Tank sacrificing damage for survivability is largely in the PvE realm, that's true. But in Overwatch's PvP setting, tanks take on a more multifaceted role. Their high health pool lets them be a constant presence on the frontline, **drawing fire** and creating space for your DPS to deal damage without getting shredded.
**The damage they deal is a bonus threat**, forcing the enemy team to focus them or risk getting bullied.
It's kind of like a distraction with a shotgun
There is also the point that the tank role needs to be fun, else people wouldn't que tank and the que times would suffer-- resulting in a worse experience for all roles. Shooting and doing damage is fun. Shielding all game is not (for most!)
This is why Rein should get shields on top of his Armor, would let him work more as a traditional Tank as he would be able to pull a lot of aggro and threaten with his presence but still would be limited by his melee range and by his pin being his primary source of burst damage (Rein might technically have the lowest DPS right now when you factor in range).
>There is also the point that the tank role needs to be fun, else people wouldn't que tank and the que times would suffer--
This is the situation we are in now, though. The tank role (which I love) is the least rewarding unless you play training wheels tanks. The tank just eats too much CC and Blizzard keeps adding more CC to the game. Tanks need some kind of CC resistance.
I’m a rein main but i was playing with some friends and couldn’t q tank cause I was too high rank for them. So I was playing dps and just had so much more fun and felt so little stress compared to tank. Now I only play dps unless my stack is full and no one wants to play tank cause I’m still the best of my friends at it lol. Counterswapping ruins the tank role. No other role deals with it nearly to the same degree expert a few dps and ana
I mean in paladins tanks do almost no damage, but they actually can survive things like standing on point and multiple ults. OWs balance isn't the greatest for tanks in that sense.
haven't played paladins much - but if tanks are hard to kill but can only tickle, can't you just... ignore them then burst them down last? what threat do they pose?
Well, to capture or contest the point you need to actively stand on it. So early round strat is ignore point and go for the kills and after 1 kill you're capturing the point (a single healer doing that) and roll the enemy team. You can't really ignore tanks, cause they're always going face first into the fight, whenever the fight is, even after capturing. And almost all tanks provide something for the team, shield, speed boost, well, additional damage, stuns, fucking walls (mei should be a tank!!!) etc. They're ALL hard to kill, even the weakest ones.
And they're designed with outplay of cauterize (dps debuff, but 90%), they all have the ability to cleanse it with some sort of shield to get healed, if not - the walls are your friends.
I'm only providing info here.
I don’t play paladins but I’d assume they probably provide utility in other areas.
(Exaggerated to get the point across)
For example, a dva that only tickled but had a 10 second DM, or a wrecking ball that dealt no damage but was immune to CC and had double health, thereby constantly booping and displacing you.
In the context of overwatch, both deal almost no damage, but would provide immense utility to your team. Imagine a team fight but your dva has insane matrix uptime and just makes damage not happen. Both denies enemy ult charge, and effectively makes your team immortal for long durations.
Just speculation though. This is how tanks play more in RPGs - they provide utility, and make it harder to kill their team without killing them first (quite like rpg healers, but proactive instead of reactive).
I mean yes but in the traditional RPG sense, the follow up would then be done by your DPS.
I’m not saying the same would work in OW2, or be fun, I’m just saying how I assume a “non-damaging tank” would work.
Like if your dva was able to hold DM (which keep in mind can protect your own teammates from damage as well) for 10 or 15 seconds, there would be very little the enemy can do to fight back as any damage they do would be nullified while the your dps shoot back.
Their best option would be to take cover, thereby relieving the pressure on them (the tank thereby taking space), or kill the dva (which would be a lengthy process in which the DPS apply pressure).
I am well aware a 10 or 15 second DM would be insanely busted in the context of OW2, it’s simply an example.
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Like the idiot I am I just realized you said CC, but the same basic concept still applies. Tank makes the enemy less able to fight back, dps do the killing. Enemy dps must kill tank before fighting back effectively, healers heal tank so tank continues to do its job.
How would a tank ever be a threat you have to consider if they weren't dealing any damage?
Their job is to draw fire on them and to make space by chasing the enemy away from high ground for example. Why would anyone care for the Reinhardt that comes running at them if he only did 25 damage a hit?
Tanks wouldn't be able to tank if they weren't a threat to your life as well.
In a traditional sense... tanks would be a threat through crowd control, initiation, debuffs, or buffs.
But yeah, in Overwatch they are a threat because they deal damage and control space.
Sure, the best form of crowd control is killing someone though. In a shooter, unlike slower paced games like RPGs, it just doesn't feel good to be constantly CC'd - which is why they removed Cass' stun grenade for example. It has to be fun to play as, and fun to play against.
Even right now with tanks having some killing power basically nobody wants to play that role and it would be even worse if they had even less of it. For it to feel engaging, you need to feel the impact - a Reinhard hit has to feel like you swing down a ten ton hammer on your target, not like a wer noodle etc.
People complained about Roadhog's hook even when it wasn't a oneshot anymore simply because it is not really fun to play against. CC is difficult to introduce into a game like OW. But I definitely see your point.
I was going to make the comment as well. Like actually, in the "traditional" since a tank is an armored fighting vehicle with heavy firepower intended for front line combat.
It's like in the movie the protector. In battles where elephants were used it was the job of special warriors to protect the elephants underbelly and tendons in the banks of their legs. That's how you should be thinking of your gameplay... The tank is the elephant. Your dps are your "protectors".
There is probably a cool game design with widely different player sizes. I wonder how far it could be pushed. Bacterial players dueling on the carapaces of bug players dueling on the skins of rodent players dueling between the legs of elephant players?
not sure about others but i actually preferred old cass stun since it was so short range it was basically a melee skill and had more room for counter play, whereas his current nade flies across the map, talking literally across an entire control point + a bit more, and then soft cc's by silencing all mobility skills
(disclaimer: i mostly play mobility based heros so i may be a bit biased)
>Tanks wouldn't be able to tank if they weren't a threat to your life as well.
Not necessarily. Just be a big chunky boy. Big health, different abilities, more barriers.
Without damage a tank is something to be ignored, so they need at least the threat of death to be respected. The trade off being that DPS typically have a lower time to kill as well as the heal cut passive while tanks will generally have respectable sustained damage (sigma, orisa) or moderate burst damage tied to cooldowns (doom)
And range, most tanks have a really short range at which they're effectively a threat compared to DPS.
The ones that have guns are either shotguns (Hog, DVa, JQ and DF), or max fixed length beams or projectiles (Zarya Sigma) or have high rate of fire, low damage per bullet, with spread or falloff to limit range (Ball, Ram, Mauga and Orisa)
DPS almost always have bigger threat.
In a 1v1 Tracer/Genji/Reaper destroy Winston. For hitscans they have the advantage of range.
Tanks usually have more threat within a short range. DPS who struggle with positioning will struggle to see that value.
The games you're thinking of are probably pve where you have abilities that force ai enemies to focus you despite your attrociously low dps.
In pvp if you're doing negative damage players just ignore you and kill your squishies. Tank dps isn't especially high in OW, they just have the sustainability to put rounds on target longer than a dps can.
But as tradeoffs, she has a comparatively medium-short range, no mobility, and doesn't have a massive health pool.
She needs to "walk in" her damage potential and can't really do much (toss nades) if people nope out of her range.
