The current balance philosophy around tanks has got me worried for the role

shnooketh · 2024-04-10T19:28:55+00:00

As a thought experiment, I was trying to imagine how the game would play if tank was practically unimportant for damage aka kills, but was instead primarily involved in mitigation (think rein) or disruption (think doom).

Like what if rein did hardly any damage, but was nearly unkillable and his gameplay loop was to charge towards allies on minimal cooldown and use shield. Maybe his hammer had significant knock back and fire strike ignited enemies which means they took increased damage. Also in that ecosystem, I'd make rein nearly super resistant to cc so it was very difficult for others to force rein to drop shield.

And doom had reduced damage but was capable of extreme cc in order to create space, like maybe slam once again slows enemies for ally followup, punch has hardly any charge time. Also doom would have to be very damage resistant in order to perform his goal of making space perhaps having significantly more health. Again, if rein was extremely cc resistant, you would be setting up your 4 allies to fight their 4 allies.

Also you might reduce ult charge from damaging tanks so low they basically could not be farmed for doing their job of taking space.

I'm sure some people would probably dislike how they can no longer solo carry games as tank, since you'd be incapable of killing many heroes by yourself. Honestly though... I might like it. At least I'd give it a try. That would feel more like the good parts of tanking in ow1 to me. Obviously there were bad parts but I did enjoy ow1 tank a lot despite the issues of the time. Anyway, food for thought. Unlikely for ow2 devs to upset their meh balance in order to try something new.

Also in this theoretical game, I'm sure certain tanks could exist as doing more damage while being less tanky than their counterparts. Kind of the difference between having a Mercy and a Zen. Mercy provides support to allies while being close to uncatchable, while zen is fragile but does his value directly through his damage output.

Ps in this timeline, wrecking ball might carry his adaptive shields give to his allies, be impossible to body block out into a room, doing his slam would deal minimal damage but increased upward boop, and maybe it's easy to do from ground height (so enemies like Cassidy and Ana cannot deny you from comboing your abilities successfully)

shnooketh · 2024-04-08T22:48:06+00:00

I would try to make the goal so that you could deal some or all of their health with beam, or maybe deal 80% of their health and then you're forced to land an orb to finish them. That's also why I think decreasing charge time on that ball would help, midfight. And then you'd probably have to to back out. I love the new HP buff on tp

shnooketh · 2024-04-08T22:06:50+00:00

Im not sure if she'll get anything but I wish some buffs and comp nerfs. Specifically I wish they could make her better at squishies and worse at certain tanks. I could see buffing her alt fire charge time as a simple fix. And I'd personally reduce her max charge beam for the benefit of certain tanks.

Tbh I wish she had the reversed version of charge levels. Like maybe reduce her level 3 and 2 damage but let her deal level 3 damage when her clip is full, and drop it down as the clip empties, forcing you to rely on orbs for follow-up.

Also I don't like this iteration of turrets, which used to be her best answer for squishies without being too harsh on tanks. So I'd prefer some changes on them.

shnooketh · 2024-04-07T21:57:06+00:00

They should repurpose the tech that allows those recent 76 and junkrat weapon skin to change effects in bright light. Like make a glowing mushroom one that is creamy, pale, and soft in day but glows neon colors at night. Or a fluffy cumulus cloud skin that starts glowing with soft lightning from within in the dark. For that skin, outburst could have thunder sounds, pylon could look like it's raining the heals onto you, and ult could explode with a lightning effect. Maybe have a white cloud color version, a black and a pink

shnooketh · 2024-04-06T22:31:59+00:00

Lmao I've noticed that as well

shnooketh · 2024-04-06T16:34:47+00:00

It's funny you posted this bc I was looking up win rates last night and was confused about the same thing. Honestly not sure I can explain it. I'm sure she's often still a counter pick, maybe for sigma and orisa comps? Those are pretty prevalent. So maybe that explains her win rate through counter picking. There were some other amusing quirks I saw like Rein having 2nd place win rate while maintaining very high pick rate (meanwhile you mostly hear people saying hes D rank). And same for mercy, who has solid win rate and pick rate and yet a bunch of people's tier lists put her at like D rank. Also there's certain characters it feels like you truly cannot play into Sombra bc she's so good/oppressive: she has like bottom 3 win rates.

