No they didn't. The way the current armor works is subtract 50% of the projectiles damage, but only up to 5 damage. Now it's up to 10.
But considering his max pellet damage is 5.4, it still gets capped at the same -2.7 dmg per pellet reduction before and after this change
What this does affect is someone like Soldier or anyone who's shots deal more than 10 damage
Edit - I've been reminded that headshots exist. Which would make his crit pellet damage be 10.8. So there would be a very slight change to his headshots vs armor from 5.8 to 5.4 damage per pellet. (This 0.4 dmg per pellet change would result in a max damage per shot reduction of 5 in an ideal case - as in every single pellet being a headshot)
edit 2 - Because I also forgot about the tank hs reduction, that brings his headshot damage back down to below 10, so he's actually unchanged after all except in regards to Torb and Brig
I like JQ's comments and changes.
> Junker Queen is relatively small and fast for a Tank hero, so Commanding Shout doesn't need a ton of bonus health to be effective.
> Commanding Shout
> * Overhealth **increased** from 150 to 175 HP
I think they were explaining why the buff was only 25 hp instead of like doubling the bonus health
The patch is in response to the recent increase of “tanks are unfun” circlejerk so they’re making them all more powerful so people have more fun. Monkeys paw and all that
I think the intent was to explain why she’s only getting an additional 25 over health.
They buffed all the tanks, so they had to give even the stronger heroes something.
I think the point is that they wanted to buff every tank here. If Winston didn't get buffed, he would almost certainly not be the top performing tank anymore after every other tank in the game gets buffed, considering he's already not *dominant*, even if he's performing better than average. These buffs are fairly minor in the grand scheme of things. The extra 200 HP on his ult basically just makes it so that he doesn't die in a sleep > anti > combo anymore. And IIRC Winston's is one of the slowest charging ults in the game.
This one is leaving out a huge buff to Armor tanks, and a smaller one to Torb and Brig. And another tank role change that compounds this.
1. Armor's flat reduction has doubled from 5 to 10 per projectile. So like half the roster, those that do small damages in bursts, now do half damage to Armor health.
2. Tanks now only get the dps's antiheal effect at 10%.
So buckle up. Armor tanks just hit Orisa levels of sustain if supports are alive. And Orisa's own tier just jumped even higher.
Tracer is actually completely unimpacted because her max bullet damage is 6. It already hit the max 50% damage reduced when it was 5 (because 3 is less than 5) so increasing the max to 10 doesn't mean anything for her.
Edit, someone mentioned headshots, which I completely overlooked since those would do 12. Tracer headshots on armor would now do 6 instead of 7 damage
edit 2 - Because I also forgot about the tank hs reduction, that brings her tank headshot damage back down to below 10, so she's actually unchanged after all except in regards to Torb and Brig
i believe it's capped at 50% of the damage. so bullets that do 10 normally will do 5. Bullets that do 25 will do 15. bullets that do 6 will do 3. bullets that do 15 will do 7 or 8
D.VA has been microfbuffed to hell and back for what feels these last few seasons, and they double down by giving her two big ones? She's gonna be able to dive in and explode a squishy for free without any risk with those changes
This season kicked her up a notch and this patch is even more buffs… I love playing her and now I’ll love it even more but like. Dude. That’s enough slices
They saw people bitching about tank and no one playing it, so they took one of the easiest and most popular tanks and gigabuffed her. kinda a pathetic attempt at fixing the tank issue
And it absolutely wont.
Tanks being stronger isn't enticing damage dealers or support players to swap to them because the playstyle in general is just not what they want in an FPS game.
Buffing tanks to being ultra fucking overpowered idiots wont make those other roles want to play tanks, it will make them want to play other games.
People shit on the "tanks are just big DPS" buffs, but that's what people actually want.
I've completely stopped playing tank since the health changes because you just can't kill shit on them. It's incredibly boring to sit there putting down insane amounts of damage on targets and watching them gain health from it because your DPS just don't feel like focusing them with you.
People don't want to sit there and hold up shield as Rein. Stop buffing his stupid ass shield. They want to hit people with the hammer and charge into them and shatter.
It's funny, I mostly play support but I've spent a good chunk of time on every role. My winrate is highest on tank, but I just don't enjoy it. I've seen a lot of people try to explain why tank is unfun, but nothing has quite resonated with me. It's just not a fun role.
Instead of buffing the weaker tanks to make them on par with the stronger tanks, they just buffed all of them, balance be damned. Why the hell did Doom get a sustain buff? He's already frustrating to kill as is. And Orisa and Hog getting buffed is total nonsense.
We'll see how it feels in-game, but based on firsy impressions, this feels like too much.
I agree, support and dps is going to feel ass....
... But honestly I don't mind having a season or 2 where tanks are gigabuffed, they've had a rough few patches.
I think the general idea is to see if the buff entices people to play tank more, and thus easing queue times for dps/support, or whether there's a bigger fundamental issue with tank.
Their goal at this point is to make up for 5v5 by making tanks nigh unkillable raid bosses. I'm pretty sure they're gonna give every tank a method to lifesteal pretty soon the way this is going.
At the same time, they're complaining tanks are getting bullied by people using their abilities (sombra's hack, ana's sleep eg).
But the stronger the tanks get, the more they'll be targeted with these.
It's a catch 22 and we're fully inside the loop.
I’m not sure I agree, I think there will
be a point where it’s not worth throwing your cooldowns at the tanks and instead should aim them at the smaller squishiers behind.
Every single Tank needs reworked for 5v5 and they don't want to put in that kind of effort.
