FRICK dude, freaking realth always one step ahead. i didn't realize. chat check realth's video out if you haven't already: ua-cam.com/video/-Fmq0NC7h3I/v-deo.html
A lot of the appeal of tank, especially in 5v5, is you feel like the leader of your team and get to make a lot of the decisions. The problem with that is you'll play against the same tank 6 games in a row, go 3-3, and every game the losing team will complain about a tank diff even though you're equally skilled as the enemy tank and the only thing that changed was your teammates.
a lot more complex than just ur teammates changing but yeah i understand what you mean. i was playing sombra and lost, next game got the same dps opponents so they were talking shit, i stomped them. does that mean either one of us is better? i mean i was better but generally no😂
14:44 I think this question is very similar to what TF2 players ask about Medic. The Medic is by far the strongest and most necessary class to have on a team, and that's by design; I think the devs said Medic was made to be the most important class because they knew he was unpopular. But just like OW tanks, he's the least popular class and always the highest value target. I've recently heard the opinion that Medic being broken just because he's unpopular is outdated design so seeing OW go through potentially the same thing now is very interesting.
Except Medic is not broken. Medic is a threat that you need to kill first. He's someone who will never have a 1v1, but you want that to happen. In 12v12, Medic's "I win" button only work if you use it on capable player. It's not even "I win", it's "we win". And single kills doesn't matter as much as in 5v5, so some Heavy or Demo going on a killing spree may not even change anything if enemy team doesn't let him kill high value ground holding targets. Medic has only artificial similarities to Tank in OW2. Both games play inherently differently. And i don't talk about 6s, because it's not what TF2 was made for, it's self imposed format that balances itself differently than base game.
I feel one of the benefits with medic is that due to being a support he isnt really the recieving end of toxicity as much as tanks are. On top of this people naturally want to be near you and protect you because they get a very noticable tangible benefit from it even if they arent consciously doing it. You just instinctively defend medics if you can because letting one die is bad for YOU directly, where as with tanks they're not really enabling players in the same way so people often kind of just ignore when their tank needs help unless they're actively pocketing them already. Its also just in general a lot harder to really tell if a medic is doing good or bad in a casual setting. They're usually in the back, they have an auto lock on weapon and usually arent shooting crossbows, and i feel people are far less likely to get mad at a medic that gives you a bad uber than a tank they think messed their plays up since like they still got an uber. People dont generally tend to get mad at badly used ults like nano boost I feel vs a bad feeding primal for instance. Ironically I feel it's probably fair to say that a lot of medic mains tend to be the ones who are a bit high strung in these types of situations because they're the ones surveying and watching their team's mistakes as part of their job. Medic in general blends into a match unless they're so absurdly good that it's noticable, like with a lot of really good crossbow shots and such. Its not something that happens to tanks given they're the ones trying to grab your attention. The meme of "shoot the medic not the person he's healing" exists because of how well he just blends in and people forget he's just there even if he's doing good. One of the only times you really notice medic even being a threat directly is when they're doing the uberchain meme. He's also a pretty easy low barrier to entry character but high skill ceiling one in terms of how heal targets work, how uber rates work, avoiding and surfing damage, positional and game state awareness. he's OP but he's also a character you have to be good with to actually exploit. At the same time he also acts as a character that allows people to exist in the video game without actually having to engage with a lot of its mechanics if say they're not that good at tf2 but still enjoy it. Honestly I feel like medic might not even be the least popular at least with how people talk, I actually get the feeling that might be heavy nowadays. Also you generally cant "counterswap" medics. Counterswapping in general in tf2 is no where near as easy as it is in OW outside of scout vs engie arguably. Even spy vs pyro can be a pretty fair matchup if you play it right and that its more of an issue of spy just being bad in general. There are strategies to get to medics easier but because of medic's role and how tf2's classes work in general, you dont really see people swapping to specific classes as much to deal with him and the medic as a cahracter is versetile enough to adapt to these changes relatively decently. If someone goes sniper to deal with medic, there are a lot of ways for medic to deal with this, same for spy, same for a bombing soldier. Not to mention, because of how medic being OP works it does honestly make the general gameplay loop of tf2 better imo. The game would be worse off if medic wasnt really strong just because of how he enhances and interacts with the game state. Its sort of a situation of winston and rein being the meta tanks vs say an orisa, mauga, roadhog meta I feel. People just generally prefer certain heroes being the meta because of how they make the game feel and I feel medic tends to lean a lot into making tf2 better by centralizing the game around him a bit. Medic's like just in general weirdly fair for an OP character. You can do what ever you want to him if you can get to him for the most part, his ability to create direct pressure is near nonexistant and all his value comes from how he increases his teams resources and controls the gamestate. A medic that does not know how to do these things will be relatively easy to deal with by players better than him at their own classes honestly. It makes him scale pretty well in terms of the general server skill level even though he lacks a lot of mechancs (outside of the crossbow) compared to characters like moira. TF2's also just a game where multiple people can play the same character in casual and characters have loadouts so like usually people are taking some of the load off your back when you mess up. TF2 comp's a different story, I imagine it has its own sort of issues but at the very least that game's meta is so defined that there's a sense of stability that just isnt in OW and there are actual expectations people are aware of, and that medic isnt the only always locked in 1 character only class considering demo also exists and that highlander is literally that in its entirety. Normal TF2 oftne will have 2 medics on a team as well as an engineer so healing often is spread about multiple people all working together without even trying.
I agree spilo, and heres my ramble: I was an ow1 main tank player and most of my enjoyment came from macro aspects of ow. Micro aspects like tracking on ball, primal mechanics, etc are important, but i dont think thats what makes the character fun to me. Typical things you think of with tank like engaging on enemies is always fun, but later on in ow1s lifespan when i still had a bit of drive to improve, i found some of the most interesting parts of rein to be learning when to disengage and back off and finding that balance. With winston i actually enjoyed joining comms and coordinating dives. With ball, learning to time engagements and setting up a tracer or other dps for the follow-up felt super rewarding. Orisa, tbf was pretty boring, but even setting up with pull felt rewarding sometimes. My point is that this stuff can still happen in ow2, but it feels more washed out now. "Washed out" in the sense that good macro plays don't feel as rewarding due to your inability to make up for your character's specific weakness making your otherwise successful plays have less overall impact. This argument has been constantly said, but currently many tanks feel the same as most tanks in the roster have great frontline pressure and self sustain that makes them not have to rely on their team that much in comparison to ow1 tank designs. In response, youre expected as the tank player to provide a steady frontline presence. On ball for instance, this season I think i'm currently like 8-2 (i dont play much tank anymore), so even while we eventually win most games, my teammates demand me to get off ball bc a lot of times bc it probably doesnt feel great for my team to take the brunt of the pressure from the enemy team, despite the enemy backline fully focused on me (and a potential dps with me). Maybe it's specifically a dive tank issue, but without the second tank to relieve pressure for my backline, I feel that I'm incapable to doing my job and executing well-timed engages to the fullest extent. Another reason the gameplay feels "washed out" is because of the strength of most of the tanks in the game that rewards players, despite the lack of tactics and strategy that you talked about. Which is why i also agree that one of the worst apects of playing tank in ow2 is dealing with the enemy tank.
I feel like the way to make tank feel better for the tank is to shift the focus from HP to Mitigation because it is more skillful for the tank and it feels worse to shoot at for everyone else so they won’t focus as much on it.
A thing about the MMO comparison, you only really see tanks in PVE modes where you need one to be able to survive large pulls with lots of mobs or tank buster boss mechanics. In PVP it’s a dance of DPS and Healers trading offensive and defensive cooldowns and making use of the situations that come and go in the moment. I would argue in PVP the closest thing to a tank are specs that can easily turtle when needed. Turtle is a defensive play style designed to just out last your opponent. They can play into this strategy because they are better equipped to stay alive. That does not mean these specs have twice as much HP and passive cc reduction. It means you’re forced to respect their presence because they are just as deadly as other dps but risk less playing aggressive. A good example would be if rein gained fortify and 75% reduced damage taken when charging towards his team. This would allow him to play aggressive and make space easier without the risk he usually faces. Just an example, unbalanced for clarity. Most of this is based on WoW arena play and I only posted because when I started thinking about the similarities/differences and found it interesting.
Yea MMO PvP, they made healers 'tanks' because healers are the natural primary target. This way they don't have to force a reason to attack a natural tank since the obvious strategy would be to ignore the high health, high mitigation, low damage character. By adding an actual tank into PvP like in OW, they've had to add all these artificial reasons on top of making them lethal. Interestingly, they seemingly tried to make supports 'tanky' at the start of ow2 because the obvious result of making tanks less of the target priority is that supports will get that focus instead and people hated that way more
PvP tanking is misunderstood imo. It's not about aggro, it's about controlling space. There's no reason for a player to go after the high hp high mitigation character, so you give them tools to make going after other areas difficult, or tools to deny enemy positions of power
Honestly, Spilo, your suggestions I know come from the best place but that's not overwatch. If I wanted to be a punching bag I'd play WOW. Your idea basically means rework every single tank to have somewhat the same capabilities and see IF it works. When 6v6 basically means we solve 70% of the problem and it's just a matter of balancing correctly. Granted, the game will need harder work. But every game goes through that for attention span. For example, when league reworked dragons, or maps, etc. But your solutions don't solve problems of an asymmetrical game. The only solution I see for 5V5 is changing the concept of Tank/DPS/Supp completely. For example, league has DPS, Supp, mid, Top, JG. With specific visions for each. How do you fit 3 roles specifically made for a symmetrical game on an asymmetrical format with out making one of the three roles unhappy?
I've been a tank main the whole time I've played OW and I really love what you're saying here. I feel like the rein/winston comparison really highlights good main tank design. They're both super deadly when playing in their strong suites, and laughably harmless when they're not. Rein plays close and aggressive and really works with corners/cover. Winston isolates and either KOs or invalidates high value targets. Good tank design should mean very strong strengths and very weak weaknesses.
I love appying strategy and tactics to overwatch. Thank you for highlighting that that is tanks role. I want to apply what i read in art of war to the video games i play
Doom parry is interesting. When block is cancelled with block input there should be a 0.15 second window to destroy incoming projectiles and impacts, 100% negating damage and effects of things like sleep, hinder, Rein charge, Lucio boop, hack. Maybe there is a .25 second lockout as punish, if you want to avoid that you must cancel with another ability.
From the PoV of a predominantly MMO player (FFXIV) who occasionally enjoys OW and likes listening in on the game's history, I feel like the biggest misconception the devs have is a common trap that the ideal "tank hero fantasy" is absorbing damage. Yes taking massive amounts of aggro that no one else can physically handle does have a certain appeal to it, but in the traditional MMO space that is done usually in a very flashy over the top manner that sells the moment. Tanks in OW1 did this by holding the roles of initiation and guardian, but with the ability creep and format shift both of these are mostly lost. Abilities like Grav and Shatter don't hold the respect their OW1 counterparts did by a longshot. Mild spoiler for the new XIV expac, but if you can find the mechanic "Mountain Fire" in the recent Extreme trial for Valigarmanda, it's a perfect example of how it's the scope that sells taking high damage, not the damage itself. There's no grandeur of being on the receiving end of Widow/Hanzo Crits or a Bastion melting your barricade, then HP. OW can't facilitate that. What OW tanks need imo is high value, high risk (long CD) hero moment abilities that really showcase their capability to use their kits in synergy with itself but also the terrain to their advantage to create checkmates. If it wasn't for Fortify and her primary weapon being what they are, Orisa actually has a really damn expressive kit that amplifies this (even if Javelin's hitbox is way too forgiving). They definitely don't need XIV invulns, I think the OW community would implode if that happened, but they need tools to better flush/displace enemies out of chokeholds and in ways where everyone in the lobby can universally say "damn that was well done." Winston is so beloved for his ability to do this despite being extremely easy to pilot at a basic level. I'll also throw out that most Tanks have nearly no tools to mitigate/disrupt high range be it air mobility or sheer meters that doesn't require a full commitment, and it's a glaring problem in average uncoordinated gameplay which tends to favor poke. Ram's grasp was advertised as an antiflyer tool and it's a brutal disappointment and to this day it amazes me they didn't pivot DVa to be an anti-air dogfighter at her core to fill a niche tank has near no answer to. In addition more slow, but threatening long range abilities (think like old Symm M2 or Fire Strike) that need to be respected but are easily outmaneuvered at distance would go a long way to help Tanks like Zarya who cannot deal with excessive sightlines or verticality. Great video as always, keep up the good work.