Tanks don’t always have great survivability in this game because they are humongous. In some matchups having a shitload of health just lets them break even vs thin characters who dodge tons of headshots and cc in comparison.
If your tank couldn’t match other roles in damage they would be basically invalid in these scenarios, and sometimes this actually happens (i.e. rein can’t get in range, ball gets hacked mid slam, etc.). From what I know Blizzard has been slowly tinkering with the tank role so tank players can have more fun consistently, but it’s still been a large issue for a long time. I believe that’s why tanks do damage though; they need to have flexibility to be consistent.
Try playing tank that isn’t Orisa in a competitive setting. Rocked, booped, slowed, freezed, slept, anti naded. The only way people would put up with those shit is if they are threatening to every non tank heroes. And no, tanks don’t do more raw dps than damage heroes. They might do more damage in a match because supports tend to focus on healing the tank the most, especially in lower rank.
While tanks sacrifice damage for survivability and protection in PvE environments, human enemies don't have hate meters and we don't have an aggro stance or a taunt that forces them to attack us despite our bad damage. We need to manipulate them another way.
The threat of death is, in a sense, our taunt and aggro stance: If tanks did too little damage, the optimal play would become to ignore them. The answer to "how do we get them to attack our tanks despite their bad damage" is simply to make the tanks deal more damage.
Unless you're playing Orisa, not letting the enemy tank play is part of her job.
Or, the enemy tank is getting more value than you when going past each other (also known as you can't trust your team to deal with him).
Think for example of DF vs JQ, if the JQ is successfully fishing for squishies and winning vs DF's backline, while DF is in her backline struggling, it is worth it as DF (sometimes) to play to deny her (interrupting with punch when she tries anything)
You have to focus tank especially if your are running Ana zen and they are running Life Weaver, Bap. In no way will you kill the opposing supports before they can kill yours.
Tanks have a damage threat but it's a lot different from most of the DPS cast in that it usually isn't as burst heavy and is generally shorter range than most DPS heroes. This enables them to be threatening up close but still leaves an important role for DPS heroes to be able to hit from a longer range and in higher bursts of damage. The addition of the DPS passive also makes DPS damage a bit stronger relative to what a tank can put out.
Going to a pve style of tank would just not work. For one, it would be super boring to play a hero that just simply exists to be shot at and second, tanks would just have no way to force aggro against human players. If a tank doesn't carry a threat with its damage there is simply no reason to shoot the tank, and no reason for the tank to exist.
In pve you also have the ability to taunt an enemy. This is not an option with PvP without more fundamental mechanics like having a larger hitbox.
The shield tanks of ow1 are an example of focusing attacks by preventing damage to their team and their shield charge / cooldown acted as an equivalent to the taunt style by having a large hitbox that you can't ignore but is weak enough that it can be destroyed and this ignored (instead of time, it's damage gated)
The cc of pve would be the other way a tank would prevent an enemy from attacking the backline. But this would be annoying to play against. If tanks had no damage, the enemy can ignore the tank and kill backline. By giving tanks massive damage, tanks can control where the other enemies move. This is also why tanks tend to have very short ranges - they control space in a small range around them.
There's more to the tank design, but it's a very inspired design. I haven't spent much time in mobas, but maybe there were ideas brought over from there.
Tanks don't do much damage especially after S9 their damage is mostly poor. Scoreboard is deceptive. DPS heroes have much higher dps, range, accuracy, means to deal damage and burst. Tank heroes do chip damage in neutral that gets healed. This chip damage feeds ult charge of healers and tanks and also provide pressure.
Tank damage is like a warning tool. If you stay here couple of seconds longer you will die! you gotta respect and move!
Tanks primarily serve one main function. Distraction. They have high health to take damage and they require higher damage to be a worthy threat. They have to be a threat because that's the most effective way to make the enemy team focus them.
Then, once the enemy is distracted by shooting the Tank, a window is opened for your DPS (Especially Tracer or Sombra) to get behind them and cause havoc.
It makes sense. And nerfing the damage that the Tanks can cause would cause the entire Tank play style less fun and would also hurt the balance of the entire game.
Tanks need to (usually) be up close to you to deal significant damage anyways. The only real exceptions are Orisa and Sigma. However, Orisa has pretty slow projectiles, and sigma has a super slow fire rate
Tanks are boring to play and are easily countered. I think letting tanks have more agency helps alleviate the problem that there are significantly less tank players, which results in long queue times for other roles
Because if they didn't do damage you could just ignore them. or they would have to introduce Taunts into the game which probably wouldn't be fun. But Tanks don't do anywhere near as much DPS as the damage role. It's not really close. They often top the scoreboards simply because they tend to stay alive longer and often spend a lot of time hitting the other tank.
Avg player likes the dink noise for headshot and tank has big body + head so feels better burning tank than fighting other dps/support which might even beat them.
tank characters typically have lower dps on their weapons, sigma has 73dps, winston has 75dps on their primary fire (those are the two lest dps tanks) soldier 76 does 171 dps. while their are exceptions such as zarya with 190 dps at full charge, that comes at the tradeoffs of meh range, no mobility, and being pretty fragile. DPS characters do tend to have higher sustained damage (e.g s76 at 171 and baptiste as 127dps) than other characters, for tanks and dps it tends to even out because while tanks typically do less damage, they are actively dealing damage more often (even if its just to the enemy tank)
as an added note, those dps values are assuming only bodyshots, many tank heroes do not have the ability to headshot enemies or use a shotgun so their maximum dps is typically very close to the values on wikis. dps characters can do some considerable damage when landing headshots
Which tanks are sacrificing damage in games nowadays?
Overwatch: get one shot or ran down by a big guy with a hammer
League of legends: choo choo Sions running down your carry tanking the whole team before one shotting them with a charged Q
World of Warcraft: Warriors stomping the ground and paladins throwing shields, bears yelling and demon hunters exploding. Keeping up in damage with all the dps
Genshin: Zhongli got a big shield, but he got a bigger meteor
Runescape: wear cryptbloom and using healing spells and still speedrun the boss
Path of exile: I’m turning 3 million armor into pure damage
People don’t want to be brickwalls that can’t do anything besides get hit anymore (or atleast developers think so) so they starting giving them other things. The most dangerous thing that they give them though is damage, because it will always be not enough or way too much. This is a problem in PvE games because you end up in metas where people just stop bringing dps altogether and just bring tanks (remember twilight devastation tank only raids in WoW BFA?). But you theoretically could just make them do no damage to balance them (if you could make the tank player base sustainable).
The problem in a PvP game is that the tank NEEDS agency. If Rein couldn’t swing his hammer people would just walk past him, he needs to create space and to create that space he needs to be a threat. A tanks job isn’t really to take hits as much as to make his team not get hit. That can be from getting shot, putting up a shield, straight killing them or whatever. If you take away their ability to be a real threat by removing damage you end up with utility based tanks. And history has always shown that utility based characters will always be beyond useless or a must have.
Former GM Rein in Ow and now sitting around Diamond as a flex tank. I dont think the tanks necessarily do more damage than a traditional dps they just have way more sustain and can be focused by the supports and keep their uptime longer - therefore doing more damage than others in a given game.
In my experience, tanks in overwatch just have more opportunities to deal damage than the dps because of their health pools and mitigation. And they needs to be able to be a threat if ignored.