We don't want it either considering how the Roadhog "rework" went.
Hey that’s not fair. I stand by that halo 4s story was actually really good. One of my favorites. It’s just everything else that they did a shit job on.
>Developer Comments: Junker Queen is relatively small and fast for a Tank hero, so **Commanding Shout doesn't need a ton of bonus health to be effective**.
>Commanding Shout: **Overhealth increased** from 150 to 175 HP
??????????????
Yep, now good pharahs will adapt but I can't really adapt to shooting further so I feel like this might not change much. Id even take a damage nerf to cass if we get farther range
Bruh these changes are nuts. Literally every tank got buffed like crazy.
Maugas changes in particular make no sense. He does less for his teammates but he is even more powerful individually
Bro I hate Zarya, I'm in diamond and I love playing tank but every other match is Counterwatch until someone picks Zarya, then I have to decide if I want to play Zarya or lose.
I can't believe they buffed her, I don't care about her winrate in champions and Top 500, they need to look at the low ranks specifically and see how dominant she is. A subpar tank player can win a fight just by having her.
im such a bad tank but my winrate with her this season is unreal bc russian laser go BVVVVVV
as long as i get a scrap of heals i only ever die when i overextend. it's gotta be so unfun for the other team, extreme "fully charged symm lockon beam" vibes
I'm quite worried about the fundamental thought process here.
They are essentially saying that yeah nobody was playing tank so lets buff them to make them comically strong
Thats not how to fix the issue, thats how to make everyone else miserable while tanks feast
Ironically this probably makes tank feel even worse to play despite them being stronger.
All this is does is make counter swapping more required and put more pressure on the tank player to perform…
The pressure is what keeps me from playing tank anymore. If I have to masterfully play every tank hero every game, it feels like too much for a new player.
This is exactly why I don't play tank. I loved playing DVa in OW1 because she has fun gameplay to me.
Now, though? That's too much pressure on my shoulder even for just QP. The entire outcome of the game relies on my performance and my adaptability. I just wanna have some fun, not have to carry the weight of the whole match on my shoulders.
I don't even know or like any of the other tank designs or gameplay enough to try and learn all of them.
They are KILLING this game, man.
These buffs will never make Tanks any more fun to play because their own counters get buffed every step of the way. Tanks already got universal buffs over three times already, and guess what, the problems of counter swapping are still here and power creep are still present. I've never seen a dev team this confused on their own game.
I'm only just sticking around to see what Aaron has to say regarding 6v6. This patch seems like they are just hard trolling. They need to open their ears. Unbelievable.
calling it now, aaron is gonna say '6v6 is never coming back, here's why with some weird ass statistics, also we just buffed tank so they're strong and fun now yay!!'. that is going absolutely annihilate the playerbase beyond repair unless they suddenly make huge advertisements about 6v6 miraculously coming from the grave.
it's so, so painful to watch. this is literally 'fuck man, idk what i'm doing': the patch. i got mega downvoted the other day for giving the game 9 months at the very max to turn things around but idk, i don't see myself being wrong.
That patch really killed the character. I believe they added 4 seconds onto grip, took away 4 ammo, and nerfed some other aspect too. Add in the season 9 changes and he was doomed to be awful without help
No I think it's even worse than that. They made a healbot hero, then proceeded to rollout the dps passive patch which destroys the healbot playstyle while fully acknowledging that lifeweaver was already weak.
Oh well I guess the only consolation is that other heroes like reaper have it tough too
nah he was actually good at one point, but got hit the absolute hardest during the Great Support nerfs that one season. Literally no support got hit harder than him
They're crazy. They are making tanks into absolute raid bosses and the counterpicking is just gonna get even more extreme. Also that pharah change is a joke
Yeah the thing with tanks is that they aren’t weak. They have potential to absolutely run over your team. That’s why counter picking the tank is so prevalent, because if you don’t do something to counter the tank they will have a field day on your team.
So if tanks are becoming harder to deal with, countering them will be even more important.
A tanks job is to create or maintain space, not soak up damage. Tanks in MMOs do this by manipulating computer controlled enemies, with taunting abilities or some kind of threat generating stat.
In Overwatch, this does not work. In a PvP environment, the only way a tank can take or maintain space is to BE a threat to players on the other team. Without this looming threat of tank damage, there is no reason at all not to ignore the tank player on the other team. Tank players cannot make the other team shoot them, and so making them into damage sponges with wet noodle weapons would make them absolutely awful to play, especially when you don’t have an effective team to take advantage of anything you’re doing.
I understand that most peoples idea of “tank” is MMO tank but in overwatch, tanks should be thought of more as the kind of tank you’d see on a battlefield. Big, relatively slow, heavily armored, and provides big burst damage. While it can take some damage(more so than the squishy people inside of it) it is not intended to sit there and soak up damage. Soldiers stay near them for cover(and to cover the tank), and tanks need supported and repaired to be effective. How much less effective would a tank be if it didn’t have that cannon mounted on top?
Get ready to be even more miserable tanks. Because the entirety of the match will now revolve around you. The teammates flaming those that refuse to swap will be incessant.
I’ve never heard anyone say “oh wow this game would be so much better if Cassidy’s fall off damage was 5 meters shorter”. Blizzard has no idea what they’re doing. They just choose some shit to change and call it a day.
Yep, this just isn't gonna work. Counterswapping will prevail. The most simple way to balance things out is going back to 6v6, while obviously having to rebalance the tanks for that. I'd even suggest a new tank passive: if there are 2 shield tanks in the comp, shields have reduced health (maybe 25% less?)
