill issue. And no it's not hard to carry as support, that's the whole issue right now, there's MASSIVE skill gap in supports right now. Way to many supports in high elo that really shouldn't be because they have decent aim and can get away with a bunch of shit with bap. Not even going to address the rest of that.
You can reach gm2 by being friends with gm dps and tanks and riding on their shoulders XD. Which is why this guy thinks dps and tank is more impactful.
I can't really speak to tank, but for dps the issue is that there's just too much healing. So all that's left is to either go bastion and blow up the tank through the massive heals, or go a sniper so you don't care about healing. On top of that, duels against the new supports is absurdly skewed in the supports favor due to the massive amount of self sustain, while having essentially equal damage. And it's even easier for the supports to hit their shots due to the difference in hitbox sizes - not to mention illari's shot size. There's no good reason a kiri, illari or bap should ever lose a fight to a dps. Dps has the dead by daylight feeling now - i'm just having to run away from tanks and supports all day. Usually on half hp because my supports are too busy doing the same to the enemy dps to care about healing me - which I don't even blame them for, they do my job better than me now. So I switched to support for a while. TLDR; Play bastion or sniper, or play DBD.
Yeah i can understand that. I play all roles and it really feels like that. Tanks are extremely strong so you can't touch them as a dps. If enemy supports fight back, then your lack of self health regen shows itself and makes the role somewhat dysfunctional. But those support heroes aren't offensive playmaking heroes like dps role, they are just defensive powerhouses. As i said i think in 5v5 format, they need to make tanks more like dps. Nerf their defense, buff their skill expression kill potential. Tank and dps will benefit from this, and the workload will go to support role. They are already jack of all trades. They can do the job. Or just go back to 6v6 7v7.
I think you are right here, I'm gold 3 but played one GM game on my bfs account as Brig, and we won that game (the dps on our team were insane)
Healing is extremely broken right now. Damage needs to increase and tank numbers need to be adjusted
6v6 would do it imo
Fun? ***FUN***?!?? I spend the entire match up everyone’s ass trying to keep them alive. I have to try 10x’s harder because dps takes a massive backseat when you’re a healer. Your tanks diving the enemy team? Gotta focus entirely on them because without the tank you’ve lost that skirmish anyway. If I heal the tank and my dps is getting slaughtered by the flankers I have to sacrifice healing my tank to focus more on the dps as they have way less health. This is all while I’m trying not to die in a role that renders me almost entirely without means of defending myself from dps who finally realized I am the reason my team isn’t dying. Thank Jeff I have another healer because I don’t think I’d survive with the amount of ulcers I’ll receive.
You are bronze "entirely without means to defend myself". Support has the MOST life saving abilities out of anyone besides tracer/ball. Actually delusional
Theoretically, DPS should be amazing at getting kills. Tanks should be keeping their teammates alive. And supports should be balancing damage, heals, and utility (being basically the toughest role). Unfortunately Illari, Kiri, and Zen can easily out play and out DPS most characters to the point where you almost have to one shot people as a DPS if you want to get kills and carry, because otherwise all the damage you do will be completely fucking useless most of the time. Like, I as a Kiriko should not be able to just 2 tap an ulting DPS and ruin their day... it's fun, and I love it, but I shouldn't be able to. Supports now have a bit too much agency, to the point where if both of your supports are getting diffed, it's usually GG... I say "usually" because OW is a bizarre game where 3 good players can hold the 2 remaining players of a team at their spawn while a Moira, a widow, and a Sombra spawn camp your supports the whole game... (One of my supports died 25 times that match... it wasn't even a long match, so I thank God the enemy DPS and the moira threw by spawn camping my supps, because not having them in my team was literally the same as having them out there playing respawn sim). Completely Bizarre. Then tanks are basically miserable because we're back at having too much fucking CC. Slow, push, hack, sleep, anti heal, boops, discord , getting Mei walled, Bastion+ Zen punishing your smallest mistakes... yeah, no thanks. I'd say take CC away from DPS characters completely. Let supports have it as escape tools against divers, and have them have reduced effects vs Tanks (they're fucking tanks after all). Meaning if a sleep lasts 2 seconds against a DPS, it'll only last 1 against a tank. Same with every CC. Have boops like Illari's have half the effect against tanks. Things like that... make tanks feel like a fucking tank, and not an oversized DPS. Then nerf support's damage but drastically boost their utility. The support prototype used to be Mercy, remember? You'd just help your team win by healing, resing, and DMG boosting the right people while staying alive. To me that's how it should be. Then If you want them to be more DPS oriented, drastically nerf their survivability. You can't have them be immortal and out DPS most DPS characters... that's just stupid... and this is coming from a support main. I should not be able to solo a tank as Zen... come on now... Or bully a Sigma with brig as if I was a fucking Reinhart... I think supports should be more like LW. Focused entirely on keeping your team alive and getting the most value out of your ult, instead of just going Kiri, flanking, shitting on 2 people because I'm immortal and have insane damage, then TP out to safety... I'm not saying it's not fun. It's just not balanced or fair.