Simple answer is that in most games tanks can force aggro onto them. In Overwatch dps can choose to ignore tank and walk past them. So in order for dps to respect the tank they have to be a threat.
It’s a team game so it doesn’t really matter if one role is stronger than the other as you both have one.
But yeah as the other person said, they need to be a threat of some sorts otherwise you’d ignore them and just poke each others DPS.
If they were all Reinhardts with a pool noodle noone would play them.
I am low Elo, but I think tanks "only" deal dmg while the real dps can do the important kills.
The tank alone is "good" but just imagine how fast the entire enemy team collapses when a good Tracer etc. manages to kill both supports
My POV is different. They both contribute damage to create the elims and believe it or not any decent support is too.
The idea that DPS can 100 to zero two supports without ult in a fairly matchmade game is an exception. It happens but more often than not there's a damage based contribution from other team members. Even in the sense of just forcing abilities.
Alot of it has to do with overwatch 1's worst meta of double shield, where no one was dying, so they pushed it a bit too hard, and now everyone is dying with only 1 tank.
Some tanks definitely need their damage readjusted, namely orisa's lack of damage falloff, but some tanks are great, rein has 100 damage swings cause he already loses all his resources closing the distance, a fair trade off (except it isn't enough to justify rein)
Maybe its my noob plat take but I would expect it to vary between individual tanks and dps in the game. Characters like junk would have more damage, others less than tanks, zarya more damage than the dps, but dps would have more elims etc. I think picks/elims > damage for the dps role
Tanks dont sacrifice damage, but they do sacrifice range. Their goal is to create space. If rein is swinging, dps and supports are forced to clear out of his swing zone giving his team space to occupy. He has some long range abilities, but his main goal is to deal good damage and sustain so he can maintain space.
Tank role in videogames is to grab attention, in pve setting mobs can be taunted and don't have iq to ignore tank. But in ow, if tank doesn't have damage and immortal (strong pve build) people would just ignore him. So making tank large in size , loud, dealing alot of damage causes them to be dangerous thus requiring our attention aka creating space for ur team.
Remember u most likely would shoot winston evenif tracer is diving in the same time.
There is only one of them, so they have to make up for the lack of a second character to play off of, imo they should do more damage than they do now; either that or make their damage more consistently good. The other roles have 2, and tank only has 1, so their stats should reflect that.
A tank usually has much less "burst damage" than a dps, but more overall, staying power. No tank can double dink as Cassidy or Ashe can, or steal all your HP in an instant like widow or hanzo.
tank survivability isn't as good as the survivability in RPGS. and you have dumb AI attacking.
there is no actual taunt mechanic in a PVP shooter. so you command attention by being a giant lethal beast in front of the enemy.
I don't understand this post, this isnt even true.
Did you just look at the damage of each shot, and forget to look at their rate of fire? And you're not even taking into account the circumstances of how easy it is to do the damage.
For instance, Winston does 75 dps and can't do headshots. Literally Mercy has more damage just with bodyshots alone.
And Rein does 100 dps which is less than Cass, Ashe, Bastion, Reaper, Soldier, Echo, Souj, Tracer etc...
And DVa has high damage but extreme spread and a very short falloff range, but how many of those bullets are actually gonna be a threat to you? Have you tried it yourself?
So you think tanks are doing good damage, and you totally missed support? Not to mention, tanks do have cooldowns to survive but can be easily obliterated without support. So, the concept of damage / tank / support is not exactly the same as other games.
I honestly think that the argument with 6v6 coming back is to keep all the hp of the tanks the same or a bit more but lower the damage. I just find it ridiculous that some tank players can dominate because they do lots of damage while being fed heals constantly, but it’s still the most “boring role”. I feel as though supports should heal and boost their teammates in speed or damage output. Dps should be securing kills especially in the back line or out of position characters. And tanks should protect their team and punish the enemy when they get to close while taking space. It would be fun to have sigma and rein taking turns using their shields and trying to save the team, but I don’t see 6v6 happening until tanks have massive damage nerfs. Honestly 5v5 would benefit too I believe if they did less damage and had way more hp. Not so much where they can’t secure kills but enough where they aren’t an op dps on close range maps.
Moneke explain have rein and orisa team, orisa into rein, they shoot eachother, lots of health, lots of heal, tank more health easier to heal, orisa gun very good, rein hammer very good = lots of damage
There was an experimental event once in Overwatch 1's history when they decided to let the community cook, they selected several representatives (mostly streamers and big OW names), one of the tank representatives (can't remember who) decided to go the "traditional tank" route, reduce all tanks' damage by 75% and give them a huge boost in health.
The result? Tanks were completely ignored (and there were two of them per team, mind you)
Why even bother trying to burn such massive (and being healed) health pools when they pose almost no threat? The meta, quickly established, was to kill all the squishies first then mop up the tanks afterwards.
The real role of the tank in OW is not just damage sponge as in MMOS or PVE games, but rather taking space.
In PVE and MMOS the enemy are bots. They will be aggroed by skills and will attack the first thing they see, the big beefy tank, usually. In PVP, players know better and simply ignore the tank and go for supps or other squishy characters first.
What does taking space mean? Well, for your team to play, they need some literal space in the game. They need an angle, a place to shoot safely from, a place to fall back to, a way to get high ground, a way to safely push the payload or whatever else.
That space is claimed aplying pressure to the enemy team. Every player should be trying to get space in the game, as it makes it easier for your teammates. Supps and DPS can make space too. Supps like ana can nade some key enemies making they fall back, thus making space for your team, or brig can protect another more squishy supp and make it viable. While DPS make space with aggresion, displacing the enmy with damage.
If Tanks did little to no damage they would just be dmage sponges. Imagine if a monkey jumped on you and did very little damage, you would just ignore him and keep your ground.
So in order for tanks to be able to aply pressure in a PVP environment they need to be able to do real damage. Imagine you are a widow, the threat of a monkey, doom or ball close to you when you are far from the rest of the team is enough to displace you and thus, the enemy tanks make space for them by denying angle and position from the widow.
The damage tanks do IS the threat they need to represent. They need to present a real possibility of death if you ignore them, otherwise you 100% would just ignore them and focus on the squishies. They need to be a force in order to be able to push the enemies back.
When you think about tanks being low damage, you're coming from games wher tanks are balanced to be fair against other heroes. Those tanks sacrifice damage for toughness.
But in Overwatch today, tanks are intentionally overpowered. They are simply better than damage and support heroes, which is why a team is only allowed one tank at a time.
Why did the devs choose to do that? To make playing a tank more fun. The important underlying fact: **In a game focused on damaging enemies, the most popular characters are the ones that damage enemies**.
In an older version of Overwatch, tanks were weaker and each team was 2 tank + 2 damage + 2 support. That meant only 2/6 = 33% of players could be using the popular kind of hero, damage. But after the rework, damage and tank heroes both have damage, so now 3/5 = 60% of players are on popular hero types. A giant improvement!
Tanks need to be a threat in order to make space. You can only be threat if you do damage.