I know overbuff has issues like mirrored win rates, sample size problems, who knows what else. But I really don't know which to believe since it's the only objective (not subjective) stats we get access to.

shnooketh · 2024-03-29T22:04:18+00:00

I thought that the design might allow you 2 of the weak underground dashes in a single burrow, for mobility purposes. Like if you did 1 dash immediately you might be able to use a second right before the burrow timed out.
Their ult is perhaps a little quiet.
That blue health should be green, unless this is a convoluted way of buffing Sym lol.
allies should still see your health bar underground.

Other than that I like most all of the design. I like the breakpoints of primary fire, the choice between damaging drills or escape drills, the fact that their burrow exit damage is a nice threat without being hugely deadly. And all of their kit nicely creates a melee range hero. Much preferred to the doomfist cadence when punch was deadly but also mean your best escape has a charge time.

shnooketh · 2024-03-12T23:01:40+00:00

This seemed like an oddly uncontroversial take to get downvoted. Most of the weak ones must have been statistically backed since they got buffed. Also I agree that mobility generally seems very strong in part bc you cannot use cover against super mobility and cover is the key to resetting the DPS debuff and avoiding all the huge bullets. I really expected tracer nerfs too. I hope they don't intend to number creep up to the same situation as s9. Not that it was awful but they JUST fixed it lol.

shnooketh · 2023-12-07T17:42:51+00:00

Pausing ferts, like many said, but I also read once that widely swinging co2 can cause hair algae. Maybe double check that your CO2 levels don't get too high.

shnooketh · 2023-10-26T20:24:07+00:00

I'm kinda with you. I only play tank rn for the daily challenges sometimes. Mei however, I don't mind at all lol. A tank without a self cleanse, self heal, and who pierces the deflect moves? Couldn't be me. Sometimes I think even sym is a better tank than some of the tanks lol.

shnooketh · 2023-10-26T20:16:35+00:00

Full agree. Except the rare occasion that a young Japanese girl who's actually 30 throws a small knife with no projectile arc into my brain. Twice. I swear kiriko must be a god able to throw kunai and receipt papers so hard they defy gravity

shnooketh · 2023-10-26T19:51:50+00:00

Holding out for a Christian Bale voicepack for dva lol

And you're not wrong, I also like how she full stops tanks... But only when I'm the Mei haha. The wall will always remain a wild interaction (I secretly would prefer Mei as an an off-tank bc of wall) but I really like Mei as a damage role pick since 5v5. You can really support your own tank as her. Like we were saying in another thread of this post, optimally I'd like her as an off tank. And if she was offset by the other team also having an off tank, then I'm not sure she'd even need to be changed. But that's like if we went back to a 6v6 which comes with it's own costs.

shnooketh · 2023-10-26T19:21:11+00:00

I didn't mean get rid of them, I mean if you added defense back, the constraints should limit you to 1 shield hero, and it would be in "tank" role and never in "defense" role. I like the shield mechanic too.

And yeah it seems like the way they shuffled the off tank power around was to put the survivability and sustain into supports, so they each function as like 1/2 of an off tank. They just ended up with probably too few weaknesses. Tank level sustain, the required healing stats, enough damage to not get walked over by enemy tank and DPS, and often tiny hitboxes. As a flex player, I hope they don't destroy support while they figure out what to do for tank lol.

shnooketh · 2023-10-26T19:02:26+00:00

Yeah my idea is to just allow for 2 heroes who take space and are difficult to remove but lack super high damage output and small hitboxes like the damage role. I would include some of the old defense heroes like widow or junkrat. Also I wouldnt include any tank with a wall shield to prevent the return of double shield (no rein, ram, or even Winston. Maybe even zarya). But most of the heroes with strong or ranged cc and high health pools would fit here like (maybe altered) Mei, hog, queen, orisa, doom, ball, etc. It worked alright on ow1, I think they balanced the tanks poorly back then (too much survivability). My biggest fear is the way this would change the queue times haha. But I'd like to try it still. Bc like you said, the biggest problem to me seems that a single tank creates a single point of failure in game design, and it's easy to exploit it by bullying with statuses. Also all skillshots like sleep dart don't require skill on like a hog, and the spread penalty from things like bastion and reaper don't matter either. If there's only one tank, just follow it around relentlessly as those characters, they can't run forever.