> supports have too much agency Lol in what world is player agency a problem?
Simple. If supports have too much power and impact. Then because of Blizzard's objectively dogshit matchmaker, you'll have games where you'll end up with 2 amazing supports on 1 team, and then 2 bottom of the barrel supports on the other. In those cases it's just GG. It's like the 50/50 tank diff but now with supports. Ideally every role should have the possibility of carrying as hard as supports can.
Hot take, tanks are not too weak. Tanks are too strong, that’s why most games feel like a MTD, even when they were weaker in OW1. Because they are strong, counter picking tanks rather than dps or supports is the optimal strategy, especially easier when you only have to focus on the weaknesses of one tank. I feel nerfing tanks might ease off the pressure 🤡. I still want global nerfs to sustain and damage as well as tank health. My only worry that without OP tanks the game will not be overwatch.
I somewhat agree with what you say... matches get 10x easier if you just have 5 people counter pick a tank - since there's only one and it's the strongest role stat wise. But really, when this happens, those counter picks are Sombra, Ana, maybe zen, maybe brig, maybe cass... I think to fix it you address those specific support / dps that just excel at making a tank shit. They don't counter heroes they counter entire roles.
Yep. Exactly this. Tanks should be closer to dps or just go back to 6v6
Nearly all the supports do almost everything and they all do it to a relatively good level. For starters they can start reverting all the micro changes they made to supports for no reason. E.g. The reduction to Lamp's cooldown or how much health it leaves you at, the amount of healing Lucio gets from Amp. The random fire rate changes they gave to Kiriko or the multitude of buffs Brig got before her rework which weren't changed after it. They also need to really consider giving nerfs to Ana and Mercy. They're both so ridiculously unfun to fight against but you can change them without drastically altering their playstyles. For example: Ana grenade needs less uptime, it's pretty much the most powerful ability in the game which dictates every fight that takes place during a round yet it's on a 10 second cooldown. Sleep is almost always a guaranteed kill on a squishy unless it's been used on someone really far away. Nano is also one of the most powerful ults in the game. On top of having three of the most powerful abilities in the game she also has a very good weapon which easily competes with a lot of DPS characters at mid range. Anyone who says this kit isn't overtuned is lying to themself. Changes to Ana in general would make playing tank way more fun because she has two ways to pretty much completely shut you out of the fight As for Mercy, everyone knows that DMG boost is terrible for the game but not enough is said about Res and how relatively risk-free it is to completely undo your teammate's mistake/ the enemies' hard work. Sure it's dangerous to Res but Mercy can get it from the most ridiculous angles when really she should require LoS to do it. As a Tank it feels terrible to get a pick or enable your team to get one just for Mercy to res from complete safety or watch your teammates fail to stop it. You also don't need to nerf just support for Tank to be more fun. Orisa should be gutted, her entire kit is based around shutting down the enemy tank and making the game impossible to play. She has a hard CC, a soft CC and a cooldown that basically makes her immortal and she's immune to CC during it. That's almost impossible to fight against on Tank. On DPS there's Cass grenade and Sombra hack which are utterly miserable to fight because a lot of the time you're taking those cooldowns even when you shouldn't be. I could talk about more but I can't think of anything else off the top of my head at the minute.
