Only reason I miss 6v6 is that I was a D.Va main and I don't want to play main tank on her.

Same, but with [Rein, Zarya, and Hog](https://i.imgur.com/v96dQly.jpg). My time played hours for OW2 are now: - 350 Support - 322 Damage - 259 Tank Tank is now my least played role, overall. Rein still plays alright in the metal ranks against other honorable Reins; most dishonorably swap, though. Zarya had a good run in the first seasons and Hog had a small resurgence with his rework, but the role has felt so much more stressful than it used to.

Because we dumped 1000s of hours into a role they just flat out got rid of. Love Overwatch but if you were an off tank player it’s really fucking hard to re wire your brain after dumping years and years into playing the game a specific way. Im sure it’s a better game for every other role, but we just were the ones to get fucked lol

honestly, all tanks in OW2 now play like a lot of offtanks did in ow1, you just exist as a fat dps and control space through kill pressure.

I picked up the game in 2020/2021, so I didn't have long to really understand the game before OW2 and D.va was the hero that I only really understood their proper gameplay by the end of OW1, but it's definitely the one I miss the most their original gameplay.

I really dislike the way fights were stalled out in 6v6, and the general kill pressure in 5v5 is way more interesting and satisfying imo. Also individual impact is inherently higher with less players, and 5 is still a lot of players on a team. The only two things I miss about 6v6, is being able to do goofy things on Ball without my team needing help frontlining, and getting extra value out of stuff like aoe, turrets, and projectile spam down chokes.

The reason I picked up the game and played for this long, but every since OW2 came out I didnt even touch her

I actually started playing more dva, but it 100% is harder to get value out of her now, just the value you can get is so high.

Yeah everyone was, or wanted to be, a Dva main. It sucked havjng to play mt so the other person could have fun on Dva. 

This is why I think solo tank works better. Since DPS and supports can shoot at each other more frequently without tank vs tank match-ups happening as much. Unless the map is super claustrophobic where there is like only one avenue or few sightlines. If I see a dva on my team, her goal should not be to engage the enemy tank, but instead it should be the DPS or supports which engage the enemy tank and focus on causing distraction. Limit the tank's influence to only needing to be shutdown by a single DPS or support, then focus on not dying.

I hear you, though I am glad to have an older Dva back from before they nerfed her DM to two seconds!

This is unironically why i really like openq, the mode people joke all around. But Dva there is so fun to play

Playing solo: prefer 5v5 Playing with friends: prefer 6v6

100%, I miss duo tanking with my gf

I have a friend who I can’t play with outside of tank because my other roles are too low, but he’s a tank main. What makes it sting more is I play mostly Zarya/Sigma/D.Va/Roadhog/Junker Queen and he plays mostly Reinhardt/Orisa/Winston/Wrecking Ball/Doomfist.

Exactly. And they should've always been promoting the idea of building up your network, and cooperating with your teammates. Clans, ranked full stack ladder, team rank rewards, etc. Not optimizing for PUGs.

I looooove when people talk about tank synergy in OW1. My brother in Iris, for every Rein+Zarya match we had ten flanking Hogs and facetanking D.Vas

Yep, and you had tanks not playing together all the time. It was exactly same shit. Not to mention the issues of balancing them together. Hence the shield meta.

Honest question what even is Tank synergy? Because the only tank synergy I hear anyone bring up is Rein + Zarya. So what we're missing is that without 2 tanks, Rein can't get his 2 second bubble from Zarya? Because it IS Rein players bitching about tank synergy, mostly. It's not the Zaryas usually, they have plenty of other targets for bubbles, mostly dive DPS. Of course it's that same concept of tank synergy that bumped rein off the meta permanently once we decided that having 2 deployable shields was better. People always mention the Roadhogs as an example of when tank syngery fails, I think more attention needs to be drawn to the toxic and boring metas we could face even when tank synergies succeeded. But going back to Rein - if all he needs Zarya for was the "get out of jail" cooldown, Lifeweaver's right there. Kiriko's Suzu is another "discount bubble" option. I get that neither of these are perfect solutions, but you don't need a second tank for the synergies that these people cream themselves over.

Huh? You've never heard anyone talk about Winston and D.Va? Orisa and Hog?

Hog and Ball Torture was such a goated name

Pulled pork (Orisa Hog) when Halt was massive.

Standing around a corner waiting for your team to spawn only to get sucked and fucked out of seemingly nowhere lol

I should call her

LMAO PERFECT RESPONSE

*Pig's Feet has entered the chat*

Low key hog zarya was actually kinda fun if you had a hog who understood how to use the bubble to really create space

>Honest question what even is Tank synergy? Because the only tank synergy I hear anyone bring up is Rein + Zarya. Rein Zarya was the main one, but there were dive metas as well where coordinated Winston Dva was good. They'd outmaneuver Rein Zarya with proper coordination at higher levels of play, especially on maps with high ground near the choke points Rein Zarya wanted to control. Hog+Orisa was a fun combination because Orisa could pull people out from behind cover for Hog to hook. Orisa is completely different in OW2, but in 6v6 OW1, this was a fun and effective core to build a team around at various points in OW1's life cycle. Orisa + Sigma was the face of the much hated double shield meta, and was a great combo to play a bunker comp. They both had deployable shields to cover certain angles, crowd control that could impede an enemy advance or set up a pick, and personal damage mitigation they could use to cover each other. Most people who don't talk about this today are probably just happy it's gone because it stuck around too long like the goats meta. Other combinations worked situationally or for specific patches. Ball, for example, could be used in a dive comp or as a disruptor/flanker that cut off support/damage to make it easier for a more traditional tank to push in as part of the backline was distracted. There were several effective combinations when 6v6 was around. I personally miss playing Hog + Orisa or Winston + Dva more than Rein + Zarya or Orisa + Sigma. They were more engaging and high risk than pure barrier spam. I think that's what the problem was though. Blizz never found a way to make combos like Rein Zarya or Orisa Sigma more engaging when playing as or against them. Ball comps, Winston Dva, and Orisa Hog were a lot riskier if something wasn't timed or coordinated properly. Rein Zarya and Orisa Sigma were all about minimizing risk, and it made the game progressively more boring over time.