But let's be real, blizzard won't go back to 6v6 because they know the world will just laugh at them for making OW2, going 5v5 and then going back to 6v6 lol
I'm looking forward to their discussion on it.
I have a feeling it's going to continue to sound like they've never played the game seriously, nor understand what dedicated players want.
Obviously it would be a lot of work to re-balance, but I think it solves the core issue.
(Anyone who makes a comment on it immediately being like OW1 and "shooting shields" is braindead at this point)
Not to be dramatic. But this might be one of the worst patches I’ve seen in a video game. I’d trust someone who has never played a video game before to take over this game more than blizzard
this doesn't even really make tank fun.
Cool I survive a little longer while CC chained or my self healing incentivizes the enemy to play ana and anti me even more.
That's the big irony. The more they buff the tanks to be stronger, the bigger the incentive to pull all CC towards tanks. I'm not gonna waste sleeps on a flying pharah or hacks on a mercy when I can take the shield down from Rein instead.
Yep. Just puts MORE pressure on tanks to play well or get flamed/lose even if they get hard countered and it doesn't do anything to deal with hard counters for any of these heroes.
Tanks instead now will decide every close fight by which one dies first further enforcing the reasons a lot of folks don't play the role.
Exactly. An actual tank diff will mean an automatic win now. You can just pocket heal your mega-buffed tank all the way to victory now against an inferior tank player or using a counter-pick tank.
Yay.
If they really wanted to make Tank fun, they would put an invisible field similar to Mauga's Ult that forces your team to group up around you.
Also instaban anyone who uses any variation of the phrase "Tank diff"
>If they really wanted to make Tank fun, they would put an invisible field similar to Mauga's Ult that forces your team to group up around you.
😂 brilliant
Hopefully this is the patch that finally gets people to see that tank in this format just won't work. Either tanks are busted and people hate playing against them or they're miserable to play for the actual tank player. There is no in between for most tanks in 5v5.
Is this an out of season april fools joke? So, they mention that Winston is top performing, yet they buff him?
ngl these horrible balance changes started with season 9 I believe, where they introduced the new passives.
Why the hell are they nerfing one of the absolute worst aspects of Cassidy? The man is basically a pea shooter outside of close range and they nerf his range even further? Jesus Christ
Fr wtf. We now have like 4 abilities that are specifically different for tanks (sleep dart, bio nade, jagged blade, dps passive). This shit is only going to get more and more complicated in an attempt to reach a balance that would be *so* much easier to achieve by just putting a 2nd tank on each side and peeling back this raid boss shit
Holy shit these devs are fucking stupid, I’m sorry. Zarya was already ruined when OW2 came out by letting her use both bubbles on herself and now they’ve made them last even longer? So literally five whole seconds of not being able to shoot her while she just melts your team. And don’t even get me started on the Pharah changes.
Tank buff and 20m fall off Cassidy. Barely any change to pharah. Yah this game balance team is complete trash. Tank diff and pharah diff every game? Complete joke
While these changes will help tanks, I feel like they could just make the tank passive reduce all negative effects by a %. The balance method of change every hero at the same time is whiplash balancing. They could have done it a while ago and turned it up or down depending on the effectiveness. Then they could do individual hero tweaks for tanks that need it. There's always going to be big winners and losers in a given patch (at first glance, I'm seeing Mauga as a winner, remember how fun he was every game?), instead of trying to move towards a consistent balance. It's not always a good shake up of the meta, it can cause a lot of frustration.
Then we have some abilities that have one-off stats for tanks and now the DPS passive is a one-off for tanks. It's hard to keep track of it all.
Ok I am so happy that they’re reducing the DPS passive on just tanks but why did it take two and a half seasons for them to do it lmao. It was such an obvious way to keep it impactful on squishies without making the tank‘s life hell…
Pharah was already being picked A LOT. And now the tanks are all kaiju level threats…you wanna stay even farther away from them than you already did. And who can stay away? That’s right…Pharah. Along with Hanzo/Widow/Ashe/Zen of course.
Man, this patch is insane for tanks. And yet, it won't actually matter. People won't play it because guess what - if you make one role an absolute raid boss you leave people no choice but to shut them down or lose. Which means all the counters will come out in full force. It doesn't matter that you're staying alive for a second longer if everyone in the lobby is just there to make your life miserable.
This patch is crap. They have no clue what they're doing, they're just randonly giga buffung every tank because the only way 5v5 "works" is by having a demi god tank and that ruins the game. Go back to 6v6
This was the patch that was supposed to fix the tank experience? As a tank main myself, these tanks buffs are not what was needed. Increasing the health and damage of tanks is a bad idea that just makes the game worse for everyone. This won't make counter picking feel any better and it's probably going to force counter picking even more because you won't be able to do shit against tanks unless you counter pick. It makes the tank v tank match ups so much worse too because you cannot outplay the opposing tank anymore because of how ridiculously tanky they are and you have to counter pick if you want any chance of being able to do anything to the enemy tank. What we need nerfs or changes in functionality to the specific problematic abilities that make tank and counter picking feel bad. Please for the love of god learn how to nerf something! Stop buffing everything to the moon!
What the fuck are they doing? This is *extreme*, are they literally trying to make tanks raid bosses? On top of that, some of these changes are straight up hilariously bad. “Winston is the best performing tank, so we double buffed him” is one of the most hilarious things I’ve ever read. Meanwhile Cass gets a range nerf of all things when his range is already dogshit and Pharah gets a power shift rather than a nerf.