HOT TAKE!! The direction Blizzard is currently taking with Tanks will result in the rebranding of the role to Bruisers. And Bruiser will eventually share queues with DPS.
Playing tank is a mentally draining experience to me, personally. The way I describe it, is I have to use my entire brain when I play tank. When I play other roles, there are certain parts of my brain that I get to turn off. When I'm playing tank, I have to be entirely locked in on everything at all times. That part is incredibly enjoyable and rewarding for people like me. The problem with Overwatch 2, however, is it has begun to feel like no matter how locked in you are, whether you win or lose has sometimes nothing to do with how well you play. To be fair, that's sort of been true about Overwatch even during 6v6 times, but there's no denying that that feeling is exacerbated being the only tank.
I agree and the community expects way too much from your average tank player because eyes are always on you. You're expected to push, take space, gets kills, mitigate all the damage and cooldowns, and basically play babysitter for your team (especially whiney supports), and you're supposed to make these plays and act as essentially the team leader. I feel like this problem gets slightly mitigated the higher up in rank you go but I don't like always having to be the initiator while simultaneously juggling every other aspect of the team while supports can just play heal bot with their multiple get out of jail free cards they can just use on themselves yet they're always the role with the shit talkers too. I've been playing the marvel rivals beta and it's so refreshing to actually be able to tank without all this BS to deal with, solo tanking doesn't even feel bad either, I recommend it at least until OW can get its shit together and at least bring back 6v6
@@propioneer6339and if you don’t hold your teammates hands it’s all magically your fault and never that they were playing a bad matchup and could’ve done more to alleviate the situation
I feel like a large contributor to this feeling is that the typical anti-tank heroes are super easy to play. I experience this a lot as a winston main. I put a lot of effort into improving my gamesense, movement, bubbles, primals etc, but all of my typical "hard counters" are super easy for any average Joe to swap to and get value with - think of roadhog, mauga, bastion, torb, reaper etc. It feels like you have to work harder than your opponents because that's literally what's happening. The same thing happens when you play tracer against torb or lucio against moira: high skill characters get hard countered by low skill characters. This is especially noticeable on the tank role because it's not unheard of to get countered by the whole enemy team at once. All the attention is on you and it feels impossible to outplay these matchups.
@@abudgie6909"hard" countered. Nah, those are mostly matchups that you can play around. Esp the tracer ones. You have to be better, but you picked the characters that say "I'm better than you", you chose the hard but high ceiling chars
@KeshavKrishnan tell me something I don't know. I've put over 110 hours into winston in overwatch 2. Can you see how much I used the word "feel" in my previous reply? The problem is a matter of feeling. The problem with tanks is not a lack of impact necessarily. The problem lies in the subjective experience of playing tank. One of the factors that contributes to a shitty subjective experience is the fact that winston's typical counters are cheese characters. When I work my ass off to try to win the game and my opponent gets infinite free value by pressing shift (bastion), it's still technically winnable - but it's fucking exhausting. The tracer-torb matchup is a slightly different issue for me. I'm learning the DPS role (it's my least played by far) and I've put some decent hours into tracer recently. When I go up against torb, he effortlessly denies so many angles for me just by placing his turret. The only way to "outskill" that for me (other than going somewhere else entirely) is having a teammate break it. This is a serious roadblock that's getting in the way of me learning this hero. My point is that, in general, noob stomper heroes seriously damage the learning curve. Any time a new player tries out a difficult character, they are likely to be completely rolled by noob stomper heroes, discouraging them from playing the difficult character again. Noob stompers obstruct your ability to learn the game.
I genuinely feel like the only way to fix tank is to weaken the tank roles offensive ability and allow them to provide utility that isn't raw stats. I wish instead of going "buff their stats" you give them more supportive utility. Like what if instead of Zarya face tanking with bubble and running the team over with inflated hp pool and 450 bonus hp with double bubbling herself, she is incentivized to bubble allies more. What if instead of DVa having micro missiles, she has something that provides utility to allies? I think there is ways to make tanks have more utility without having them overlap with supports and I think thats how you save tank. Blizz could do give them utility that allows them to initiate fights while also getting away from point anchors. Point anchors = CC sponges or unkillable bullet sponges. It could even be a passive for each archetype that enables their proper playstyles.
Tbh there was a creator patch that did something similar and people hated it. Not being able to use dmg to make space or defend yourself felt really bad when you are such an easy target. I think it would be worse in ow2 with the bigger projectiles
during 6v6 there was talk of wanting 3 DPS Comps when 5v5 launched people mourned the tank duos Doomfist, Bastion, Mei, Torb, Reaper, they all have felt like DPS+ in this iteration of the game, and they even moved doomfist into tank. The solution hilariously is the Defense role. 1 Tank 1 Defense 2 DPS 2 Support Mei, Reaper, Torb, Symetra, Junker Queen, Doomfist, Roadhog, Venture, & Brig. Balance them to be more vulnerable than the tank role. Then you have 6v6, triple dps, off tank, and you can tune the roles to be as intended.
Because you can either play him obviously and guard the team, and when no one is paying attention you force it back with a charge or a shatter. Rein forces the enemy team to respect space
Because he has no abilities to force a change in tempo like other tanks do. Sure he has charge, but if you haven't worked to set up charge in a relatively safe and impactful position you're just going to eat dirt. He's 100% honest and demands that you know how to position and have good fundamentals and timing, so he is very tactical. He doesn't just press a button to make space. It makes him one of if not the most difficult tanks to play properly
Because rein is about position, shield management, and fire strike efficiency. Its a game of corners, hallways, and manipulating sight lines. Its so fun.
He was WAY more tactical when you couldn’t cancel pin. One of the worst hero changes from OW1 to OW2. Pin should one shot every non-tank and should be an all or nothing ability.
@@cl4709 I mean the ability to cancel pin also adds some tactics when it comes to trying to bait out cooldowns from the enemy tank or their team. If anything it makes him more tactical because now pin is more versatile. Plus in a rein mirror matchup it makes it a lot more dynamic with how pin can be used to bait the enemy rein to misplay.
Tanks need utility to increase strategic value. Even if it’s not directly damage related. Zarya was my main on ow1 for this reason. I could bubble and save heroes as off tank all the time, and that value felt incredible.
Hey Spilo! I really don't understand this obsession of yours with trying to find tanking playstyle parallels on MMOs. The psychology is way, WAY more different when you compare the role on that genre, mainly because tank (in the vast majority of MMOs) are exclusive played on PvE, and not PvP. I can understand why it's enticing to search solutions there, but when you are in a PvP environment, tanks don't work because there's no demand and use for the purpose of the role: being the mitigating machine meat bag. Watch any trinity MMO PvP and you'll see that the most analogous playstyle tanks have to their PvE counterpart is... turtling. And we can all agree that turtling (rams blocking ad eternum) is VERY boring. Tank works on PvE because you are essentially playing a predictable resource managing game -- and that can never work against real humans without the tanks being calibrated to be literal Thanos on lobbies (which this patch made an attempt of doing exactly that, but they need to be even MORE opressive to get the same feeling from PvE MMOs). We don't have massive groups of dumb AI mobs to pull and manage on a PvP environment. There's no NEED to actually TANK anything on a PvP environment, be it Overwatch or on MMOs. Pressure on objectives is the closest tanks get to having a "duty", but you can't have a tank applying pressure for too long on an objective without them feeling like complete crap for everyone involved (again, rams blocking ad eternum). This lack of purpose in-game is what afflicts most tanks on Overwatch -- when all objectives are glorified contest rectangles, killing people will always be the most efficient way to play the game. We can have all the Overwatch talk of space, angles, pressure, micro & macro, etc... but at the end of the day, if the game modes are designed to be "PvP blob on objective or rotate and dive to frick people" then DPS and support will forever feel WAY better than any tank playstyle. This role in gaming was invented because someone needed to manage predictable large amounts of damage while other roles pump damage and heals. There's no way to quantify or enforce that manner of tanking on current Overwatch PvP game modes. What if a game mode needed you to take down an enemy base, and tanks got more value shooting that than shooting players? Like, I don't know. I just know that the issue lies on the Overwatch game modes not giving tanks a justifiable enough reason for tanks to... tank. We need better objectives and reasons to exist, until then, we'll forever be fat DPS with some util. Food for thought: why call them tanks? Call them initiators, enablers, brawlers... something else. Entering hot take territory: all the sucessful shooters on the market have some sort of homogeneity to some aspects of their gameplay to keep them balanced exactly because of the above arguments (consistent hitbox sizes, everyone has access to the same guns, abilities and util achieve the same thing through different flavours, etc). Overwatch could reenvision itself to be more moba-like, which I think is what they currently experimenting on with the passive choices and whatnot. I just don't really like that current gamemodes on Overwatch kinda destroys the inherent heterogeneity on hero shooters, and mobas do a very good job of keeping diverse roles and skills relevant and needed. I do enjoy Overwatch meat gameplay a lot -- rotating and diving is fun, interactions are fun, hero fantasy is -mostly- fun, strategy is fun as hell, but at the end of the day everything feels like deathmatch with (a lot of) extra steps, and while that creates a good and entertaining enough game (seeing that most of us vets are playing this thing for almost a decade), it could be so much more... not only for tanks, but the other roles too. Every role could be as much cerebral and tactical as tank and tank could have a more valid reason to exist!
Spilo seems to find certain things that he thinks is a slam dunk argument and then just uses them over and over again instead of having substance to arguments.
This is a very good point and I was also very confused when he kept mentioning it. Though I will say it is hard to find games that play like OW even within the same genre. Most of them died off and are unplayable except Paladins I guess. You need to have played these "dead-at-launch" games before they are shut down and long enough to have a good understanding. So I can see why it's difficult. Also honestly I think Concord is the most similar to OW I've ever played and I don't think that game will last long enough to find out how tanks will feel after people learn the game properly. Even tanks in PVP games seems pretty niche. All I can think of is "big body" characters in fighting games and things like chivalry or For Honor which basically is a fighting game. In each of those the "tank" is usually slower but hits hard and the threat of that damage helps them control space. Of course whether they are "tanks" still is debatable but I think it is a better jumping off point for OW tanks if you didn't play all of those dead hero shooters.
Cooking some options to add counter play. Iron wall: When a tank uses a certain ability, just one not both, for that first second they are completely immune to any form of cc. Cant get naded, slept, hooked, booped, slowed, nothing. Not like a suzu where they are invulnerable, but they can still take damage from it. So still get nade damage, hook damage, still can be shot at, but adds counter play. Somewhat of a parry. Requires good timing and reading of the situation, not like Orisa where you just go golden and walk in. This could be put on stuff like mauga overrun, doom block, rein charge, dva boost, winton jump, ram transform, etc. Again this is only during the initial instance so you still can sleep or boop anyone after the cast, but its like a parry. Its still punishable but it gives tanks an option and adds another knob. It could be an effect/buff that they add and can be tweaked on a per hero basis.
In ff14, every role is demanding and engaging similarly but in separate ways. Tanks manage their cooldowns to pull large groups and manage boss cycles, DPS have tight and interesting rotations and mechanics on each different Job, Healers have to pay attention and manage their resources to keep everyone alive. Both Healers and Tanks DO damage at the same time as their mechanics, Healers go between making sure people aren't dead, and using damage abilities to push the bosses down faster. Tanks usually have healing sustain and mitigation in their combos of damage. Keeping aggro is done WITH basic combos. I think OW should focus on how to make each Hero distinct like Jobs, everyone has an identity in gameplay, and each role more specific to the idea of the role. DPS shouldn't be lax and supports be mixed and tanks be max stress. Everyone should be the same level of stress and engaging to play.
