A short pre-discussion
I'm not going to lie, i wanted to get a long blog post put out before the announcements this week but the "post" turned into a paper and i'm having a hard time cutting it down. It contains a lot of discussion that i think needs to happen but let me just talk about 2/2/2 briefly right now.
Currently Shanghai just won the OWL and took out the best GOATs teams one after another. The more amazing fact is that they did it with their own type of DPS comp. It shines a light on how teams are finally dealing with GOATs and learning how to take it down. Its key to understand that what shanghai did wouldn't be allowed under the 2/2/2 rule set. More players are starting to question the entire 2/2/2 push when options are out there and they work. Blizzard is very close to achieving balance in their game if they can make some hard decisions. The big question is, how do they balance tanks and i just wanted to briefly talk about them before getting my long paper out next week.
The problem? Simple; Overwatch is a FPS.
When customers go to play it, they expect to shoot something; its the nature of the genre. This alone means tanks need to deal damage, that's what most people find fun that pick up a FPS. Now they can't have too much damage but at the same time, they need to provide some sort of large threat else there's no reason to kill them. What the developers at blizzard have done is make tanks deal a constant low amount of DPS but every tank has some criteria that when met will give them brief moments of burst damage. Winston and Rein have cleave damage, while low when hitting a single target they both do massive damage when hitting multiple. They also both have burst damage skills with winston knockback for environmental kills and rein with his charge ability. Of course roadhog has his hook, orisa has halt for a couple seconds of easy shots and hammond has his slam combos. Zarya is another easy demonstration with her charge mechanic and D.va when using all her skills can instantly kill a 200hp target.
Its a brilliant plan, allow tanks to just do enough damage to counteract healing but then give people moments of fun by doing high amounts of damage over a short duration. Based on how they do this burst damage you can make tanks feel completely different even if they have the same space creating ability that tanks need.
Which is our second point, tanks have damage but now to be a tank they need some ability to provide space. What is space? The short version is that space is what allows a team to move from point to point across the map in a safe manner. This is the tanks primary job and they can provide it through multiple ways. First they can provide space through damage mitigation. This is easy to see with orisa and rein, they provide a shield that provides cover for their team to move and deal damage safely. Secondly, tanks provide space through damage. The extreme case for this method is roadhog. While he provides little damage mitigation he makes up for it through fear. If he see's anyone out of position or in the open he can easily hook and kill them. It's this fear that provides space around roadhog that his teammates can leverage.
The last piece of the puzzle is that a tank needs a decent HP pool. This is to stop other heroes from bursting them down and gives supports a chance to heal and keep the tanks alive. This is normally counteracted by a larger hit box.
With these 3 pieces, look at what tanks have. Large HP pools, consistent average DPS with high burst damage under specific conditions and damage mitigation abilities. Some even have high mobility. Why the hell wouldn't you play these heroes?!
Normally because of their dependence on cooldowns.
One tank isn't an issue, two tanks isn't as well but when you start getting to three and you have the issue that goats is causing. While all damage mitigation abilities have cooldowns you can start overlapping them to cover for each other. Now with a little bit of sustain from your supports you have a very strong defensive unit. In a non 2/2/2 design how do you create tanks that can do their job alone but when paired up with other tanks not be over powered? It seems like they have everything! Well the answer is the same as how shanghai beat GOATs.
Range.
The single thing I've been saying for the past year, tanks lack range. Its the one weakness they all have. Some can deal with it better than others but at the cost of abilities and downtimes which can be exploited by good players. If you want to balance tanks you need them to be a little crummier at range and you'll open up a ton of alternative solutions for goats.
Currently Shanghai just won the OWL and took out the best GOATs teams one after another. The more amazing fact is that they did it with their own type of DPS comp. It shines a light on how teams are finally dealing with GOATs and learning how to take it down. Its key to understand that what shanghai did wouldn't be allowed under the 2/2/2 rule set. More players are starting to question the entire 2/2/2 push when options are out there and they work. Blizzard is very close to achieving balance in their game if they can make some hard decisions. The big question is, how do they balance tanks and i just wanted to briefly talk about them before getting my long paper out next week.
The problem? Simple; Overwatch is a FPS.
When customers go to play it, they expect to shoot something; its the nature of the genre. This alone means tanks need to deal damage, that's what most people find fun that pick up a FPS. Now they can't have too much damage but at the same time, they need to provide some sort of large threat else there's no reason to kill them. What the developers at blizzard have done is make tanks deal a constant low amount of DPS but every tank has some criteria that when met will give them brief moments of burst damage. Winston and Rein have cleave damage, while low when hitting a single target they both do massive damage when hitting multiple. They also both have burst damage skills with winston knockback for environmental kills and rein with his charge ability. Of course roadhog has his hook, orisa has halt for a couple seconds of easy shots and hammond has his slam combos. Zarya is another easy demonstration with her charge mechanic and D.va when using all her skills can instantly kill a 200hp target.
Its a brilliant plan, allow tanks to just do enough damage to counteract healing but then give people moments of fun by doing high amounts of damage over a short duration. Based on how they do this burst damage you can make tanks feel completely different even if they have the same space creating ability that tanks need.
Which is our second point, tanks have damage but now to be a tank they need some ability to provide space. What is space? The short version is that space is what allows a team to move from point to point across the map in a safe manner. This is the tanks primary job and they can provide it through multiple ways. First they can provide space through damage mitigation. This is easy to see with orisa and rein, they provide a shield that provides cover for their team to move and deal damage safely. Secondly, tanks provide space through damage. The extreme case for this method is roadhog. While he provides little damage mitigation he makes up for it through fear. If he see's anyone out of position or in the open he can easily hook and kill them. It's this fear that provides space around roadhog that his teammates can leverage.
The last piece of the puzzle is that a tank needs a decent HP pool. This is to stop other heroes from bursting them down and gives supports a chance to heal and keep the tanks alive. This is normally counteracted by a larger hit box.
With these 3 pieces, look at what tanks have. Large HP pools, consistent average DPS with high burst damage under specific conditions and damage mitigation abilities. Some even have high mobility. Why the hell wouldn't you play these heroes?!
Normally because of their dependence on cooldowns.
One tank isn't an issue, two tanks isn't as well but when you start getting to three and you have the issue that goats is causing. While all damage mitigation abilities have cooldowns you can start overlapping them to cover for each other. Now with a little bit of sustain from your supports you have a very strong defensive unit. In a non 2/2/2 design how do you create tanks that can do their job alone but when paired up with other tanks not be over powered? It seems like they have everything! Well the answer is the same as how shanghai beat GOATs.
Range.
The single thing I've been saying for the past year, tanks lack range. Its the one weakness they all have. Some can deal with it better than others but at the cost of abilities and downtimes which can be exploited by good players. If you want to balance tanks you need them to be a little crummier at range and you'll open up a ton of alternative solutions for goats.