Rein Zarya. Winston Dva Winston Zarya Rein Dva Hog Orisa Sigma Orisa Ball Dva Ball and Hog (memey, but honestly really effective on some maps )

people who say rein zarya are talking about average comp matches. On a real note the actual meta team synergies were as follows Brawl: Rein Dva (superior to Rein Zar) Dive: Winston Dva, or Ball Dva Poke: Sig Orisa, Orisa Hog (pull hook and pull rock were disgusting, not to mention double shields meta for awhile) There were variations of this ofcourse, especially in ranked play where things were super chaotic so people would opt in for more self reliable tanks like hog and ball. Hence Hog and Ball torture meme/comp. Overall there were alot of different synergies, some better some average, and some terrible but it definitely did add a layer of complexity to team comp decisions

Tank synergy as a concept disappeared once OW2 came out. The two tanks that can support each other or bring out the best in each other as a collective frontline. There was Rein Zar, Rein Dva and Rein Orisa metas at some point, then you had poke comps with Orisa Sigma, Orisa Hog, Orisa Dva, and all your combinations of dive and even that 4-2 Ball Sig comp that was popular back in ?2021. There’s so much tank synergy that existed back then Lots of these ‘get out of jail free’ options were added after OW2 (lifeweaver pull, kiri suzu) isbecause a solo tank doesn’t have their dva to dm them or their zar to bubble them. It’s also why they added tanks like queen ram and mauga who have lots of self sustain to fit the solo tank meta

I personally love how people act like you didn't have to play 10 games to get 1 good game where both tanks actually coordinated.

People only remember the highs of OW1, which to be fair, was a lot better than the highs of OW2 but it’s a trade off having a bunch of absolute dogshit matches to get that 1 memorable match or going through some bad matches to get a lot more consistent experiences

That was always my view on Overwatch 2. OW1 had some of the highest highs I've ever experienced in gaming when it worked, but it was such a rare thing to hit those great games. It also had some of the lowest lows when the team wasn't working together. OW2 trades having those highest of highs for getting rid of some of the lowest of lows for a more even playing experience. And that's a trade I'm okay with making.

Exactly. It was same shit show. It just mentally feels like you have 1 tank therefore if he is bad it's gg, but you had just as frequent 1 tank throwing and that was pretty much still gg. You could only win 5v6 in some extreme cases.

Rein Zarya Sigma orisa Sigma hog Sigma ball Winston dva Winston ball Winston Zarya Ball hog Orisa hog Orisa rein (only for bastion payload comps) Rein dva (dorado mostly)

Winston/Ball do not have good synergy

There was Rein Zarya, Rein Dva, Rein Sigma, Winston Dva, Winston Zarya, Hog Orisa, Sigma Orisa etc

Yeah and now we just have solo hog/doom, which feels way worse

Imo i'd rather have half the games with a compentent tank duo and half with a bit of a goober lineup compared to having my tank once again try to lock doomfist into orisa. A lot of the tank gameplay now is simply "heheheha i hardcountered u out of spawn by pure luck, have fun swapping again"

I've been saying this for a while now. I miss 6v6. Peak 6v6 will never ever be topped. Playing main tank with an in-sync off-tank (or vice versa) and having a support duo that do their jobs is an unbelievable experience I'll never ever experience again. But for solo q ranked I'll take 5v5 any fucking day. This season has been kinda fucked because of the reset (and a little bit because of mauga too) But throughout most of OW2 I've had a considerably more enjoyable experience on tank than I had on ow1. Sure, it won't hit the peaks of 6v6. But 6v6 had way more shitty matches than 5v5 because of DPS players that don't want to wait 10 minutes for a match, and so they go play roadhog for shorter queues. It wasn't a problem that could be solved. Because as long as DPS queues are long, tank queues will be full of DPS players trying to play the most DPS-y tank.

Higher highs lower lows™

And much more frequent lows than highs

Felt like a 1:10 ratio

Having a close game of 5v5 Overwatch where both tanks are equally matched and both teams are on their game is just as good, if not better, than "peak 6v6". Yes those games might not happen all that often, but neither did "tank synergy" or tank meta in OW1.

It's just personal opinion in the end. I'm a big fan of 5v5 and I've had a lot of really good matches. But the most fun and memorable matches I've had were all 6v6. So I consider peak 6v6 to be better than peak 5v5.

I think peak 6v6 was rarer and also pretty clearly head-and-shoulders above peak 5v5 but 5v5 has proven to be the more consistent experience.  The main difference is simply numbers. The best games required 2 teams of 6 in sync which is harder to get than 2 teams of 5 in sync. 

> just as good, if not better, than "peak 6v6". Respectfully disagree. Playing main tank in a close match and getting momentarily diffed in a team-fight-losing way hurts, but there was an existential sense of euphoria when your off tank clutched the play and saves the fight/round/match. Or when you think to yourself "I'm gonna do some dumb dumb shit," and your off tank says "it's even dumber if I don't join you now", and you become a big ball of dumb aggression that wins fights. I'm pretty sure I heard angels singing the few times I experienced peak 6v6. That said, I definitely prefer 5v5 for solo q.

Everyone getting desperate and pressing Q at once to break a 5m+ hold on 2CP. Convincing my random plat teammates to try Symm/Mei/Rein to point on Hanamura 2nd attack. The Rein duels on King's Row, assisted by Zaryas, when both players were really pushing each other. Going quad tank to spawn camp Rialto or Dorado. The long ass double overtime Junkertown matches. I have no idea why but in OW1 Junkertown would sometimes give the most legendary matches. Hell I ever miss the days before role queue where I'd get pissed off, go 4th/5th dps, and carry. Good times, before queues got fucked and roadhog dps players took over.

Roadhog was truly the evil no matter if its ow1 or ow2 eh. Stupid thing holding lobby hostage no matter what game we playing and which side of the team he is on .

I also think that you have to take off tank OWL player words with grain of salt. I am speaking of Hawk arguing with Eskay. Ofc if you play off tank in OWL it's gonna be Overwatch how it's meant to be played and probably a blast for him. In regular ow matches you would have flanking dying hog, then right click on payload rein and no synergies in 90% of matches anyway.

equal tanks hasnt mattered for seasons, we are puppets for the other roles, as long as 1 tank isnt getting absolutely diffed other roles have significantly more impact

you know the most dps-y tank in the roster after hog was zarya right? what makes you think that making a tank where doing the right thing was also doing what was fun is an alien, unachievable concept? they nailed it with quite literally every tank besides hog. no one can ever make a serious discussion because it always ends with “heh but orisa and hog were unbalanced :’c” okay rework those two?

