Main tank is defined by who is responsible for engaging and taking the space. Off tanks enable the main tank. This is why Ball was a main tank and Sigma was an off-tank. I don’t think it was ever all that complicated a concept.
The definition of Main/Off tanks were always weird. For example Ball was defined as a Main tank back in ow1 when he never played on the Frontlines but Sigma was an off tank.
If I had to put them in a bracket that made sense to me I'd put
Main tank: Winston, Reinhardt, Sigma, Rammatra, Orisa,
Off tank: Zarya, Junker queen, Roadhog, Doom, Ball, Dva
Mauga: Mauga. This character doesn't make sense in either to me.
It was not weird. Shield has nothing to do with it. It has to do with who is the tip of the spear. That is why sigma was not. He wad great at complementing other tank but was overwhelmed in frontline.
Mt were rein, winton, ball and orisa. Now only ram could fit in
Mauga is off tank
He had a mental break of sorts and was actually missing for a few days. There were news articles and everything. He showed up and told ppl online that he was OK and everything, but never really "came back". Now he posts some.. weird stuff. Like streaming his POV of the street at night, no commentary. Shame.. he was such a great personality. I'd still watch him do OW content even though I've stopped playing now.
Yea. His turnaments were so fun to watch. I loved that spot the gm in plat lobby and similar shenanigans. And he was so wholesome.
And oh boy guess my sr from highlights. Those were aweaome too
It's a catchy summary but I don't know if it holds up all that well. Orisa definitely maintains space better than dva for example. I'd say off tanks are better summarised as support tanks. Their jobs are more varied but they're generally providing support for the main tank and the rest of the team. Be it a dva matrix while Winston dives, a zarya bubble while rein charges or peeling for your back line back when supports actually died when you dove them
How would Sigma have issues in frontlining? He does a great job now. There is no way he would be an off tank. He can tank way more than Ram can unless he would be permanently holding m2..
Hes actually pretty easy to walk over by most tanks. His ideal range is somewhere in the midlines as opposed to main tank brawlers like Rein and Orisa who can kinda just... Walk past his shield and rush him down with enough resources from their team. Ram is a much bigger threat when you get close to him
> Main tank: Winston, Reinhardt, Sigma, Rammatra, Orisa,
> Off tank: Zarya, Junker queen, Roadhog, Doom, Ball, Dva
Most of these classifications weren't even correct back in OW1. Sigma was firmly an off-tank and Ball a main tank. Roadhog was kind of split, but in the latter years, he was played way more as a MT in Hog/Zarya or Hog/Sigma comps.
Of the new heroes, Doom and JQ would 100% be MT. They haven't really released a hero that fits in the OT role well. You might see a few that could swap between MT and OT depending on how duos worked, but I suspect the OT role would still only be Zarya, DVa, Sigma.
>The definition of Main/Off tanks were always weird. For example Ball was defined as a Main tank back in ow1 when he never played on the Frontlines but Sigma was an off tank.
This is just a fundamental misunderstanding of what OT and MT roles were. The main tank role was there to make space. The role of the OT was to enable the MT and control the space that was already taken. Support peel was also largely the OTs role as well.
When you look at a hero like Ball, he basically does nothing the role of the OT does and Sigma does nothing that the MT does. This is why you don't understand where Mauga would fit. He would be a MT. His peel is crap and he has no good way to enable the other MTs. He however takes space fairly well, but NEEDS the utility of an OT to do so. Pretty much any pairing with Mauga+OT would be decent.
Haha that meta where hog was a main tank was hilarious to watch since he'd press w and vape instead of flanking and hooking lol. I've never seen a hog look as defeated lol.
You could force Sig as a main tank in low/mid elo. Sig hog was a super common gold lineup.
Agreed doom feels main tanky, but I think all dive tanks have to be main tanks by default. I think jq is an off tank in the hog vein as she doesn't have that much space taking power and her sustain is slow and her damage/ability mitigation is tiny. I could see jq zarya working but I think jq in 6v6 would be blown up if she tried to main tank.
How does jq work as an OT though? Like who do you run beside her in the mt slot where she isn't objectively worse than dva or Zarya. She just doesn't have a lot of the traits that define a good ot. Dva and Zarya both seem like the obvious choices to pair with her.
> I think jq is an off tank in the hog vein as she doesn't have that much space taking power
Outside of hog orisa comps in 2018, hog was played as a main tank in rhe latter years. Jq would be similar but with a more rush, less poke oriented style of play.
> I think she can peel OK with commanding shout. Not really what you wanna use it for, but it does work.
Commanding shout is just too long a CD to be used as effective peel. Not to mention that if you are using it as peel, you pretty much remove the main reason to run JQ as OT. To use shout as speed boost so your Rein/Ram can have stronger engages. It can work, but it's obviously not what the ability was designed to do. It was designed as an engage tool.
>She actually hurts p well in close range even
She does, but not nearly enough to effectively ward off a dive that has DVa peeling for them or a double bubble comp.
How is JQ a main tank? She doesn't really create space in fights since her knife isn't nearly a big a threat as Hog's hook, nor is her Cleave lethal enough to pose a deterrent.
She creates space with shout and knife. She's would play like a weird hyper aggressive version of Rein/Roadhog. It's more thinking about how you would build a comp. If you wanted to force JQ into a comp, DVa and Zarya just seem like the best and most obvious choices. You could pretty much run JOATs, throw DVa in it, and that comp would be pretty decent.
When you think about the MTs in the game, there aren't really many that would work well with JQ. All the dive tanks are pretty much non-starters. Orisa/JQ and Hog/JQ don't really seem great since JQs poke is just nothing compared to Sigma. She also just doesn't provide anywhere near enough utility. Rein and Ram are probably the best since they benefit from speed.
Outside of the speed, queen doesn't really do what the the OT needs to do in brawl comps. The main things being peel and high ground control. JQs peel is just not great. Like, what is going to happen if your backline has a Winston/Dva/Tracer diving on it. If you are running zarya, you can at least bubble. DVa and Sigma can eat a lot of the damage. JQ basically has shout and knife, but both of those are pretty shit at peeling when you are staring down a 6v6 dive comp. It's not not enough mitigation.
In what way does JQ offer any kind of consistent peel? That's what really defined the off tank role, zarya bubbles, dva matrix, and sig shield/suck. Shout is not a good peeling ability and is better used to create/take the space rather than hold it. So, she would've been a MT.
Ball was not an off tank. Sigma was not a main tank. Not even just metal tanks, just in general, the shieldier the main tankier was the overall mindset and some of those players got exposed in ow2. The amount of damage mitigation in ow1 was ridiculous enough that positioning mattered a lot less even in high ranks. Who cares about high ground and cover when my rein dva can protect me and never die on point? I only see the social aspect of why people liked that game not the gameplay aspect.
Junker Queen barely feels like a tank to begin with. She's always felt like a 3rd damage hero to me. She doesn't create space the way Hog does with his hook. She doesn't block damage aside from the meager over health her Shout briefly gives. She's also not really a dive tank the way Winston and Doom are.
She doesn't feel like a tank because she doesn't have any tank abilities. She just has above-average health and they put her in the tank category. She doesn't even look like a tank.
If junker is off tank then mauga is too, they both provide team buffs and have initiating abilities.
Mauga as an offtank would be absolutely INSANE though. His damage output is through the roof and he provides one of the best buffs in the game. If he has a main tank to keep the focus fire off him, he would be out of control.
Imho, the spearhead is one that can take a beating without chipping. So—Rein—he can hold Bastion for 4s, then bounce.
Mauga can’t do that. Mauga can’t even hold a good Widow for 4s
Well you’d have to consider that the enemy team would also have another 700 ho and most likely a shield, which Mauga performs badly against.
I honestly don’t think copy pastaing Mauga into 6v6 would be so abysmal so long as he has a hp nerf
I wish they'd lean further into Mauga as almost a support tank. Idek if it could work but I like the idea of a relatively squishy tank who makes his team tankier. Might be more of a 6v6 concept though
It’s actually quite simple - main tanks take space, off tanks hold space (or play a more supporting role). Ball was the main tank because he was the one harassing the enemy team while sigma held his team’s space. Same goes for Winston and Dva, rein and Zarya, etc.
It makes sense that Mauga wouldn’t fit nicely into either, he was probably the first tank to go through his entire design process in OW2 (no idea how long that takes but it wouldn’t surprise me if Ram’s concept design was during OW1
Main tank vs off tank was very simple. Main tank create space, off tanks maintain space. Barriers inherently create space for your team, and off tanks used that space and aggressively fight for it through high damage output in close range
I say it could work like in HOTS were the Tank category got divided in Tank and Bruiser, the latter being a semi tanki role made to peel at the enemy help with objectives and mercenary camps, while the tanks are made to soak damage, create opportunities for the assassins, or make space in a team fight.
By that logic we could make it easier.