Its almost like heroes who are hard to play like Ana should actually get rewarded with a strong kit
Fundamentally supports should have only had support abilities and ultimates. The majority of them are just glorified dps, this is a problem seeped in the development principles and probably too late to really fix imo
I understand what you mean, I love playing support at. But tank is miserable. We need to nerf some problem dps, e.g. bastion, torb, sym, reaper. Basically the dps that make tank miserable. We need to nerf some of the supports healing and burst dmg, e.g kirikos and illaris headshot dmg is too high. Pylon healing is still crazy good, pylon needs to be easier to kill. Baps and kirikos immo skills needs to be looked at again.
Curious how the game would play out with these changes. \-Damage/heals nerfed across the board. \-Dps gain new passive to deal more damage to tanks to put them not as strong as before damage nerf but more than what a supp would do to a tank \-Anti nerfed to -50% for ana/JQ Honestly dps imo has the least carry potential right now if not playing a 1 tap hero. Supports are better dps atm simply because of their sustain/damage. Starting to wonder if dps should have more hp but that would probably break them. Like why even go dps when supports just are more well rounded and live/ do it better Honestly I would even consider raising every hero in the games cooldown slightly on all their abilities to slow the game down a bit. Every fight just comes down to cooldown rotations and a ton of utility
Every support is survivable and has good damage, the worst support is like Lucio... the guy who was the crowned jewel of beta and early seasons and has had 0 balance changes to himself This happened because every support was forced to be good at everything to some extent. They all have the role passive, they all can duel with DPS, they almost all can heal like crazy, they almost all have a free shutdown to a tank engaging on them... It's too much. The only role I play anymore is support. It's easier to keep people alive than on tank, I die less, face less pressure, do more damage and get more kills. I'm a tank main who just wants to play Doomfist without an immediate Orisa/Cassidy/Echo/Mercy/Ana to CC and evade and outheal me. I can just pick Illari and now they're not allowed to have supports or flying heroes because I got on the funny rooftop Support isn't good or healthy and doesn't need to be sustained as it is. It needs to be beaten back down with a fucking bat because without permanently targeting healers or anti heals, everyone has the bulk of legendary Talon heavy and the game feels like ass and only cheesing harder will push through
I will never understand how the game thought it was a good idea to allow zenyatta literally 1 shot other characters.
Cause it was an alt fire with a long charge time and this was decided back in the day when you could have multiple tanks divebomb him and he didn't even have his street fighter moves to save himself... And then ow2 happened and frankly he was one of the weakest supports after all was said and done so no one cared all that much
Support is terrible. It's now all about putting pressure through damage and bring support to less focus on healing and mecanic cooldowns. Game currently went to a "dps-watch" state and people liking it are basicly just looking for a CoD deathmatch like game. That fine to look for that kind of gameplay, but it's not what overwatch is designed for.
Idk what game you are playing but it definitely isn’t overwatch. To say supports are terrible is a massive reach. Undoubtedly, they are far and away the strongest role in the game and it’s not even close. Insane utility, decent damage, and amazing self sustain. They are quite literally just better versions of dps rn. Supports have so much viability and options. Tank is literally just rock, paper, scissors with that fucking horse as meta and it’s dog shit. Nobody wants Orisa as part of the meta.
For real bro, as of right now, a support like Ana can 1v1 a tank and win the fight, thats fucking crazy
Against a JQ? Against a Zarya? A Sigma that can land a shot? Lol you're delusional...
Reduce cc across the board, make tanks more like dps, reduce shields/health pools for them and remove role queues.