Maybe it's just me but I like playing tank overall, I just hate a handful of specific interactions. It's annoying that someone can just pick sombra and completely deny ball. Even more annoying than ball, and low key underrated, is sombra vs sigma. You can't even use your grasp without it getting hacked, let alone your ult. Hack needs to be a skill shot, and get rid of invis. If you get stunned out of grasp, you should still get the overhealth. Why does doomfist have a 4 second cooldown that can cancel almost every tank ult? The other issues are human issues. It's annoying to hear your teammates say tank diff when the enemy junkerqueen had 2 deaths the entire game because she was farming your team and there was little you could do about it. Many such cases. Lucio boop and brig flail completely denying ball on a shorter cooldown than his movement. Hacks and stuns working on ball even when he is in fireball. But what can you do about your supports going Moira Illari when you pick monkey on a good high ground map? Then they wait till the end of the match to say tank diff, even though I beat the red team tank on my last match decisively.
The Tank Role have to be open to being creative. There is ONLY ONE mode where Tank is fun to play: Arcade Total Mayhem. Why? Survivability combined with quick and unpretentious cooldowns gave you the opportunity to be creative and strategic with skills. I believe the key is to reduce damage, reduce cooldowns and let tanks be creative with their abilities, depending on the rest of the team to fulfill their strategy, as they alone will not be able to score kills. The only impact the tank will have is the strategic.
I think the main issue tank has right now is just the efficacy of counterswapping in the most extreme cases constantly reinforcing in people that it's the right play. I've had games recently, not necessarily wins in which the enemy hasn't immediately swapped to counters and playing tank felt great. Perhaps my opinion is slightly skewed as a mostly ball/Winston player, but they might also be the perfect examples. Playing Winston into reaper/hog/bastion/Ana/brig feels absolutely fine when compared to playing ball into even just sombra/cass. Perhaps if you work out the fringe cases that feel too oppressive to play into, that may go a long way towards fixing it. I like a yap too
Tank-like slower game pace, where they have time to make decisions and impact the game on a tactical and strategic level. Tank like the buffer they get through tankiness, allowing them to implement their decisions and react to what is happening. The current issue is, the tank needs to do everything. They need to protect, deny space, and take space. The current issue is, that tank players face the brunt of the enemies' abilities, and damage, and have to rely on their team to do their part to not go under. Tankiness or damage is not the solution to this issue. The solution would be to give the tank players more tools they can use to interact with the other team and their team. These "tactic tools" will give them options they currently lack. If you play a tank on a point map and your team plays Ashe, Widow, Illari, and Ana, it doesn't matter what tank you play. During hack the pickable passives allowed some tactical decision-making by picking and adjusting what we currently need. Damage, Sustain, CDR But this is more a bandaid fix and it would take a short while until a meta is established and we are back at square one.
Some tanks when played optimally don't want fights to go long at all. If you're playing rein you win by swinging on as many squishy heros as fast as possible. As ball you win by hitting a big piledriver engage as fast as possible then disengaging for the next fight. It's only the poke tanks that want fights to go long because that's how their sustain or damage works. As for the team comp it does matter a lot what tank you play. Sigma to synergize with poke, Dva to peel, or even arguably Orisa with her infinite damage range to spam pressure at long range. You have serious influence. You don't have to do everything to win games. You just have to do what your team needs the most. And that's when enforces the counter pick state of tank so much. In every game there is a best tank to swap to. And every tank has hard counters now. Mauga just generically counters like 80% of tank picks by doing nothing but shooting the biggest guy on the other team.
Here is my reason. For me all roles have their ''benchmarking'' in this competitive game. DPS role benchmark it's mechanical skill which i'm not interested. Sup role in OW2 is now closer to DPS role. I was mostly a sup player in OW1 but not in OW2. Tank role benchmark strategy and tactics, that's why i play tank. I don't enjoy racing with other enemies in a mechanical skill tournament if that makes sense. Tank is more stimulating to me. However tank balance is always problematic i think devs do a very bad job. I always played MMO and ARPG games since my childhood. I think devs lack this knowledge to balance this game. Their balance doesn't make sense. Any ARPG veteran can easily see this. Trade offs aren't in right places. It was definitely better before S9. To tackle counterpicking, they trapped themselves and make the balance even worse. Sure it's now way harder or not possible to ''counter'' some tanks but it's not a good thing. OW community, pros, streamers etc... these people worse than devs. Bunch of clueless childs. I think devs should ignore everyone but also improve themselves. In the meantime, pickrate/winrate should be their guidance to some degree. However how they collect winrate data is also questionable.
Reduce healing and spike damage over all. I think the healing and dmg numbers are way way to high. there are times i peak and take 1000 dmg in less than 2 seconds. and sometimes that's without ults and this is just from peaking a corner. When that goes away, spammy bs. then you can nerf tanks without them feeling worse. I just feel like the focus is put into the wrong things. Power creep is real and i know most people won't agree with me but I think it goes beyond just tank.
tanks used to be about positional outplay and proactivity in 6v6 until they chose to put in more and more defensive playstyles in the game to go against hard dive and the few actual good tank players. Also in the hope to make more ppl queue for tank. the result was double shield and cheese strats which trickled down to the lowest of ranks. It's just a series of unfortunate events. Now we're left with this empty shell of a game which enforces toxic playstyles, constant counterswapping and more toxicity towards tanks.
It came up when you were talking about the Warden... and I'm wondering if perhaps Blizzard should make it so tanks get ult from being damaged again. Maybe not all tanks, but perhaps Reihn, Sigma and Orisa just as a start could try it out. Make it so that you really don't want to shoot the tank, while for those three you really want to make sure you're taking hits instead of your team. I think it could feel great to eat an ultimate with reihn barrier, turn around and shatter right afterwards.
Your idea of a cc parry is interesting. Having a straight cleanse on a doom or ball would be boring, but it could be something crazy on a new dive hero that if you react fast enough, or even prime it and use it like Sigma eat, you could convert the cc effect and turn it into a skill shot under your control. Like you catch a sleep dart, have 2 seconds to hold it before you shoot it in another direction, or if you only want it to affect the cc effect, you get slept, you cleanse and it gets out into an orb you throw out. Even weirder, if you could react to like brig shield bash stun or something, cleanse and shoot it out. You may have covered something like that but i was cooking dinner while watching and thought of that
what about a hud indicator for how much attention you're taking (how many enemies are looking at you). That way you know how much danger youre in and get a better rewarding feel for how much enemy attention youre taking. maybe have a stat to go with it
We really need an off tank/warrior type role. Main tanks get cc and dmg reduction while off tank/warriors are more brawl/dmg focused. But then we would probably need 6v6 again
Ball Hog worked just fine in OW1? I peaked at 3456 in OW playing nothing but ball and I often had Hog as tank partner... I had a 60% win rate at the time so I was still climbing... and that is back in the last couple seasons of OW1 when it wasn't uncommon for Diamond tanks to end up in Masters games.
Spilo i dont think you see the value of the Warden example you presented. Maybe give all tanks some sort of measured buff to their kits per person shooting at them or possibly even change one of their abilities to an empowered version that is charged by taking damage
1:01:09 You didn't answer this question. Why do top players complain about playing tank? I assume top players know not to shoot tank, otherwise they wouldn't be the top players. So what else is the problem? Is it a different problem or is there one problem affecting all ranks?
I feel like the tank’s sole presence on the field is taking too much attention, instead of my existence drawing attention it should more be my actions and playmakings that force exponentially more attention
They should straight-up nerf tick damage volume based on the target's current HP amount. So it starts scaling down in volume from like 200HP to almost inaudible at like 600HP
The problem with tank in 5v5 is in the fight between role and agency. Role is the opposite of agency. If you have a job, then you do that job or you lose. Choices that you're forced to make aren't real choices. Without real choices, you have no agency. A job is the opposite of a game. You're not playing if you have to do something. With one tank, you must do the job that is expected of that tank or your team simply loses. With two tanks, there is room for playstyle choices. Not only that, but those choices are intuitive. Do we need peel? One tank peels while the other holds frontline. Do we need to punish? One tank punishes while the other peels or holds the line. The declaration of the main tank gets enforced in different ways by different off tanks, creating agency and interest. With one tank, that tank has a job. That is binary. The tank is either doing their job or not. Work isn't play.
I think a lot of heroes, but doom specifically have had a lot less tactical options and flexibility since s9. Doomfist for example got his punch buffed to compensate for healthpools, but his slam untouched. So now you rely far more heavily on punch to consistently confirm a kill, while your slam feels ineffective for much more than mobility and building shields/ult. This makes him far more predictable and limits your creativity potential. He needs either 60dmg slam or make his block be able to absorb 1 "cc" cooldown by just breaking without giving empowered instead of getting cc'd. In his current state he just feels like an empowered punch bot which is much less engaging. Overall devs seem to not understand doom at all, buffing his shields when that's not a pain point or the ult healing "buff" that seriously nerfed the hero in exchange for 250 avg healing a game.
I love these videos so much despite not playing the game as much. Out of every tank, i mained doomfist because it scratched a similar itch i got from tanking in ff14, where i have yo be mindful of where i am for raid encounters, rotating cooldoqns and executing on ability usage. Doom constantly shifts around the battlefield, looking to interrupt abilities, flank angles, coordinate dives with other players or even have an escape route in mind in case a fight goes poorly. Comparing thst to someone like orisa who feels much more static and then her being rewarded for such a boring playstyle just sucks for the game as a whole imo. I hope the devs look into giving tanks more dynamic and interesting kits for all players to sink their teeth into.
For the sake of conversation, I want to the challenge the idea of making tanks less visually imposing. My big issue with it is simply, I don't think it will actually work in the short term. It doesn't matter how small you make Roadhog - anyone who's seen a Roadhog before is going to shoot the Roadhog, simply because that's what they know to do. We have to fight up to 8 years of psychological training to make these characters not look juicy. I don't have an immediate answer for how to beat that, but I think it's more complicated than just hurtbox sizes
I think what your friend said about reacting to things and needing to feel like he is on the edge constantly very much appeals to me, I'm a long-term main tank player, been so since 2016 and the thing I've found the most miserable about ow2 is the counter swapping aspect, I like feeling like I am on the edge utilising my winston bubble perfectly to maybe block an ana dart, or blocking a shatter with rein shield however when the best strategy feels like "oh just swap character to have a better match up" it doesn't feel very intelligent and I find it mind-numbing I've never enjoyed playing OP characters, I fucking HATE it when the sustain tanks are meta and as your friend said it feels like my brain is actively dying and I play worse because of that.
I faced the same tank player 5 times yesterday. We got to a point where we greeted each other in chat. We both were good so it was literally just who has the better team that round lol. Ofc tho every dps that cycled through blamed either me or him haha
How to fix tank but keep him balanced. Looking at tank makes you permanently blind. Sound goes mute. That way the numerical balance is not affected at all.
Spilo said we need tanks to hve more tactics, but in what way? Are we giving more speed/mobilty for more choice or how can we make it more “tactical”? Because i dont rly see anything they can add in the numbers to make it more tactical, unless we make more tanking abilties like maugas shorter, but more powerful.
I'm the minority, I guess, since Tank is by far my best role and I've always liked being able to protect my team moreso than attacking the enemy team or making big plays. I need to engage since that is how Tank is played in OW, but I always feel the most satisfied whenever I get the perfect Zarya bubble to keep an ally alive or rush forward with a Rein to put my shield up to have my DPS safely retreat (even if no one actually sees/recognizes it). I also can't discount that getting elims (or just getting the enemy to retreat) is probably the best way to protect the team (see: Hog being my second-most played tank). But I do not like the pressure on a solo tank. Not the enemy-focus pressure - though that is an element of it - but the fact that having so many more *numbers* than DPS or support means the team can easily fall apart if you can't measure up to the enemy tank. I didn't play tank for the first 2 seasons of OW2 because I didn't want to deal with that, and the extra power that the OW team is putting into the role is just making me want to queue for my favored/preferred role even less.