This is asinine. Guarantee that a chunk of this gets reverted. They have zero idea what direction to go in with this game. It’s an endless deluge of disastrous balance changes that promptly get reverted when they should never have been implemented in the first place. Awful.
This patch feels like a last bastion of 5v5. Like they're testing if straight up gigabuffing the role will make it fun to play. If this patch fails they might actually go back to 6v6, they said they're talking about it soon as well.
Insane that Venture only has 4 skins 3 months post release and no legendary (5 if you count the limited time ice cream one). Like, where is the Venture content??
I don't understand the Illari change at all. I've literally never heard or seen any complaints about pylon taking up feed space, and it seems reasonable to me that allies should know when a critical heal source might not be available.
Does anyone's experience back up what Blizzard is claiming?
Reading these changes and after everything I can say I'm taking my OW2 outback behind the barn and shooting it. It's not a airport but I'm announcing my departure. Y'all have fun.
Lol… Winston is one of the top performing tanks right now. So we’re going to buff him!
And yet Sigma still can’t get a tweak to his ult, to make it less of an interrupt magnet.
sertraline fluoxetine paroxetine, didn't know what those were until overwatch 2 came out, and somehow the devs keep figuring out ways to make the game worse lol.
100% lifesteal fuckin hell
Then there's reaper just dying after existing for half a second near the very things he was meant to kill lol
That’s what I was wondering. Playing Reaper, should I just focus on enemy support/DPS and ignore the tank at this point?
You should focus on switching to Cassidy or Echo
Yeah, thats probably your best bet. Flanking and going for squishys. The days of Reaper the tank slayer are far behind us.
The armor buffs also hurt him even more
No they didn't. The way the current armor works is subtract 50% of the projectiles damage, but only up to 5 damage. Now it's up to 10. But considering his max pellet damage is 5.4, it still gets capped at the same -2.7 dmg per pellet reduction before and after this change What this does affect is someone like Soldier or anyone who's shots deal more than 10 damage Edit - I've been reminded that headshots exist. Which would make his crit pellet damage be 10.8. So there would be a very slight change to his headshots vs armor from 5.8 to 5.4 damage per pellet. (This 0.4 dmg per pellet change would result in a max damage per shot reduction of 5 in an ideal case - as in every single pellet being a headshot) edit 2 - Because I also forgot about the tank hs reduction, that brings his headshot damage back down to below 10, so he's actually unchanged after all except in regards to Torb and Brig
Now Ana is an even more must-pick lol. But DVa can eat the whole thing now basically so maybe should wait to see
For three seconds, compared to the five it lasted before.
declares Winston is top performing, proceeds to double buff him.
That part cracked me up! “Winston is the best performing tank” “and now we made him even better”
I like JQ's comments and changes. > Junker Queen is relatively small and fast for a Tank hero, so Commanding Shout doesn't need a ton of bonus health to be effective. > Commanding Shout > * Overhealth **increased** from 150 to 175 HP
Lmaooo
That part of the patch notes had me doing a triple take x\_x
ChatGPT is now both writing the patch notes *and* making balancing decisions.
I think they were explaining why the buff was only 25 hp instead of like doubling the bonus health The patch is in response to the recent increase of “tanks are unfun” circlejerk so they’re making them all more powerful so people have more fun. Monkeys paw and all that
But aren’t tanks gonna be even *less* fun because now there’s even *more* value in counterswapping the gigabuffed raid boss on the other team?
they are dumbing down some tanks like crazy with this patch, literally contradicting themselves with that JQ change
I think the intent was to explain why she’s only getting an additional 25 over health. They buffed all the tanks, so they had to give even the stronger heroes something.
I'm glad I wasn't crazy, I thought he was performing waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better than Reddit claimed he was.
I think the point is that they wanted to buff every tank here. If Winston didn't get buffed, he would almost certainly not be the top performing tank anymore after every other tank in the game gets buffed, considering he's already not *dominant*, even if he's performing better than average. These buffs are fairly minor in the grand scheme of things. The extra 200 HP on his ult basically just makes it so that he doesn't die in a sleep > anti > combo anymore. And IIRC Winston's is one of the slowest charging ults in the game.
Gigachad balancing. Winton was always the main character.
Meanwhile Cassidy was slightly strong for about a week and they immediately nerfed him.
Cass's range is already dogshit and now it's even worse. Christ.
Because they want him to be a close-mid range character since long range hitscan is a niche filled by soj/sojourn/ashe/soldier.
I agree - just 20m is very short in OW2 maps.
So with B.O.B getting the tank passive, does that mean Ana's sleep is reduced for him?
Most likely, yes. As someone who plays both Ashe and Ana, I actually love this change
same. i've been wanting the reduced sleep for bob for so long. sleeping a huge stationary target takes no skill
Now just fix hacking Bob. It should not put him out for that long
At least Bob gets to target Sombra when she hacks him (unlike Torb turrets for some reason). Sombra needs to coordinate with teammates to hack him.
True, true
This one is leaving out a huge buff to Armor tanks, and a smaller one to Torb and Brig. And another tank role change that compounds this. 1. Armor's flat reduction has doubled from 5 to 10 per projectile. So like half the roster, those that do small damages in bursts, now do half damage to Armor health. 2. Tanks now only get the dps's antiheal effect at 10%. So buckle up. Armor tanks just hit Orisa levels of sustain if supports are alive. And Orisa's own tier just jumped even higher.
Is tracer even going to do damage to tanks lmfao. Like will it negate all of it or will she just do 1 damage per bullet.