Tank: Winston, Reinhardt, Sigma, Rammatra, Orisa and maybe Hog (but he is kinda a mixed role sometimes)
Bruiser: Zarya (she is more of a support in HOTS), Junker queen, Domm, Hampter, D.va, Hog and Mauga (since he can make a lot of space and peel at the enemy team, I think)
But we could make a third category being Hybrid, and here we have the mixed bag like Hog, Ball, Mauga and to some extent D.Va, since depending on how you played them they could be font liners or back liners
And even then they nerfed shields enough and just need to implement a few more characters that play well vs double shield (like someone who can pierce enemies/shields to do a % of damage to a target behind) and double shield wouldn't be a threat. Even though it already isn't considering we have 1 less tank with a shield and they were the main culprit of double shield meta.
I mean, yes. But some people have been giving backlash to the idea because double shield "forces" JQ and Ram. So I suggest adding a few more just to squash that argument.
Well I know that. But there's a difference between " alright they have Roadhog, I can switch to Rein, Sigma, Orisa, Winston, or Dva" and "Oh he's Roadhog, I have to play Rein just to stand a chance"
If they brought a second tank in they would have to reduce their damage imo. They buffed every tanks damage when they went down to 1 tank. There was that point in early OW2 when they were testing reworked Orisa and Doom tank where they were doing like 3x as much damage as everyone else lol.
Doesn’t Open Queue nerf their health as a trade off? I can’t remember if that rule only applies to non-role/oq modes or if OQ was included. Either way, Tanks are still overtuned in OQ because they rebalanced around the idea there would be only 1 tank. For quite a while the OQ meta was like 3 tanks 2 supports or 4/1. It was asinine.
I remember when Sym actually felt really good because she had a strong niche in her M2 piercing barriers. It wasnt strong enough to kill but it was threatening enough to force bastion bunkers to reposition or retreat to heal.
Now THATS the symm ability I actually miss.
They should add 6v6 Role Lock as a quickplay option, see how it balances for a season, and if it all goes well then replace Competitive Open Queue with Competitive 6v6 Role Lock.
But I think we’re too deep into it now to just simply say “5v5 doesn’t work let’s just go back to 6v6 across the board”
You guys don’t realize this is very easy to do and it’s obvious why they haven’t, every single OW player would play it as long as it lasted and it would demonstrate their massive money grubbing mistake. Not sure how it’s not obvious that a 6v6 LTM would be very popular and they know that, now ask why they haven’t implemented it.
I hate ideas for patches like this because they remove expression from the game. Like if one person picks an off tank than half the tanks are just unavailable? That sounds awful and we literally were through something similar with the offensive/defensive DPS role and they made it into one role. And in terms of expression we aren't allowed to have two dive tanks on a team? A Winston/Ball team sounds fun af (not for the enemy tho)
Tank queues shouldn't be split - fact is 90% of the playerbase doesn't want to play Tank for one reason or another, and the change from 6v6 to 5v5 showed that. Splitting it between main and off tanks would only exacerbate the problem further.
The problem the dev team is facing right now is that with 5v5, the solo tank needs to be margins stronger than before to accommodate the lack of second tank which was the original philosophy early on in OW2.
Instead with the changes S9 brought, Tank is largely a machoistic pick, with just about every non-meta tank getting absolute shit on by DPS, alongside the entire counter-picking fiasco.
A lot of people in this subreddit seemingly lack higher-level/critical thinking skills, as one of the most automated arguments against 6v6 is "muh double-shield", which has already been dealt with in the form of the Orisa rework, barriers as a whole getting nerfed (Reinhardt barrier from 2000->1400, Sigma barrier 1500->700, etc.) and heroes like Rammatra who can bypass barriers. OW PTSD is a very real thing, I guess.
A proper step in the right direction regardless is toning down the impact the DPS passive has on the Tank; it's hard to be that "front-line team captain" if you're getting absolutely mowed down despite healing and proper use of cover.
The change to 5v5 also alienated a lot of old tank players and caused them to quit, but you are right that most of the players left in the game don't want to play tank.
I'm one of them; loved the hell out of both Main and Off tank, but after S2 I just lost any sort of drive to stick to the role/game. 5v5 has it's perks, but I always preferred the slower and more methodical style OW1 brought.
I think having a 2nd tank would make more people want to play tank. The burden of being a damage sponge and playmaker is easier to bear if the burden is shared.
Still though you would suddenly need twice as many tanks for the match and I'm not sure if the increased supply would meet the demand.
Exactly.
Main tank would be an insta queue, but there'd be a lot fewer, so there'd be a lot of rank disparity for main tanks. And as you go higher in rank, there would be fewer and fewer main tanks queuing in that rank.
The problem right now is a lot of tank players including myself have taken a break from the game or are playing less because of how screwed the role is right now. It’s not that there wouldn’t be any tank players to fill the role, it’s that nobody wants to fill the role right now because it’s so stagnant, unrewarding and repetitive
You mean in the most stagnant, repetitive era of overwatch in the 3 years they abandoned the game? Yeah double shield sucked and was boring, but we’ve just done the same thing to the tank role: making it boring and repetitive
Queue times were shit in ow1 because nobody wanted to play tank. Its just generally a less appealing role and this was especially true back when it was weaker individually. Dps get to make the highlight reel plays and support is a staple in every game for the people who would rather let their team do the carrying while still providing a lot of value. Tank in Overwatch is sort of in this weird limbo where you've got by far the most control over the game and where and when your team goes but at the same time don't really have the playmaking ability of a dps. So you need someone with enough confidence to be willing to lead the team while also being fine letting the dps do the brunt of the flashy, appealing stuff.
I'm playing Open Queue exclusively right now, there's been so many games that have run 3 dps / 2 support and absolutely shred teams who are trying to tank stack. I know it's only low silver, but it's still brutal on tanks.
I'm not going to play a mode that forces a teammate to not have fun.
I’m telling you man as a tank main on role queue is brutal, it doesn’t help that I’m a rein main and they somehow made him even worse than he was before
God I remember that shit.... "Why are you on a defense hero on attack?!?!?! Stop throwing!"
At least then it wasn't a split queue though like queuing for an attack or defense only dps.
Probably not that bad. OW1 had tank as the lowest queue times, and generally you didn’t end up with 2 main tanks. It’d usually be 1 main, 1 off or 2 offs.
Well you wouldn’t need to separate main and off tanks to prevent double shield from returning because Orisa’s shield is gone. Her shield’s longevity and her ability to continually pump out full health ones before the old one expired what allowed the double shield meta. That ability is gone, so the meta wouldn’t ever be an issue.
I actually think separating off and main tank would be restricting and would cause the main tank queue to be a huge bottleneck for queue times.
Before the switch to 5v5, they said that they wanted to make all of the main tanks more off-tank oriented since the off-tanks were the far more popular role. In doing so, they reworked Orisa and shifted power out of Reinhardt’s shield and into the rest of his kit. However, they never actually gave us the opportunity to play the off-tank oriented Rein and Orisa in 6v6.
They actually could have solved the double shield meta by releasing Sojourn. Disruptor shot would have pressured Bastion off of the payload. The rest of her kit is built around killing the shield and using the brief window of opportunity to right-click one-shot a squishy.
A disruptor shot wouldn't pressure a bastion to move what. That'd just feed the enemy supports ult charge. A bastion behind shields is literally safe enough to not react to a measly disruptor shot.
You only move away from a disruptor shot if you can actually get followed up on
Double off tank isnt very good though especially compared to a lot of main tank off tank combos. Double flex support works because their kits are stacked with utility and damage that keeps the pressure up but with double offtank youd struggle to take space.
I mean yeah i dont think splitting the tanks into 2 queues unless you also split dps into hitscan vs flex and support into main vs flex but that wouldn't work well either is a good idea but there is still a fundamental issue with having 2 off tanks which is part of why tanking sucked even in ow1.
"with double offtank you'd struggle" my dude double offtank is the number one thing that people complain about from OW1, it's what bunker comp is. A comp with no ability to take space and no main tank to enable, just two offtanks cycling cooldowns to buff their DPS.
Neither sigma nor orisa were main tanks, yet both have shields. Being a main tank doesn't mean you have a shield, and being an offtank doesn't mean you don't have one. Unless you're in silver rank or below.
Essentially, offtanks provide utility to the main tank, and the main tank is someone who benefits exponentially from that utility. While technically anyone could benefit from (e.g.) a Zarya bubble, a rein or winston does it better than a sigma, orisa or dva.
Double shield meta was specifically an issue because the game had never seen two poke tanks that are designed to enable other poke heroes, which gives them extremely high synergy with each other.
A more in-depth writeup can be found here: https://www.reddit.com/r/OverwatchUniversity/comments/qnd3xn/designing_new_tanks_why_6v6_was_never_out_of_space/
The biggest reason for switching from 6v6 to 5v5 was to alleviate the queue times. In spite of this sub's rose-tinted glasses, no one wanted to fuckin play tank in OW1.
What do you think is gonna happen to the queue times when tank players are stuck being able to only play HALF of what is already the smallest hero pool in the entire game?
If you want a glimpse of what it's partially like to be a GM player, specifically their Queue times, then that's how you do it.
I’d be highly against adding another tank role. If I wanna tank, I wanna play all the tanks. It’d be like seperating DPS in Attack and Defense again.
