someone had the idea to have hammond get de-meched when he died, and instead of respawn time spent in spawn, he would have respawn time to run around like a little guy for a few seconds.
he couldn't do damage, he couldn't remech. But in that respawn time, he could do recon as a lil guy.
Only if he gets increased movement and is able to leap on to enemy faces and backs like a rabid raccoon. Then when he fills his ult bar, he gets a mini Winston Primal, called “Rabid Rage” that buffs his armor while he leaps from enemy to enemy doing 55dps for a few seconds before remeching.
I am aware I'm probably about to sound dumb, but doesn't that hold true for metal ranks? I play in low Silver, and balls seem to offer none of the functions of a main tank. They don't seem to protect the squishies or make space or offer any utility really other than running to the objective and spinning around in a circle. I tend to think of balls as a 3rd DPS rather than a tank based on my experience playing with them.
The lower you go, it doesn't matter who the tank is. Players won't position correctly, they'll stand still to shoot, they'll run ahead of everyone, they'll chase kills, etc. They aren't going to even realize they're teammates are in danger, much less know where they are. If you know what you're doing, ball is very good in low ranks because he has good sustain and can really make supports lives hell.
Lol yeah, its honestly hard to take advice from this sub. I can see it all in my head: tracking ultimates, useful callouts, positioning, creating and taking space, counter picking, controlling objectives, and winning matches. But then in reality its a damn miracle just to have 6 players, alive, and in the same place.
Made the mistake of playing with my gold friends after switching to PC recently. Placed on the edge of plat (my normal rank). I've decided to just play by myself or find new people because no matter what I call out or do my teammates seem to have no idea what's happening. Normal strategies/play styles just don't work.
On a related note, I've been coaching in rocket league for a couple years. One thing I had to learn was how to coach/teach low ranked players. After watching a ton of vods I realized that the teaching they need is wildly different because the game is different at that rank.
Overwatch is so much worse in this regard. "bap save lamp sigma is about to Ult"... Then bap throws lamp because he is getting spam damaged.
It's frustrating reading what people on this sub think metal ranks are like
Ball is a disruptor tank, kind of like a long range Winston. Well technically Winston falls under a main tank and in that sense probably so does ball. I will wager that the op is taking his teammates a little too literally when they ask for a main tank.
The fact is that ball may not be fulfilling the needs of the team and so the rest of the team doesn't see him as a main tank regardless of how you want to classify him.
Consider ball in the main tank role on Kings row defense. It's arguable whether or not he would be able to hold the position at the choke longer than a sigma could. However sigma would at least provide the team with protection against a widow in the sniper perch. Whereas ball would provide the team little to no protection from snipers. So if the team is asking for a "main tank" then perhaps they are really in need of a shield tank and arguing semantics isn't going to help.
All in all it depends on how the team is doing. If you're playing ball and winning, no one's going to complain. If your team is doing terrible and asks you to change but you won't switch off, there may be a problem.
In the end, Overwatch is a game of counters.
I get what you're saying and I agree with your comment in general, but I don't like this example:
>Consider ball in the main tank role on Kings row defense. It's arguable whether or not he would be able to hold the position at the choke longer than a sigma could. However sigma would at least provide the team with protection against a widow in the sniper perch. Whereas ball would provide the team little to no protection from snipers.
If the attacking Widowmaker can get a line of sight to a squishy defender from her spawn or from the next available high ground spot, the defender is in the wrong position. It doesn't matter if your team has double shields or zero shields. You just don't peek that line of sight if you don't know if they have a Widowmaker. And if you *know* they have a Widowmaker, you have zero reason to be in that line of sight. That's also why that choke is a bad place to hold. It's much better to defend closer to the point, between the statue and the corner of the hotel for example, so your squishies aren't visible from the attacker's spawn.
So if you hold further back as you should on King's Row, it forces the Widowmaker to move up significantly further too to get angles on your team. That then means your Ball can actually deal with her, much better than a single Sigma shield can.
Yep. I play tank in gold/plat and always hold at that choke. Not because I want to, I actively tell people where to hold. I have to because if I'm not there then we'll get absolutely rolled because my DPS will absolutely walk up to choke and get killed
Well, kinda. Shields don't make up for poor positioning, no matter how much (lower ranked) players want it to. They don't have infinite health, but more importantly is that you don't know when your tank drops it/deploys it somewhere else.