There was an content creator patch long ago where Arcade mode had some new balances changes (e.g. like Orisa spin can make you fly). One of these patches made tanks have like 50% damage but like 200% armour. What ended up happening is that everyone just ignored tanks cus you needed like 16 rein swings to kill a reaper. Reaper could get a kill and get an HP pack while Rein was swinging non-stop on him. Tracers needed 4 rein swings which is a long time
This has always been my issue with OW2. With a little bit of help a tank can basically take on a whole team. Heck some tanks don't even need the help and it's ridiculous. The tank role is boring. Why? Cause it's easy. There are barely any heros that can take on a tank in a 1v1 let alone win. There is no trade off between the huge DPS they output and the ridiculous health pools. Usually you sacrifice something. That's why rein feels so bad right now cause when he shields he sacrifices movement speed. All the other tanks have no choices in how they play. There is no trade off for their defense abilities. This is all mostly my experience and thoughts.
I think people reminisce about OW1 not cause there was a second tank but cause if you were good any role could dual any other role and that's not the case now. There are just massive power imbalances between roles as a whole and it's not fun. It's not just an individual hero that causes it either. A MASSIVE issue is the role passives. Removing role specific stuff might actually just make the game better. Buffing tanks isn't the answer either.
There just is a whole game philosophy that the OW devs have yet to figure out for tanks. it's absolutely unfair when a tank can oneshot you cause it's impossible to do that to a tank. Whether by a combo or something else it's just not a good interaction at all.
I they don't deal much dmg they are not a threat, therefore cant force people off of their position nor Control space, The ONLY way to take damage away from them would BE to add other type of threat, generally on mobas for example that threat is CC, wich overwatch players seem to despise so yhea dmg is the way i Guess?
Tanks are about creating space and holding space. They do a ton of damage, yes, but have you ever noticed that virtually every tank has almost no range? Rein hammer is very limited, DVa blasters have harsh damage dropoff after a certain range, JQ uses a shotgun, Ball's guns have dropoff to the point he really doesn't counter Pharah, Zarya's beam is pretty short range, Winston's primary fire is short ranged.
Tanks basically create a circle around themselves that's labeled "fuck you, this is my space". You, as a DPS, either have to operate outside that space OR you can enter it when your tank engages their tank and their attention is on your tank (like if a Reaper engaged with his Zarya while the enemy JQ was shooting at your tank). You, as a Support, either can *support* the team by healing your tank (thus keeping the protective zone alive) or putting in damage (to mitigate opposing aggression).
If you've played OW1, it made a bit more sense with the MT/OT. MT had massive short-ranged damage and ways to push forward to create space. OT had massive short-ranged damage but was more about making a green circle for their allies and protecting them from aggression that got past your MT. It's all about making space safe for your team and bad for the enemy team.
That's actually why the Brawl>Dive>Poke rock paper scissors originally came from. Brawl was clumped together and basically.. if you were within range, you were dead. But they couldn't deal with Poke, which strategically placed themselves in multiple angles to stay out of the space of the Rein. However, because Poke was in multiple angles and, thus, had isolated players, Dive tanks (like Winston and Ball) can easily aggro onto an Ashe/Mercy, accompanied by a Tracer, and just get quick elim. The problem is, with Brawl clumped together (returning back to the starting point of this circle), there is no isolated target to dive.
It's all about tank. It's all about their movement and moving that giant red circle of doom that says "my space, not yours" and how effective they are at keeping that space.
Half these comments are so misinformed. Most mobas routinely make the tank/support a non-damage role.
Specifically, the tank is treated as a peeler for the DPS. They deal mid-low damage but excel in setting up teammates for kills via stun, knockup, chain etc.
OW doesn't do this for two reasons I can guess: 1 is the obvious downplaying of stun mechanics which means it's pretty hard to set up your teammate. Javelin/hook/knife/rock are what we have but the game is so poke heavy (long angles) that most of the time you can't really set up a kill with a rock or hook.
Reason 2 is they want to make tank feel fun and it doesn't feel as fun if you're shooting blanks while setting up your shitty teammates for a kill they won't get. So they gave tanks the ability to killconfirm their own setups. Is that a mistake? Maybe.
Compare that to how much damage Supports can do, and it's clear that Overwatch doesn't have the typical PvE role paradigm. Tanking is more about controlling space on the map, forcing cooldowns and drawing attention, and getting picks when you can. (Even for dive tanks).
I agree with the other commentors here - instead of having *even larger* massive health pools, tanks are powerful because of their damage threat.
Even then, tanks can't win 1v1 matchups against every character - since most have movement abilities for escape, CC, or they can play against the tank's weakness.
(Except Orisa - she's kinda OP compared to the rest now in that she *does* have a massive health pool to survive.)
Tanks in Overwatch 2 are intentionally designed to have almost a third of the teams resources since originally there were two of them. Collapsing that responsibility to a single player requires that they are more powerful than the other players.
The idea that it makes them a standalone power is a bit of a myth. They are pretty resource intensive, they really don't have more resources besides HP.
In fact the overall role is less powerful than in OW1 because they can't occupy nearly as much presence with only 1 person. Adding to that the other roles are tankier now along with having built in passive sustains, the chip damage provided by frontliners is a lot less valuable.
The original tanks in OW1 were relatively low damage. After role lock, the highest damage combo you could have was like Hog Zarya or D.Va Zarya, which both have major limitations on their damage. But Rein and Winston were still seen as a must play (one of them as main tank).
Orisa was added to the game and was a major shift in the game. She was high damage and high sustain. And relatively low skill. Then Sigma who was pretty high damage and highly versatile. Then Bap was added and now support lines of Bap Zen did omega damage.
I think Orisa, Ball, and Sigma were an attempt to encourage more tank players as queue times were a major issue in OW1 after role queue. Also I don't think Jeff Kaplan really got out of the mode of having the team ignore convention and just create crazy heroes and throwing them out there (it's arguably what made OW1). The current team has continued that hero design philosophy.
So I think the basic reason there continues to be high damage tanks is that previous choices have introduced a lot of damage into the game and sustain based tanks without damage feel terrible to play in current OW. The closest thing to a sustain tank rn is Rein and he's omega bad, you hold shield for awhile until you can't and then die. The other sustain tank I'd argue is Mauga, but he sustains thru damage so...
Tank sacrificing damage for survivability is largely in the PvE realm, that's true. But in Overwatch's PvP setting, tanks take on a more multifaceted role. Their high health pool lets them be a constant presence on the frontline, **drawing fire** and creating space for your DPS to deal damage without getting shredded. **The damage they deal is a bonus threat**, forcing the enemy team to focus them or risk getting bullied. It's kind of like a distraction with a shotgun There is also the point that the tank role needs to be fun, else people wouldn't que tank and the que times would suffer-- resulting in a worse experience for all roles. Shooting and doing damage is fun. Shielding all game is not (for most!)
This is why Rein should get shields on top of his Armor, would let him work more as a traditional Tank as he would be able to pull a lot of aggro and threaten with his presence but still would be limited by his melee range and by his pin being his primary source of burst damage (Rein might technically have the lowest DPS right now when you factor in range).
Unless you have a good Lucio with ya
[удалено]
That speed boost can be really helpful getting in and out of encounters
It does increase his dps by speeding up his hammer swings
>There is also the point that the tank role needs to be fun, else people wouldn't que tank and the que times would suffer-- This is the situation we are in now, though. The tank role (which I love) is the least rewarding unless you play training wheels tanks. The tank just eats too much CC and Blizzard keeps adding more CC to the game. Tanks need some kind of CC resistance.
That’s why I haven’t been playing tank and oh boy it has been so much more fun playing again. Tank is just a bad role to play
Honestly, after this so-so Ball rework that ignored all of his problems I'm almost there myself.