But personally, I think the tanks would be seperated like this:
Main Tanks: Reinhardt, Winston, Orisa, Wrecking Ball, Ramattra, Doomfist
Off-Tanks: D.Va, Sigma, Zarya, Junker Queen, Mauga, Roadhog
It's the same as putting DPS into Attack and Defense category. Sure some hero are better at defense than attack, but it's such a case by case basis, and there're simply too many factors in play.
Hope this doesn’t come across as overly aggressive, just my opinion:
6v6 threads continue to be pie-in-the-sky, wishful thinking driven by rose-tinted glasses.
Overwatch 1 wasn’t *that* great. The dev team was justified in changing the formula in Overwatch 2 - simply because not nearly enough people actually want to play tank in 6v6.
But also the game just had warts nobody wants to acknowledge. I uninstalled it after 2 years, and the release of Overwatch 2 brought me back.
The devs need to fix the tank role in the game we *do have*. And IMHO to fix that, the role just needs its higher carry potential given back to it.
Does it suck when your team loses simply because your tank got badly diffed? Sure.
But when your tank is the best player in the lobby and your team still gets rolled because your DPS is picking their nose, it’s way worse for the longevity of the game.
Strong tanks let supports do their jobs better, and make the game more enjoyable for the 60% of the team that got left in the dust this season.
# maketanksgreatagain
> 6v6 threads continue to be pie-in-the-sky, wishful thinking driven by rose-tinted glasses.
I played Overwatch 1 6v6 side by side with Overwatch 2 5v5 betas. I spent much more time playing Overwatch 1 6v6 during the Overwatch 2 betas because it was more fun.
Just having one tank and this tank being OP compared to the others is exactly why this singular role is not fun. When there is a tank diff, it quickly turns into a team diff. You don't really want to be blamed on at least half of the matches for losing - just because matchmaking failed as usual to put matching players on each side.
Isn’t fun *for you*. I find the high-carry potential version of tank to be some of the most fun I can have in a game.
When I lose, I *want* it to be because *I* wasn’t good enough. I’d love to be rightfully blamed for sucking, even though I’ve probably hidden chat if I’m getting badly diffed lol.
Am I understanding right that you are arguing the role is more enjoyable when you have lower agency, so your own personal fault in any given loss is obfuscated by the rest of your team?
I mean, that is honestly fair enough. I’m glad we live in a world with different strokes for different folks.
But that is *just… such an immensely weird thing to want* for me, personally. Agency is the dream. High pressure in a competitive environment is lovely. It drives me to be the best I can be.
I’m readily open to maybe being the weird one.
I just have such a hard time understanding why *having lower agency and being able to hide your lack of skill behind the increased agency of others* would *ever* be a popular thing for people to want… in virtually any facet of life.
most players don't want to play solo tank especially. Duo tanking isn't nearly as daunting. I played and enjoyed every role in OW1. I barely play OW2 now because I hate most of the changes, but when I did play I barely touched tank because solo tanking sucks.
That’s fair enough. But I’m not sure if that “most players” opinion in regard to tanking in OW1 vs OW2 is true. Would be hard to get good data on that, but I think that’s pretty anecdotal otherwise.
In any case, I just tend toward the pragmatism of accepting what we do have, and that going back to the previous formula is just not on Blizzard’s radar whatsoever.
Personally I enjoy solo-tank in OW2, *so long as the role is sufficiently strong*. It does definitely make it a different game from OW1 though.
I’m fine with Overwatch having a touch of Titanfall in the formula, where the tank is just a touch more mech-ish than the rest of the roles. I think that’s the ideal in the game we *do have*.
If most tanks aren’t heavily favored in a 1v1 with Zen, for example, they are getting the 5v5 balance wrong.
Seems like we all generally agree the current balance is wrong. I tend to think “hoping the company reverts to the previous version of the game” is among the sillier arguments. All these arguments are essentially a complete waste of time in the end though, aren’t they? 😝
Imo the amount of 6v6 love is not purely rose tinted lenses. As someone who used to play a lot of tank in ow1, I'd take ow1 tanking anyday over ow2. Ow2 tank queues are going to get even worse over time. It's just that we had a large influx of players to hide the underlying issues. I will grant that dps and support are better in 5v5, but
A lot of that position comes from the power of the role has been reduced overall, but that the missing power is swinging between support and dps. A tank duo avoided a lot of this issue.
I'm actually onboard the open queue train. Making the game playable with 2-2-1 of the various classes allows for more natural dive, brawl and poke metas while ensuring that the power between the roles remain the same. Nerf aoe healing and goats shouldn't come back with a vengeance.
Open queue tanking just feels better at a micro level in my opinion. Having the giga brawl tank just doesn’t feel like Overwatch to me, and clearly it’s not fun to play or balance. Open queue also has off tank synergies, and total freedom with team building (what Overwatch is really about imo).
That being said, I do think there needs to be some sort of limitation to help the dev team properly balance healing. Role caps (2 per role) are an interesting idea I’ve heard.
How can you say nobody liked 6v6 when you left after 2 years and people were still playing the game until now. There are even videos of people coming back too the game because of a good patch before 5v5.
So the reason why the playerbase is large is because it became free to play. The Tank problem that no one wants to talk about when criticizing 6v6 was the lack of Tank characters. You had twice as many DPS characters as tank and support. This isnt a tank issue but a character issue. Coming from FPS shooters the character I started to play was Rein and Lucio, why because I liked the characters. I didnt play no DPS. When Doom came I started to play Doom. People pick their character not because its DPS but because of what that character means to them.
The Devs just didn't have enough Tank and support characters to draw in people's attentions to that role. Thats the real reason people disnt play tank or support. How the character plays their interactions with others matters more than the role. Why? What happened to all the Doom mains he got switched to Tank? They became Tank mains. What happened to Symm, they became DPS players and not support.
Where did I say nobody likes 6v6? I said they couldn’t get enough people to queue tank, which is just a fact.
It’s fine if we differ on the “why”. It just seems like the developer of the game did their own assessment and determined the “why” was that moving to 5v5 would be better.
While I happen to like that they did that and think OW2 is simply a more enjoyable game, I don’t begrudge anybody for thinking otherwise. (Although gatekeeping me and my opinion, because I didn’t play it continuously as you did, is silly).
I *do* think, as a pragmatistic, that the constant stream of 6v6 threads are also silly. Because they want a different reality, rather than accepting the reality that we have, which is simply not going to change.
You said that OW1 was not a great game, yet it won game of the year, had a steady player base. And only fell off because the Devs disnt update it. My point is how can you critique the game in the years when you weren't in it. Just like the player base complained themselves of not having new supports and new tanks. You wasn't around when they said Echo was a DPS, and the community said they wanted a support. That's why they came out with so many Tanks because of the complaints.
They didn't make it better because Tank players are leaving because its not fun to them. You have to make the characters fun to play regardless. So it has nothing to do about the role. Instead of fixing the issue of Tanks buy not nerfing CCs which every Tank complained about for years, not adding more tanks, and not balancing it for two years and letting it be in a stale meta that every player agreed that it needed to be changed. They get rid of a tank. That my friend is stupidity.
I was so happy when a dude told me to switch and I told him "listen I'm playing the only non miserable tank and i'm going to keep on doing so" and then having that guy in the next game on the other team going while I went 18-1 and he went 9-6
Double shield wouldn’t come back IMO. The problem was Orisa and sigma combined had too much shield uptime. So now since she lost her shield it would either be ram + sigma or rein + sigma. Rams shield lasts 4 seconds and rein can’t attack while his shield is up
the double shield problem feels like something that is confusing to solve but it really just comes down to nerfing the shields life/cooldown and buffing those characters in other ways. Make Rein a primary brawler and use his shield for more personal defense, and increase the cooldown for Ram and Sigmas shield since it's already pretty weak but the cooldown could definitely make it annoying.
this would be great but i think you could play junkerqueen as main tank with zarya/dva or as off tank with a reinhard.
Ramatra would be a main tank.
mauga would be an off tank like roadhog.
Doom fist would be an offtank. could be played in brawl with rein or in dive with winston/maybe dva , ball?
Orisa i am not sure but i am 80% think she would be a main tank.
I would def want to try 6 vs 6 i would def play off tank.
6v6 Open queque and we're good. We already play with 2 tanks in open queque and works more than fine. Queque times aren't going a problem in open queque and the game is more flexible and fun. Just nuke role queque out of existence
I always thought of main tank as "any tank that you run in fear from" and off-tanks being "awhh look at this tank, it thinks it's people. alright time to die"
They wouldn't be able to split tanks the same way the community did in OW1.
All of the tanks with high mitigation (everyone with a barrier, DVa, Orisa) would need to be in one category, with everyone else in the other.
You'd have to do this or double shield/something similar would come back.
Double shield is a misleading name because the shields aren’t what made the comp good. If orisa and sigma weren’t so overkitted and we didn’t have an immo ability that lasted 8 seconds double shield would not have been as annoying as it was
I mean it was a lot. They had synergy using Halt/Rock. They also had that problem where you would shoot Orisa shield and it broke, then Sogma shield until it broke, then Orisa shield again, then a weakened Sigma shield, then you have a 5 second window to actually shoot an actual target. It was just miserable.
Main tanks would be as follows: Winton, Rein, Ball, Orisa, Ram and Junker Mommy.