Generally in ow1 days in deathmatch people picked tanks if they were bad. Because if they were good they'd just pick more fun dps. That allowed me to kill roadhogs on mercy. It is ow2 where I have no chances against a tank in 1v1
I'll be honest. I just want to play OW1. Don't care how bad I just don't want the new hero's who are all annoying to play against and it's just going to keep being that way. Other than Juno. Kiri/weaver/soj/venture all just really not enjoyable to play against and easily op if someone is good or even decent at em. Just massive gaps in game results because no sbmm, or sbmm makes you carry if you're good. All just a bad time.
As a tank in WoW. I love having control over the flow of the fight. The tactics and position control is crucial. The ability to stun, taunt, disarm, body block, etc., are all mini-games that I get to play as a tank when I played Rein in OW1, but completely lost the ability to do so in OW2. I used to enjoy shielding up while their tank overextended because it meant their ana couldn't heal, but now, I just get my shield obliterated and nuked if I hold shield too long to try to manipulate the map in that way.
What feels good about tank to me is not the 'power' of tank. It's the ability to enable my team through skillful expression. I have quit tank recently as I relised the tanks I enjoyed (Zarya, Winston) didn't have the same expression they used to when i picked them up. I dont care how long I live if the 'moments' I create are exciting and I feel like I earned a fight win. Also I don't care about attention on Zarya, it's about enabling the other tank, or genji, reaper, etc (charge is just a fun byproduct of the oppenents lack of discipline). Whereas on Winston I want the attention as the fun is in my ability to engage and disengage. Just knowing you caused the fight win is the fun bit. Not because the numbers allowed my to be annoying for longer.
Is tactical suppose to be like... choices? If so then parry surely isn't tactical but a skill check. ofc this depends on how it's implemented, but if it's like genjis deflect but against cc then I only see it used in engages and that's about it, not many choices in that.
I guess I'd go about this issue by making tanks less oppressive threat-wise but giving them all more ways to mitigate damage? either through sustain, protection or cc. For me the best tanks are Rein and Sigma, they both have a bit of that going, ya know what i mean?
Honestly for me (specifically my experience not saying this is everyone), 5v5 is such a better feeling overwatch. Angles can be taken without two tanks that could shut down every single angle. Also just the QOL of shorter queue times makes OW so much more enjoyable. Not facts, but im saying this is how I feel and probably a lot of others as well. There will never be a way to balance the game to a point where everyone will be happy and thats something we should be very aware of. Tank will always be an unpopular role, thats how it is for every single game no exception. Needing two less of them very clearly significantly shortened the queue times. Its not about just “needing more players overall will shorten queue times.” What is needed is a more even ratio of 1/3 dps, tanks, and supports and tank is just not as sexy or desirable as a role to anyone. No matter how much tank as a role and experience is changed for the better, there will still be less of them. Nobody is willing to accept the fact that tank as a role is something that is not desirable for majority of the player base. No matter how many people play OW, the ratios of the playerbase will generally stay the same. Its shown that it was able to temporarily sway previously with the introduction of priority pass, but after like the first week or two queue times went right back to normal. I want an OW that is alive and healthy and is thriving. Something that could appeal to as many as possible. It is my belief that queue times and playability are a more significant portion of one’s expectations when playing than wanting some more damage mitigation and complexity with a second tank.
Mind you im not saying that we shouldnt strive for a more balanced and enjoyable playing experience for tanks. I even posted some ideas I had for adding somewhat of a parry option for tanks. Every role deserves to have an enjoyable experience and adding more skill expression to all roles is what makes the game fun for a lot of people. Just personal statement but I honestly dislike the discussion of tank synergy. As ive stated above, queue times are something that I believe to be an integral chunk of ones experience when playing a game. Having such horribly long queue times takes so much away from having a fun time playing a game. It makes it much less of a time commitment, especially for those who play casually and want something to decompress after work/school. 5v5 helped so much with this by utilizing the ratio of tank players better than 6v6. A smaller amount of people play tank and that is a fact. No amount of change can permanently change the fact that supp and dps will always have a higher ratio of the player base in queue. 5v5 pretty much entirely solved this issue and I believe that it is not something that should be given up.
“What if we had two types of tanks? Tanks that were closer to DPS but more lethal, and tanks that were closer to these more attention manipulation -that still have tools, but can do stuff for longer“ Congratulations, you just designed our way back to main/off tanks. Just put 2 on each team and balancing gets a lot easier. Yes, I see you respond to someone on this moments later, but there is some lenience- Doomfist can be an initiator and J Queen can be a main tank as well (trust me I played her with Zarya in 6v6 PUGS and she functioned as the main tank and BOTH were fun to play) even though they have high damage. Ball was a main tank in OW1 and Sigma was hybrid. The issue is with solo tank they all have to be hyper durable or be like Doomfist and avoid damage and just get picks.
Ima be real the moment my hero shooter stopped allowing you to play your favorite hero, the game died. Even in 2 2 2 you could make any character work. I remember the top 500 at the end of OW being very diverse in terms of hero selection but now it’s all the same two/three characters
I think tanks should take design ideas from fighting games. Focus on making the micro of each tank 1v1 matchup engaging, and the rest will follow. Leaning into this idea of having a kaiju battle with a teamfight rotating around it, like the eye of a hurricane, is the only reasonable path forward for 5v5 imo.
i many times will beat someone on mauga or orisa and then next fight both dps come out on sombra, bastion or mei they exist to bully tanks imo and need to be looked at
Mei needs to be a tank, her kit screams it.. Bastian needs his turret mode reworked into a rooted ult instead of just having it most of the time, I think sombra is just a cheap character for an fps and having invis/teleport/increased movement/ hack on a couple abilities is ridiculous for one character
"The tanks by nature who don't have tools or tactics to deal with that attention directly, maybe those tanks need to be more directly lethal." Dude I cannot believe you're saying this, because this was the original design philosophy of Roadhog. He was a tank that was squishy relative to the others, but threatened a full hp to death combo on squishies when landing a skill shot. They released Kiriko, who came out overtuned and has been a meta staple for the entirety of OW2, and instead of nerfing her when she enabled Hog to be meta, they nuked the one thing that made Hog good. Then after leaving Hog as hot garbage for a year, a decision endorsed by you, they took the feedback from the community and decided, fine we'll make Hog's one-shot and damage less consistent (But still left it in because it was the one reason that he was ever useful, and simultaneously what all the Hog players thought made him fun), but decided then make him tankier and more adaptable, and the community still whined (yourself included). I personally think the theory behind a brute that takes attention by necessity of evading a strong threat is good design, but you've continued for years to pedal this narrative that Roadhog is a poison to the game. I love a lot of the intelligent feedback you provide as a coach in your videos, and it's why I watch you, but I wish you would be more self aware in your inherent biases against certain characters like Hog and Junkrat, Torb, Lifeweaver, etc. that you clearly just have a personal disliking for. When content creators like you and Flats direct such strong hatred towards unpopular characters, suggesting they're the root of all problems in the game and always citing them immediately as the first example of bad design, you enable people in the community to direct toxicity to the people who play them.
as a tank player since ow1 release, i like how tank is now. i think the issue is largely skill-based and people much rather the game change to fit them than they actually learn the game
I'm not a very good player but I do see a huge lack of tactics and team play, each role wanting things to line up for them instead of how does everything synergize for everyone as a whole..
So your solution to a problem that a large amount of players have with tank is to get good? Why would anyone not having a good time playing tank put in anymore time just for it to get slightly less terrible?
Completely misses the point- the "problem" u are talking about is caused precisely by lack of skill.If people were better they wouldnt have this problrm
I love how with every post like this you always get the "But hmmm... Actually it's their job" gang who has never played the role but still know all the ins and outs of it... should we bring back 6v6 and tell you it's your job to wait 10mins for a game, would you be ok with it? No one role/player should have a more toxic experience just to benefit others, that's nobody's job
If you workout, and you feel sick at the end of it, you probably are doing something wrong: dehydrated, overheated, overworked, ate too close to it, etc. The analogy applies though, as with tank, im doing what i need to, but its detrimental to my progress because the environment is wrong. 5v5, raidboss tank format, causes the game to become two 1v4 fights. The only time it changes, is when the two teams stack on a braindead tank, and shoot at the other braindead tank, until someone falls over. This is kind of what Overwatch became after 2020, even with 2 tanks. You had metas like double shield that were braindead stack fights, or you had two tanks that didnt jive, one making the necessary play, the other running down mid to "protect" the team. 6v6 is superior, but balance has been broken from the start. Until team 4 figures out how to balance the roles, the game will continue to slide downhill in quality.
Yeah it's tiring. You're cut off from your supports, the enemy tank is cut off from their supports, whoever manages their resources 1v4 better wins. Tank exchange means nothing now, it's just two kaiju slap fighting.
I feel like if they were to go back to 6v6 and target cc then I feel that will solve the fundamental problems of tank. Part of the reason ow2 felt nice at the start was the reduced cc compared to ow1. Going back to 6v6 will bring back more cc since the majority of tanks have cc in their kit which is why I believe they should reduce it. (I also believe giving characters more cc is just bad gameplay design). You would still have to deal with hero design/balance but it doesn't matter what format you are in for that.
Randm ideas: Winston gets 4 leaps at increased cooldown to allow more choice/ "what the hell is going on?" -enemy Dmg ramping from tanks either based on time in combat or based on HP% Dmg reduced at start of combat, reducing the longer they are in combat
i will never lose a yapping competition
J LUL K E has entered the chat
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Realth yapped for double the time. Best him
flats on a group up podcast bragging has entered the chat
Reach out, community organization and outreach professionals Volatile Chemistry here, we're a games company #study #edu
"i will now rant about overwatch 2 tank theory for one hour"
FRICK dude, freaking realth always one step ahead. i didn't realize. chat check realth's video out if you haven't already: ua-cam.com/video/-Fmq0NC7h3I/v-deo.html
xD
@@CoachSpiloyou two should do a video together
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery 😎
😐
As someone who listens to your videos while working, “a 1 hour discussion on Overwatch 2 tank theory” was an instant watch lol.
Saaaaame
I watched half of this video on the toilet and the other half unclogging the toilet. Thanks, Spilo!
holy shit
@@Relicsindeed
"I get to decide the movie tonight"
😆
Damn that made me lol
Right to the watch later folder for when I'm eating
A lot of the appeal of tank, especially in 5v5, is you feel like the leader of your team and get to make a lot of the decisions. The problem with that is you'll play against the same tank 6 games in a row, go 3-3, and every game the losing team will complain about a tank diff even though you're equally skilled as the enemy tank and the only thing that changed was your teammates.
a lot more complex than just ur teammates changing but yeah i understand what you mean. i was playing sombra and lost, next game got the same dps opponents so they were talking shit, i stomped them. does that mean either one of us is better? i mean i was better but generally no😂
14:44 I think this question is very similar to what TF2 players ask about Medic. The Medic is by far the strongest and most necessary class to have on a team, and that's by design; I think the devs said Medic was made to be the most important class because they knew he was unpopular. But just like OW tanks, he's the least popular class and always the highest value target. I've recently heard the opinion that Medic being broken just because he's unpopular is outdated design so seeing OW go through potentially the same thing now is very interesting.
Except Medic is not broken. Medic is a threat that you need to kill first. He's someone who will never have a 1v1, but you want that to happen.
In 12v12, Medic's "I win" button only work if you use it on capable player. It's not even "I win", it's "we win". And single kills doesn't matter as much as in 5v5, so some Heavy or Demo going on a killing spree may not even change anything if enemy team doesn't let him kill high value ground holding targets.