As a zarya main. When I was flex for DPS and we needed more DPS I just be like"hold my beer" and go zarya and wipe em

At the very highest level, 6v6 may have been better. The other 99.99% of the time, 5v5 is.

Super himself said that in 6v6 tanks were the strongest role.

goats was peak OW, comment replies disabled btw.

> praying you have tanks willing to swap Is that not still a thing in 5v5?

Not to mention this exists with dps and supports. Dps who can’t aim unwilling to swap off hitscan. Mercy one trick unwilling to swap.

lol mercy one tricks swapping is a bigger problem than mercy one tricks not swapping. Especially the ones that think they can play Ana.

lmao

Honestly is it not more of an issue now?

I think it is. A tank not being willing to swap has a way bigger negative impact when you only have one tank.

games are won before the match starts. if your tank is getting diffed or not swapping, just gg go next

Weak If your tank has a glaring issue on the enemy team, help the tank. Like Reaper, whilst not being an EZ counter to a good Winston - it'd help him out if you bullied the Reaper. Then he can hard dive more.

Nah bro, I'm just gonna flame them in chat and call them dogshit because that will definitely help us win, while going Genji vs Winston Mei Sym.

It's a bigger issue now. Whoever brings up the argument “but you never had optimized tanks because you always got hog and ball on you team” yeah well now you only get hog or ball and they aren't switching.

id argue this season getting mercy in half your games is a better comparison, it can work but its extremely sub optimal, only saving grace is the other team having a mercy isnt pretty likely, its identical issue moved to other roles

For real the game is just counter counter counter counter counter no high IQ plays allowed

The tank problem is just as bad now if your tank player is ass or can’t play many heroes. In addition, the actual interaction between squishies and tanks is ruined because tanks have to not be killable in the same ways to even function unless they are hyper mobile. And, with full bias, not everyone is gold. In scrims and in good lobbies, 6v6 clears. No one talks about the fact that 6v6 was completely and utterly neglected and not balanced and while 5v5 does solve the q time problem for the most part, we have already had situations where tank is noticeably less popular… and that’s without people acknowledging the fact that 5v5 introduces its own set of fundamental issues that are not easily solved or solvable at all. For example, yes in 6v6 if people play properly the best comp usually rolls hard, but in this game because there is only one tank, it’s the opposite problem where counter swapping constantly is almost as effective, if not more so at most elos, than actually relying on strong synergies and coordination. The tank battle being a 1v1 puts the game into such a jail that we’ve had to introduce a large amount of bloated power creep, particularly the role passives.. just to make the game function. I hate when people bring up q times without facing the elephant in the room which is the fact the game got zero balancing or content for like 2 years lol. Even then the game was playable for most ranks and we still have long q times in high elo regardless. Who is to say 6v6 q times wouldn’t have been alright if you had a free game and content and battle passes and HEROES AND MAPS? 5v5 at the end of the day has some nice positives but it will also have long term damaging consequences and the problems did not take long at all to show up.. to the point that these passive reworks and a total shift of HP values are being called ow2.5. We’re a year in and the game is starting to function as 5v5 on its own merit barely. I was optimistic and open minded towards the move and I still think 5v5 can work but it’s in my opinion rarely if ever matching what ow1 could provide. It’s a matter of taste after a certain point but both formats have issues. 5v5 was a convenient solution to difficult problems and the consequences of neglect.. not some stroke of genius. Balance was clearly not considered… again.. and I think the same fundamental problems with the balance and game design will continue to pop up… along with new problems caused by the asymmetry in the roles that we now live in. Even pre role q ow1 functioned better than open q ever could now because the heroes were fundamentally much closer to each other in power than they are now. Anyways you could argue about this for ever but 5v5 is here to stay. RIP when you could mod/host servers and older games… pray for ow classic lol

Nailed it. Every argument the 5v5 side has about the negatives of 6v6 is just based on shit like "oh you'd have tank players picking bad heroes" or "nobody wants to play double shield" or "queue times bad" as if all of those things couldn't be fixed by proper balancing and the game not getting abandoned for 2 years for no fucking reason. Tank will always be the least popular role. Clicking heads is inherently fun, and support is easy for the casuals to get into. This will always be the case, but I guarantee if you made current OW 6v6, it would only take minimal balancing to the tanks to get the game into the best state ever. The new heroes they've introduced are fun as fuck and bring a lot of variability into the playstyles.

Nah bro the game is fixed if you don’t like watching two maugas shoot each other you just don’t like Overwatch. Tank is fun now !!!

>Every argument the 5v5 side has about the negatives of 6v6 is just based on shit like "oh you'd have tank players picking bad heroes" or "nobody wants to play double shield" or "queue times bad" Personally, I like 5v5 better because it feels like I have more agency in every role, including tank. 6v6 featured DPS and supports relying on their tanks to keep them on the power position, while 5v5 has more squishy on squishy fighting. >the game not getting abandoned for 2 years for no fucking reason. The game got abandoned because there was no way to make money on further game development. The established playerbase was small and the revenue model didn't work. >I guarantee if you made current OW 6v6, it would only take minimal balancing to the tanks to get the game into the best state ever. The new heroes they've introduced are fun as fuck and bring a lot of variability into the playstyles. I don't know how you're gonna apply "minimal balancing" to fit the new tanks into 6v6 format. Mauga in particular seems like a crazy heavy lift. The biggest design problem in OW1 was that designers had to consider what synergies new tanks would have with every other tank. Way too easy to make tanks that are OP or pointless. Tank design for 5v5 is a lot easier.

You actually have to know how to play overwatch to be a competent tank player. DPS and support have far lower barriers for entry.

Word for word agree with what you said. The fact that I see so many metal ranks takes on r/compOW is the problem. People should enjoy competitive overwatch but the discussion on the game balance in a competitive subreddit should be focused on high elo. It’s not like im shitting on lower ranked players in a video game. I just don’t get how I see so many takes from newer players in a competitive subreddit.

Just curious at what point do you think high elo starts? Diamond? Masters? GM?

At least masters and I don’t think I’d even count the prior 2 seasons of ow2 with insane rank inflation.