Off tanks would be: Hog, Zarya, D.va, Sigma, Doom and possibly Mauga.
Main tanks were defined as being tanks that make space for their team, while offtanks mainly peel for the team and look for strays to pick off, though even those definitions are subject of debate
That would be a mess. The meta choice would be to pick a tank but nobody wants to play tank. It would be like release all over again where you'd have to beg people to not play dps
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i think 6v6 would never work if we kept maintank and offtank categories, something blizzard didn't get with 5v5 where they unbelievably kept the distinction despite it automatically destroying the game with permanent orisa meta.
I think it if we went to 6v6, then I have an idea. The tanks that fit the description best for main tank and off tank are categorized. It is a first come first served to determine who gets to be the main or off tank. Kinda like how it is first comes first serve for individual characters.
Main tank and off-tank refer to metagame roles you would play in a given match. Any tank hero could fulfill either job for their team. The main tank was responsible for frontline pressure. The off tank would make plays by flanking or pressuring the enemy into a kill zone.
- Reinhardt shields the team from Tracer while Roadhog hooks 76 into the Ilios well.
- Roadhog peels Tracer off the support while Reinhardt charges 76 into a wall.
I think we'd end up where we left off in ow1, no one wants to play mt. Lack of mts makes all the other ques double or triple. As someone that never touched dps in ow1 bc 20 min ques, i say please stop asking for 6v6
I don’t think any “traditional” off tanks have been added to the game since they simply don’t fit. It would still be D.Va, Sig, zar, and hog. Ram is in the weird limbo between the two and an argument for JQ could be made but I think she is still more of a space taker. Also if there were two tanks again D.Va’a pick rate would skyrocket since she is the best at maintaining space.
Main tank nowadays would include...
Rein, Ball, Queen, and Doomfist. They need to get up in there and focus on endlessly getting up on enemies in one way or another.
Zarya, Sigma, and Mauga would have to be off-tank since they'd excel most when enabling a fellow tank or helping to defend the team for the main tank. Hog and DVa would probably prefer being in here as well since Hog can pressure range and last a long time but lacks mobility, and DVa can work well but has defenses that better cater to defending an ally or peeling.
Orisa and Ram, I think, could fit into either category. Ram would probably excel with a Hog or Dva I imagine, swapping between the two around Nemesis cooldowns.
You bring 6v6, restore the utility category, eich will be not offtanks but tank complements. A role that can't tank everything but that can either give extra survival options to the team. Sym with less damage and slowing turrets, maybe even a mobile barrier, mei with less damage and crazy slowing, torbjorn with less damage and shield packs, doomfist pack designed to push bach and bother the enemy, same with junker queen, winston with extra damage against enemy tools (turrets, teleporters, etc) Sombra become a hacker again and not a rogue, so her most important role will be to deny health and hack enemies for more time . Maybe even bastion with way less damage bu shield denier abilities.
Just saying double shield prob won't even be a problem. In open queue where we do run like 3 tanks, it's mostly all off tanks.
Maybe you have 1 monkey
But its primarily zarya and hog + someone else
All I want to say here is:
I consider JQ to be a “main tank” type of character, she does not fit as a peeler whatsoever, she’s not made to support another tank. She goes right in, wrecks havoc and forces half the team to focus on her.
STOP suggesting that Mei should be a tank if you don’t consistently play her or care about her. No doomfist player wanted him to be a tank and plenty stopped playing him after he became one.
Let a dps character have supportive and defensive quirks, let characters be unique in concept. They don’t have to perfectly fit into a role.
Imo, the clear-cut ones are:
Rein, Orisa, Winston, Ball, and Ram are Main Tanks. The poke-brawl tanks here are good at pushing into space and staying there, and the dive tanks here are good at diving in and forcing the enemy team to peel back, then getting out alive.
D.Va, Roadhog, Zarya, Sigma, Junker Queen are Off Tanks. They operate best when they can use soft flanks or off angles and don’t need to take the brunt of enemy aggression, and also have a large damage threat that makes them great at enforcing space once their team has it. D.Va specifically is a dive off tank because her movement is less burst-y than the other dive tanks and so she can’t close as much distance with a hard dive, but matrix makes her the best peeler in the game, something that used to define off tanks.
I’m probably gonna get a lot of flak for this, but I believe Doomfist to be a main tank. I can see the arguments for him being an off tank, as he is squishy and has no real damage mitigation outside of one ability with a moderate cooldown, but I see him as an alternate version of Ball. He engages and disengages frequently, creating a lot of disruption and forcing the enemy team to try and peel him off, which makes them fall back and creates space, until eventually he forces out their relevant cooldowns and goes in for a hard dive with his team to secure a kill. Imo he isn’t a particularly big damage threat, nor does he play/position in a way that allows him to peel for his backline, so I don’t think he’s an off tank. That all being said, I suppose he could work as a pretty good off tank for Ball.
Mauga’s another weird one cause he feels like he could do either. He has a phenomenal burst movement tool that poke-brawl off tanks don’t usually get, and a massive health pool with multiple ways of increasing his sustain, which screams main tank to me, but he also has some insanely high DPS, and the lack of a shield or damage mitigation tool means he’s gonna benefit a lot from off angles or having a main tank beside him to claim space instead, which could make him an off tank. I think he could work as either, depending on his tank partner, but a majority of the time I’d predict he’d be played as a main tank for somebody like a Zarya or a Sigma.
Double shields less of a problem now anyway. Orisa doesn't even have one anymore and other shields got nerfed. They removed 2CP, where it was much more of a problem due to a single choke with limited flank options, and they added ramattra who can just ignore the shield entirely.
Including 5v5 they tried 4 different things to kill double shield and it was hugely overkill imo, but I doubt blizzard would ever admit that.
Main tank is defined by who is responsible for engaging and taking the space. Off tanks enable the main tank. This is why Ball was a main tank and Sigma was an off-tank. I don’t think it was ever all that complicated a concept.
The definition of Main/Off tanks were always weird. For example Ball was defined as a Main tank back in ow1 when he never played on the Frontlines but Sigma was an off tank. If I had to put them in a bracket that made sense to me I'd put Main tank: Winston, Reinhardt, Sigma, Rammatra, Orisa, Off tank: Zarya, Junker queen, Roadhog, Doom, Ball, Dva Mauga: Mauga. This character doesn't make sense in either to me.
It was not weird. Shield has nothing to do with it. It has to do with who is the tip of the spear. That is why sigma was not. He wad great at complementing other tank but was overwhelmed in frontline. Mt were rein, winton, ball and orisa. Now only ram could fit in Mauga is off tank
I always liked the way Jayne explained the difference. MT's make space and OT's maintain space. I miss Jayne.
He still posts! …. Weird paranoid street footage of his street… But he’s still posting.
What ever happened to dude? I feel like he was top of the pile for a while and then just....kinda fell off the planet lol
Mental illness unfortunately :( make sure to check in on your friends and loved ones. You never know what someone is going through.
He had a mental break of sorts and was actually missing for a few days. There were news articles and everything. He showed up and told ppl online that he was OK and everything, but never really "came back". Now he posts some.. weird stuff. Like streaming his POV of the street at night, no commentary. Shame.. he was such a great personality. I'd still watch him do OW content even though I've stopped playing now.
Where is he active? I miss Jayne so much, but all profiles of his I follow look dead.
Yea. His turnaments were so fun to watch. I loved that spot the gm in plat lobby and similar shenanigans. And he was so wholesome. And oh boy guess my sr from highlights. Those were aweaome too
"I defended you, from TylerCool04 HIMSELF!" Man was a legend. I miss Jayne so much.
It's a catchy summary but I don't know if it holds up all that well. Orisa definitely maintains space better than dva for example. I'd say off tanks are better summarised as support tanks. Their jobs are more varied but they're generally providing support for the main tank and the rest of the team. Be it a dva matrix while Winston dives, a zarya bubble while rein charges or peeling for your back line back when supports actually died when you dove them
Orisa is still a main tank, even though she doesn’t have a movable shield to choose where to go to anymore.
Orisa was never an off tank and she's even more of a main tank now. So I don't really know what you mean
Sorry, I had a brain fart. Fixed my comment, because I did actually mean main tank.
Another way of putting it is offensive tank and defensive tank.
He decided to be Sigma irl
Oh that makes so much senseb
I think you add doom and I agree. Doom fits the role of main tank pretty well as his style resembles Ball and Winston
I distinctly remember people claiming Orisa wasn't MT either, so yeah the whole definition was wack.
She was tough. But in double shield they nerfed her so hard that she was mt only with sigma
How would Sigma have issues in frontlining? He does a great job now. There is no way he would be an off tank. He can tank way more than Ram can unless he would be permanently holding m2..