Medic has only artificial similarities to Tank in OW2. Both games play inherently differently.
And i don't talk about 6s, because it's not what TF2 was made for, it's self imposed format that balances itself differently than base game.
Medic is perfect in tf2 lol not comparable
I feel one of the benefits with medic is that due to being a support he isnt really the recieving end of toxicity as much as tanks are. On top of this people naturally want to be near you and protect you because they get a very noticable tangible benefit from it even if they arent consciously doing it. You just instinctively defend medics if you can because letting one die is bad for YOU directly, where as with tanks they're not really enabling players in the same way so people often kind of just ignore when their tank needs help unless they're actively pocketing them already. Its also just in general a lot harder to really tell if a medic is doing good or bad in a casual setting. They're usually in the back, they have an auto lock on weapon and usually arent shooting crossbows, and i feel people are far less likely to get mad at a medic that gives you a bad uber than a tank they think messed their plays up since like they still got an uber. People dont generally tend to get mad at badly used ults like nano boost I feel vs a bad feeding primal for instance. Ironically I feel it's probably fair to say that a lot of medic mains tend to be the ones who are a bit high strung in these types of situations because they're the ones surveying and watching their team's mistakes as part of their job. Medic in general blends into a match unless they're so absurdly good that it's noticable, like with a lot of really good crossbow shots and such. Its not something that happens to tanks given they're the ones trying to grab your attention. The meme of "shoot the medic not the person he's healing" exists because of how well he just blends in and people forget he's just there even if he's doing good. One of the only times you really notice medic even being a threat directly is when they're doing the uberchain meme.
He's also a pretty easy low barrier to entry character but high skill ceiling one in terms of how heal targets work, how uber rates work, avoiding and surfing damage, positional and game state awareness. he's OP but he's also a character you have to be good with to actually exploit. At the same time he also acts as a character that allows people to exist in the video game without actually having to engage with a lot of its mechanics if say they're not that good at tf2 but still enjoy it. Honestly I feel like medic might not even be the least popular at least with how people talk, I actually get the feeling that might be heavy nowadays.
Also you generally cant "counterswap" medics. Counterswapping in general in tf2 is no where near as easy as it is in OW outside of scout vs engie arguably. Even spy vs pyro can be a pretty fair matchup if you play it right and that its more of an issue of spy just being bad in general. There are strategies to get to medics easier but because of medic's role and how tf2's classes work in general, you dont really see people swapping to specific classes as much to deal with him and the medic as a cahracter is versetile enough to adapt to these changes relatively decently. If someone goes sniper to deal with medic, there are a lot of ways for medic to deal with this, same for spy, same for a bombing soldier.
Not to mention, because of how medic being OP works it does honestly make the general gameplay loop of tf2 better imo. The game would be worse off if medic wasnt really strong just because of how he enhances and interacts with the game state. Its sort of a situation of winston and rein being the meta tanks vs say an orisa, mauga, roadhog meta I feel. People just generally prefer certain heroes being the meta because of how they make the game feel and I feel medic tends to lean a lot into making tf2 better by centralizing the game around him a bit. Medic's like just in general weirdly fair for an OP character. You can do what ever you want to him if you can get to him for the most part, his ability to create direct pressure is near nonexistant and all his value comes from how he increases his teams resources and controls the gamestate. A medic that does not know how to do these things will be relatively easy to deal with by players better than him at their own classes honestly. It makes him scale pretty well in terms of the general server skill level even though he lacks a lot of mechancs (outside of the crossbow) compared to characters like moira.
TF2's also just a game where multiple people can play the same character in casual and characters have loadouts so like usually people are taking some of the load off your back when you mess up. TF2 comp's a different story, I imagine it has its own sort of issues but at the very least that game's meta is so defined that there's a sense of stability that just isnt in OW and there are actual expectations people are aware of, and that medic isnt the only always locked in 1 character only class considering demo also exists and that highlander is literally that in its entirety. Normal TF2 oftne will have 2 medics on a team as well as an engineer so healing often is spread about multiple people all working together without even trying.
There’s a difference between “making tanks better” and “making tanking better” and blizzard doesn’t seem to know that.
I agree spilo, and heres my ramble:
I was an ow1 main tank player and most of my enjoyment came from macro aspects of ow. Micro aspects like tracking on ball, primal mechanics, etc are important, but i dont think thats what makes the character fun to me. Typical things you think of with tank like engaging on enemies is always fun, but later on in ow1s lifespan when i still had a bit of drive to improve, i found some of the most interesting parts of rein to be learning when to disengage and back off and finding that balance. With winston i actually enjoyed joining comms and coordinating dives. With ball, learning to time engagements and setting up a tracer or other dps for the follow-up felt super rewarding. Orisa, tbf was pretty boring, but even setting up with pull felt rewarding sometimes.
My point is that this stuff can still happen in ow2, but it feels more washed out now. "Washed out" in the sense that good macro plays don't feel as rewarding due to your inability to make up for your character's specific weakness making your otherwise successful plays have less overall impact.
This argument has been constantly said, but currently many tanks feel the same as most tanks in the roster have great frontline pressure and self sustain that makes them not have to rely on their team that much in comparison to ow1 tank designs. In response, youre expected as the tank player to provide a steady frontline presence. On ball for instance, this season I think i'm currently like 8-2 (i dont play much tank anymore), so even while we eventually win most games, my teammates demand me to get off ball bc a lot of times bc it probably doesnt feel great for my team to take the brunt of the pressure from the enemy team, despite the enemy backline fully focused on me (and a potential dps with me). Maybe it's specifically a dive tank issue, but without the second tank to relieve pressure for my backline, I feel that I'm incapable to doing my job and executing well-timed engages to the fullest extent.
Another reason the gameplay feels "washed out" is because of the strength of most of the tanks in the game that rewards players, despite the lack of tactics and strategy that you talked about. Which is why i also agree that one of the worst apects of playing tank in ow2 is dealing with the enemy tank.
I feel like the way to make tank feel better for the tank is to shift the focus from HP to Mitigation because it is more skillful for the tank and it feels worse to shoot at for everyone else so they won’t focus as much on it.
A thing about the MMO comparison, you only really see tanks in PVE modes where you need one to be able to survive large pulls with lots of mobs or tank buster boss mechanics.
In PVP it’s a dance of DPS and Healers trading offensive and defensive cooldowns and making use of the situations that come and go in the moment. I would argue in PVP the closest thing to a tank are specs that can easily turtle when needed. Turtle is a defensive play style designed to just out last your opponent. They can play into this strategy because they are better equipped to stay alive.
That does not mean these specs have twice as much HP and passive cc reduction. It means you’re forced to respect their presence because they are just as deadly as other dps but risk less playing aggressive.
A good example would be if rein gained fortify and 75% reduced damage taken when charging towards his team. This would allow him to play aggressive and make space easier without the risk he usually faces. Just an example, unbalanced for clarity.
Most of this is based on WoW arena play and I only posted because when I started thinking about the similarities/differences and found it interesting.
Yea MMO PvP, they made healers 'tanks' because healers are the natural primary target. This way they don't have to force a reason to attack a natural tank since the obvious strategy would be to ignore the high health, high mitigation, low damage character.
By adding an actual tank into PvP like in OW, they've had to add all these artificial reasons on top of making them lethal.
Interestingly, they seemingly tried to make supports 'tanky' at the start of ow2 because the obvious result of making tanks less of the target priority is that supports will get that focus instead and people hated that way more
Yeah I agree, tanking makes sense in PvE, but in PVP there’s no way to force(“draw aggro”) opponents to focus on you.
PvP tanking is misunderstood imo. It's not about aggro, it's about controlling space. There's no reason for a player to go after the high hp high mitigation character, so you give them tools to make going after other areas difficult, or tools to deny enemy positions of power
Honestly, Spilo, your suggestions I know come from the best place but that's not overwatch. If I wanted to be a punching bag I'd play WOW.
Your idea basically means rework every single tank to have somewhat the same capabilities and see IF it works.
When 6v6 basically means we solve 70% of the problem and it's just a matter of balancing correctly.
Granted, the game will need harder work. But every game goes through that for attention span.
For example, when league reworked dragons, or maps, etc.
But your solutions don't solve problems of an asymmetrical game.
The only solution I see for 5V5 is changing the concept of Tank/DPS/Supp completely.
For example, league has DPS, Supp, mid, Top, JG.
With specific visions for each. How do you fit 3 roles specifically made for a symmetrical game on an asymmetrical format with out making one of the three roles unhappy?
I've been a tank main the whole time I've played OW and I really love what you're saying here. I feel like the rein/winston comparison really highlights good main tank design. They're both super deadly when playing in their strong suites, and laughably harmless when they're not. Rein plays close and aggressive and really works with corners/cover. Winston isolates and either KOs or invalidates high value targets. Good tank design should mean very strong strengths and very weak weaknesses.
Man Spilo I have so much respect for you after some of the stuff you said here. One of my favorite creators for real
I love appying strategy and tactics to overwatch. Thank you for highlighting that that is tanks role. I want to apply what i read in art of war to the video games i play
Doom parry is interesting. When block is cancelled with block input there should be a 0.15 second window to destroy incoming projectiles and impacts, 100% negating damage and effects of things like sleep, hinder, Rein charge, Lucio boop, hack. Maybe there is a .25 second lockout as punish, if you want to avoid that you must cancel with another ability.
.15 seconds is too little imo. Especially in a game where ping is based on the shooter, not the receiver. Maybe .75, similar to a Suzu? I’m not sure.
@@Wusyaname_ but Suzy length is waaay too long I say either anywhere between .35 to .50
Until you realize that doing this just takes away options from other players.
@@israelsmith6122 Yeah, ur right
@@MrBreakdownx It doesn’t take away options, it just means you need a little more skill to use a sleep dart or even hack.
From the PoV of a predominantly MMO player (FFXIV) who occasionally enjoys OW and likes listening in on the game's history, I feel like the biggest misconception the devs have is a common trap that the ideal "tank hero fantasy" is absorbing damage. Yes taking massive amounts of aggro that no one else can physically handle does have a certain appeal to it, but in the traditional MMO space that is done usually in a very flashy over the top manner that sells the moment. Tanks in OW1 did this by holding the roles of initiation and guardian, but with the ability creep and format shift both of these are mostly lost. Abilities like Grav and Shatter don't hold the respect their OW1 counterparts did by a longshot.
Mild spoiler for the new XIV expac, but if you can find the mechanic "Mountain Fire" in the recent Extreme trial for Valigarmanda, it's a perfect example of how it's the scope that sells taking high damage, not the damage itself. There's no grandeur of being on the receiving end of Widow/Hanzo Crits or a Bastion melting your barricade, then HP. OW can't facilitate that.
What OW tanks need imo is high value, high risk (long CD) hero moment abilities that really showcase their capability to use their kits in synergy with itself but also the terrain to their advantage to create checkmates. If it wasn't for Fortify and her primary weapon being what they are, Orisa actually has a really damn expressive kit that amplifies this (even if Javelin's hitbox is way too forgiving). They definitely don't need XIV invulns, I think the OW community would implode if that happened, but they need tools to better flush/displace enemies out of chokeholds and in ways where everyone in the lobby can universally say "damn that was well done." Winston is so beloved for his ability to do this despite being extremely easy to pilot at a basic level. I'll also throw out that most Tanks have nearly no tools to mitigate/disrupt high range be it air mobility or sheer meters that doesn't require a full commitment, and it's a glaring problem in average uncoordinated gameplay which tends to favor poke. Ram's grasp was advertised as an antiflyer tool and it's a brutal disappointment and to this day it amazes me they didn't pivot DVa to be an anti-air dogfighter at her core to fill a niche tank has near no answer to. In addition more slow, but threatening long range abilities (think like old Symm M2 or Fire Strike) that need to be respected but are easily outmaneuvered at distance would go a long way to help Tanks like Zarya who cannot deal with excessive sightlines or verticality.