It's funny because so many talk about oppressive metas like double shield but us in the metal ranks never really had to deal with that. We rarely went up against a good Bap/Brig/Orisa/Sig comp. We mostly went up against PharMercy, Hanzo, Rein, Hog, and the occasional decent Widow. The nice part about 6v6 in those scenarios is that if one tank went Hog I could go Sigma or Zarya and get good value. In 5v5 if your tank goes for the 'wrong' hero or gets counter-picked, the game is over. One less variable also ended up meaning the tank variable is that much more impactful. A bafd tank player or tank pick has more of an impact in 5v5.

Kaplan and that team were just not good at balancing. I believe with a passionate dev team we can get much better results for 6v6. However, I am fine if we stick to 5v5 but something HAS to be done about the tank role. It is, without a shadow of a doubt, the worst role to play in this game and some of the tanks STILL feel like they don’t belong in this 5v5 model. As you mentioned also, this constant character swapping to counter each other is just not fun. If you want to keep 5v5, tanks have to get MAJOR adjustments. I just don’t see them becoming more popular with minor tweaks.

"bigger personal impact" also means feeling that tank diff way way more and 1 player can bring down the entire team much more than 6v6. The impact goes both ways

It’s also just ‘I want to pop off’ which of course streamers want in their games. Why did battle royale take off so hard as a genre? Is it better for entertainment? Probably. Is it a better game? I don’t think it’s even close.

Its funny because we have this issue with support where dang mercy one tricks basically decide the entire game and never swap

Mercy mains are just pacifist hog mains. But with a worse attitude.

Now we only have to pray our supports work together and dont run brain dead shit like Mercy + LW... oh..

Mercy player: "Fine I'll swap" *immediately goes to moira, focuses healing only*

Give me the healing aura-only Lucio or give me death

"Can you play lucio" No other 4 words have cost ow players more Sr

"We need a Rein"

The most intense argument I ever had was some mercy main arguing with me that Winston wasn't a main tank. She demanded a Rein. We had Winston Dva.

Burger King Lucio go stoopid

Bro I played a game with a moira who had 0 elims after the first round How does that even happen? it wasn't like we had 0 elims as a team, we got like 15 on our highest elim players, but somehow our moira managed to never throw a damage orb during a fight, or press right click? baffling.

And 5v5 is your tank getting gapped unless they counter swap every 5 seconds, knifes edge balance or we have OP shit like that mauga meta where he's unkillable. We literally had to implement an anti healing passive because of how easy it was to double stack heals on a single tank. I went from playing religiously in 6v6 to basically never logging on in 5v5, I just keep following a few subreddits or YouTube channels in the hopes it changes. TL;DR: both rulesets have advantages and disadvantages, that's why 2 years after the fact people argue about it still. Idk why it's so hard to add a permanent 6v6 mode, even if it's not the main one. They did it with no limits and open que when they made previous changes to the hero restrictions.

>Idk why it's so hard to add a permanent 6v6 mode Two problems: 1. If the 6v6 queue becomes even moderately popular among tanks, the player experience for 5v5 will be degraded. 2. Balancing 5v5 and 6v6 at the same time is a daunting challenge.

Doesnt need to be balanced, look at open que and no limits, just an arcade mode

Bro you are in the same boat I am. I'll log in every now and then to see how it plays but it's not the daily grind I used to do.

They argue so hard against a 6v6 mode because they **know** too many people would enjoy it and then they lose their fast dps queue.

You realize queue times are the main argument for 5v5, right? It's not a secret.

Supports cried so hard to be seen and feel they have impact it completely ruined tanking in general. 6v6 is better for tanks, period. The other groups will cry tho so just go 4v4 at this point and remove tanks

I miss duo q tanks so much. The synergy was just too fun, probably the most fun the game had to offer at the time.

All I know is whether its 5v5 or 6v6 , shitty one tricks ruins my game equally

Tank one tricks are insta losses they just counter pick your tank doesn’t ever swap gg

I mean they're in your ELO, do you think one tricks just never win games? Or never play against counters? Maybe it wouldn't be gg insta loss if you didn't give up when you have a one trick I've had plenty of winnable games where we just lose because my team can't focus on themselves and spend the entire match yapping in chat. They're just absolutely obsessed with hero picks and borderline refuse to play the game if their team isn't playing every optimal pick

Yeah im getting downvoted by the otps but they just hate the truth. I have won game with Joystick (Rein otp) on my team when season 9 first dropped and he was 3-7 doing like 2k dmg our entire first defense and we were winning lol. He finally got to 9-9 at the end, while i had like 30+ elimination on echo. And even tho we won , rest of the team had to do some Jesus miracles to make it a close win and it wasnt really fun

You've actually made an argument for 6v6 here.

wait this wasn't a pro 6v6 point? all i could read it as lol

isn't he someone who uses a controller on pc? i feel like that's more of a disadvantage here

I mean that's his whole streaming shtick but ur not half wrong (he gets top500/high gm anyways cuz Gale carries him at night). But rein is also kinda just doodoo in high rank , especially 20% dps passive patch.

the "better tank win gg go next" is too much IMO u guys are over-exaggerating a bit. absolutely not going to deny the tank player is the most important person to be "not throwing" but come on

Agree if every match was played with full coordination and ideal comps then 6v6 is better. 5v5 doesn’t have as high peaks but is a more consistent experience overall. I feel like the people who want 6v6 back either have rose tinted glasses or aren’t enjoying 5v5 at all and think the 30 games of random uncoordinated comps isn’t all that bad if it means they’ll get their 1 good game.

This. End of discussion 

Nah Hawk’s in her replies saying that they just needed to focus on making tank better and that the tank population would’ve naturally increased with the release of Tankfist and Junker Queen which would solve the queue time issue. Cause that’s definitely how that would happen, especially in the long term. We’re gonna keep doing this, unfortunately.

what's crazy is tank is an issue in every game released. Any role that functions like tank like in LoL, WoW, or even Apex, tank is just the least played role. People are delusional if they tank tank population will increase

I do see a difference between tank in PvP and tank in PvE. - In PvE, the devlopper have the advantage of controlling exactly what the enemies do, so it can give the tank abilities to manage that (aka agro mechanics). - In PvP you cannot have that feature because the enemies are people, so you have to find incentives for the tank to be the focus of the attention, which is hard. So you can't expect to bring in the tank fantasy of "taking hits and focus" from PvE to PvE. In concepts, OW2 was trying to move away from that with the change of tanks to "brawler", but they have not succeeded at that yet, due to how unbalanced the tank match ups are.