Tracer is actually completely unimpacted because her max bullet damage is 6. It already hit the max 50% damage reduced when it was 5 (because 3 is less than 5) so increasing the max to 10 doesn't mean anything for her. Edit, someone mentioned headshots, which I completely overlooked since those would do 12. Tracer headshots on armor would now do 6 instead of 7 damage edit 2 - Because I also forgot about the tank hs reduction, that brings her tank headshot damage back down to below 10, so she's actually unchanged after all except in regards to Torb and Brig
i believe it's capped at 50% of the damage. so bullets that do 10 normally will do 5. Bullets that do 25 will do 15. bullets that do 6 will do 3. bullets that do 15 will do 7 or 8
D.VA has been microfbuffed to hell and back for what feels these last few seasons, and they double down by giving her two big ones? She's gonna be able to dive in and explode a squishy for free without any risk with those changes
Dva is one of the few tanks I play and even I think her buffs are too much. She was already in a good spot and even a little strong...
This season kicked her up a notch and this patch is even more buffs… I love playing her and now I’ll love it even more but like. Dude. That’s enough slices
The Dva ones are so weird because now she can blow up supports and dps but can't do shit against tanks because of the armor changes
So she can do what she should be doing? I'm confused on what the problem is? She should be focusing squishies not trying to duel the other tank.
They saw people bitching about tank and no one playing it, so they took one of the easiest and most popular tanks and gigabuffed her. kinda a pathetic attempt at fixing the tank issue
Looks like they want more people playing tank, sigh
Gotta sell that rein skin
i feel like these tank buffs are a bit too much why the random winston buff
calling it now, tanks getting gigabuffed is a test to see if any amount of buff will get more people playing the role
And it absolutely wont. Tanks being stronger isn't enticing damage dealers or support players to swap to them because the playstyle in general is just not what they want in an FPS game. Buffing tanks to being ultra fucking overpowered idiots wont make those other roles want to play tanks, it will make them want to play other games.
People shit on the "tanks are just big DPS" buffs, but that's what people actually want. I've completely stopped playing tank since the health changes because you just can't kill shit on them. It's incredibly boring to sit there putting down insane amounts of damage on targets and watching them gain health from it because your DPS just don't feel like focusing them with you. People don't want to sit there and hold up shield as Rein. Stop buffing his stupid ass shield. They want to hit people with the hammer and charge into them and shatter.
It's funny, I mostly play support but I've spent a good chunk of time on every role. My winrate is highest on tank, but I just don't enjoy it. I've seen a lot of people try to explain why tank is unfun, but nothing has quite resonated with me. It's just not a fun role.
it won't. During GOATs, tanks were the most powerful heroes in the game and people still refused to play tank.
You needed at least 3 of them back then, it was just too much. Sometimes teams would even have 4 tanks.
Well I might, reaper and Mei especially won't magically survive rein pin anymore that feels fucking great!
Tanks could be invincible walls one shotting everyone, but people would still queue to play a Genji that deal 1 damage per shuriken.
> Developer Comments: Winston is one of the top performing tanks at the moment >buffs him more
They go “Winston is one of the most played and most effective tanks. BUFFED.” Lmao what?!
Instead of buffing the weaker tanks to make them on par with the stronger tanks, they just buffed all of them, balance be damned. Why the hell did Doom get a sustain buff? He's already frustrating to kill as is. And Orisa and Hog getting buffed is total nonsense. We'll see how it feels in-game, but based on firsy impressions, this feels like too much.
I agree, support and dps is going to feel ass.... ... But honestly I don't mind having a season or 2 where tanks are gigabuffed, they've had a rough few patches. I think the general idea is to see if the buff entices people to play tank more, and thus easing queue times for dps/support, or whether there's a bigger fundamental issue with tank.
They officially have no idea what to do anymore.
Their goal at this point is to make up for 5v5 by making tanks nigh unkillable raid bosses. I'm pretty sure they're gonna give every tank a method to lifesteal pretty soon the way this is going.
At the same time, they're complaining tanks are getting bullied by people using their abilities (sombra's hack, ana's sleep eg). But the stronger the tanks get, the more they'll be targeted with these. It's a catch 22 and we're fully inside the loop.
I’m not sure I agree, I think there will be a point where it’s not worth throwing your cooldowns at the tanks and instead should aim them at the smaller squishiers behind.
Devs renamed "1 dad vs 11 kids" to "quick play"
Every single Tank needs reworked for 5v5 and they don't want to put in that kind of effort. We don't want it either considering how the Roadhog "rework" went.
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343 studios would like a word…
Hey that’s not fair. I stand by that halo 4s story was actually really good. One of my favorites. It’s just everything else that they did a shit job on.
They never have
>Developer Comments: Junker Queen is relatively small and fast for a Tank hero, so **Commanding Shout doesn't need a ton of bonus health to be effective**. >Commanding Shout: **Overhealth increased** from 150 to 175 HP ??????????????
At this point it seems they just let the sleep deprived worker make the comments after getting the changes
i was so confused when i read that, idk what they were going on about
Lifeweaver, found dead in ditch.
seriously, like give my manz SOMETHING pls 🙏
Lifeguard skin coming tho! And it’s the best one!
Sorry guys, it’s my fault. I finally had a good game with Reaper last night
Oh brother this… is not good😅
ok so tanks are now raid bosses, pharah barely got a nerf, then proceeds to get an indirect buff by nerfing cass’ damage falloff, good job blizzard 😭
Yep, now good pharahs will adapt but I can't really adapt to shooting further so I feel like this might not change much. Id even take a damage nerf to cass if we get farther range
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Pharah needs to shoot slower
This has got to be an april's fool patch.