Great video as always, keep up the good work.
HOT TAKE!! The direction Blizzard is currently taking with Tanks will result in the rebranding of the role to Bruisers. And Bruiser will eventually share queues with DPS.
Thanks for announcing this, couldn't see your comment until you added the caps
@@ari7164what?
Playing tank is a mentally draining experience to me, personally. The way I describe it, is I have to use my entire brain when I play tank. When I play other roles, there are certain parts of my brain that I get to turn off. When I'm playing tank, I have to be entirely locked in on everything at all times. That part is incredibly enjoyable and rewarding for people like me. The problem with Overwatch 2, however, is it has begun to feel like no matter how locked in you are, whether you win or lose has sometimes nothing to do with how well you play. To be fair, that's sort of been true about Overwatch even during 6v6 times, but there's no denying that that feeling is exacerbated being the only tank.
I agree and the community expects way too much from your average tank player because eyes are always on you. You're expected to push, take space, gets kills, mitigate all the damage and cooldowns, and basically play babysitter for your team (especially whiney supports), and you're supposed to make these plays and act as essentially the team leader. I feel like this problem gets slightly mitigated the higher up in rank you go but I don't like always having to be the initiator while simultaneously juggling every other aspect of the team while supports can just play heal bot with their multiple get out of jail free cards they can just use on themselves yet they're always the role with the shit talkers too. I've been playing the marvel rivals beta and it's so refreshing to actually be able to tank without all this BS to deal with, solo tanking doesn't even feel bad either, I recommend it at least until OW can get its shit together and at least bring back 6v6
@@propioneer6339and if you don’t hold your teammates hands it’s all magically your fault and never that they were playing a bad matchup and could’ve done more to alleviate the situation
I feel like a large contributor to this feeling is that the typical anti-tank heroes are super easy to play. I experience this a lot as a winston main. I put a lot of effort into improving my gamesense, movement, bubbles, primals etc, but all of my typical "hard counters" are super easy for any average Joe to swap to and get value with - think of roadhog, mauga, bastion, torb, reaper etc.
It feels like you have to work harder than your opponents because that's literally what's happening. The same thing happens when you play tracer against torb or lucio against moira: high skill characters get hard countered by low skill characters. This is especially noticeable on the tank role because it's not unheard of to get countered by the whole enemy team at once. All the attention is on you and it feels impossible to outplay these matchups.
@@abudgie6909"hard" countered. Nah, those are mostly matchups that you can play around. Esp the tracer ones. You have to be better, but you picked the characters that say "I'm better than you", you chose the hard but high ceiling chars
@KeshavKrishnan tell me something I don't know. I've put over 110 hours into winston in overwatch 2. Can you see how much I used the word "feel" in my previous reply? The problem is a matter of feeling. The problem with tanks is not a lack of impact necessarily. The problem lies in the subjective experience of playing tank.
One of the factors that contributes to a shitty subjective experience is the fact that winston's typical counters are cheese characters. When I work my ass off to try to win the game and my opponent gets infinite free value by pressing shift (bastion), it's still technically winnable - but it's fucking exhausting.
The tracer-torb matchup is a slightly different issue for me. I'm learning the DPS role (it's my least played by far) and I've put some decent hours into tracer recently. When I go up against torb, he effortlessly denies so many angles for me just by placing his turret. The only way to "outskill" that for me (other than going somewhere else entirely) is having a teammate break it. This is a serious roadblock that's getting in the way of me learning this hero. My point is that, in general, noob stomper heroes seriously damage the learning curve.
Any time a new player tries out a difficult character, they are likely to be completely rolled by noob stomper heroes, discouraging them from playing the difficult character again. Noob stompers obstruct your ability to learn the game.
I am up waaaay to late Australian time to keep catching these uploads spilo
Get some sleep, helps to rank higher.
@@moocows111111don’t forget to take breaks between each video too
This man is a legend! Easily the best content in the overwatch scene.
I genuinely feel like the only way to fix tank is to weaken the tank roles offensive ability and allow them to provide utility that isn't raw stats.
I wish instead of going "buff their stats" you give them more supportive utility. Like what if instead of Zarya face tanking with bubble and running the team over with inflated hp pool and 450 bonus hp with double bubbling herself, she is incentivized to bubble allies more.
What if instead of DVa having micro missiles, she has something that provides utility to allies?
I think there is ways to make tanks have more utility without having them overlap with supports and I think thats how you save tank. Blizz could do give them utility that allows them to initiate fights while also getting away from point anchors. Point anchors = CC sponges or unkillable bullet sponges.
It could even be a passive for each archetype that enables their proper playstyles.
Tbh there was a creator patch that did something similar and people hated it. Not being able to use dmg to make space or defend yourself felt really bad when you are such an easy target. I think it would be worse in ow2 with the bigger projectiles
during 6v6 there was talk of wanting 3 DPS Comps
when 5v5 launched people mourned the tank duos
Doomfist, Bastion, Mei, Torb, Reaper, they all have felt like DPS+ in this iteration of the game, and they even moved doomfist into tank.
The solution hilariously is the Defense role.
1 Tank
1 Defense
2 DPS
2 Support
Mei, Reaper, Torb, Symetra, Junker Queen, Doomfist, Roadhog, Venture, & Brig.
Balance them to be more vulnerable than the tank role.
Then you have 6v6, triple dps, off tank, and you can tune the roles to be as intended.
Unironically, Rein is very tactical in playing. It's hard to say why at the moment when writing this.
Because you can either play him obviously and guard the team, and when no one is paying attention you force it back with a charge or a shatter. Rein forces the enemy team to respect space
Because he has no abilities to force a change in tempo like other tanks do. Sure he has charge, but if you haven't worked to set up charge in a relatively safe and impactful position you're just going to eat dirt. He's 100% honest and demands that you know how to position and have good fundamentals and timing, so he is very tactical. He doesn't just press a button to make space. It makes him one of if not the most difficult tanks to play properly
Because rein is about position, shield management, and fire strike efficiency. Its a game of corners, hallways, and manipulating sight lines. Its so fun.
He was WAY more tactical when you couldn’t cancel pin. One of the worst hero changes from OW1 to OW2. Pin should one shot every non-tank and should be an all or nothing ability.
@@cl4709 I mean the ability to cancel pin also adds some tactics when it comes to trying to bait out cooldowns from the enemy tank or their team. If anything it makes him more tactical because now pin is more versatile. Plus in a rein mirror matchup it makes it a lot more dynamic with how pin can be used to bait the enemy rein to misplay.
Tanks need utility to increase strategic value. Even if it’s not directly damage related. Zarya was my main on ow1 for this reason. I could bubble and save heroes as off tank all the time, and that value felt incredible.
Hey Spilo! I really don't understand this obsession of yours with trying to find tanking playstyle parallels on MMOs. The psychology is way, WAY more different when you compare the role on that genre, mainly because tank (in the vast majority of MMOs) are exclusive played on PvE, and not PvP. I can understand why it's enticing to search solutions there, but when you are in a PvP environment, tanks don't work because there's no demand and use for the purpose of the role: being the mitigating machine meat bag. Watch any trinity MMO PvP and you'll see that the most analogous playstyle tanks have to their PvE counterpart is... turtling. And we can all agree that turtling (rams blocking ad eternum) is VERY boring. Tank works on PvE because you are essentially playing a predictable resource managing game -- and that can never work against real humans without the tanks being calibrated to be literal Thanos on lobbies (which this patch made an attempt of doing exactly that, but they need to be even MORE opressive to get the same feeling from PvE MMOs).
We don't have massive groups of dumb AI mobs to pull and manage on a PvP environment. There's no NEED to actually TANK anything on a PvP environment, be it Overwatch or on MMOs. Pressure on objectives is the closest tanks get to having a "duty", but you can't have a tank applying pressure for too long on an objective without them feeling like complete crap for everyone involved (again, rams blocking ad eternum). This lack of purpose in-game is what afflicts most tanks on Overwatch -- when all objectives are glorified contest rectangles, killing people will always be the most efficient way to play the game. We can have all the Overwatch talk of space, angles, pressure, micro & macro, etc... but at the end of the day, if the game modes are designed to be "PvP blob on objective or rotate and dive to frick people" then DPS and support will forever feel WAY better than any tank playstyle. This role in gaming was invented because someone needed to manage predictable large amounts of damage while other roles pump damage and heals. There's no way to quantify or enforce that manner of tanking on current Overwatch PvP game modes.
What if a game mode needed you to take down an enemy base, and tanks got more value shooting that than shooting players? Like, I don't know. I just know that the issue lies on the Overwatch game modes not giving tanks a justifiable enough reason for tanks to... tank. We need better objectives and reasons to exist, until then, we'll forever be fat DPS with some util. Food for thought: why call them tanks? Call them initiators, enablers, brawlers... something else.
Entering hot take territory: all the sucessful shooters on the market have some sort of homogeneity to some aspects of their gameplay to keep them balanced exactly because of the above arguments (consistent hitbox sizes, everyone has access to the same guns, abilities and util achieve the same thing through different flavours, etc). Overwatch could reenvision itself to be more moba-like, which I think is what they currently experimenting on with the passive choices and whatnot. I just don't really like that current gamemodes on Overwatch kinda destroys the inherent heterogeneity on hero shooters, and mobas do a very good job of keeping diverse roles and skills relevant and needed. I do enjoy Overwatch meat gameplay a lot -- rotating and diving is fun, interactions are fun, hero fantasy is -mostly- fun, strategy is fun as hell, but at the end of the day everything feels like deathmatch with (a lot of) extra steps, and while that creates a good and entertaining enough game (seeing that most of us vets are playing this thing for almost a decade), it could be so much more... not only for tanks, but the other roles too. Every role could be as much cerebral and tactical as tank and tank could have a more valid reason to exist!
Spilo seems to find certain things that he thinks is a slam dunk argument and then just uses them over and over again instead of having substance to arguments.
This is a very good point and I was also very confused when he kept mentioning it.
Though I will say it is hard to find games that play like OW even within the same genre. Most of them died off and are unplayable except Paladins I guess. You need to have played these "dead-at-launch" games before they are shut down and long enough to have a good understanding. So I can see why it's difficult. Also honestly I think Concord is the most similar to OW I've ever played and I don't think that game will last long enough to find out how tanks will feel after people learn the game properly.
Even tanks in PVP games seems pretty niche. All I can think of is "big body" characters in fighting games and things like chivalry or For Honor which basically is a fighting game. In each of those the "tank" is usually slower but hits hard and the threat of that damage helps them control space. Of course whether they are "tanks" still is debatable but I think it is a better jumping off point for OW tanks if you didn't play all of those dead hero shooters.
Cooking some options to add counter play.
Iron wall: When a tank uses a certain ability, just one not both, for that first second they are completely immune to any form of cc. Cant get naded, slept, hooked, booped, slowed, nothing. Not like a suzu where they are invulnerable, but they can still take damage from it. So still get nade damage, hook damage, still can be shot at, but adds counter play. Somewhat of a parry. Requires good timing and reading of the situation, not like Orisa where you just go golden and walk in. This could be put on stuff like mauga overrun, doom block, rein charge, dva boost, winton jump, ram transform, etc. Again this is only during the initial instance so you still can sleep or boop anyone after the cast, but its like a parry. Its still punishable but it gives tanks an option and adds another knob. It could be an effect/buff that they add and can be tweaked on a per hero basis.
In ff14, every role is demanding and engaging similarly but in separate ways. Tanks manage their cooldowns to pull large groups and manage boss cycles, DPS have tight and interesting rotations and mechanics on each different Job, Healers have to pay attention and manage their resources to keep everyone alive. Both Healers and Tanks DO damage at the same time as their mechanics, Healers go between making sure people aren't dead, and using damage abilities to push the bosses down faster. Tanks usually have healing sustain and mitigation in their combos of damage. Keeping aggro is done WITH basic combos. I think OW should focus on how to make each Hero distinct like Jobs, everyone has an identity in gameplay, and each role more specific to the idea of the role. DPS shouldn't be lax and supports be mixed and tanks be max stress. Everyone should be the same level of stress and engaging to play.