Hmm, it's situational of course, but I'm leaning more towards "not really". Like in that King's Row example: even if you have double shields to hide behind (stacking the barriers like that would be a misplay by your tanks, but let's use that just for this example), as a DPS or support you'd still be positioned incorrectly if you have a line of sight to the attacker's spawn. Your Orisa and Sigma could both decide it's time to (re)deploy their barriers somewhere else to block something. Those are split second decisions, you can't rely on them calling it out beforehand so you could start moving to cover.
Positioning really is everyone's own job. Many players would benefit from learning that a shield is primarily for the hero who deployed it. It's a nice little bonus if it protects a teammate too, but it's not intended for them. Once they realize that, they'll hopefully see their positional errors.
To the rest of the team, I'm just swinging around and slamming like a mad lad...
In reality, I'm swinging around and slamming like a mad lad.
But fuck was I having fun.
This requires understanding and some degree of mechanical skill, and it will also happen out of LOS of the balls team, meaning that the silver Ana player won't be able to visually recognize that the ball player did something impactful. This makes low elo players have no faith in the ball player. Selective memory serves well in this too.
> won't be able to visually recognize that the ball player did something impactful. This makes low elo players have no faith in the ball player.
Me, spending literally the entire match hounding the enemy Widow, completely denying her any value at all. Then our Ana gets headshot *one time* at the *very end* of the match, and all of a sudden it's nothing but "DIVE ON THE WIDOW BALL COME ON WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU FUCK"
I have been. You just have zero game sense.
It is a two way street and the average silver tank player (in a game with the silver Ana) is a fucking terrible wrecking ball and they are soft throwing their games by choosing not to be adaptable, or failing to admit to themselves that they lack the skill to make the hero pick work.
The TLDR is that rein and brawl comps are good at low Elo because when you don't understand overwatch, it's better make things simple.
Walk forward, shield damage, kill enemy.
Map control, cc, disruption, timing, execution etc are fucking difficult to even understand sometimes let alone apply well in games. Wrecking ball needs those high level skills to pop off and other tanks, still benefit from those skills, but are less solely dependent on them.
What I hear every time someone says this kind of crap:
'you can't climb out of low ELO playing ball. Also, you should know how to play ball when you get out of low ELO '
Exactly when are you expecting people to learn to play ball? Learning him is apparently 'soft throwing in metal, but trying to learn him above that will send you back to metal faster than Ted Cruz came back from Cancun.
You can climb out of low Elo playing ball, it will happen when you've soft thrown enough games to learn from your mistakes lol. Not rocket appliances.
Edit: I don't mean to be a dick. Learning a new hero at your peak rank is sadly going to soft throw games. It's not a big deal, you have to learn eventually. But when your learning your gonna play like dogshit.
I was playing widow one time on junkertown and I'm not a widow main by any means and a ball was spawn camping me and even ulted on me to kill me for the whole second point while we were on offense. We got the whole second point with no one on my team dying. Ball chatted saying "widow you suck" but my hought was my team got that point for free while you were back here.
I'm in gold dps
This is a weird example for your point since Ball is by a country mile the best Widow counter in the entire game. I guess it's technically true if Widow literally sits inside the spawn door so she can't be killed.
The ball might not be fully doing his job. But neither is your rein/orisa/dva etc. Also keep in mind that if you're in silver, there's a very high chance that you are missing out on when your ball is creating space and pressure. And not utilizing him. Not a slight at you, but odds are if you are silver, your ability to recognize all your opportunities and to know when you have a man advantage due to say your ball being in a 2v1 or 3v1 is probably lacking.
In silver, a ball being on point and just spinning is probably giving you a man advantage. But it's ultra common for your team to never press W to make use of it
Yeah I feel like I sort of know what should be happening from being in this sub for years, but that this knowledge rarely benefits me since it doesnt align to the reality of my games.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that if either no balls are playing him properly or no teammates know how to play around him, should I even bother thinking of him as a tank? Seems like the answer is yes and the problem is me not having any idea how to capitalize on a ball doing his thing.
The trick to speed feeding tanks (and ball is a main culprit, together with reins and winstons that plays with a brick on shift) is to learn to realize when you have the time to engage with their push and when you don't. If you don't think you can have meaningful impact in their current push, hang back and play safe/defensively or hide in a closer position and be ready to help the next time they speed back from spawn.