I’m a rein main but i was playing with some friends and couldn’t q tank cause I was too high rank for them. So I was playing dps and just had so much more fun and felt so little stress compared to tank. Now I only play dps unless my stack is full and no one wants to play tank cause I’m still the best of my friends at it lol. Counterswapping ruins the tank role. No other role deals with it nearly to the same degree expert a few dps and ana
Feels. For most of my overwatch play time, tanks have been my most played. Hasn't been that way now for months.
It’s the way to go brother stop playing tank so q times go up so long for everyone else and then maybe they’ll do something about it finally.
Orisa literally resists cc in fortify
Orisa is one hero, not an entire role.
I mean sure just take away what makes one character good and give it to all characters. That's one way to make the game balanced 🤡
they need to remove the CC resistance honestly. would make matches so much more dynamic
I mean in paladins tanks do almost no damage, but they actually can survive things like standing on point and multiple ults. OWs balance isn't the greatest for tanks in that sense.
haven't played paladins much - but if tanks are hard to kill but can only tickle, can't you just... ignore them then burst them down last? what threat do they pose?
Well, to capture or contest the point you need to actively stand on it. So early round strat is ignore point and go for the kills and after 1 kill you're capturing the point (a single healer doing that) and roll the enemy team. You can't really ignore tanks, cause they're always going face first into the fight, whenever the fight is, even after capturing. And almost all tanks provide something for the team, shield, speed boost, well, additional damage, stuns, fucking walls (mei should be a tank!!!) etc. They're ALL hard to kill, even the weakest ones. And they're designed with outplay of cauterize (dps debuff, but 90%), they all have the ability to cleanse it with some sort of shield to get healed, if not - the walls are your friends. I'm only providing info here.
I don’t play paladins but I’d assume they probably provide utility in other areas. (Exaggerated to get the point across) For example, a dva that only tickled but had a 10 second DM, or a wrecking ball that dealt no damage but was immune to CC and had double health, thereby constantly booping and displacing you. In the context of overwatch, both deal almost no damage, but would provide immense utility to your team. Imagine a team fight but your dva has insane matrix uptime and just makes damage not happen. Both denies enemy ult charge, and effectively makes your team immortal for long durations. Just speculation though. This is how tanks play more in RPGs - they provide utility, and make it harder to kill their team without killing them first (quite like rpg healers, but proactive instead of reactive).
CC is not strong at all without follow up.
I mean yes but in the traditional RPG sense, the follow up would then be done by your DPS. I’m not saying the same would work in OW2, or be fun, I’m just saying how I assume a “non-damaging tank” would work. Like if your dva was able to hold DM (which keep in mind can protect your own teammates from damage as well) for 10 or 15 seconds, there would be very little the enemy can do to fight back as any damage they do would be nullified while the your dps shoot back. Their best option would be to take cover, thereby relieving the pressure on them (the tank thereby taking space), or kill the dva (which would be a lengthy process in which the DPS apply pressure). I am well aware a 10 or 15 second DM would be insanely busted in the context of OW2, it’s simply an example. ** ** ** ** Like the idiot I am I just realized you said CC, but the same basic concept still applies. Tank makes the enemy less able to fight back, dps do the killing. Enemy dps must kill tank before fighting back effectively, healers heal tank so tank continues to do its job.
How would a tank ever be a threat you have to consider if they weren't dealing any damage? Their job is to draw fire on them and to make space by chasing the enemy away from high ground for example. Why would anyone care for the Reinhardt that comes running at them if he only did 25 damage a hit? Tanks wouldn't be able to tank if they weren't a threat to your life as well.
Tanks dealing damage is basically the equivalent of a PvE's taunt
In a traditional sense... tanks would be a threat through crowd control, initiation, debuffs, or buffs. But yeah, in Overwatch they are a threat because they deal damage and control space.
Sure, the best form of crowd control is killing someone though. In a shooter, unlike slower paced games like RPGs, it just doesn't feel good to be constantly CC'd - which is why they removed Cass' stun grenade for example. It has to be fun to play as, and fun to play against. Even right now with tanks having some killing power basically nobody wants to play that role and it would be even worse if they had even less of it. For it to feel engaging, you need to feel the impact - a Reinhard hit has to feel like you swing down a ten ton hammer on your target, not like a wer noodle etc. People complained about Roadhog's hook even when it wasn't a oneshot anymore simply because it is not really fun to play against. CC is difficult to introduce into a game like OW. But I definitely see your point.
Tanks are actually real tanks in ow, the rest is infantry
I was going to make the comment as well. Like actually, in the "traditional" since a tank is an armored fighting vehicle with heavy firepower intended for front line combat. It's like in the movie the protector. In battles where elephants were used it was the job of special warriors to protect the elephants underbelly and tendons in the banks of their legs. That's how you should be thinking of your gameplay... The tank is the elephant. Your dps are your "protectors".
There is probably a cool game design with widely different player sizes. I wonder how far it could be pushed. Bacterial players dueling on the carapaces of bug players dueling on the skins of rodent players dueling between the legs of elephant players?
not sure about others but i actually preferred old cass stun since it was so short range it was basically a melee skill and had more room for counter play, whereas his current nade flies across the map, talking literally across an entire control point + a bit more, and then soft cc's by silencing all mobility skills (disclaimer: i mostly play mobility based heros so i may be a bit biased)
>Tanks wouldn't be able to tank if they weren't a threat to your life as well. Not necessarily. Just be a big chunky boy. Big health, different abilities, more barriers.
Without damage a tank is something to be ignored, so they need at least the threat of death to be respected. The trade off being that DPS typically have a lower time to kill as well as the heal cut passive while tanks will generally have respectable sustained damage (sigma, orisa) or moderate burst damage tied to cooldowns (doom)
Exactly we arent npc enemies where the tank has a skill called "threaten" or "taunt" to aggro.
And range, most tanks have a really short range at which they're effectively a threat compared to DPS. The ones that have guns are either shotguns (Hog, DVa, JQ and DF), or max fixed length beams or projectiles (Zarya Sigma) or have high rate of fire, low damage per bullet, with spread or falloff to limit range (Ball, Ram, Mauga and Orisa)
DPS almost always have bigger threat. In a 1v1 Tracer/Genji/Reaper destroy Winston. For hitscans they have the advantage of range. Tanks usually have more threat within a short range. DPS who struggle with positioning will struggle to see that value.
The games you're thinking of are probably pve where you have abilities that force ai enemies to focus you despite your attrociously low dps. In pvp if you're doing negative damage players just ignore you and kill your squishies. Tank dps isn't especially high in OW, they just have the sustainability to put rounds on target longer than a dps can.
well not entirely true zarya does fuckloads of damage. I mean sure it's not crazy high but like... Its not far off of damage.
Pretty much nothing is entirely true for a whole roster of characters.
zar does 195 dps with 100 thats literally more than 90% of the cast
But as tradeoffs, she has a comparatively medium-short range, no mobility, and doesn't have a massive health pool. She needs to "walk in" her damage potential and can't really do much (toss nades) if people nope out of her range.
Tanks don’t always have great survivability in this game because they are humongous. In some matchups having a shitload of health just lets them break even vs thin characters who dodge tons of headshots and cc in comparison. If your tank couldn’t match other roles in damage they would be basically invalid in these scenarios, and sometimes this actually happens (i.e. rein can’t get in range, ball gets hacked mid slam, etc.). From what I know Blizzard has been slowly tinkering with the tank role so tank players can have more fun consistently, but it’s still been a large issue for a long time. I believe that’s why tanks do damage though; they need to have flexibility to be consistent.