Finally good content? Can't wait to watch this when I have time
Maybe it's just me but I like playing tank overall, I just hate a handful of specific interactions. It's annoying that someone can just pick sombra and completely deny ball. Even more annoying than ball, and low key underrated, is sombra vs sigma. You can't even use your grasp without it getting hacked, let alone your ult. Hack needs to be a skill shot, and get rid of invis. If you get stunned out of grasp, you should still get the overhealth. Why does doomfist have a 4 second cooldown that can cancel almost every tank ult? The other issues are human issues. It's annoying to hear your teammates say tank diff when the enemy junkerqueen had 2 deaths the entire game because she was farming your team and there was little you could do about it. Many such cases. Lucio boop and brig flail completely denying ball on a shorter cooldown than his movement. Hacks and stuns working on ball even when he is in fireball. But what can you do about your supports going Moira Illari when you pick monkey on a good high ground map? Then they wait till the end of the match to say tank diff, even though I beat the red team tank on my last match decisively.
The Tank Role have to be open to being creative. There is ONLY ONE mode where Tank is fun to play: Arcade Total Mayhem. Why? Survivability combined with quick and unpretentious cooldowns gave you the opportunity to be creative and strategic with skills. I believe the key is to reduce damage, reduce cooldowns and let tanks be creative with their abilities, depending on the rest of the team to fulfill their strategy, as they alone will not be able to score kills. The only impact the tank will have is the strategic.
Im not unhappy. I like playing tank and think it was a good patch generally. (In masters)
I really love your videos 👍
No wonder I struggle with working out; feeling sick after rather than seratonin is my norm 😭
I think the main issue tank has right now is just the efficacy of counterswapping in the most extreme cases constantly reinforcing in people that it's the right play. I've had games recently, not necessarily wins in which the enemy hasn't immediately swapped to counters and playing tank felt great. Perhaps my opinion is slightly skewed as a mostly ball/Winston player, but they might also be the perfect examples. Playing Winston into reaper/hog/bastion/Ana/brig feels absolutely fine when compared to playing ball into even just sombra/cass.
Perhaps if you work out the fringe cases that feel too oppressive to play into, that may go a long way towards fixing it.
I like a yap too
Tank-like slower game pace, where they have time to make decisions and impact the game on a tactical and strategic level.
Tank like the buffer they get through tankiness, allowing them to implement their decisions and react to what is happening.
The current issue is, the tank needs to do everything.
They need to protect, deny space, and take space.
The current issue is, that tank players face the brunt of the enemies' abilities, and damage, and have to rely on their team to do their part to not go under.
Tankiness or damage is not the solution to this issue.
The solution would be to give the tank players more tools they can use to interact with the other team and their team.
These "tactic tools" will give them options they currently lack.
If you play a tank on a point map and your team plays Ashe, Widow, Illari, and Ana, it doesn't matter what tank you play.
During hack the pickable passives allowed some tactical decision-making by picking and adjusting what we currently need.
Damage, Sustain, CDR
But this is more a bandaid fix and it would take a short while until a meta is established and we are back at square one.
Some tanks when played optimally don't want fights to go long at all. If you're playing rein you win by swinging on as many squishy heros as fast as possible. As ball you win by hitting a big piledriver engage as fast as possible then disengaging for the next fight. It's only the poke tanks that want fights to go long because that's how their sustain or damage works.
As for the team comp it does matter a lot what tank you play. Sigma to synergize with poke, Dva to peel, or even arguably Orisa with her infinite damage range to spam pressure at long range. You have serious influence.
You don't have to do everything to win games. You just have to do what your team needs the most. And that's when enforces the counter pick state of tank so much. In every game there is a best tank to swap to. And every tank has hard counters now. Mauga just generically counters like 80% of tank picks by doing nothing but shooting the biggest guy on the other team.
man I'm one second in and I'm hyped asf 👀
Here is my reason. For me all roles have their ''benchmarking'' in this competitive game. DPS role benchmark it's mechanical skill which i'm not interested. Sup role in OW2 is now closer to DPS role. I was mostly a sup player in OW1 but not in OW2. Tank role benchmark strategy and tactics, that's why i play tank. I don't enjoy racing with other enemies in a mechanical skill tournament if that makes sense. Tank is more stimulating to me. However tank balance is always problematic i think devs do a very bad job. I always played MMO and ARPG games since my childhood. I think devs lack this knowledge to balance this game. Their balance doesn't make sense. Any ARPG veteran can easily see this. Trade offs aren't in right places. It was definitely better before S9.
To tackle counterpicking, they trapped themselves and make the balance even worse. Sure it's now way harder or not possible to ''counter'' some tanks but it's not a good thing. OW community, pros, streamers etc... these people worse than devs. Bunch of clueless childs. I think devs should ignore everyone but also improve themselves. In the meantime, pickrate/winrate should be their guidance to some degree. However how they collect winrate data is also questionable.
Reduce healing and spike damage over all. I think the healing and dmg numbers are way way to high. there are times i peak and take 1000 dmg in less than 2 seconds. and sometimes that's without ults and this is just from peaking a corner. When that goes away, spammy bs. then you can nerf tanks without them feeling worse. I just feel like the focus is put into the wrong things.
Power creep is real and i know most people won't agree with me but I think it goes beyond just tank.
tanks used to be about positional outplay and proactivity in 6v6 until they chose to put in more and more defensive playstyles in the game to go against hard dive and the few actual good tank players. Also in the hope to make more ppl queue for tank. the result was double shield and cheese strats which trickled down to the lowest of ranks. It's just a series of unfortunate events. Now we're left with this empty shell of a game which enforces toxic playstyles, constant counterswapping and more toxicity towards tanks.
It came up when you were talking about the Warden... and I'm wondering if perhaps Blizzard should make it so tanks get ult from being damaged again. Maybe not all tanks, but perhaps Reihn, Sigma and Orisa just as a start could try it out. Make it so that you really don't want to shoot the tank, while for those three you really want to make sure you're taking hits instead of your team. I think it could feel great to eat an ultimate with reihn barrier, turn around and shatter right afterwards.
Your idea of a cc parry is interesting. Having a straight cleanse on a doom or ball would be boring, but it could be something crazy on a new dive hero that if you react fast enough, or even prime it and use it like Sigma eat, you could convert the cc effect and turn it into a skill shot under your control. Like you catch a sleep dart, have 2 seconds to hold it before you shoot it in another direction, or if you only want it to affect the cc effect, you get slept, you cleanse and it gets out into an orb you throw out. Even weirder, if you could react to like brig shield bash stun or something, cleanse and shoot it out. You may have covered something like that but i was cooking dinner while watching and thought of that
what about a hud indicator for how much attention you're taking (how many enemies are looking at you). That way you know how much danger youre in and get a better rewarding feel for how much enemy attention youre taking. maybe have a stat to go with it
OW devs need to look into ESO pvp to get an idea on how to design their tanks.
I love the game theory stuff but man this shit long as hell 😭
We really need an off tank/warrior type role. Main tanks get cc and dmg reduction while off tank/warriors are more brawl/dmg focused. But then we would probably need 6v6 again
I just think one of the factors in 5v5 is that the dps and support have to work better with the tank than 6v6.
What if we aplied tanks a passive to deal reduced dmg to dps/healers while being as tanky as rn?
my favorite yapper releases another banger
Ball Hog worked just fine in OW1? I peaked at 3456 in OW playing nothing but ball and I often had Hog as tank partner... I had a 60% win rate at the time so I was still climbing... and that is back in the last couple seasons of OW1 when it wasn't uncommon for Diamond tanks to end up in Masters games.
Spilo i dont think you see the value of the Warden example you presented. Maybe give all tanks some sort of measured buff to their kits per person shooting at them or possibly even change one of their abilities to an empowered version that is charged by taking damage
Tank shouly need more control abilities/neglected abilities not damage or sustainable abilities
What if Doom got a small shield based on distance traveled with his slam?
1:01:09 You didn't answer this question. Why do top players complain about playing tank? I assume top players know not to shoot tank, otherwise they wouldn't be the top players. So what else is the problem? Is it a different problem or is there one problem affecting all ranks?
I feel like the tank’s sole presence on the field is taking too much attention, instead of my existence drawing attention it should more be my actions and playmakings that force exponentially more attention
They should straight-up nerf tick damage volume based on the target's current HP amount. So it starts scaling down in volume from like 200HP to almost inaudible at like 600HP
The problem with tank in 5v5 is in the fight between role and agency. Role is the opposite of agency.
If you have a job, then you do that job or you lose. Choices that you're forced to make aren't real choices. Without real choices, you have no agency.
A job is the opposite of a game. You're not playing if you have to do something.
With one tank, you must do the job that is expected of that tank or your team simply loses.
With two tanks, there is room for playstyle choices.
Not only that, but those choices are intuitive. Do we need peel? One tank peels while the other holds frontline.
Do we need to punish? One tank punishes while the other peels or holds the line.
The declaration of the main tank gets enforced in different ways by different off tanks, creating agency and interest.
With one tank, that tank has a job. That is binary.
The tank is either doing their job or not.
Work isn't play.
spilo you should upload this kind of videos to spotify id love to listen to you yap sessions as a podcast
I think a lot of heroes, but doom specifically have had a lot less tactical options and flexibility since s9. Doomfist for example got his punch buffed to compensate for healthpools, but his slam untouched. So now you rely far more heavily on punch to consistently confirm a kill, while your slam feels ineffective for much more than mobility and building shields/ult. This makes him far more predictable and limits your creativity potential. He needs either 60dmg slam or make his block be able to absorb 1 "cc" cooldown by just breaking without giving empowered instead of getting cc'd. In his current state he just feels like an empowered punch bot which is much less engaging.
Overall devs seem to not understand doom at all, buffing his shields when that's not a pain point or the ult healing "buff" that seriously nerfed the hero in exchange for 250 avg healing a game.
Time to go scorched earth, go 6v6 or re-evaluate the entire concept and value of tanks in OW.
I love these videos so much despite not playing the game as much. Out of every tank, i mained doomfist because it scratched a similar itch i got from tanking in ff14, where i have yo be mindful of where i am for raid encounters, rotating cooldoqns and executing on ability usage. Doom constantly shifts around the battlefield, looking to interrupt abilities, flank angles, coordinate dives with other players or even have an escape route in mind in case a fight goes poorly. Comparing thst to someone like orisa who feels much more static and then her being rewarded for such a boring playstyle just sucks for the game as a whole imo. I hope the devs look into giving tanks more dynamic and interesting kits for all players to sink their teeth into.
For the sake of conversation, I want to the challenge the idea of making tanks less visually imposing. My big issue with it is simply, I don't think it will actually work in the short term. It doesn't matter how small you make Roadhog - anyone who's seen a Roadhog before is going to shoot the Roadhog, simply because that's what they know to do. We have to fight up to 8 years of psychological training to make these characters not look juicy. I don't have an immediate answer for how to beat that, but I think it's more complicated than just hurtbox sizes
I think what your friend said about reacting to things and needing to feel like he is on the edge constantly very much appeals to me, I'm a long-term main tank player, been so since 2016 and the thing I've found the most miserable about ow2 is the counter swapping aspect, I like feeling like I am on the edge utilising my winston bubble perfectly to maybe block an ana dart, or blocking a shatter with rein shield however when the best strategy feels like "oh just swap character to have a better match up" it doesn't feel very intelligent and I find it mind-numbing
I've never enjoyed playing OP characters, I fucking HATE it when the sustain tanks are meta and as your friend said it feels like my brain is actively dying and I play worse because of that.