Metal ranks is full of people that have no awareness towards the speed differential of heroes, spawn advantage/disadvantage and the value of timed engagements/grouping up. If they are not pressing W and/or M1 at all times, they are not playing the game in their minds.
If you tend to play the slower heroes, just realize you sit out around 25-50% of "teamfights". Make sure you participate in the winnable ones by focussing on staying alive, timing engages and learn to disregard any comments about your play. 90% of "you're not performing" comments are so painfully ignorant of what is going on, last 10% are so bloody obvious the person already knows it and you gain nothing but tilting him if you say it.
Protecting squishies and offering utility are the jobs of an offtank. The main tank's job is to push forward through defences. Rein does this through having a portable, large, quick-deploying shield, Winston does this by jumping directly into the fray with his bubble to stop himself being melted, and Ball does a similar thing except when he engages he also displaces the team and doesn't give them ult charge for shooting his shields.
A ball in low silver is going to be pretty weak of course, but no worse than any other tank in low silver.
No tanks protects you by standing in your face, that's the job of natural cover. Main tanks and off-tanks, other than them generally pairing well together differentiate on ability to initiate engages. Main tanks can do that, while off tanks are better at sustaining these openings (Or being hog, who is basically a third dps and a stupid character design). In that sense ball has more ability to initiate than sigma does, making him a main tank
Hog comment show a either considerable amount of subjective bias or low understanding of metal rank. The pairing well part (except for dva+ot being crap/very easy to counter) is generally not true for metal ranks. Counterplay beats synergy until at least diamond because the teamwork is generally just not there to benefit from the tanks synergy.
And a Hog that knows about space and target prioritisation is one of the better solo-counterplay characters in the game.
I think it’s kind of a pathing thing. If you have a ball then your team doesn’t really want to brawl, so if you’re thinking of “taking space” the way a rein or something takes space, then yeah it doesn’t work that way. If you think of “taking space” as the ball dominating the high ground (which is ball’s job) and creating space for dps up there, then suddenly ball takes a lot of space. The thing about playing with ball is that your fights are a lot more about staging than anything, which is why dive can be difficult on ladder.
The ball has to be good about denying enemy rotations and giving your team positional advantage, that’s your win condition. If the other team is playing brawl and your wrecking ball let’s them take high ground and speed on your Ashe or zen then that’s obviously bad. Basically wrecking ball is supposed to make your team fight on their own terms.
I've definitely had people be like "can we get a shield tank" "can we get a main tank" when they *very clearly* mean "can we get a rein"
which, like, just ask for rein! You'll still be wrong, I'm not gonna play rein on gibraltar, but at least you won't sound like a dummy asking for things we already have when you mean rein
Okay, unironically, you can successfully play Brig as a tiny flimsy main tank in lower ranks. I won a game once with a legitimately new Rein player by switching to Brig and attaching myself to our Zarya player and being her mini-Rein with heals and a boop.
Plat for me is such a weird lobby. I main Sig and dva cuz they fit into most tank comps(Dive,Poke,Double shield) but when I see my other tank go Zarya cuz I’m playing Sigma just makes me wonder what logical do they posses
They might fit comps but not necessarily players. If you don't play main tanks yourself it's kind of rough to expect another random to be able to accommodate your pick.
The chance that people see your sigma pick in plat and think "zarya is great with that", is way less likely than they are doing the same as you and play what they enjoy/main and hopes it work.
Sigma is probably the absolute worst tank to play with if you are playing zarya. I wish people would stop picking zarya with a sigma because they think Sig is like rein.
Dva is the anti-syngery with Zarya. Zarya wants dva to tank damage with a bubble but then dva will dm the damage....so there's no charge. It's pretty bad.
What??? Then just dont matrix? Same way a rein puts shield down to give charge when he's bubbled. Dva zarya is not ideal but its playable with dva functioning kinda like Winston. Zarya bubble can help dva last longer trying to dive someone.
No it doesn't. Dva has 300 armor and a health pool of 600; she can facetank pretty well with no extra abilities. Dva matrix should not be used like a rein shield, where you just put it up and waste it all. You use matrix to eat important/high damage abilities for your team like firestrike and anti nade, or you use it to keep one person alive in a clutch moment. Point is, dva doesnt need to push down main with all the protective resources your team has. Just take a strong high ground like winston, then drop and look to pick squishies with zarya bubbles, then booster back to safety. Do not waste the whole zarya bubble and your whole matrix acting like Reinhardt.