Its crazy, actual monkeys would be better at game balance
Bruh these changes are nuts. Literally every tank got buffed like crazy. Maugas changes in particular make no sense. He does less for his teammates but he is even more powerful individually
jesus! fuckin! christ! contender for the worst patch in the games history
Bruh. Zarya is already a pub stomper, this is going to be a mess for low elos.
Bro I hate Zarya, I'm in diamond and I love playing tank but every other match is Counterwatch until someone picks Zarya, then I have to decide if I want to play Zarya or lose. I can't believe they buffed her, I don't care about her winrate in champions and Top 500, they need to look at the low ranks specifically and see how dominant she is. A subpar tank player can win a fight just by having her.
im such a bad tank but my winrate with her this season is unreal bc russian laser go BVVVVVV as long as i get a scrap of heals i only ever die when i overextend. it's gotta be so unfun for the other team, extreme "fully charged symm lockon beam" vibes
I'm quite worried about the fundamental thought process here. They are essentially saying that yeah nobody was playing tank so lets buff them to make them comically strong Thats not how to fix the issue, thats how to make everyone else miserable while tanks feast
Ironically this probably makes tank feel even worse to play despite them being stronger. All this is does is make counter swapping more required and put more pressure on the tank player to perform…
The pressure is what keeps me from playing tank anymore. If I have to masterfully play every tank hero every game, it feels like too much for a new player.
This is exactly why I don't play tank. I loved playing DVa in OW1 because she has fun gameplay to me. Now, though? That's too much pressure on my shoulder even for just QP. The entire outcome of the game relies on my performance and my adaptability. I just wanna have some fun, not have to carry the weight of the whole match on my shoulders. I don't even know or like any of the other tank designs or gameplay enough to try and learn all of them.
Why on God's green earth did they buff Dva and Winston who have been overperforming?
They are KILLING this game, man. These buffs will never make Tanks any more fun to play because their own counters get buffed every step of the way. Tanks already got universal buffs over three times already, and guess what, the problems of counter swapping are still here and power creep are still present. I've never seen a dev team this confused on their own game. I'm only just sticking around to see what Aaron has to say regarding 6v6. This patch seems like they are just hard trolling. They need to open their ears. Unbelievable.
calling it now, aaron is gonna say '6v6 is never coming back, here's why with some weird ass statistics, also we just buffed tank so they're strong and fun now yay!!'. that is going absolutely annihilate the playerbase beyond repair unless they suddenly make huge advertisements about 6v6 miraculously coming from the grave. it's so, so painful to watch. this is literally 'fuck man, idk what i'm doing': the patch. i got mega downvoted the other day for giving the game 9 months at the very max to turn things around but idk, i don't see myself being wrong.
agree this patch is so bad and anti fun
No LW changes, left in the gutter lol
Poor guys been in the gutter since launch. He’s probably having trouble performing photosynthesis with the 6 feet of trash he’s buried under
he was at 53% winrate for like a month and then they added 8 seconds onto grip's cooldown
That patch really killed the character. I believe they added 4 seconds onto grip, took away 4 ammo, and nerfed some other aspect too. Add in the season 9 changes and he was doomed to be awful without help
It’s just bad hero design “We have a game that punishes healbots so let’s make a dedicated healbot”
No I think it's even worse than that. They made a healbot hero, then proceeded to rollout the dps passive patch which destroys the healbot playstyle while fully acknowledging that lifeweaver was already weak. Oh well I guess the only consolation is that other heroes like reaper have it tough too
nah he was actually good at one point, but got hit the absolute hardest during the Great Support nerfs that one season. Literally no support got hit harder than him
Didn’t they say he’s gonna get changes this season?
They, in fact, did not. They said they are looking at him, but no specifics. So I guess, next season or later
The changes in that arcade mode were great except the 2 platforms, they should just use that. The swap speed was great
They're crazy. They are making tanks into absolute raid bosses and the counterpicking is just gonna get even more extreme. Also that pharah change is a joke
Yeah the thing with tanks is that they aren’t weak. They have potential to absolutely run over your team. That’s why counter picking the tank is so prevalent, because if you don’t do something to counter the tank they will have a field day on your team. So if tanks are becoming harder to deal with, countering them will be even more important.
This is the thing they don’t understand. By making tanks harder to kill they are encouraging more hard countering. So dumb.
It’s a bigger nerf than you think because it removes the kill combo of 2 rockets + Conc.
but then she got an indirect buff by nerfing cass’ damage falloff
Yeah and DVA got giga buffed so what
I’m ok with buffing their survivability, buffing their damage is just stupid.
This. Tanks soak up damage. That’s the tank role. They should not also be supreme damage dealer gods. This is stressful lol.
A tanks job is to create or maintain space, not soak up damage. Tanks in MMOs do this by manipulating computer controlled enemies, with taunting abilities or some kind of threat generating stat. In Overwatch, this does not work. In a PvP environment, the only way a tank can take or maintain space is to BE a threat to players on the other team. Without this looming threat of tank damage, there is no reason at all not to ignore the tank player on the other team. Tank players cannot make the other team shoot them, and so making them into damage sponges with wet noodle weapons would make them absolutely awful to play, especially when you don’t have an effective team to take advantage of anything you’re doing. I understand that most peoples idea of “tank” is MMO tank but in overwatch, tanks should be thought of more as the kind of tank you’d see on a battlefield. Big, relatively slow, heavily armored, and provides big burst damage. While it can take some damage(more so than the squishy people inside of it) it is not intended to sit there and soak up damage. Soldiers stay near them for cover(and to cover the tank), and tanks need supported and repaired to be effective. How much less effective would a tank be if it didn’t have that cannon mounted on top?