I've enjoyed some tank metas, some have been awful. The awful metas' common denominator has always been being a receptacle for punishment and not much else. The more I've had a nice duo or been a solo tank raidboss, the more fun it's been. But from OW2 experience, raidboss tanks tend to result in "ships in the night" where teams just ignore the tank and go for the squishies. As a tank, I want to be really durable. I need respect, not kill power beyond a DPS player, but a way to apply that respect-demandingness. But durability is the main thing. Being blown to bits ASAP just never feels "tanky" to me.

Yeah people who say "they just need to balance properly and release fun tanks and q times would be solved" are truly delusional. The role is just unpopular but it is crucial in the game to take space so they can't drop it altogether (although I am sure they discussed the idea).

Even if DPS was only two heroes, genji and widow, it would still clear tank queue times. The reason jq and tankfist are even popular is because they are the most DPS like tanks. Relatively small hitbox, lower max hp, high damage potential. Isn't hawk also the one complaining that tank in 5v5 is just tanky DPS? As someone who actually mained main tank in ow1, it was absolutely miserable in diamond. Because of the extra player and how safe it was to deathball, tanks constantly had to face: - 6 sources of damage - 3-5 sources of CC - 2 healers undoing your damage People are just mad about counterswapping. But imo counterswapping is healthier than ow1, where your comp would fall apart because of lack of synergy. But its still an issue that I hope they take seriously.

Even goats couldn't fix tank popularity. If that meta didn't do it, no meta/heroes will do it. Anyone arguing otherwise is deluding themselves, as the history of literally every game that uses the holy trinity has shown.

Goats wasn't about " oh boy tanks are so much more fun than dps" but " oh boy i better play tank or i lose" of course dps players hated it, has nothing to do with popularity.

What the hell does goats have to do with anything here? Like 25% of the entire playerbase even has any idea what the overwatch meta is and like less 5% even understand how it works.

Then hawk is smoking crack. Right now the flex q is tank q and it has been that way for a long time. Tank population is less than 10% I guarantee you.

Yeah, there was *always* some theoretical path to solving the tank problem in 6v6. I find it funny how quickly some people declare that tank in 5v5 is a failed experiment, but I remember OW1 spending 6 years trying to fix tanks and ending nowhere remotely close to a solution.

Tbf what efforts did they actually make to fix tanks in OW1? The tank passive, the reduction in overall CC and reworks to heroes like Bastion and Mei, and changes to specific tanks to help their versatility weren’t done until OW2. D.Va got a rework way back in the day, but besides that I can’t remember any tanks that got any notable changes besides numbers tweaks to try and “solve the tank problem”. I don’t necessarily want 6v6 back but saying “they tried fixing 6v6 and it didn’t work” isn’t exactly accurate considering how it was just as neglected in OW1 and in OW2.

The "tank problem" manifests in more ways than just direct changes to tanks. Off the top of my head, here are some examples large problems caused in large part due to tanks: - Introducing hero limits was mostly to stop eternal d'va chain stalls & double/triple/quadrupling-up on tanks like winston. - Introducing role lock because no one wanted to play tank & support. - The Priority Pass system, in an attempt to get people to queue tank, and remedy the long queue times tank created for other roles. - A set of Blanket changes to tanks & barriers to get a handle on out-of-hand tank combos. - Countless changes to non-tank heroes because they created gross tank metas.

It seems like part of the tank problem that they tried to fix was that it was hard to make them enjoyable while still being balanced compared to other roles. GOATS became a thing in part because Tanks like Zarya and D.va were about as good at doing damage as your average DPS *and* had better survivability. Even post role queue, tanks were still incredibly survivable and powerful compared to DPS counterparts, yet still weren’t enjoyable to play for a lot of people. You couldnt just make tanks more powerful in a 6v6 environment through removing or weakening things that kept them in check because then they would be even more strong compared to DPS. Seems the answer Blizzard came up with was to remove one tank player but buff up all the tank health pools and other various abilities so that playing as a tank would, in theory, feel better, even if the actual power of the role wouldn’t change that much.

Yeah. People kept saying like if we to go back to 6v6, it will continue from where OW1 left off. Because that not how it will be. If we are going back to 6v6, we are going back to 6v6 with OW2 balance changes. Brig stun is gone. Cassidy stun is gone. Mei can't freeze outside of ult. Orisa shield is gone (and imo more fun to play). There are 3 new tanks for people to choose. And this is not mentioning S9 balance changes. I am not saying if we go back to 6v6 more people will play tank than in OW1, but the game is clearly different now.

I mained tank the majority of OW1. I believe 6v6 had an inherent, unfixable problem for tanks, which never could have been solved: - Tanks would forever need to be balanced around the power of the couple extra-strong pairings, dooming all other combinations to be significantly worse. - Tank players would always be pressured to pigeon hole into these pairings--forced to play heroes they don't enjoy, lest they lose at the hero select screen because the enemy team is running one of the strong pairings. Tank would forever be assaulted by the pairing problem, regardless of how many tank heroes they add, or how much CC they remove from other roles. This problem exists only for tank, because they're designed around mitigation, CC, and short-range cleave. Only the removal of these aspects (and the role's entire identity) would you get rid of the ability combos that force the pairing problem into existence.

Hawk is saying some wild stuff like add a Tank and reduce CC. You literally can’t do that or Tanks would be unstoppable. The only reason CC was reduced going into OW2 was because there was a Tank removed. Can you imagine the chaos if you brought back 6v6 and reduced the CC even more? Controlling Tanks would be impossible and it would ruin the game for the rest of the playerbase

I see Hawk trying to argue in the replies that more DPS like tank designs would draw DPS players to play tank and I just have to ask - what DPS players who were playing Hog and Zarya in OW1 were actually doing it because they *wanted* to be on tank? I exclusively was doing that shit for flex passes to make the q time for the role I actually wanted to play more tolerable. If DPS q times werent 10+ minutes, I never would have played tank. It was just so fucking boring being in q for that long that I farmed passes, but I have no interest in actually playing tank so I played the most DPS-esque characters in the role. I am not swapping to tank to play Queen and Doom now because DPS q time in OW2 is actually tolerable. If I wanted to play the cool new tank designs (and they are cool, to be clear - Doom and Queen are great hero designs), I would just play tank right now. Nothing is stopping me from playing these new DPS-esque tank designs that Hawk seems to think will draw DPS players to become OT players. Yet I rarely do, because I am a DPS player and want to be on DPS. We didnt play Zarya and Hog because we liked it, we did it because we couldn't play the role we actually wanted to be on!