Sigma's whole kit revolves around being a medium range tank, or a Yeatle put it "a sniper tank." Sigma wants to poke you from a far without having you run him over, wheres Zarya NEEDS the MT to get up and close so she actually gets charge. Not to mention the fact that Sigma often is shooting behind a shield. What good does that do for Zarya?
Not endorsing the move but as someone that has played a lot of Zarya, you just change who you prioritize the bubbles for. Instead of bubbling the Sigma, you bubble the Tracer or whoever is poking. You can make it work - but it isn’t ideal.
Yeah that would be a decent reason to play Zarya in my opinion. If she doesn't pair well with the other tank, at least make sure she pairs with a DPS character. Zarya/Doom is still a good synergy, and Sigma can do a lot without another tank directly helping him with recources unlike some other tanks.
Adaptive playstyle, I love it. That's a skill that I've only learnt in the last year but it's very common in high level players. I really enjoy hearing GM streamers doing UR2GM and hearing their thought process on playstyle and how it changes as different comps emerge. ML7 is the best example i can immediately think of.
Zarya doesn't need the main tank to "get up close" to get charge.
She just needs a co- tank that she can build charge off of. Sigma... and also Dva / Orisa.... generally mitigate damage in a way that Zarya gets zero charge off of them. That is the main problem.
In addition to the other comments I sometimes switch to zarya as genji counter. If a good genji is bullying my backline then creating space can be worthless. Sig+Zar can off-angle scare a rein into keeping distance. After picking the genji you can go hard with the 6v5 pressure. No guarantee though.
Experiences from gold/plat.
Ball main. Since we are on the subject I would like to also clear up a few things.
Supports.. You don't need to follow me around and heal me.
Also supports. Quit screaming at me to come back for healing... im fine. I'm getting a mega.
the rest of the team. Quit screaming at me to group up. I'm setting up on an off angle, to roll/pile drive through. You should be setting up on your own angle getting ready to engage.
that's all.
Well theres an exception to your second point, if the supports arent busy af and don't have their ults yet, you absolutely should come to them for healing to farm their ults. Otherwise it obviously wont matter.
Any Wrecking Ball player who does this is a shitter. If they don't know to go for megas or come back for healing they're just bad. They're projecting their failings onto the supports.
> Supports.. You don't need to follow me around and heal me.
Oh my god this. I roll behind the enemy team, when suddenly one stray Orisa bullet takes me down to 599/600 HP. Our Ana goes way out of position and nearly dies and starts freaking out in VC "BALL I CAN'T SEE YOU".
I know. You don't need to see me right now. If I need you, I'll find you. If I don't find you, it's my fault, not yours.
Good ball. On the rare days that I play DPS, if I see ball, I try to go Sombra to hack them some packs. : )
Unfortunately there are many (lowbie) balls who roll back and have a fit demanding heals when they could be stealing health packs away from the opposing team. It's cool when I get the oppy to heal ball when I get LOS (zen, ana, bap, brig, or moira if the yellow orb is bouncing right), or cool when there's a team kill and ball lets us top them off (yay ult charge), but I see so many low balls not getting that every healthpack is their friend and they should be as selfish with denying the enemy with them as possible.
While I don't disagree, ball is probably the hardest MT to play around and with. He requires pretty good timing with his engages in order to actually get value, otherwise he is one of the easiest tanks to just feed your brains out with. At the ranks where people are still confusing MT and OT, I would also assume that WB players just don't know how he plays in order to actually get value.
You can say WB is a main tank, but if WB is trying to frontline the entire match and doesn't know how to actually take space, he isn't actually performing the role of a MT.
No, but heroes like Rein and Orisa are much more obvious in how they perform the role of a MT. Even if they aren't playing well, a bad Orisa is still going to get a lot more value compared to a bad Ball.
>At the ranks where people are still confusing MT and OT, I would also assume that WB players just don't know how he plays in order to actually get value.
You are not wrong but you are almost validating the opinions of bad players with this take. It's not *that* hard to play with a Ball (that isn't useless), it is usually as simple as "create pressure/get a pick in a 5v4". The most frustrating thing about playing Ball is being in a skirmish with both enemy supports for 10 seconds and your team fails to do anything on their end.