I faced the same tank player 5 times yesterday. We got to a point where we greeted each other in chat. We both were good so it was literally just who has the better team that round lol. Ofc tho every dps that cycled through blamed either me or him haha
I like your thumbnails they the coaches one was a great laugh 😂
How to fix tank but keep him balanced. Looking at tank makes you permanently blind. Sound goes mute.
That way the numerical balance is not affected at all.
Spilo said we need tanks to hve more tactics, but in what way? Are we giving more speed/mobilty for more choice or how can we make it more “tactical”? Because i dont rly see anything they can add in the numbers to make it more tactical, unless we make more tanking abilties like maugas shorter, but more powerful.
I'm the minority, I guess, since Tank is by far my best role and I've always liked being able to protect my team moreso than attacking the enemy team or making big plays. I need to engage since that is how Tank is played in OW, but I always feel the most satisfied whenever I get the perfect Zarya bubble to keep an ally alive or rush forward with a Rein to put my shield up to have my DPS safely retreat (even if no one actually sees/recognizes it). I also can't discount that getting elims (or just getting the enemy to retreat) is probably the best way to protect the team (see: Hog being my second-most played tank).
But I do not like the pressure on a solo tank. Not the enemy-focus pressure - though that is an element of it - but the fact that having so many more *numbers* than DPS or support means the team can easily fall apart if you can't measure up to the enemy tank. I didn't play tank for the first 2 seasons of OW2 because I didn't want to deal with that, and the extra power that the OW team is putting into the role is just making me want to queue for my favored/preferred role even less.
Generally in ow1 days in deathmatch people picked tanks if they were bad. Because if they were good they'd just pick more fun dps. That allowed me to kill roadhogs on mercy. It is ow2 where I have no chances against a tank in 1v1
I'll be honest. I just want to play OW1. Don't care how bad I just don't want the new hero's who are all annoying to play against and it's just going to keep being that way. Other than Juno. Kiri/weaver/soj/venture all just really not enjoyable to play against and easily op if someone is good or even decent at em. Just massive gaps in game results because no sbmm, or sbmm makes you carry if you're good. All just a bad time.
Take a shot everytime Spilo says "palpable"
if tanks had a parry like fiora from league
The more lethal a Tank is, the more the enemy will focus them.
As a tank in WoW. I love having control over the flow of the fight. The tactics and position control is crucial. The ability to stun, taunt, disarm, body block, etc., are all mini-games that I get to play as a tank when I played Rein in OW1, but completely lost the ability to do so in OW2. I used to enjoy shielding up while their tank overextended because it meant their ana couldn't heal, but now, I just get my shield obliterated and nuked if I hold shield too long to try to manipulate the map in that way.
What feels good about tank to me is not the 'power' of tank. It's the ability to enable my team through skillful expression. I have quit tank recently as I relised the tanks I enjoyed (Zarya, Winston) didn't have the same expression they used to when i picked them up. I dont care how long I live if the 'moments' I create are exciting and I feel like I earned a fight win.
Also I don't care about attention on Zarya, it's about enabling the other tank, or genji, reaper, etc (charge is just a fun byproduct of the oppenents lack of discipline). Whereas on Winston I want the attention as the fun is in my ability to engage and disengage.
Just knowing you caused the fight win is the fun bit. Not because the numbers allowed my to be annoying for longer.
I think you're trying to recook the agility tank vs sponge tank debate
Is tactical suppose to be like... choices? If so then parry surely isn't tactical but a skill check. ofc this depends on how it's implemented, but if it's like genjis deflect but against cc then I only see it used in engages and that's about it, not many choices in that.
Is anybody else's UA-cam just not playing videos? I can see them and comment, but they never play.
7v7 no hero limits,,,, then we wouldn't need to be having this discussion.
I guess I'd go about this issue by making tanks less oppressive threat-wise but giving them all more ways to mitigate damage? either through sustain, protection or cc. For me the best tanks are Rein and Sigma, they both have a bit of that going, ya know what i mean?
Do you ever keep up with Rocket League? On your twitter I saw under the “explore” tab about Squishy Muffinz rejoining Cloud-9.
Honestly for me (specifically my experience not saying this is everyone), 5v5 is such a better feeling overwatch. Angles can be taken without two tanks that could shut down every single angle. Also just the QOL of shorter queue times makes OW so much more enjoyable. Not facts, but im saying this is how I feel and probably a lot of others as well. There will never be a way to balance the game to a point where everyone will be happy and thats something we should be very aware of. Tank will always be an unpopular role, thats how it is for every single game no exception. Needing two less of them very clearly significantly shortened the queue times. Its not about just “needing more players overall will shorten queue times.” What is needed is a more even ratio of 1/3 dps, tanks, and supports and tank is just not as sexy or desirable as a role to anyone. No matter how much tank as a role and experience is changed for the better, there will still be less of them. Nobody is willing to accept the fact that tank as a role is something that is not desirable for majority of the player base. No matter how many people play OW, the ratios of the playerbase will generally stay the same. Its shown that it was able to temporarily sway previously with the introduction of priority pass, but after like the first week or two queue times went right back to normal. I want an OW that is alive and healthy and is thriving. Something that could appeal to as many as possible. It is my belief that queue times and playability are a more significant portion of one’s expectations when playing than wanting some more damage mitigation and complexity with a second tank.
Mind you im not saying that we shouldnt strive for a more balanced and enjoyable playing experience for tanks. I even posted some ideas I had for adding somewhat of a parry option for tanks. Every role deserves to have an enjoyable experience and adding more skill expression to all roles is what makes the game fun for a lot of people.
Just personal statement but I honestly dislike the discussion of tank synergy. As ive stated above, queue times are something that I believe to be an integral chunk of ones experience when playing a game. Having such horribly long queue times takes so much away from having a fun time playing a game. It makes it much less of a time commitment, especially for those who play casually and want something to decompress after work/school. 5v5 helped so much with this by utilizing the ratio of tank players better than 6v6. A smaller amount of people play tank and that is a fact. No amount of change can permanently change the fact that supp and dps will always have a higher ratio of the player base in queue. 5v5 pretty much entirely solved this issue and I believe that it is not something that should be given up.
“What if we had two types of tanks? Tanks that were closer to DPS but more lethal, and tanks that were closer to these more attention manipulation -that still have tools, but can do stuff for longer“
Congratulations, you just designed our way back to main/off tanks. Just put 2 on each team and balancing gets a lot easier.
Yes, I see you respond to someone on this moments later, but there is some lenience- Doomfist can be an initiator and J Queen can be a main tank as well (trust me I played her with Zarya in 6v6 PUGS and she functioned as the main tank and BOTH were fun to play) even though they have high damage. Ball was a main tank in OW1 and Sigma was hybrid. The issue is with solo tank they all have to be hyper durable or be like Doomfist and avoid damage and just get picks.
Ima be real the moment my hero shooter stopped allowing you to play your favorite hero, the game died. Even in 2 2 2 you could make any character work. I remember the top 500 at the end of OW being very diverse in terms of hero selection but now it’s all the same two/three characters
I think tanks should take design ideas from fighting games. Focus on making the micro of each tank 1v1 matchup engaging, and the rest will follow. Leaning into this idea of having a kaiju battle with a teamfight rotating around it, like the eye of a hurricane, is the only reasonable path forward for 5v5 imo.
i many times will beat someone on mauga or orisa and then next fight both dps come out on sombra, bastion or mei they exist to bully tanks imo and need to be looked at
Mei needs to be a tank, her kit screams it.. Bastian needs his turret mode reworked into a rooted ult instead of just having it most of the time, I think sombra is just a cheap character for an fps and having invis/teleport/increased movement/ hack on a couple abilities is ridiculous for one character
rack the weight bruah
tank is just ok 5% of the time. i always run people over or i just cant play the game. i almost never have a game where its a fair game all the time
"The tanks by nature who don't have tools or tactics to deal with that attention directly, maybe those tanks need to be more directly lethal." Dude I cannot believe you're saying this, because this was the original design philosophy of Roadhog. He was a tank that was squishy relative to the others, but threatened a full hp to death combo on squishies when landing a skill shot. They released Kiriko, who came out overtuned and has been a meta staple for the entirety of OW2, and instead of nerfing her when she enabled Hog to be meta, they nuked the one thing that made Hog good. Then after leaving Hog as hot garbage for a year, a decision endorsed by you, they took the feedback from the community and decided, fine we'll make Hog's one-shot and damage less consistent (But still left it in because it was the one reason that he was ever useful, and simultaneously what all the Hog players thought made him fun), but decided then make him tankier and more adaptable, and the community still whined (yourself included). I personally think the theory behind a brute that takes attention by necessity of evading a strong threat is good design, but you've continued for years to pedal this narrative that Roadhog is a poison to the game. I love a lot of the intelligent feedback you provide as a coach in your videos, and it's why I watch you, but I wish you would be more self aware in your inherent biases against certain characters like Hog and Junkrat, Torb, Lifeweaver, etc. that you clearly just have a personal disliking for. When content creators like you and Flats direct such strong hatred towards unpopular characters, suggesting they're the root of all problems in the game and always citing them immediately as the first example of bad design, you enable people in the community to direct toxicity to the people who play them.
as a tank player since ow1 release, i like how tank is now. i think the issue is largely skill-based and people much rather the game change to fit them than they actually learn the game
I'm not a very good player but I do see a huge lack of tactics and team play, each role wanting things to line up for them instead of how does everything synergize for everyone as a whole..
Learning to press a button to swap =/= learning the game
So your solution to a problem that a large amount of players have with tank is to get good? Why would anyone not having a good time playing tank put in anymore time just for it to get slightly less terrible?
Completely misses the point- the "problem" u are talking about is caused precisely by lack of skill.If people were better they wouldnt have this problrm
@@Desh1355genius game designer here
Paladins has never had a huge 5v5 problem lol
games not popular enough to complain 😂
Paladins never had a playerbase to complain
Imagine hog where the trap is minimal damage but always active, actually serving the purpose of area denial.
I know this is old news, but we need 6v6
Show me tank/tank/dps/dps/support and ow will be healed
was the discussion done on twitch?
Yes
I love how with every post like this you always get the "But hmmm... Actually it's their job" gang who has never played the role but still know all the ins and outs of it... should we bring back 6v6 and tell you it's your job to wait 10mins for a game, would you be ok with it? No one role/player should have a more toxic experience just to benefit others, that's nobody's job
If you workout, and you feel sick at the end of it, you probably are doing something wrong: dehydrated, overheated, overworked, ate too close to it, etc.
The analogy applies though, as with tank, im doing what i need to, but its detrimental to my progress because the environment is wrong. 5v5, raidboss tank format, causes the game to become two 1v4 fights. The only time it changes, is when the two teams stack on a braindead tank, and shoot at the other braindead tank, until someone falls over. This is kind of what Overwatch became after 2020, even with 2 tanks. You had metas like double shield that were braindead stack fights, or you had two tanks that didnt jive, one making the necessary play, the other running down mid to "protect" the team.
6v6 is superior, but balance has been broken from the start. Until team 4 figures out how to balance the roles, the game will continue to slide downhill in quality.
Yeah it's tiring. You're cut off from your supports, the enemy tank is cut off from their supports, whoever manages their resources 1v4 better wins. Tank exchange means nothing now, it's just two kaiju slap fighting.
I feel like if they were to go back to 6v6 and target cc then I feel that will solve the fundamental problems of tank. Part of the reason ow2 felt nice at the start was the reduced cc compared to ow1. Going back to 6v6 will bring back more cc since the majority of tanks have cc in their kit which is why I believe they should reduce it. (I also believe giving characters more cc is just bad gameplay design). You would still have to deal with hero design/balance but it doesn't matter what format you are in for that.
Randm ideas:
Winston gets 4 leaps at increased cooldown to allow more choice/ "what the hell is going on?" -enemy
Dmg ramping from tanks either based on time in combat or based on HP%
Dmg reduced at start of combat, reducing the longer they are in combat