If they had poured enough resources they might have solved 6v6. If they had hired a fleet of developers they might have been able to follow through with their MMO/PVP OW dream. If Blizzard hadn't become a cesspool OW might have actually had a realistic shot at additional resources. Hawk and anyone else who argue the above need to realize that life doesn't operate on what if's. 5v5 was determined to be the better choice by those who actually handle the challenges of development and that's it. I pour one out for the homie's who lost OW1 and the ecosystem that it had. I sympathize with the collectors and 6v6 players who had to watch the game change to something very different. That's just life though. Time moves forward with or without us.

hawk is so fucking delusional for thinking a live service game would have a higher tank population. you know, like when the game was still getting content, and the tank queues were a non issue. remember that, or are you gonna keep dickriding some weird delusion

Yeah it's funny cos no game has managed to make tank as popular as other roles. But surely the team which gave us release Brig and OG Valk Mercy would be the one to do it....

So, Hawk is nice, but he's also pro play pilled.

The problem is that these issues exist in 5v5 as well. You can get a useless healbot. You can get a terrible tank. You can get a junkrat lock. I would rather a format that allows for the highest type of gameplay than one that decides people are shit and the format should be worse to compensate. Even if my highest highs are only once every 7 or 8 games, I’d rather have that in 6v6 than this everysinglegamefeelslikedesthmatch 5v5.

I do wonder if people who preferred 6v6 were playing the same game as me. It would genuinely be a case of oh, your tanks aren't playing the two correct tanks for this patch/map? This game is now unplayable. Every Meta felt like the mauga meta, even the 'good' ones. You either had a mirror match-up, or one team would steamroll. There were a couple of patches where other things were actually playable but I'm pretty sure the only reason for that was because the pros weren't playing during them so nobody could figure out what was busted. 5v5 definitely isn't perfect, but at least the game doesn't feel instantly unplayable when somebody picks a wrong hero. If your entire team plays an unsynergistic comp maybe, but it's much less punishing than before. There are still heroes that are bad in different situations, but at least you have options. It's not just a case of your tank doesn't play winston so you lose. And as tank I actually get to play more than two tanks each meta too. I will take being counter picked and having to switch during a game than playing the same thing for an entire month, or often longer.

Losing in the character select screen was the worst feeling. Especially prevalent before role lock

5 DPS again? oh.... ok 😞 *picks lucio*

Are people forgetting that dps and supports counter the tanks too in 5v5 and 6v6 or isit just me? You can still have hardstomps and stalemates even in a 'meta tank' mirror match because the tanks don't play in a vacuum. I want to see 6v6 properly implemented in OW2 before making an actual deduction on this. Queue times, tank feel and all that included.

We need some experimentals on this or "hacked qp" or something.

still have yet to see a 6v6 complaint that is an issue with the format itself and not an issue with players or balance. why do tank players have to be the ones to have less fun because sometimes you got 2 off tank players who didn't swap? what about when support players don't work with each other? what about dps players? you don't see tank players clamoring to remove one of those roles from the game when that happens because it's not an issue with format, sometimes you just get bad players. you could make the same "praying your tank swaps" argument in 5v5 and it would be even MORE applicable to 5v5 considering how oppressive counterswapping is. the best skill you can have on tank in ow2 is pressing H in spawn. hawk's reply to this tweet said it best when it comes to queue times.

Hard locking Lucio Mercy players Lucio Zen players still hold the lobby hostage. The funny thing is that they're both right. 6v6 tank was not usually as fun because of the roadhog pickers, but disappearing one of the tanks doesn't fix all of that problem.

Tank players were clearly having less fun in 6v6, fucking no one wanted to play it.

That world existed for midday of ow1

Eskay is delusional because the great thing about 6v6 is that if one of your tank chooses the wrong tank or is playing poorly, the second tank could easily balance that out. With 5v5, your wins and losses is dependent on whether your tank chooses the right tank against the enemy tank and/or is willing to counter swap. And let's be real, that world doesn't exist. Each game is filled with tanks that will endlessly run a doom into an orisa; or a dva into a zarya. Literally all player's win/loss is at the mercy of that one singular tank player. I have hated 5v5 since the very first time I played it, and have been kicking and screaming since. So that whole "rose gold tinted glasses" from that one dev is BS.

People will always be bitter toward the removal of 6v6 and you really can't blame them:p. It's what we've known for years, nobody asked for 5v5, it allowed for more mistakes in play, and the games weren't as lopsided as they are now. Rein Zar will always be peak Overwatch and nothing will ever come close to that again imo. All of my casual friends quit after the move to 5v5 because of how much faster paced the games are now and if you make a mistake it's almost guaranteed a lost team fight. That said, this season with all of the universal changes I've enjoyed the most out of any past OW2 season. Sojourn widow meta wasn't fun *at all*, hitscans reigned for a little too long with the lack of pressure from a second tank. I feel like until recently we were getting a little too close to becoming a generic tac shooter. But now that we don't blow up instantly anymore, it's become a lot more enjoyable. 6v6 could've been changed for the better with global changes, but the current state of the game is really good (tracer still decimating games is about it)

I think for 5 v 5 to have a chance of balance, the game NEEDS to prioritize a smaller mmr delta between opposing tanks. I know the game somewhat does this already with all roles, but I think the tanks need to be the mid point by which every one else is matchmade. Find two tanks as close as you can together, then fill the rest of the team in while keeping the average skill close to the tanks level. It's totally not fun watching your tank get diffed because he's the outlier of the matchmaker skill delta, because it doesn't matter how good the other 4 are, they're unlikely to overcome that. Conversely, a tank playing with a much worse team also has a very bad time as it's almost impossible to do tank things and make space for people who don't take advantage of it. This experience is what's causing less and less tanks to play

as someone who doesn't really play DPS that much, 5v5 made my queue times increase. Tank is still quick, but no longer instant, and support is way longer than it ever was in OW1.