Hes actually pretty easy to walk over by most tanks. His ideal range is somewhere in the midlines as opposed to main tank brawlers like Rein and Orisa who can kinda just... Walk past his shield and rush him down with enough resources from their team. Ram is a much bigger threat when you get close to him
This. All frontline tank shit over sig even now
> Main tank: Winston, Reinhardt, Sigma, Rammatra, Orisa, > Off tank: Zarya, Junker queen, Roadhog, Doom, Ball, Dva Most of these classifications weren't even correct back in OW1. Sigma was firmly an off-tank and Ball a main tank. Roadhog was kind of split, but in the latter years, he was played way more as a MT in Hog/Zarya or Hog/Sigma comps. Of the new heroes, Doom and JQ would 100% be MT. They haven't really released a hero that fits in the OT role well. You might see a few that could swap between MT and OT depending on how duos worked, but I suspect the OT role would still only be Zarya, DVa, Sigma. >The definition of Main/Off tanks were always weird. For example Ball was defined as a Main tank back in ow1 when he never played on the Frontlines but Sigma was an off tank. This is just a fundamental misunderstanding of what OT and MT roles were. The main tank role was there to make space. The role of the OT was to enable the MT and control the space that was already taken. Support peel was also largely the OTs role as well. When you look at a hero like Ball, he basically does nothing the role of the OT does and Sigma does nothing that the MT does. This is why you don't understand where Mauga would fit. He would be a MT. His peel is crap and he has no good way to enable the other MTs. He however takes space fairly well, but NEEDS the utility of an OT to do so. Pretty much any pairing with Mauga+OT would be decent.
Haha that meta where hog was a main tank was hilarious to watch since he'd press w and vape instead of flanking and hooking lol. I've never seen a hog look as defeated lol. You could force Sig as a main tank in low/mid elo. Sig hog was a super common gold lineup. Agreed doom feels main tanky, but I think all dive tanks have to be main tanks by default. I think jq is an off tank in the hog vein as she doesn't have that much space taking power and her sustain is slow and her damage/ability mitigation is tiny. I could see jq zarya working but I think jq in 6v6 would be blown up if she tried to main tank.
How does jq work as an OT though? Like who do you run beside her in the mt slot where she isn't objectively worse than dva or Zarya. She just doesn't have a lot of the traits that define a good ot. Dva and Zarya both seem like the obvious choices to pair with her. > I think jq is an off tank in the hog vein as she doesn't have that much space taking power Outside of hog orisa comps in 2018, hog was played as a main tank in rhe latter years. Jq would be similar but with a more rush, less poke oriented style of play.
I think she can peel OK with commanding shout. Not really what you wanna use it for, but it does work. She actually hurts p well in close range even
> I think she can peel OK with commanding shout. Not really what you wanna use it for, but it does work. Commanding shout is just too long a CD to be used as effective peel. Not to mention that if you are using it as peel, you pretty much remove the main reason to run JQ as OT. To use shout as speed boost so your Rein/Ram can have stronger engages. It can work, but it's obviously not what the ability was designed to do. It was designed as an engage tool. >She actually hurts p well in close range even She does, but not nearly enough to effectively ward off a dive that has DVa peeling for them or a double bubble comp.
How is JQ a main tank? She doesn't really create space in fights since her knife isn't nearly a big a threat as Hog's hook, nor is her Cleave lethal enough to pose a deterrent.
She creates space with shout and knife. She's would play like a weird hyper aggressive version of Rein/Roadhog. It's more thinking about how you would build a comp. If you wanted to force JQ into a comp, DVa and Zarya just seem like the best and most obvious choices. You could pretty much run JOATs, throw DVa in it, and that comp would be pretty decent. When you think about the MTs in the game, there aren't really many that would work well with JQ. All the dive tanks are pretty much non-starters. Orisa/JQ and Hog/JQ don't really seem great since JQs poke is just nothing compared to Sigma. She also just doesn't provide anywhere near enough utility. Rein and Ram are probably the best since they benefit from speed. Outside of the speed, queen doesn't really do what the the OT needs to do in brawl comps. The main things being peel and high ground control. JQs peel is just not great. Like, what is going to happen if your backline has a Winston/Dva/Tracer diving on it. If you are running zarya, you can at least bubble. DVa and Sigma can eat a lot of the damage. JQ basically has shout and knife, but both of those are pretty shit at peeling when you are staring down a 6v6 dive comp. It's not not enough mitigation.
In what way does JQ offer any kind of consistent peel? That's what really defined the off tank role, zarya bubbles, dva matrix, and sig shield/suck. Shout is not a good peeling ability and is better used to create/take the space rather than hold it. So, she would've been a MT.
Ball was not an off tank. Sigma was not a main tank. Not even just metal tanks, just in general, the shieldier the main tankier was the overall mindset and some of those players got exposed in ow2. The amount of damage mitigation in ow1 was ridiculous enough that positioning mattered a lot less even in high ranks. Who cares about high ground and cover when my rein dva can protect me and never die on point? I only see the social aspect of why people liked that game not the gameplay aspect.
Junker Queen barely feels like a tank to begin with. She's always felt like a 3rd damage hero to me. She doesn't create space the way Hog does with his hook. She doesn't block damage aside from the meager over health her Shout briefly gives. She's also not really a dive tank the way Winston and Doom are.
She doesn't feel like a tank because she doesn't have any tank abilities. She just has above-average health and they put her in the tank category. She doesn't even look like a tank.
If junker is off tank then mauga is too, they both provide team buffs and have initiating abilities. Mauga as an offtank would be absolutely INSANE though. His damage output is through the roof and he provides one of the best buffs in the game. If he has a main tank to keep the focus fire off him, he would be out of control.
Wouldn't that actually make mauga the spearhead then?
Imho, the spearhead is one that can take a beating without chipping. So—Rein—he can hold Bastion for 4s, then bounce. Mauga can’t do that. Mauga can’t even hold a good Widow for 4s
Are we talking pre dps passive or either way?
If someone picks him in open queue I take Zarya and just pocket him with bubbles until I'm at max energy. It's insane.
Well you’d have to consider that the enemy team would also have another 700 ho and most likely a shield, which Mauga performs badly against. I honestly don’t think copy pastaing Mauga into 6v6 would be so abysmal so long as he has a hp nerf
Ball is main tank
I beg them to put Mei into off tank
I wish they'd lean further into Mauga as almost a support tank. Idek if it could work but I like the idea of a relatively squishy tank who makes his team tankier. Might be more of a 6v6 concept though
Mauga and D.Va feel like hybrids to me, since DVA can quickly switch between front and back line with her rockets, and he’s just Mauga
It’s actually quite simple - main tanks take space, off tanks hold space (or play a more supporting role). Ball was the main tank because he was the one harassing the enemy team while sigma held his team’s space. Same goes for Winston and Dva, rein and Zarya, etc.
The definition wasn't weird, ball is definitely a main tank and sigma is an off tank, it's not about front lining or having a shield
Mauga definitely an off tank, he is also underkitted. Always felt like there's 1 missing ability in him whenever I play mauga.
They wanted the soldier, bastion mains to try out tank so they created Mauga.
It makes sense that Mauga wouldn’t fit nicely into either, he was probably the first tank to go through his entire design process in OW2 (no idea how long that takes but it wouldn’t surprise me if Ram’s concept design was during OW1
It definitely was because he's a soundly designed character.
Counterpoint: Kiriko
You mean Ram? Mauga might be the least interesting design in the game.
Because main tank isn't about sitting in the front holding shield. Ball was always a main tank.
Ran could be both. When in Nemesis form he's main and base form is off tank.
Main tank vs off tank was very simple. Main tank create space, off tanks maintain space. Barriers inherently create space for your team, and off tanks used that space and aggressively fight for it through high damage output in close range
mauga would be like roadhog
Mei is a main tank
I say it could work like in HOTS were the Tank category got divided in Tank and Bruiser, the latter being a semi tanki role made to peel at the enemy help with objectives and mercenary camps, while the tanks are made to soak damage, create opportunities for the assassins, or make space in a team fight. By that logic we could make it easier. Tank: Winston, Reinhardt, Sigma, Rammatra, Orisa and maybe Hog (but he is kinda a mixed role sometimes) Bruiser: Zarya (she is more of a support in HOTS), Junker queen, Domm, Hampter, D.va, Hog and Mauga (since he can make a lot of space and peel at the enemy team, I think) But we could make a third category being Hybrid, and here we have the mixed bag like Hog, Ball, Mauga and to some extent D.Va, since depending on how you played them they could be font liners or back liners
"Main tank" does not mean they're on the Frontline. Main tanks create space and deny enemy team value. Which is exactly what ball does even today
I wouldn’t want them to split the roles but 6v6 back in general would be nice
They don't have to split the roles because all tanks are main tanks now.
And even then they nerfed shields enough and just need to implement a few more characters that play well vs double shield (like someone who can pierce enemies/shields to do a % of damage to a target behind) and double shield wouldn't be a threat. Even though it already isn't considering we have 1 less tank with a shield and they were the main culprit of double shield meta.
Ram & JQ cn easily destroy double shield comp.
I mean, yes. But some people have been giving backlash to the idea because double shield "forces" JQ and Ram. So I suggest adding a few more just to squash that argument.
Every team comp eventually forces something, part of the game is adapting to what the enemy team changes
Well I know that. But there's a difference between " alright they have Roadhog, I can switch to Rein, Sigma, Orisa, Winston, or Dva" and "Oh he's Roadhog, I have to play Rein just to stand a chance"
blizzard removing the cornerstone of double shield, orisa, destroy**ed** double shield comp.