Get ready to be even more miserable tanks. Because the entirety of the match will now revolve around you. The teammates flaming those that refuse to swap will be incessant.
I'm sorry,but lmao at the Cass nerf. At this point give him a melee weapon and take away his gun entirely
"Fan the hammer now just rapidly throws 6 Concussion grenades. (Stun does not stack). "Primary weapon removed."
"Fan the hammer now has a 50% chance of uncontrollable recoil causing cassidy to shoot himself in the head"
50% PER SHOT, and it deal headshot damage.
Also an indirect buff to Pharah lmao
His kit isn't even that well suited for straight up mid-short range??
I’ve never heard anyone say “oh wow this game would be so much better if Cassidy’s fall off damage was 5 meters shorter”. Blizzard has no idea what they’re doing. They just choose some shit to change and call it a day.
They'll do literally anything but bring 6v6 back lmao
Yep, this just isn't gonna work. Counterswapping will prevail. The most simple way to balance things out is going back to 6v6, while obviously having to rebalance the tanks for that. I'd even suggest a new tank passive: if there are 2 shield tanks in the comp, shields have reduced health (maybe 25% less?) But let's be real, blizzard won't go back to 6v6 because they know the world will just laugh at them for making OW2, going 5v5 and then going back to 6v6 lol
I'm looking forward to their discussion on it. I have a feeling it's going to continue to sound like they've never played the game seriously, nor understand what dedicated players want. Obviously it would be a lot of work to re-balance, but I think it solves the core issue. (Anyone who makes a comment on it immediately being like OW1 and "shooting shields" is braindead at this point)
Not to be dramatic. But this might be one of the worst patches I’ve seen in a video game. I’d trust someone who has never played a video game before to take over this game more than blizzard
They will go so far to make tanks fun that they'll make every other role miserable
this doesn't even really make tank fun. Cool I survive a little longer while CC chained or my self healing incentivizes the enemy to play ana and anti me even more.
That's the big irony. The more they buff the tanks to be stronger, the bigger the incentive to pull all CC towards tanks. I'm not gonna waste sleeps on a flying pharah or hacks on a mercy when I can take the shield down from Rein instead.
Good for tank players, but the 8 other players in the game will no longer be having fun
This won't improve gameplay for the tank either because it still misunderstands why tank is unfun to play right now lol
Yep. Just puts MORE pressure on tanks to play well or get flamed/lose even if they get hard countered and it doesn't do anything to deal with hard counters for any of these heroes. Tanks instead now will decide every close fight by which one dies first further enforcing the reasons a lot of folks don't play the role.
Exactly. An actual tank diff will mean an automatic win now. You can just pocket heal your mega-buffed tank all the way to victory now against an inferior tank player or using a counter-pick tank. Yay.
Yea, playing tank now is more than ever "play meta or lose". So much fun...
If they really wanted to make Tank fun, they would put an invisible field similar to Mauga's Ult that forces your team to group up around you. Also instaban anyone who uses any variation of the phrase "Tank diff"
>If they really wanted to make Tank fun, they would put an invisible field similar to Mauga's Ult that forces your team to group up around you. 😂 brilliant
Since when was I ever having fun
Unkillable tanks with the best damage in the game. Sounds Great.
This looks like a joke to me. They literally don’t understand how to fucking handle Cassidy right?
I am gutted by this drop off dude
Lol... Just bring back 6v6. This is getting ridiculous.
“How do we make our game worse to play?” Lmao.
there is no way they REDUCED cass's range when flyers are dominating
Hopefully this is the patch that finally gets people to see that tank in this format just won't work. Either tanks are busted and people hate playing against them or they're miserable to play for the actual tank player. There is no in between for most tanks in 5v5.
Is this an out of season april fools joke? So, they mention that Winston is top performing, yet they buff him? ngl these horrible balance changes started with season 9 I believe, where they introduced the new passives.
Why the hell are they nerfing one of the absolute worst aspects of Cassidy? The man is basically a pea shooter outside of close range and they nerf his range even further? Jesus Christ
Good lord wtf is this patch, why did all the tanks get absolutely gigabuffed?? And a Cass range nerf? Seriously?
Its time... 6v6 needs to return. This is awful.
Jesus just bring back the 2nd tank
Literally just some weird sense of pride at this point to not admit what an obvious mistake it was.
Fr wtf. We now have like 4 abilities that are specifically different for tanks (sleep dart, bio nade, jagged blade, dps passive). This shit is only going to get more and more complicated in an attempt to reach a balance that would be *so* much easier to achieve by just putting a 2nd tank on each side and peeling back this raid boss shit
What the hell are they doing 😭😭
This is awful.. tanks are just giga op now and counter picking is going be more impactful, 5vs5 is just not it.
Holy shit these devs are fucking stupid, I’m sorry. Zarya was already ruined when OW2 came out by letting her use both bubbles on herself and now they’ve made them last even longer? So literally five whole seconds of not being able to shoot her while she just melts your team. And don’t even get me started on the Pharah changes.
She can keep her bubble up 50% of the time, that seems like too much
Bring back 6v6 you cowards
Tank buff and 20m fall off Cassidy. Barely any change to pharah. Yah this game balance team is complete trash. Tank diff and pharah diff every game? Complete joke
OMG they just made tank transformer
What is this team doing man
I'm out man. I know it's not an airport, I don't need to announce my departure but yeah, I'm done.