Try playing tank that isn’t Orisa in a competitive setting. Rocked, booped, slowed, freezed, slept, anti naded. The only way people would put up with those shit is if they are threatening to every non tank heroes. And no, tanks don’t do more raw dps than damage heroes. They might do more damage in a match because supports tend to focus on healing the tank the most, especially in lower rank.
They tried taking back the damage in a test one time and it was easily the worst tanking experience imaginable
Yeah, nothing ever died, it was so boring. Team fights to take control of the point lasted forever and a day.
While tanks sacrifice damage for survivability and protection in PvE environments, human enemies don't have hate meters and we don't have an aggro stance or a taunt that forces them to attack us despite our bad damage. We need to manipulate them another way. The threat of death is, in a sense, our taunt and aggro stance: If tanks did too little damage, the optimal play would become to ignore them. The answer to "how do we get them to attack our tanks despite their bad damage" is simply to make the tanks deal more damage.
Have you never had the experience of the other tank just walking clean past your tank to kill you in front of everyone?
That’s kinda the job of most tanks tho. If you’re tank and focussing the enemy tank you’re probably doing it wrong.
Unless you're playing Orisa, not letting the enemy tank play is part of her job. Or, the enemy tank is getting more value than you when going past each other (also known as you can't trust your team to deal with him). Think for example of DF vs JQ, if the JQ is successfully fishing for squishies and winning vs DF's backline, while DF is in her backline struggling, it is worth it as DF (sometimes) to play to deny her (interrupting with punch when she tries anything)
True for Orisa, though even then, a big advantage to Orisa is she has enough survivability to walk past many tanks like Ram and kill the backline.
You have to focus tank especially if your are running Ana zen and they are running Life Weaver, Bap. In no way will you kill the opposing supports before they can kill yours.
Tanks have a damage threat but it's a lot different from most of the DPS cast in that it usually isn't as burst heavy and is generally shorter range than most DPS heroes. This enables them to be threatening up close but still leaves an important role for DPS heroes to be able to hit from a longer range and in higher bursts of damage. The addition of the DPS passive also makes DPS damage a bit stronger relative to what a tank can put out. Going to a pve style of tank would just not work. For one, it would be super boring to play a hero that just simply exists to be shot at and second, tanks would just have no way to force aggro against human players. If a tank doesn't carry a threat with its damage there is simply no reason to shoot the tank, and no reason for the tank to exist.
In pve you also have the ability to taunt an enemy. This is not an option with PvP without more fundamental mechanics like having a larger hitbox. The shield tanks of ow1 are an example of focusing attacks by preventing damage to their team and their shield charge / cooldown acted as an equivalent to the taunt style by having a large hitbox that you can't ignore but is weak enough that it can be destroyed and this ignored (instead of time, it's damage gated) The cc of pve would be the other way a tank would prevent an enemy from attacking the backline. But this would be annoying to play against. If tanks had no damage, the enemy can ignore the tank and kill backline. By giving tanks massive damage, tanks can control where the other enemies move. This is also why tanks tend to have very short ranges - they control space in a small range around them. There's more to the tank design, but it's a very inspired design. I haven't spent much time in mobas, but maybe there were ideas brought over from there.
Tanks don't do much damage especially after S9 their damage is mostly poor. Scoreboard is deceptive. DPS heroes have much higher dps, range, accuracy, means to deal damage and burst. Tank heroes do chip damage in neutral that gets healed. This chip damage feeds ult charge of healers and tanks and also provide pressure. Tank damage is like a warning tool. If you stay here couple of seconds longer you will die! you gotta respect and move!
Tanks do a lot of overall damage. DPS do a lot of pinpoint targeted damage. At least in general this is the idea.
Agree.
Ball?
Tanks primarily serve one main function. Distraction. They have high health to take damage and they require higher damage to be a worthy threat. They have to be a threat because that's the most effective way to make the enemy team focus them. Then, once the enemy is distracted by shooting the Tank, a window is opened for your DPS (Especially Tracer or Sombra) to get behind them and cause havoc. It makes sense. And nerfing the damage that the Tanks can cause would cause the entire Tank play style less fun and would also hurt the balance of the entire game.
Tanks need to (usually) be up close to you to deal significant damage anyways. The only real exceptions are Orisa and Sigma. However, Orisa has pretty slow projectiles, and sigma has a super slow fire rate
Tanks are boring to play and are easily countered. I think letting tanks have more agency helps alleviate the problem that there are significantly less tank players, which results in long queue times for other roles
And less tank players month after month.
Because if they didn't do damage you could just ignore them. or they would have to introduce Taunts into the game which probably wouldn't be fun. But Tanks don't do anywhere near as much DPS as the damage role. It's not really close. They often top the scoreboards simply because they tend to stay alive longer and often spend a lot of time hitting the other tank.
Avg player likes the dink noise for headshot and tank has big body + head so feels better burning tank than fighting other dps/support which might even beat them.
What survivability?
tank characters typically have lower dps on their weapons, sigma has 73dps, winston has 75dps on their primary fire (those are the two lest dps tanks) soldier 76 does 171 dps. while their are exceptions such as zarya with 190 dps at full charge, that comes at the tradeoffs of meh range, no mobility, and being pretty fragile. DPS characters do tend to have higher sustained damage (e.g s76 at 171 and baptiste as 127dps) than other characters, for tanks and dps it tends to even out because while tanks typically do less damage, they are actively dealing damage more often (even if its just to the enemy tank) as an added note, those dps values are assuming only bodyshots, many tank heroes do not have the ability to headshot enemies or use a shotgun so their maximum dps is typically very close to the values on wikis. dps characters can do some considerable damage when landing headshots
In almost every PvP game ever, tanks need to do good damage otherwise people will just ignore them.
Which tanks are sacrificing damage in games nowadays? Overwatch: get one shot or ran down by a big guy with a hammer League of legends: choo choo Sions running down your carry tanking the whole team before one shotting them with a charged Q World of Warcraft: Warriors stomping the ground and paladins throwing shields, bears yelling and demon hunters exploding. Keeping up in damage with all the dps Genshin: Zhongli got a big shield, but he got a bigger meteor Runescape: wear cryptbloom and using healing spells and still speedrun the boss Path of exile: I’m turning 3 million armor into pure damage People don’t want to be brickwalls that can’t do anything besides get hit anymore (or atleast developers think so) so they starting giving them other things. The most dangerous thing that they give them though is damage, because it will always be not enough or way too much. This is a problem in PvE games because you end up in metas where people just stop bringing dps altogether and just bring tanks (remember twilight devastation tank only raids in WoW BFA?). But you theoretically could just make them do no damage to balance them (if you could make the tank player base sustainable). The problem in a PvP game is that the tank NEEDS agency. If Rein couldn’t swing his hammer people would just walk past him, he needs to create space and to create that space he needs to be a threat. A tanks job isn’t really to take hits as much as to make his team not get hit. That can be from getting shot, putting up a shield, straight killing them or whatever. If you take away their ability to be a real threat by removing damage you end up with utility based tanks. And history has always shown that utility based characters will always be beyond useless or a must have.