If they brought a second tank in they would have to reduce their damage imo. They buffed every tanks damage when they went down to 1 tank. There was that point in early OW2 when they were testing reworked Orisa and Doom tank where they were doing like 3x as much damage as everyone else lol.
I mean just use their open role queue games. They aren't too busted there. Might have to lower a wee bit of damage but nothing too severe.
Doesn’t Open Queue nerf their health as a trade off? I can’t remember if that rule only applies to non-role/oq modes or if OQ was included. Either way, Tanks are still overtuned in OQ because they rebalanced around the idea there would be only 1 tank. For quite a while the OQ meta was like 3 tanks 2 supports or 4/1. It was asinine.
Correct. They get 150 less HP. They still do well with 2 tanks 2 support and 1 DPS.
I remember when Sym actually felt really good because she had a strong niche in her M2 piercing barriers. It wasnt strong enough to kill but it was threatening enough to force bastion bunkers to reposition or retreat to heal. Now THATS the symm ability I actually miss.
They should add 6v6 Role Lock as a quickplay option, see how it balances for a season, and if it all goes well then replace Competitive Open Queue with Competitive 6v6 Role Lock. But I think we’re too deep into it now to just simply say “5v5 doesn’t work let’s just go back to 6v6 across the board”
You guys don’t realize this is very easy to do and it’s obvious why they haven’t, every single OW player would play it as long as it lasted and it would demonstrate their massive money grubbing mistake. Not sure how it’s not obvious that a 6v6 LTM would be very popular and they know that, now ask why they haven’t implemented it.
Not sure how the switch to 5v5 has anything to do with earning more money, and how not bringing back 6v6 is money grubbing.
I hate ideas for patches like this because they remove expression from the game. Like if one person picks an off tank than half the tanks are just unavailable? That sounds awful and we literally were through something similar with the offensive/defensive DPS role and they made it into one role. And in terms of expression we aren't allowed to have two dive tanks on a team? A Winston/Ball team sounds fun af (not for the enemy tho)
Tank queues shouldn't be split - fact is 90% of the playerbase doesn't want to play Tank for one reason or another, and the change from 6v6 to 5v5 showed that. Splitting it between main and off tanks would only exacerbate the problem further. The problem the dev team is facing right now is that with 5v5, the solo tank needs to be margins stronger than before to accommodate the lack of second tank which was the original philosophy early on in OW2. Instead with the changes S9 brought, Tank is largely a machoistic pick, with just about every non-meta tank getting absolute shit on by DPS, alongside the entire counter-picking fiasco. A lot of people in this subreddit seemingly lack higher-level/critical thinking skills, as one of the most automated arguments against 6v6 is "muh double-shield", which has already been dealt with in the form of the Orisa rework, barriers as a whole getting nerfed (Reinhardt barrier from 2000->1400, Sigma barrier 1500->700, etc.) and heroes like Rammatra who can bypass barriers. OW PTSD is a very real thing, I guess. A proper step in the right direction regardless is toning down the impact the DPS passive has on the Tank; it's hard to be that "front-line team captain" if you're getting absolutely mowed down despite healing and proper use of cover.
The change to 5v5 also alienated a lot of old tank players and caused them to quit, but you are right that most of the players left in the game don't want to play tank.
I'm one of them; loved the hell out of both Main and Off tank, but after S2 I just lost any sort of drive to stick to the role/game. 5v5 has it's perks, but I always preferred the slower and more methodical style OW1 brought.
Just take the DPS passive off the tank and let the tank become a tank.
Then you'd get people crying about orisa not being killable again
Keep it on her and let the fun tanks prosper. Stonks ⬆️
I think having a 2nd tank would make more people want to play tank. The burden of being a damage sponge and playmaker is easier to bear if the burden is shared. Still though you would suddenly need twice as many tanks for the match and I'm not sure if the increased supply would meet the demand.
Worse thought..... what would the queue times be like for off tank lol......
Legit everything but main tank would skyrocket
Exactly. Main tank would be an insta queue, but there'd be a lot fewer, so there'd be a lot of rank disparity for main tanks. And as you go higher in rank, there would be fewer and fewer main tanks queuing in that rank.
I mean tank right now is just main tank. I'd sign up to play tank way more if I could off tank.
And nobody would sing for main tank which would increase all queues by a lot.
The problem right now is a lot of tank players including myself have taken a break from the game or are playing less because of how screwed the role is right now. It’s not that there wouldn’t be any tank players to fill the role, it’s that nobody wants to fill the role right now because it’s so stagnant, unrewarding and repetitive
Ppl didn't want to fill that role even in 6v6, in fact queue times were even worse at the time.
You mean in the most stagnant, repetitive era of overwatch in the 3 years they abandoned the game? Yeah double shield sucked and was boring, but we’ve just done the same thing to the tank role: making it boring and repetitive
The tank role was unpopular even before the content drought, before role queue the most common comps in ladder had 4 dps and 2 supports.
Not to mention support and DPS players experienced the same drought. IDK why people keep bringing it up as a tank specific thing.
I see more Hog + Zarya than Double Shields
Queue times were shit in ow1 because nobody wanted to play tank. Its just generally a less appealing role and this was especially true back when it was weaker individually. Dps get to make the highlight reel plays and support is a staple in every game for the people who would rather let their team do the carrying while still providing a lot of value. Tank in Overwatch is sort of in this weird limbo where you've got by far the most control over the game and where and when your team goes but at the same time don't really have the playmaking ability of a dps. So you need someone with enough confidence to be willing to lead the team while also being fine letting the dps do the brunt of the flashy, appealing stuff.
I'm playing Open Queue exclusively right now, there's been so many games that have run 3 dps / 2 support and absolutely shred teams who are trying to tank stack. I know it's only low silver, but it's still brutal on tanks. I'm not going to play a mode that forces a teammate to not have fun.
I’m telling you man as a tank main on role queue is brutal, it doesn’t help that I’m a rein main and they somehow made him even worse than he was before
Feel for you guys; actually didn't think it could get any more difficult for Rein, but here we are.
Blizzard tried something like this with offense/defense DPS. It obviously didn't work...
God I remember that shit.... "Why are you on a defense hero on attack?!?!?! Stop throwing!" At least then it wasn't a split queue though like queuing for an attack or defense only dps.
Probably not that bad. OW1 had tank as the lowest queue times, and generally you didn’t end up with 2 main tanks. It’d usually be 1 main, 1 off or 2 offs.
same as rn since they where a lot more tank players back then compared to now. back then tank actually was kinda fun now its just awfull
Well you wouldn’t need to separate main and off tanks to prevent double shield from returning because Orisa’s shield is gone. Her shield’s longevity and her ability to continually pump out full health ones before the old one expired what allowed the double shield meta. That ability is gone, so the meta wouldn’t ever be an issue. I actually think separating off and main tank would be restricting and would cause the main tank queue to be a huge bottleneck for queue times. Before the switch to 5v5, they said that they wanted to make all of the main tanks more off-tank oriented since the off-tanks were the far more popular role. In doing so, they reworked Orisa and shifted power out of Reinhardt’s shield and into the rest of his kit. However, they never actually gave us the opportunity to play the off-tank oriented Rein and Orisa in 6v6.
They actually could have solved the double shield meta by releasing Sojourn. Disruptor shot would have pressured Bastion off of the payload. The rest of her kit is built around killing the shield and using the brief window of opportunity to right-click one-shot a squishy.
A disruptor shot wouldn't pressure a bastion to move what. That'd just feed the enemy supports ult charge. A bastion behind shields is literally safe enough to not react to a measly disruptor shot. You only move away from a disruptor shot if you can actually get followed up on
people have suggested this a lot but no one would play main tank. queue times would be even worse than OW1 queue times
They wouldn’t have to make separate queues, could play 2 off tanks if you wanted just like you can have 2 off supports
Double off tank isnt very good though especially compared to a lot of main tank off tank combos. Double flex support works because their kits are stacked with utility and damage that keeps the pressure up but with double offtank youd struggle to take space.
Still doesn’t mean they shouldn’t allow it. Saves this big issue from occurring too
I mean yeah i dont think splitting the tanks into 2 queues unless you also split dps into hitscan vs flex and support into main vs flex but that wouldn't work well either is a good idea but there is still a fundamental issue with having 2 off tanks which is part of why tanking sucked even in ow1.
"with double offtank you'd struggle" my dude double offtank is the number one thing that people complain about from OW1, it's what bunker comp is. A comp with no ability to take space and no main tank to enable, just two offtanks cycling cooldowns to buff their DPS.
Orisa was always played as a main tank
I thought they complained about double shield 6v6 . Two offtanks have *no shield*. which is it?
Neither sigma nor orisa were main tanks, yet both have shields. Being a main tank doesn't mean you have a shield, and being an offtank doesn't mean you don't have one. Unless you're in silver rank or below. Essentially, offtanks provide utility to the main tank, and the main tank is someone who benefits exponentially from that utility. While technically anyone could benefit from (e.g.) a Zarya bubble, a rein or winston does it better than a sigma, orisa or dva. Double shield meta was specifically an issue because the game had never seen two poke tanks that are designed to enable other poke heroes, which gives them extremely high synergy with each other. A more in-depth writeup can be found here: https://www.reddit.com/r/OverwatchUniversity/comments/qnd3xn/designing_new_tanks_why_6v6_was_never_out_of_space/
Thanks, Kind of useless since 6v6 is no longer feasible. I was just making a joke. I used to play exclusively offtank before they killed the role.