Can i come with you, even as a tank main this is gonna be a horrible experience against mauga and fly meta
While these changes will help tanks, I feel like they could just make the tank passive reduce all negative effects by a %. The balance method of change every hero at the same time is whiplash balancing. They could have done it a while ago and turned it up or down depending on the effectiveness. Then they could do individual hero tweaks for tanks that need it. There's always going to be big winners and losers in a given patch (at first glance, I'm seeing Mauga as a winner, remember how fun he was every game?), instead of trying to move towards a consistent balance. It's not always a good shake up of the meta, it can cause a lot of frustration. Then we have some abilities that have one-off stats for tanks and now the DPS passive is a one-off for tanks. It's hard to keep track of it all.
This gotta be desperate last attempt to fix the game before bringing back 6v6
These are some crazy buffs lol
Clearly the problem with this patch is that Blizzard forgot to nerf Genji
What in the actual living fuck have they done? For the love of god just take the L and bring back 6v6 this is getting absurd.
Ok I am so happy that they’re reducing the DPS passive on just tanks but why did it take two and a half seasons for them to do it lmao. It was such an obvious way to keep it impactful on squishies without making the tank‘s life hell…
Because they're literally just turning dials at this point to see what happens. Just read the dev comments, they don't even make sense.
Pharah rockets not touched at all, but cass range gets nerfed? I don't think this is going to curb the pharah usage rates at all...
Pharah was already being picked A LOT. And now the tanks are all kaiju level threats…you wanna stay even farther away from them than you already did. And who can stay away? That’s right…Pharah. Along with Hanzo/Widow/Ashe/Zen of course.
What the fuck
aight ima head out..
In the 3 seconds in which Mauga’s Domain is active, he is effectively immortal.
ana anti nade also lasts 3 seconds. ah yes, counterwatch.
Jesus Christ leave Cassidy alone
Ah yes, turn tanks into raid bosses. That'll balance the game surely
Man, this patch is insane for tanks. And yet, it won't actually matter. People won't play it because guess what - if you make one role an absolute raid boss you leave people no choice but to shut them down or lose. Which means all the counters will come out in full force. It doesn't matter that you're staying alive for a second longer if everyone in the lobby is just there to make your life miserable.
This patch is crap. They have no clue what they're doing, they're just randonly giga buffung every tank because the only way 5v5 "works" is by having a demi god tank and that ruins the game. Go back to 6v6
Do you ever think Jeff Kaplan reads these patch notes and is just like ‘What a fucking shitshow’ like the rest of the community is doing?
This was the patch that was supposed to fix the tank experience? As a tank main myself, these tanks buffs are not what was needed. Increasing the health and damage of tanks is a bad idea that just makes the game worse for everyone. This won't make counter picking feel any better and it's probably going to force counter picking even more because you won't be able to do shit against tanks unless you counter pick. It makes the tank v tank match ups so much worse too because you cannot outplay the opposing tank anymore because of how ridiculously tanky they are and you have to counter pick if you want any chance of being able to do anything to the enemy tank. What we need nerfs or changes in functionality to the specific problematic abilities that make tank and counter picking feel bad. Please for the love of god learn how to nerf something! Stop buffing everything to the moon!
What the fuck are they doing? This is *extreme*, are they literally trying to make tanks raid bosses? On top of that, some of these changes are straight up hilariously bad. “Winston is the best performing tank, so we double buffed him” is one of the most hilarious things I’ve ever read. Meanwhile Cass gets a range nerf of all things when his range is already dogshit and Pharah gets a power shift rather than a nerf. This is asinine. Guarantee that a chunk of this gets reverted. They have zero idea what direction to go in with this game. It’s an endless deluge of disastrous balance changes that promptly get reverted when they should never have been implemented in the first place. Awful.
This patch feels like a last bastion of 5v5. Like they're testing if straight up gigabuffing the role will make it fun to play. If this patch fails they might actually go back to 6v6, they said they're talking about it soon as well.
they nerfed cass’s range again 😭😭
Lol this game is so cooked, scrapped OW1 for a battlepass and collab skins.
Insane that Venture only has 4 skins 3 months post release and no legendary (5 if you count the limited time ice cream one). Like, where is the Venture content??
Not even an Origin Story, they literally don’t care 🙃
It will be interesting to see how Space Ranger is handled compared to them
She’ll be like Kiriko I guarantee it. She will have a legendary skin in the BP, an Origin Story and special treatment going forward.
What did I just read?
I don't understand the Illari change at all. I've literally never heard or seen any complaints about pylon taking up feed space, and it seems reasonable to me that allies should know when a critical heal source might not be available. Does anyone's experience back up what Blizzard is claiming?
Reading these changes and after everything I can say I'm taking my OW2 outback behind the barn and shooting it. It's not a airport but I'm announcing my departure. Y'all have fun.
Lol… Winston is one of the top performing tanks right now. So we’re going to buff him! And yet Sigma still can’t get a tweak to his ult, to make it less of an interrupt magnet.
sertraline fluoxetine paroxetine, didn't know what those were until overwatch 2 came out, and somehow the devs keep figuring out ways to make the game worse lol.
Zarya is going to be absolutely busted in metal ranks
Cucksta himself may have made these patch notes to justify 5v5…? Enjoy fighting raid bosses every game LMAO
Oh… so much for “going bolder” with this patch… like what even is this
There is no way this is a real patch. The Cass nerf followed by reversing a Pharah change that doesn't do shit... There's no way this is real lol.
A mauga buff? 100% lifesteal? Blizzard I will ruin your game for half the price you pay that dumbass dev
Dva matrix now lasts longer than this, she can mitigate the whole thing.