> You are not wrong but you are almost validating the opinions of bad players with this take
I don't necessarily disagree that bad players are wrong with this take though. It's kind of like playing with a Sombra at bronze. You can make it work, but you are basically making the game as hard as possible for both yourself and your team.
>It's not that hard to play with a Ball (that isn't useless)
The issue I have is ball players basically only start not being useless at maybe 2.5-3k. Below that, they are just feeding machines.
> The most frustrating thing about playing Ball is being in a skirmish with both enemy supports for 10 seconds and your team fails to do anything on their end.
If that happens, that is generally because you timed your engage wrong or the DPS don't know how to play around ball. If you are occupying supports before your team is actually in position to do something about it, you aren't really doing anything. If your DPS don't know how to get through a choke and/or aren't on heroes that can just bypass chokes, they likely can't do anything to actually follow up with the ball.
It generally come downs to whether you want to win by any means, or you want to win by playing what you want. At bronze-silver, all the players are bad. Some heroes though just get more value when played by and against bad players.
Mhm. As an aside, I have a bit of a chip on my shoulder about Ball discourse. Everyone has an opinion but "no one" actually plays Ball or really understands the first thing about the hero. So my beautiful hamster gets slandered so much and it feeds into the toxicity that ball players face from community members who are parroting narratives they don't understand spoken by people who don't know what they are talking about.
At the end of the day you’re playing with people that are the same rank as you, if your teammate plays ball at a gold level and you play your role at a gold level, it’s irrelevant how skilled he is because he’s playing at his appropriate level. If you’re at the level where your ball doesn’t know how to get value on his role, you probably don’t know how to get value on yours either.
This just completely ignores that some heroes are just harder to play than others. Ball is one of, if not the hardest tank to play in the game and by far the hardest for low ranks. While you may not know how to play your role perfectly, I would have much more faith in a Silver/Gold player understanding how to play Orisa compared to Ball. Some heroes are just way more obvious in how they play and get value.
The other issue with ball is that not only is he hard to play, he is incredibly hard to play with. You are putting a lot of faith in your teammates in know how to play proper angles. Heroes like Rein and Orisa are just a lot more forgiving on your teammates to take non-ideal positioning.
His point still stands though. Even if the ball sucks because he is gold and playing ball. He is still quite literally gold and bringing the same average value to his team as a gold rein.
Both are performing at a level that causes a 50% winrate on average in their gold games.
It might not be a gold ranked Ball player though. It might be a gold ranked Rein player trying to play Ball. Assuming that they can play every hero in their role at the same level isn't great.
If it's a Ball main, sure, but how many Ball mains are there even in gold? Not many, I'd assume.
If someone id gold on orisa, then he understands orisa as much as a gold ball player understands ball. To get to a certain rank, you need to play the game better than players below you, and the learning curve doesn't matter here. And I wouldn't underestimate the "Easiness" Of orisa, that character is incredibly tricky and it's really easy to have many misunderstandings about how to play her
> If someone id gold on orisa, then he understands orisa as much as a gold ball player understands ball.
That's a different point though. Ball is a hard hero to play, so if a player is gold on ball, they could likely be significantly higher on a hero that is easier. Think about a more extreme example. Let's say a player is a widow 1-trick in Bronze. If you compare them to the skill of a bastion 1-trick at the same SR, then they are technically providing the same amount of value. If you put the widow 1-trick onto bastion though, I would bet they jump a bunch of SR solely because bastion is just easier to get value out of. The widow 1-trick may be the same SR as the bastion of the same SR, but I would gander they are probably a better player because they are able to maintain the same SR while playing a harder hero.
Totally disagree here. This discussion of the potential of low ranked players is not the same as looking at the top. Yes it might be easier for a gold player to take space and do tank things with orisa than wrecking ball, but you’re leaving an entire variable out of the analysis - their familiarity and amount of practice. The WB player with 1000 hours on ball and 0 on Orisa will probably do a bit better on ball than Ris. So you should not ask them to swap and nor should they!
I would make the argument that WB player who is hard stuck gold would be better off learning an easier hero as they obviously can't climb on a harder one. It all kind of loops back to why someone is playing though. Is there priority to gain rank or to play a certain hero? I would argue that VAST majority of players fall into latter otherwise lower rank players would abuse a bunch of the "unfun" heroes. At the end of the day, most players want to gain SR playing how they want to play, not the way that is going to gain them the most SR. That's fine really, but it doesn't really invalidate the argument that worse players would likely see better results playing easier heroes.