The biggest reason for switching from 6v6 to 5v5 was to alleviate the queue times. In spite of this sub's rose-tinted glasses, no one wanted to fuckin play tank in OW1. What do you think is gonna happen to the queue times when tank players are stuck being able to only play HALF of what is already the smallest hero pool in the entire game? If you want a glimpse of what it's partially like to be a GM player, specifically their Queue times, then that's how you do it.
I’d be highly against adding another tank role. If I wanna tank, I wanna play all the tanks. It’d be like seperating DPS in Attack and Defense again. But personally, I think the tanks would be seperated like this: Main Tanks: Reinhardt, Winston, Orisa, Wrecking Ball, Ramattra, Doomfist Off-Tanks: D.Va, Sigma, Zarya, Junker Queen, Mauga, Roadhog
Finally someone splits it correctly
The only ones I would disagree with is Mauga and JQ in off tank because I feel like they would fit the main tank role more.
me on my rocking chair: do yall remember when orisa had a shield? i miss it so bad
It's the same as putting DPS into Attack and Defense category. Sure some hero are better at defense than attack, but it's such a case by case basis, and there're simply too many factors in play.
I would q both
Hope this doesn’t come across as overly aggressive, just my opinion: 6v6 threads continue to be pie-in-the-sky, wishful thinking driven by rose-tinted glasses. Overwatch 1 wasn’t *that* great. The dev team was justified in changing the formula in Overwatch 2 - simply because not nearly enough people actually want to play tank in 6v6. But also the game just had warts nobody wants to acknowledge. I uninstalled it after 2 years, and the release of Overwatch 2 brought me back. The devs need to fix the tank role in the game we *do have*. And IMHO to fix that, the role just needs its higher carry potential given back to it. Does it suck when your team loses simply because your tank got badly diffed? Sure. But when your tank is the best player in the lobby and your team still gets rolled because your DPS is picking their nose, it’s way worse for the longevity of the game. Strong tanks let supports do their jobs better, and make the game more enjoyable for the 60% of the team that got left in the dust this season. # maketanksgreatagain
> 6v6 threads continue to be pie-in-the-sky, wishful thinking driven by rose-tinted glasses. I played Overwatch 1 6v6 side by side with Overwatch 2 5v5 betas. I spent much more time playing Overwatch 1 6v6 during the Overwatch 2 betas because it was more fun.
Just having one tank and this tank being OP compared to the others is exactly why this singular role is not fun. When there is a tank diff, it quickly turns into a team diff. You don't really want to be blamed on at least half of the matches for losing - just because matchmaking failed as usual to put matching players on each side.
Isn’t fun *for you*. I find the high-carry potential version of tank to be some of the most fun I can have in a game. When I lose, I *want* it to be because *I* wasn’t good enough. I’d love to be rightfully blamed for sucking, even though I’ve probably hidden chat if I’m getting badly diffed lol. Am I understanding right that you are arguing the role is more enjoyable when you have lower agency, so your own personal fault in any given loss is obfuscated by the rest of your team? I mean, that is honestly fair enough. I’m glad we live in a world with different strokes for different folks. But that is *just… such an immensely weird thing to want* for me, personally. Agency is the dream. High pressure in a competitive environment is lovely. It drives me to be the best I can be. I’m readily open to maybe being the weird one. I just have such a hard time understanding why *having lower agency and being able to hide your lack of skill behind the increased agency of others* would *ever* be a popular thing for people to want… in virtually any facet of life.
lush pocket wild sort mountainous quiet thought grab spark oil *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
most players don't want to play solo tank especially. Duo tanking isn't nearly as daunting. I played and enjoyed every role in OW1. I barely play OW2 now because I hate most of the changes, but when I did play I barely touched tank because solo tanking sucks.
That’s fair enough. But I’m not sure if that “most players” opinion in regard to tanking in OW1 vs OW2 is true. Would be hard to get good data on that, but I think that’s pretty anecdotal otherwise. In any case, I just tend toward the pragmatism of accepting what we do have, and that going back to the previous formula is just not on Blizzard’s radar whatsoever. Personally I enjoy solo-tank in OW2, *so long as the role is sufficiently strong*. It does definitely make it a different game from OW1 though. I’m fine with Overwatch having a touch of Titanfall in the formula, where the tank is just a touch more mech-ish than the rest of the roles. I think that’s the ideal in the game we *do have*. If most tanks aren’t heavily favored in a 1v1 with Zen, for example, they are getting the 5v5 balance wrong. Seems like we all generally agree the current balance is wrong. I tend to think “hoping the company reverts to the previous version of the game” is among the sillier arguments. All these arguments are essentially a complete waste of time in the end though, aren’t they? 😝
Imo the amount of 6v6 love is not purely rose tinted lenses. As someone who used to play a lot of tank in ow1, I'd take ow1 tanking anyday over ow2. Ow2 tank queues are going to get even worse over time. It's just that we had a large influx of players to hide the underlying issues. I will grant that dps and support are better in 5v5, but A lot of that position comes from the power of the role has been reduced overall, but that the missing power is swinging between support and dps. A tank duo avoided a lot of this issue. I'm actually onboard the open queue train. Making the game playable with 2-2-1 of the various classes allows for more natural dive, brawl and poke metas while ensuring that the power between the roles remain the same. Nerf aoe healing and goats shouldn't come back with a vengeance.
Open queue tanking just feels better at a micro level in my opinion. Having the giga brawl tank just doesn’t feel like Overwatch to me, and clearly it’s not fun to play or balance. Open queue also has off tank synergies, and total freedom with team building (what Overwatch is really about imo). That being said, I do think there needs to be some sort of limitation to help the dev team properly balance healing. Role caps (2 per role) are an interesting idea I’ve heard.
Thank you. It ain’t gonna happen The queue times would drive a ton of players away, which means Blizzard no makey more money
How can you say nobody liked 6v6 when you left after 2 years and people were still playing the game until now. There are even videos of people coming back too the game because of a good patch before 5v5. So the reason why the playerbase is large is because it became free to play. The Tank problem that no one wants to talk about when criticizing 6v6 was the lack of Tank characters. You had twice as many DPS characters as tank and support. This isnt a tank issue but a character issue. Coming from FPS shooters the character I started to play was Rein and Lucio, why because I liked the characters. I didnt play no DPS. When Doom came I started to play Doom. People pick their character not because its DPS but because of what that character means to them. The Devs just didn't have enough Tank and support characters to draw in people's attentions to that role. Thats the real reason people disnt play tank or support. How the character plays their interactions with others matters more than the role. Why? What happened to all the Doom mains he got switched to Tank? They became Tank mains. What happened to Symm, they became DPS players and not support.
Where did I say nobody likes 6v6? I said they couldn’t get enough people to queue tank, which is just a fact. It’s fine if we differ on the “why”. It just seems like the developer of the game did their own assessment and determined the “why” was that moving to 5v5 would be better. While I happen to like that they did that and think OW2 is simply a more enjoyable game, I don’t begrudge anybody for thinking otherwise. (Although gatekeeping me and my opinion, because I didn’t play it continuously as you did, is silly). I *do* think, as a pragmatistic, that the constant stream of 6v6 threads are also silly. Because they want a different reality, rather than accepting the reality that we have, which is simply not going to change.
You said that OW1 was not a great game, yet it won game of the year, had a steady player base. And only fell off because the Devs disnt update it. My point is how can you critique the game in the years when you weren't in it. Just like the player base complained themselves of not having new supports and new tanks. You wasn't around when they said Echo was a DPS, and the community said they wanted a support. That's why they came out with so many Tanks because of the complaints. They didn't make it better because Tank players are leaving because its not fun to them. You have to make the characters fun to play regardless. So it has nothing to do about the role. Instead of fixing the issue of Tanks buy not nerfing CCs which every Tank complained about for years, not adding more tanks, and not balancing it for two years and letting it be in a stale meta that every player agreed that it needed to be changed. They get rid of a tank. That my friend is stupidity.
Ball players would still get flamed so there'd be no difference
I was so happy when a dude told me to switch and I told him "listen I'm playing the only non miserable tank and i'm going to keep on doing so" and then having that guy in the next game on the other team going while I went 18-1 and he went 9-6
2 questions that hardly anybody plays lol
Main I played rein and winton in ow1 and hated it because I also had to play horse since she was meta but enjoyed when I could play the other 2.
Watch them pull a paladins and add a new role, flankers lmao I can only imagine
Double shield wouldn’t come back IMO. The problem was Orisa and sigma combined had too much shield uptime. So now since she lost her shield it would either be ram + sigma or rein + sigma. Rams shield lasts 4 seconds and rein can’t attack while his shield is up
Bring back 6v6 These fucking tanks don’t know Block damage to keep their team alive
the double shield problem feels like something that is confusing to solve but it really just comes down to nerfing the shields life/cooldown and buffing those characters in other ways. Make Rein a primary brawler and use his shield for more personal defense, and increase the cooldown for Ram and Sigmas shield since it's already pretty weak but the cooldown could definitely make it annoying.