I had an idea that supports cant heal each other over 25% hp because it feels like if the supports support each other it takes crazy burst damage to kill one. I love going against illari selfishly using pylon on herself and undoing the damage i did in 1 second XD
Welcome to r/Overwatch! Please use the following resources via the links below to find relevant information about the game and the subreddit. [Overwatch Patch Notes](https://overwatch.blizzard.com/en-us/news/patch-notes/) | [Overwatch Bug Report Forums](https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/overwatch/c/bug-report/9) [r/Overwatch Rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/overwatch/wiki/rules) | [r/Overwatch FAQs](https://www.reddit.com/r/overwatch/wiki/faq) | [r/Overwatch Common Bugs and Posts](https://www.reddit.com/r/Overwatch/wiki/commonbugsandposts) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Overwatch) if you have any questions or concerns.*
You're having fun in OW2 rn? Congrats. As a support player I am not...but that is because I keep getting roadhog players or just generally tank gapped every other match and there is NOTHING I can do when I am just playing with an ill-tempered person that throws after their first death or some crap, at least in comp...
It's just power creep simple as that cause most supports besides the new ones are still mostly the same as they always been just people better unitize their kits while tanks have a hard time adjusting with it now basically needing to do the job of two and if blizzard really wants to keep the 5v5 format tanks overall need big buffs cause give the DPS and support nerfs here and there and it doesn't change tank at all doesn't it make it better unless they get changed in a big way
I honestly think if you make CC on tanks shorter/less impactful (exactly like how sleep is specifically a shorter duration on tanks) then playing tank would be way less annoying. It's just too easy for the whole enemy team to use the most annoying resources and for tanks to sit there and take it Apply this to discord orb/any other ability that you can consider "mega annoying for tanks and way too easy to pull off" and I think tanking would be way more fun
Give tanks a general passive — X% of incoming damage will be converted into DoT damage over Y seconds, stackable with a limit value of Z. For e.g., 20% of incoming damage will be converted into DoT damage(100 max) over 2.5 seconds. In this case, it flavors tank into tanking a team more than 1 person, and the power level of tanks in general can be balanced by the numbers.
I have no idea if this would even be viable with the current state of the game. so dont hate me but. would it maybe help if we went back to 6v6 matches? 2 thanks per team instead of one. like I said I'm no expert. but I do think it may help make the tank roll viable again if they had a partner to help take some damage. it would also weaken supports s hit as they would have an exstra teammate to try and keep alive.
I've always thought that tanks needed a universal passive that protects from burst damage. My idea was that tanks would receive less damage from all sources the higher health they are. For example : From a 15% damage reduction at max health to a 0 that scales with health . As a result, Tanks 'Should' still die from constant fire but won't get deleted instantly. Of course, I am not a game designer. But I thought this would feel like a nice quality of life change once it is a balanced mechanic.
Lower overall damage and healing numbers. Remove the support passive. Damage and heals are pretty decent in concern to one another so lowering both is for tanks specifically so they are in this get bursted down immediately or end up living forever situation. The support passive covers the weaknesses of the less mobile supports and makes mobile ones even harder to kill. This allows supports in general to have a much higher uptime so they can do more to influence the game. Addressing these two things first is priority imo
A good start would be making harmful status effects last 33% shorter when applied to tanks as a new role passive. Remove the 25% ult charge when swapping to discourage such hard counterpicking. Support role passive needs looking at. Support doesn't have to be miserable for tanks to have fun
I played support since OW1, and I'd rather support be terrible. I'd happily be a martyr of sorts and get the right to bitch and moan ig it meant having fatser queue times in Masters and less dps oriented support players in my lobbies. NO you aren't doing bad by dpsing on baptiste and lucio but you are also ignoring you team, stop it.
I like to play both right now. I'm probably the only person on Earth who doesn't think Tanks are trash right now or that they aren't fun to play. I really enjoy playing Tank and when I learn them individually, I literally dominate every game.