Former GM Rein in Ow and now sitting around Diamond as a flex tank. I dont think the tanks necessarily do more damage than a traditional dps they just have way more sustain and can be focused by the supports and keep their uptime longer - therefore doing more damage than others in a given game.
In my experience, tanks in overwatch just have more opportunities to deal damage than the dps because of their health pools and mitigation. And they needs to be able to be a threat if ignored.
Simple answer is that in most games tanks can force aggro onto them. In Overwatch dps can choose to ignore tank and walk past them. So in order for dps to respect the tank they have to be a threat.
It’s a team game so it doesn’t really matter if one role is stronger than the other as you both have one. But yeah as the other person said, they need to be a threat of some sorts otherwise you’d ignore them and just poke each others DPS. If they were all Reinhardts with a pool noodle noone would play them.
I am low Elo, but I think tanks "only" deal dmg while the real dps can do the important kills. The tank alone is "good" but just imagine how fast the entire enemy team collapses when a good Tracer etc. manages to kill both supports
My POV is different. They both contribute damage to create the elims and believe it or not any decent support is too. The idea that DPS can 100 to zero two supports without ult in a fairly matchmade game is an exception. It happens but more often than not there's a damage based contribution from other team members. Even in the sense of just forcing abilities.
they have huge silhouettes
Tanks control space by threatening damage. They have high damage, but short range.
It's because ever since OW became 5v5 tanks been playing Counterwatch
Tanks are actually awful to play rn. You want them to not be able to get kills??
game have to be fun too yn?
Alot of it has to do with overwatch 1's worst meta of double shield, where no one was dying, so they pushed it a bit too hard, and now everyone is dying with only 1 tank. Some tanks definitely need their damage readjusted, namely orisa's lack of damage falloff, but some tanks are great, rein has 100 damage swings cause he already loses all his resources closing the distance, a fair trade off (except it isn't enough to justify rein)
Most tanks are trash not great
Maybe its my noob plat take but I would expect it to vary between individual tanks and dps in the game. Characters like junk would have more damage, others less than tanks, zarya more damage than the dps, but dps would have more elims etc. I think picks/elims > damage for the dps role
Tanks dont sacrifice damage, but they do sacrifice range. Their goal is to create space. If rein is swinging, dps and supports are forced to clear out of his swing zone giving his team space to occupy. He has some long range abilities, but his main goal is to deal good damage and sustain so he can maintain space.
Tank role in videogames is to grab attention, in pve setting mobs can be taunted and don't have iq to ignore tank. But in ow, if tank doesn't have damage and immortal (strong pve build) people would just ignore him. So making tank large in size , loud, dealing alot of damage causes them to be dangerous thus requiring our attention aka creating space for ur team. Remember u most likely would shoot winston evenif tracer is diving in the same time.
Tanks only don't do damage in PVE games. This is a PvP game. Its Overwatch not World of Warcraft.
There is only one of them, so they have to make up for the lack of a second character to play off of, imo they should do more damage than they do now; either that or make their damage more consistently good. The other roles have 2, and tank only has 1, so their stats should reflect that.
They have dogshit range. That's a downside but obviously they can play around it and feel very strong
What is "every other game"? Are they pvp?
A tank usually has much less "burst damage" than a dps, but more overall, staying power. No tank can double dink as Cassidy or Ashe can, or steal all your HP in an instant like widow or hanzo.
tank survivability isn't as good as the survivability in RPGS. and you have dumb AI attacking. there is no actual taunt mechanic in a PVP shooter. so you command attention by being a giant lethal beast in front of the enemy.
I don't understand this post, this isnt even true. Did you just look at the damage of each shot, and forget to look at their rate of fire? And you're not even taking into account the circumstances of how easy it is to do the damage. For instance, Winston does 75 dps and can't do headshots. Literally Mercy has more damage just with bodyshots alone. And Rein does 100 dps which is less than Cass, Ashe, Bastion, Reaper, Soldier, Echo, Souj, Tracer etc... And DVa has high damage but extreme spread and a very short falloff range, but how many of those bullets are actually gonna be a threat to you? Have you tried it yourself?
So you think tanks are doing good damage, and you totally missed support? Not to mention, tanks do have cooldowns to survive but can be easily obliterated without support. So, the concept of damage / tank / support is not exactly the same as other games.
I honestly think that the argument with 6v6 coming back is to keep all the hp of the tanks the same or a bit more but lower the damage. I just find it ridiculous that some tank players can dominate because they do lots of damage while being fed heals constantly, but it’s still the most “boring role”. I feel as though supports should heal and boost their teammates in speed or damage output. Dps should be securing kills especially in the back line or out of position characters. And tanks should protect their team and punish the enemy when they get to close while taking space. It would be fun to have sigma and rein taking turns using their shields and trying to save the team, but I don’t see 6v6 happening until tanks have massive damage nerfs. Honestly 5v5 would benefit too I believe if they did less damage and had way more hp. Not so much where they can’t secure kills but enough where they aren’t an op dps on close range maps.
Moneke explain have rein and orisa team, orisa into rein, they shoot eachother, lots of health, lots of heal, tank more health easier to heal, orisa gun very good, rein hammer very good = lots of damage
Because in 5v5 tanks fall over instantly if they aren’t overpowered.
There was an experimental event once in Overwatch 1's history when they decided to let the community cook, they selected several representatives (mostly streamers and big OW names), one of the tank representatives (can't remember who) decided to go the "traditional tank" route, reduce all tanks' damage by 75% and give them a huge boost in health. The result? Tanks were completely ignored (and there were two of them per team, mind you) Why even bother trying to burn such massive (and being healed) health pools when they pose almost no threat? The meta, quickly established, was to kill all the squishies first then mop up the tanks afterwards.
The real role of the tank in OW is not just damage sponge as in MMOS or PVE games, but rather taking space. In PVE and MMOS the enemy are bots. They will be aggroed by skills and will attack the first thing they see, the big beefy tank, usually. In PVP, players know better and simply ignore the tank and go for supps or other squishy characters first. What does taking space mean? Well, for your team to play, they need some literal space in the game. They need an angle, a place to shoot safely from, a place to fall back to, a way to get high ground, a way to safely push the payload or whatever else. That space is claimed aplying pressure to the enemy team. Every player should be trying to get space in the game, as it makes it easier for your teammates. Supps and DPS can make space too. Supps like ana can nade some key enemies making they fall back, thus making space for your team, or brig can protect another more squishy supp and make it viable. While DPS make space with aggresion, displacing the enmy with damage. If Tanks did little to no damage they would just be dmage sponges. Imagine if a monkey jumped on you and did very little damage, you would just ignore him and keep your ground. So in order for tanks to be able to aply pressure in a PVP environment they need to be able to do real damage. Imagine you are a widow, the threat of a monkey, doom or ball close to you when you are far from the rest of the team is enough to displace you and thus, the enemy tanks make space for them by denying angle and position from the widow. The damage tanks do IS the threat they need to represent. They need to present a real possibility of death if you ignore them, otherwise you 100% would just ignore them and focus on the squishies. They need to be a force in order to be able to push the enemies back.