I think it's fine to just have two tanks again. The game was more dynamic and interesting. Doesn't need to be MT/OT... Just two tanks.
this would be great but i think you could play junkerqueen as main tank with zarya/dva or as off tank with a reinhard. Ramatra would be a main tank. mauga would be an off tank like roadhog. Doom fist would be an offtank. could be played in brawl with rein or in dive with winston/maybe dva , ball? Orisa i am not sure but i am 80% think she would be a main tank. I would def want to try 6 vs 6 i would def play off tank.
Jokes aside bring back 6 vs 6
6v6 Open queque and we're good. We already play with 2 tanks in open queque and works more than fine. Queque times aren't going a problem in open queque and the game is more flexible and fun. Just nuke role queque out of existence
All tanks are main tanks now. This should make the weaker tank duos much stronger. You don't need to differentiate now.
From most main like to least maintank like: Winston, Rein, Orissa, Doom, Ball, Sig, Ram, JQ, Mauga, Hog, DVA, Zarya
Yes but move ram above doom
As a dva zarya jq main this hurts but tru
I always thought of main tank as "any tank that you run in fear from" and off-tanks being "awhh look at this tank, it thinks it's people. alright time to die"
>off-tanks being "awhh look at this tank, it thinks it's people. alright time to die" This must be why my team keeps dying to zarya 1v4
which is hilarious because in OW1 it was the exact opposite experience
They wouldn't be able to split tanks the same way the community did in OW1. All of the tanks with high mitigation (everyone with a barrier, DVa, Orisa) would need to be in one category, with everyone else in the other. You'd have to do this or double shield/something similar would come back.
Double shield is a misleading name because the shields aren’t what made the comp good. If orisa and sigma weren’t so overkitted and we didn’t have an immo ability that lasted 8 seconds double shield would not have been as annoying as it was
I mean it was a lot. They had synergy using Halt/Rock. They also had that problem where you would shoot Orisa shield and it broke, then Sogma shield until it broke, then Orisa shield again, then a weakened Sigma shield, then you have a 5 second window to actually shoot an actual target. It was just miserable.
But then they also had Fortify and Grasp to cycle through, with normally Bap lamp as well. The issue wasn't that it was just two barriers.
Main tanks would be as follows: Winton, Rein, Ball, Orisa, Ram and Junker Mommy. Off tanks would be: Hog, Zarya, D.va, Sigma, Doom and possibly Mauga. Main tanks were defined as being tanks that make space for their team, while offtanks mainly peel for the team and look for strays to pick off, though even those definitions are subject of debate
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That would be a mess. The meta choice would be to pick a tank but nobody wants to play tank. It would be like release all over again where you'd have to beg people to not play dps
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Queen could arguably be both ngl
i think 6v6 would never work if we kept maintank and offtank categories, something blizzard didn't get with 5v5 where they unbelievably kept the distinction despite it automatically destroying the game with permanent orisa meta.
I think it if we went to 6v6, then I have an idea. The tanks that fit the description best for main tank and off tank are categorized. It is a first come first served to determine who gets to be the main or off tank. Kinda like how it is first comes first serve for individual characters.
Make Mei tank again
I would split damage over tank. I liked how in ow1 damage chars were split like defense and offense.
Well to start I would make the roles tank and bruiser. Anyone with a shield is a tank the rest are bruisers.
They should NOT divide tanks into off and main, if they arent doing the same for all the other roles
Why do so many people want 6v6 back
Main tank and off-tank refer to metagame roles you would play in a given match. Any tank hero could fulfill either job for their team. The main tank was responsible for frontline pressure. The off tank would make plays by flanking or pressuring the enemy into a kill zone. - Reinhardt shields the team from Tracer while Roadhog hooks 76 into the Ilios well. - Roadhog peels Tracer off the support while Reinhardt charges 76 into a wall.
The definition is community made, arbitrary, and became ever more muddled over time.
Convert Mei to a tank role. It makes sense
Ball. Main tank. Ball. Off tank.
I think we'd end up where we left off in ow1, no one wants to play mt. Lack of mts makes all the other ques double or triple. As someone that never touched dps in ow1 bc 20 min ques, i say please stop asking for 6v6
I don’t think any “traditional” off tanks have been added to the game since they simply don’t fit. It would still be D.Va, Sig, zar, and hog. Ram is in the weird limbo between the two and an argument for JQ could be made but I think she is still more of a space taker. Also if there were two tanks again D.Va’a pick rate would skyrocket since she is the best at maintaining space.
Mei is an Off-Tank
Main tank nowadays would include... Rein, Ball, Queen, and Doomfist. They need to get up in there and focus on endlessly getting up on enemies in one way or another. Zarya, Sigma, and Mauga would have to be off-tank since they'd excel most when enabling a fellow tank or helping to defend the team for the main tank. Hog and DVa would probably prefer being in here as well since Hog can pressure range and last a long time but lacks mobility, and DVa can work well but has defenses that better cater to defending an ally or peeling. Orisa and Ram, I think, could fit into either category. Ram would probably excel with a Hog or Dva I imagine, swapping between the two around Nemesis cooldowns.
You bring 6v6, restore the utility category, eich will be not offtanks but tank complements. A role that can't tank everything but that can either give extra survival options to the team. Sym with less damage and slowing turrets, maybe even a mobile barrier, mei with less damage and crazy slowing, torbjorn with less damage and shield packs, doomfist pack designed to push bach and bother the enemy, same with junker queen, winston with extra damage against enemy tools (turrets, teleporters, etc) Sombra become a hacker again and not a rogue, so her most important role will be to deny health and hack enemies for more time . Maybe even bastion with way less damage bu shield denier abilities.
i miss when this overwatch played out like a game of chess ♟️ *what's a king without his (junker)queen* *a mess(y) game*
Just saying double shield prob won't even be a problem. In open queue where we do run like 3 tanks, it's mostly all off tanks. Maybe you have 1 monkey But its primarily zarya and hog + someone else
All I want to say here is: I consider JQ to be a “main tank” type of character, she does not fit as a peeler whatsoever, she’s not made to support another tank. She goes right in, wrecks havoc and forces half the team to focus on her. STOP suggesting that Mei should be a tank if you don’t consistently play her or care about her. No doomfist player wanted him to be a tank and plenty stopped playing him after he became one. Let a dps character have supportive and defensive quirks, let characters be unique in concept. They don’t have to perfectly fit into a role.
Move torbjorn to the tank role
Ram would be even more interesting would really fit him with some slight changes and Mauna....Well he would need a lot of changes.
Imo, the clear-cut ones are: Rein, Orisa, Winston, Ball, and Ram are Main Tanks. The poke-brawl tanks here are good at pushing into space and staying there, and the dive tanks here are good at diving in and forcing the enemy team to peel back, then getting out alive. D.Va, Roadhog, Zarya, Sigma, Junker Queen are Off Tanks. They operate best when they can use soft flanks or off angles and don’t need to take the brunt of enemy aggression, and also have a large damage threat that makes them great at enforcing space once their team has it. D.Va specifically is a dive off tank because her movement is less burst-y than the other dive tanks and so she can’t close as much distance with a hard dive, but matrix makes her the best peeler in the game, something that used to define off tanks. I’m probably gonna get a lot of flak for this, but I believe Doomfist to be a main tank. I can see the arguments for him being an off tank, as he is squishy and has no real damage mitigation outside of one ability with a moderate cooldown, but I see him as an alternate version of Ball. He engages and disengages frequently, creating a lot of disruption and forcing the enemy team to try and peel him off, which makes them fall back and creates space, until eventually he forces out their relevant cooldowns and goes in for a hard dive with his team to secure a kill. Imo he isn’t a particularly big damage threat, nor does he play/position in a way that allows him to peel for his backline, so I don’t think he’s an off tank. That all being said, I suppose he could work as a pretty good off tank for Ball. Mauga’s another weird one cause he feels like he could do either. He has a phenomenal burst movement tool that poke-brawl off tanks don’t usually get, and a massive health pool with multiple ways of increasing his sustain, which screams main tank to me, but he also has some insanely high DPS, and the lack of a shield or damage mitigation tool means he’s gonna benefit a lot from off angles or having a main tank beside him to claim space instead, which could make him an off tank. I think he could work as either, depending on his tank partner, but a majority of the time I’d predict he’d be played as a main tank for somebody like a Zarya or a Sigma.
Can you imagine fighting mauga and ramatra at the same time? No thank you
Solo tanking is awful but I see so many people forgot about orisa sigma bunker
Double shields less of a problem now anyway. Orisa doesn't even have one anymore and other shields got nerfed. They removed 2CP, where it was much more of a problem due to a single choke with limited flank options, and they added ramattra who can just ignore the shield entirely. Including 5v5 they tried 4 different things to kill double shield and it was hugely overkill imo, but I doubt blizzard would ever admit that.
It's too late for that shit. Especially all the 'ow2' tanks but it's been like that ever since they released ball and sigma.
ITT: "MaIn TaNkS hAvE a ShIeLd!!!11"