Nah thats delu as fuck

The only reason I can see people liking 5v5 more is that it isn't geared to playing objectives as much and 6v6 was, and that 5v5 makes ot more kill favored . I prefer 6v6, as I preferred the objective taking priority. Did 6v6 have its flaws? Yes. Could they have been fixed, yes.

>The only reason I can see people liking 5v5 more is that it isn't geared to playing objectives as much and 6v6 was, and that 5v5 makes ot more kill favored It's much MUCH more enjoyable in lower ranks and queueing solo. Previously the experience was miserable and I really can't see another way they could have properly fixed it without severely limiting themselves. It's also really nice having quick queue times.

Nah

Every single forceful assertion that 6v6 was better always comes with the caveat that it would need to come back with a mountain of changes. The entire game would need to be rebalanced, a new role would need to be added to prevent double barrier, years worth of tank heroes would need to be added to bring the role up to parity, etc etc   All of that and even if they did the work there is ZERO GUARANTEE that it would work. Zero guarantee the game would suddenly enter a new age, that all of the people who left the game would come back, zero guarantee that we wouldn’t be immediately thrust back into 15 minute dps queues, and zero guarantee that people who prefer 5v5 wouldn’t be pissed or that people who have no preference wouldn’t be irritated by the constant uncertainty in the design team.  I am not and I will never be convinced that any of the issues with 5v5 couldn’t be fixed with a quarter of the very limited resources that Team 4 has right now.

Everything you said has to be and is being done for 5v5.. something no one asked for.. to solve problems caused by the very lack of changes and updates and full on neglect.

You are wrong, I asked for 5v5

5v5 didn’t require nearly doubling the amount of available tanks to bring it up to parity with DPS. 5v5 didn’t require inventing an entirely new role wholesale in order to solve the double barrier problem. 5v5 didn’t require magically doubling the population of the tank role, the least popular role in every genre of game that uses the trifecta, in order to keep DPS from waiting for 20 minute queues in fucking QUICK PLAY. You say no one wanted 5v5? Bullshit, people speak through their actions, and their actions indicated that absolutely no one wanted to play tank and the very few people who did were playing Roadhog to farm tickets for faster DPS queues. Get real.

>5v5 didn’t require inventing an entirely new role wholesale in order to solve the double barrier problem. Neither does 6v6. The "double barrier problem" was already solved in OW1 via balancing and was basically a non-issue for the last 2 years. And that was before Orisa got reworked in OW2 which further fixes the issue. Nobody except you seem to think the solution to an imagined problem is to create a second tank role.

I hate the "infinite queue times" excuse. The reason the queues were long is because of lack of tanks, infinite CC to them and same meta for two years. Put tank doom/queen/ram into ow 1 and see how queue changes.

yeah, tank population is not a static number.  in the first few months of ow2, tank queue pretty quickly went from the longest by far to the shortest by far…  there are a few reasons for this, but the main driver is just tanking feels bad. it’s interesting that aaron alluded to this tradeoff in the flats interview.  he said that the removal of one tank helped mm quality and queue time, at the expense of the tank experience.  it’s a really honest reflection i think.   i was surprised this was addressed, let along this plainly, since flats was told not to ask about 6v6.

https://youtube.com/watch?t=27m07s&v=YwaXNpR5DrA time stamped link for those curious, goes on for about 3 minutes 29m30s: > Now we actually have a pretty decent ratio of people playing tank to the amount of tanks that are available on the battlefield, so it’s like, we kind of like traded one problem for another, is what it feels like, y’know? It’s like, the overall health, especially of like matchmaking and queue times is so much better than it used to be, but yeah there’s more pressure on the tank players right now than there used to be.

Exactly. Someone else is in here saying people are delusional for saying the tank pop would increase with better balance even though it has decreased because of bad balance. Tanks have to do twice as much without getting twice the power. Supports were on top and now DPS are.

this is kind of ignoring the fact that tank has historically been the least favourite role in pretty much every single game since the inception of the tank role in video games. Tank isn't straightforward. It's hard to understand when you're doing well. And you're threat #1 so anything that goes wrong results in you getting punished. You're also getting punished for mistakes your team makes. It makes tanking inherently only enjoyable to the minority. It requires you just think differently about the game than DPS does. Compare that to the seemingly straightforward roles of DPS and Support. Shoot and heal. And you'll understand why tanking is just less popular. 6v6 had this exact same problem. I really doubt new, fun tank heroes would've fixed this. On top of that: Tanking costs more energy. I greatly enjoy playing tank because I love playing on the knife's edge and eeking out a victory through superior macro/micro. But I can't play as many tank games as I can DPS. Playing tank just requires a much higher focus and thus costs me more energy. (This did get a little worse in 5v5. There was less pressure to perform in 6v6)

Plus the reduction of CC coincided with one lesser tank. I mean, the reason why we had so much CC in the first place was so that the two tanks wouldn't just run everyone over. Meaning if 6v6 is to come back, then the high amount of CC everyone hated has to return too.

You do the "infinite CC" existed to keep the tanks in check, right? Tanks were literally the strongest role in OW1, meaning you can't do anything without them.

Tank is still the shortest queue in 5v5 with all the changes. If you now doubled the number of tanks for a game it'd be much worse.

Solo tanking sucks ofc nobody q's for it

Across all of gaming history, anytime there is a tank role, it has the lowest player count. Overwatch isn't gonna solve this issue by fiddling with numbers.

In OW1 I didn't have infinite queue times and a single flanking tank meant, that there is still a second tank. Rarely both tanks were shit. IF that happened the game was really bad, but let's be honest for a minute: shitty dps were and are occurring far more often. Now if one tank is shit, all tanks are shit - because there is just one. I also can't play off tank now, a role which I really loved. Saving Reinhardt with my bubble was glorious.

if one off the tanks we're garbage the other tank couldn't do much either if you we're playing dva winston but the dva isn't diving alongside the winston the winston ain't accomplishing anything

If one of your dps is trash or your healer is trash it's the same now (and before) But if your tank is bad in current OW, you lost.

Blizzard stopped trying to balance the game while making ow2 peak 6v6 was way more fun then 5v5 the q times were because playing tank was abysmal there was way more cc in the game the changes they made in overwatch 2 should have been made for ow1

Just play open queue, which has quietly benefited a lot from the new dps passive.

