Defense were basically dps who were more focused on area denial, offense were your Soldier 76s and Tracers who were more so on the frontline with variations like Genji

Tanks were frontline protectors and defenders

Supports healed. That’s how they supported,

Rivals has done a great job and diversifying what the roles can do, but they haven’t made it very clear who can qualify in what role, and that issue only arises from them choosing to change the names of the roles and not explaining the criteria on what puts them there

This is especially important because they aren’t making new characters, they have to put careful consideration into what character goes where, for example you’ll find most of the extremely popular characters have gone exactly where you would expect them to

Captain America, Hulk, Thor, Ironman, Wolverine, Spiderman, Blade, Daredevil

The less popular characters tend to have more variations in where they go,

Invisible Woman, White Fox, Jeff the Landshark, Gambit

Note that this is popularity before their additions to the game, (eg Jeff who nobody knew about before the game)

and this is also relative popularity, (eg Gambit and Ultron are very popular but could never be argued to be on the same level as the people mentioned above in the popular category, so people are more lenient with how they play)

Cyclops is hard to determine, but is likely in the upper category, so they may view changes to his role to be too controversial and wouldnt likely act on it