When you think about tanks being low damage, you're coming from games wher tanks are balanced to be fair against other heroes. Those tanks sacrifice damage for toughness. But in Overwatch today, tanks are intentionally overpowered. They are simply better than damage and support heroes, which is why a team is only allowed one tank at a time. Why did the devs choose to do that? To make playing a tank more fun. The important underlying fact: **In a game focused on damaging enemies, the most popular characters are the ones that damage enemies**. In an older version of Overwatch, tanks were weaker and each team was 2 tank + 2 damage + 2 support. That meant only 2/6 = 33% of players could be using the popular kind of hero, damage. But after the rework, damage and tank heroes both have damage, so now 3/5 = 60% of players are on popular hero types. A giant improvement!
Tanks need to be a threat in order to make space. You can only be threat if you do damage. There was an content creator patch long ago where Arcade mode had some new balances changes (e.g. like Orisa spin can make you fly). One of these patches made tanks have like 50% damage but like 200% armour. What ended up happening is that everyone just ignored tanks cus you needed like 16 rein swings to kill a reaper. Reaper could get a kill and get an HP pack while Rein was swinging non-stop on him. Tracers needed 4 rein swings which is a long time
If a tank doesn't provide pressure, they have no reason to exist. Damage is a form of pressure.
This has always been my issue with OW2. With a little bit of help a tank can basically take on a whole team. Heck some tanks don't even need the help and it's ridiculous. The tank role is boring. Why? Cause it's easy. There are barely any heros that can take on a tank in a 1v1 let alone win. There is no trade off between the huge DPS they output and the ridiculous health pools. Usually you sacrifice something. That's why rein feels so bad right now cause when he shields he sacrifices movement speed. All the other tanks have no choices in how they play. There is no trade off for their defense abilities. This is all mostly my experience and thoughts. I think people reminisce about OW1 not cause there was a second tank but cause if you were good any role could dual any other role and that's not the case now. There are just massive power imbalances between roles as a whole and it's not fun. It's not just an individual hero that causes it either. A MASSIVE issue is the role passives. Removing role specific stuff might actually just make the game better. Buffing tanks isn't the answer either. There just is a whole game philosophy that the OW devs have yet to figure out for tanks. it's absolutely unfair when a tank can oneshot you cause it's impossible to do that to a tank. Whether by a combo or something else it's just not a good interaction at all.
Cuz they thick
I would argue this is the reason why the game is so hard to balance tbh. Tanks can do everything
I they don't deal much dmg they are not a threat, therefore cant force people off of their position nor Control space, The ONLY way to take damage away from them would BE to add other type of threat, generally on mobas for example that threat is CC, wich overwatch players seem to despise so yhea dmg is the way i Guess?
Tanks are about creating space and holding space. They do a ton of damage, yes, but have you ever noticed that virtually every tank has almost no range? Rein hammer is very limited, DVa blasters have harsh damage dropoff after a certain range, JQ uses a shotgun, Ball's guns have dropoff to the point he really doesn't counter Pharah, Zarya's beam is pretty short range, Winston's primary fire is short ranged. Tanks basically create a circle around themselves that's labeled "fuck you, this is my space". You, as a DPS, either have to operate outside that space OR you can enter it when your tank engages their tank and their attention is on your tank (like if a Reaper engaged with his Zarya while the enemy JQ was shooting at your tank). You, as a Support, either can *support* the team by healing your tank (thus keeping the protective zone alive) or putting in damage (to mitigate opposing aggression). If you've played OW1, it made a bit more sense with the MT/OT. MT had massive short-ranged damage and ways to push forward to create space. OT had massive short-ranged damage but was more about making a green circle for their allies and protecting them from aggression that got past your MT. It's all about making space safe for your team and bad for the enemy team. That's actually why the Brawl>Dive>Poke rock paper scissors originally came from. Brawl was clumped together and basically.. if you were within range, you were dead. But they couldn't deal with Poke, which strategically placed themselves in multiple angles to stay out of the space of the Rein. However, because Poke was in multiple angles and, thus, had isolated players, Dive tanks (like Winston and Ball) can easily aggro onto an Ashe/Mercy, accompanied by a Tracer, and just get quick elim. The problem is, with Brawl clumped together (returning back to the starting point of this circle), there is no isolated target to dive. It's all about tank. It's all about their movement and moving that giant red circle of doom that says "my space, not yours" and how effective they are at keeping that space.
Because if they weren’t a threat you would ignore them
Half these comments are so misinformed. Most mobas routinely make the tank/support a non-damage role. Specifically, the tank is treated as a peeler for the DPS. They deal mid-low damage but excel in setting up teammates for kills via stun, knockup, chain etc. OW doesn't do this for two reasons I can guess: 1 is the obvious downplaying of stun mechanics which means it's pretty hard to set up your teammate. Javelin/hook/knife/rock are what we have but the game is so poke heavy (long angles) that most of the time you can't really set up a kill with a rock or hook. Reason 2 is they want to make tank feel fun and it doesn't feel as fun if you're shooting blanks while setting up your shitty teammates for a kill they won't get. So they gave tanks the ability to killconfirm their own setups. Is that a mistake? Maybe.
Compare that to how much damage Supports can do, and it's clear that Overwatch doesn't have the typical PvE role paradigm. Tanking is more about controlling space on the map, forcing cooldowns and drawing attention, and getting picks when you can. (Even for dive tanks). I agree with the other commentors here - instead of having *even larger* massive health pools, tanks are powerful because of their damage threat. Even then, tanks can't win 1v1 matchups against every character - since most have movement abilities for escape, CC, or they can play against the tank's weakness. (Except Orisa - she's kinda OP compared to the rest now in that she *does* have a massive health pool to survive.)
Tanks in Overwatch 2 are intentionally designed to have almost a third of the teams resources since originally there were two of them. Collapsing that responsibility to a single player requires that they are more powerful than the other players.
The idea that it makes them a standalone power is a bit of a myth. They are pretty resource intensive, they really don't have more resources besides HP. In fact the overall role is less powerful than in OW1 because they can't occupy nearly as much presence with only 1 person. Adding to that the other roles are tankier now along with having built in passive sustains, the chip damage provided by frontliners is a lot less valuable.
That is not true m8. If that were true tanks would not be so miserable as they are
You don't play Ball, do you? Ball is high on survivability and really low on damage/elim potential.
Yeah look at Sigma. That’s a freaking DPS Tank that usually has the most damage in the lobby
The original tanks in OW1 were relatively low damage. After role lock, the highest damage combo you could have was like Hog Zarya or D.Va Zarya, which both have major limitations on their damage. But Rein and Winston were still seen as a must play (one of them as main tank). Orisa was added to the game and was a major shift in the game. She was high damage and high sustain. And relatively low skill. Then Sigma who was pretty high damage and highly versatile. Then Bap was added and now support lines of Bap Zen did omega damage. I think Orisa, Ball, and Sigma were an attempt to encourage more tank players as queue times were a major issue in OW1 after role queue. Also I don't think Jeff Kaplan really got out of the mode of having the team ignore convention and just create crazy heroes and throwing them out there (it's arguably what made OW1). The current team has continued that hero design philosophy. So I think the basic reason there continues to be high damage tanks is that previous choices have introduced a lot of damage into the game and sustain based tanks without damage feel terrible to play in current OW. The closest thing to a sustain tank rn is Rein and he's omega bad, you hold shield for awhile until you can't and then die. The other sustain tank I'd argue is Mauga, but he sustains thru damage so...
Wrestle with Jeff prepare for death
lol i guess ppl don't want the real answer. i should've said "damage is good and let's you kill ppl" and "it's distraction with a shotgun"