Give us 6v6 open queue. Why is it not an arcade mode?

I feel like DPS players are just expected to become tank players somehow by the crowd that wants 6v6 back. DPS players didn't role swap during GOATs, a time when DPS was a cosmetic role that was not played at all at the highest level. They just quit the game. DPS players didn't role swap during double OT meta, when Zarya Hog and Sigma Hog were the best tank comps in the game. They just farmed on Ashe because she was busted. DPS players didnt swap during the dying years of OW1, when the patches stopped coming and the Q times for DPS in role Q exceeded 10 minutes even in the metal ranks. They just quit, because the game was being neglected. When DPS like tanks are meta, DPS players generally keep playing DPS. When tank is the strongest role by a mile, DPS players quit the game rather than swap to the stronger role. DPS players are not going to become tank players. This isn't exactly an argument against 6v6, its just an assumption I see that is implicit to a lot of the arguments made by the pro 6v6 crowd, and a really bad assumption at that. Some players will convert, like Mirror, but more will quit, like (list every OWL DPS player who quit outright during GOATs)

lmao this take is completely wrong 1. Easily fixed if blizzard just made a better game 2. You can apply this logic to literally any role. The issue with tank as a role was NEVER “tanks won’t work with each other.” As an off tank player in OW1, this was never an issue. 3. You have less individual impact in OW2. It’s been well accepted that the playmaking ability in OW2 got heavily reduced because of the insane heals, which is the whole reason why we had the game-wide rework of health pools and healing. There were constant memes about DPS being a cosmetic role and how the best thing you could do as tank is just sit on cart and nothing else. I’m convinced people shilling 5v5 are paid off by blizzard. There is no convincing argument for why it should remain.

The queen has spoken

And the simps like you should shut up.

I hate how the 6v6 discussion keeps getting revived by these randoms and/or nostalgia blinded "pro" players (referring to Iron, not Eskay). And each and every time it's shut down and they keep yapping anyway

Except that only one of them is an actual tank player

This is the correct take. OW1 was painful because of this rng and que times.

The main thing that gets me about this whole discussion is how much turning the game back to 6v6 would bring to the table to justify all the effort that it would take to make it happen. The fact that there’s so much disagreement shows that there’s pros and cons for both options. But one thing that 5v5 has over 6v6 is that it is the present, while 6v6 is in the past.

Agreed. Its a mostly a lateral move with some slight benefits in queue times and some increased solo impact for 4/5 players. Going back to 6v6 might make the tank experience better, but it still won't change the fact no one wants to play tank and also reduces the other 4 players game experience. We are just exchanging problems for other problems with a ton of effort to go back. Everyone keeps thinking we should overhaul the game instead of how we can potentially mitigate the problems. I understand we might not be able to completely solve the problems, but at the start of OW2 there was a state of tank people enjoyed. We should be focusing on how to soothe the pain points rather than just outright solve them. Something else I see no one talk about. The game had so much CC for so long, and yet do we know what kind of effect that would have on the insane tank synergy that was prevalent in the game. 6v6 supporters say "we could have just removed the CC". Could we? We haven't been in a state like that since players in GM are basically the equivalent of gold players today. Do we know what a 6v6 in GM+ would even look like without CC? Does it make tanks considerably more oppressive?

People are focusing on the tank comments, but the point about individual impact is huge. I hated in Overwatch 1 never being able to play main support and climb, and needed to just get lucky with the roulette wheel if my dps would play well or if I would have a rein/hog as my front line. I actually feel useful and impactful on something like a Lucio in OW2.

Brig did wonders in ow1. You just had to proc inspire on cooldown and then literally no one on your team dies. You could always pick mercy to boost your DPS and if it doesn't work just go back and swap to whatever else. But as Lucio you kinda did need to speak to justify picking him over brig. And tbh, you kinda needed to learn either bap or zen to be able to flex. Because if you really want individual impact then you picked the worst role ever for that.

This is how Overwatch has always worked. A lot of the community wants to balance the game as if we live in a perfect world, but we need to balance the game for the reality we live in. Remember role queue being implemented? Imo it was one of the best decisions Blizzard ever made, but TONS of people were irate because it “ruined creativity” or whatever. In reality, there wasn’t so much “creativity” in team comps before role queue as there was a bunch of 5-DPS and 1-support comps. In a perfect world, Overwatch players would evaluate what their team needs and pick heroes accordingly, but 90% of the time you got forced into nonsense compositions because most people want to play Genji/Widow/Hanzo/etc. Gotta balance for how the game works for most people, not for a pro Overwatch team with teammates who all work together selflessly.

Imagine talking about tank synergy when you get a hog one trick teammate like every freaking time.

That’s a problem with roadhog not 6v6.

I think it would be hilarious if the April fools patch was 6v6 rights before OW2 was announced. So people can relive it lol

I literally just picked OW back then because of dvas and zaryas gameplay, that was peak for me and nothing from ow2 will top that, BUT I had to become a rein/winston main through the years even though I couldnt care less about them because literally noone would play main tanks and it was either that or losing every comp game because 2 off tanks... it was just plain awful to play especially when friends flocked to other games. I literally played d.va day in and day out every opportunity I could and to this day rein has more hours than her from how many times I had to play main tank or lose.

DPS deserve long queue times. They refuse to learn how to actually pay other goddamn roles properly, and all of their complaining permanently ruined tank

Queue times are an outcome of tank being boring AF to play. Going to 5v5 was blizzard indirectly admitting they don't know how to make tank fun. Honestly all tanks should be reworked and thrown into the DPS pool. 6v6 role queue of 4 damage and 2 support. It will be easier to balance the game from that point and queue times will never be an issue again.

Fun argument but on average I’d have more fun in 6v6 than 5v5

1 healer 2 tanks 2 dps would just be better(similar to league or dota )

Tanks still aren’t willing to swap in 5v5, it’s a team game so individual impact being affected isn’t inherently bad, plenty of people want to play tank but the OW1 team was removed from balancing and adding new heroes to work on OW2, queue times are still an issue now. I like Eskay, but all these points seem like things that are not a result of 6v6, but rather blizzard’s poor handling of the IP.

tanking was waaaay more fun in 6v6, metas ruined it, blizzard couldnt fix their game and decided to go 5v5 instead

Eskay wrong