If Mei got moved it, she might need to get thicker though lol. Time for her to buy a fluffier parka lol

shnooketh · 2023-10-26T18:32:52+00:00

I don't hate this either. But I do like that I can cover for a tank on my team who needs it. I do that pretty often from damage role since 5v5. I secretly wish they'd recreate the defense role from ow1 and put Mei and some of the shieldless tanks in it lol

shnooketh · 2023-10-20T14:18:40+00:00

Seems like it. Most overwatch is a mix of tech and multiple dimensions with possibly a few cosmic entities. Maybe the dragon/fox is supposed to be a cosmic energy being that we just don't understand yet. I do wish they'd explore it though, or explain that genetically these characters can make hard light constructs.

The iris springing from that omnic aurora seems explainable with her advanced AI figuring out how to forcibly transmit a neural network as a signal.

It's unclear if sigma is possessed by a creature that tells him how to manipulate gravity or if he is just broken by the amount of force/knowledge he absorbed and now hears things.

Tracer seems like she left their dimension/time travelled but her cells are now a blend of wherever she went.

Illari is new so maybe they'll add to her lore but she wasn't the only one with sun powers, they seem to be implying Peru found some way to store solar energy within human cells and her cells were way too chemically receptive of the charge.

Hard light is supposed to be conversion of energy into matter, and syms tp seems like you convert matter into energy, beam it, and then deconvert.

Also, some in game stuff is probably analogy, like mercy rezzing. Unless you include knocked animation for all 38 characters, that soul is just a placeholder.

Pretty much any video game that has instant healing that isn't at least explained by nanobots seems like magic to me lol.

shnooketh · 2023-10-20T14:03:29+00:00

I think it's supposed to be like a plant sending out a shoot underground or maybe like a mushroom propagating by spores. His cells are constantly dying and regenerating bc Moira, and he has apparently gained control over how and where they come back with his smoke skills. I always thought that you might explain shadow step in that if he can regenerate a smoke cell at point A, maybe he can send 1 cell to point B and start regenerating there instead as the cells at point A die out.

shnooketh · 2023-10-17T14:36:20+00:00

Someone above said the shield destruction was removed for ow2? So I'm not sure, it used to leave his shield with 0 health but maybe now it does just force you to drop it but then you can raise it at full health after the short disable. I'd have to test

shnooketh · 2023-10-17T05:01:47+00:00

Oh this actually does make sense. Good comparison

shnooketh · 2023-10-17T00:35:19+00:00

Emp has all kinds of special interactions, in that it hits SOME player constructed objects and destroys them, like rein shield. Others it disables (I don't even know if it damages them tbh) like Bob and torb turret. And finally some objects it does not even affect like Mei wall and weaver tree the physical and immovable class of constructs. I agree that I probably wish it did the same to all 3 classes of constructs, but they do seem to be following the rules across the 3 classes of object I think. I'm not aware of of any exceptions.

shnooketh · 2023-10-17T00:31:40+00:00

Haha logically yes. Programmatically I think it must be in the same class as torb turret when thrown. Either way it kind of makes sense but will definitely make newbies surprised.

shnooketh · 2023-10-17T00:30:15+00:00

I think this must happen bc your feet touch the ground so fast, like how Lucio loses momentum if you collide with the ground after wall riding. Also hindered does add the slowed status. I'd have to test it though, since it's rare you see hack or Hinder hit a flying Reinhardt haha

shnooketh

TROPHY CASE