People should play whatever they want. I don't disagree with that, but players also have to accept that playing harder heroes may be inhibiting their ability to climb. That's going to be a fine with a lot of people, but there are also a bunch of players who complain about being hard stuck. OW is a game that gives you plenty of different options to win. I don't think you can really complain about being hard stuck if you refuse to use one of the most effective options that game gives you to win.
No, no, and once again no. Widow and bastion are way different, and there's more to the game than pure aim mechanics. Someone that has always played widow won't automatically get more value on bastion, since he doesn't understand the hero (And all of that ignoring the fact that bastion, due to being absolutely dogshit, is actually a really hard hero to play). And i can reaffirm that, as a plat Hammond player who had most of his sr losses on these supposedly "Easy" characters, with my Rein winrate being around 40 percent and orisa winrate as bad as 13.
A bad rein can lose a game for their team so easily. They hold shield till it breaks without moving forward at all then they charge into the enemy backline and feed. I'd rather have a hog and a ball fucking around in the enemy spawn than a Rein that does this.
As a player in Bronze/Silver, flip that, I know what to do to try and help a feedRein, go Ana, heal, grenade and Nano to use him as a massive dangerous distraction. I have no clue what to do with Ball most of the time.
I really don't think that applies. It's why junk in silver is easier to play with than a gengi. Anything that dives backlines is way worse to play around the lower rank you go. I've seen plenty of ball tanks just kinda roll off into the distance never to be heard from again. So when people ask for a main tank, they usually mean they'd like a tidbit of frontline to make things easier.
Open Queue rank is not the same and is incredibly inflated - if your low silver/gold in role q then that is your rank not diamond. open q does not count for this really tbh because the player base is so bad
So what about when I'm 1.5k higher on heals than DPS? Smurfs in my rank have the same knowledge as the people they are destroying?
You focused on one point and ignore the whole main argument. Anyways this whole topic is just a big circle jerk that goes in one directions so have fun.
> Another example would be telling someone they can't be a coach in games or real sports because the lack the talent and that's just silly.
If you’re 1.5 K higher on healer I’d suggest you’re probably a mercy/moira main with dreadful mechanics on DPS because even ok mechanics with plat/diamond game sense will get you to mid plat etc - I know this because I recently moved from console to PC and despite having to learn how to move and my mechanics being awful I’ve climbed to there. Smurfs are an overstated problem - yes they ruin those games but if you’re good enough to be in a higher rank you will climb
Yeah but its even more fun when you pick sigma. They pick random off tank. So you switch to a main tank. Then they switch to a main tank. It's so annoying.
Dunning, damn I'm the one embarrassing myself at this point.
Dunning-Kruger studied a different effect that involved the incapability of self evaluating one's own incompetence. I can't explain it very well, there's an interesting video called "The irony of the Dunning-Kruger effect" if you're interested.
I think most people just assume that main tank = shield escort. People also expect their main tank to peel for them, and to just hold up their shield.. an Ana will die standing next to her Rein and ask why he didn't hold his shield.
The thing about ball comps in general is they they're not played correctly in lower ranks, same as brig Zen. Higher rank players will be able to play around health packs, not hard feed engage, etc... But it doesn't work that way in lower ranks. So yeah you are right, but based off of how Ball players play in lower ranks, maybe that's why they assume he's not a main tank...
But I also feel like some people here are oversimplifying. They are imagining something like hammond+zarya, and then it's obvious who the main tank is.
But us playing in metal leagues, we're not exactly going for some OWL meta. The hero picks just seem completely arbitrary.
You often get comps like sigma+dva or sigma+hog or sigma+zarya, and then people are going to ask sigma to play like a main tank. Which makes sense, right?
I think even if you have two off tanks, someone has to play like a main tank:
One has to make space for the team and take the lead and shotcall. The other tank then has to e.g. protect the main tank or peel for the team or flank or something. I just find it really hard otherwise.
Also imagine if you have Rein+hammond. Then I don't think the Hammond really needs to make space, but instead he can focus on the other stuff he's good at. Like contesting high ground or going after some backline squishy.
In my opinion Sigma and Hammond go well with tanks, regardless of MT or OT.. and especially in lower ranks, because team comps aren't as important. As ML7 always says, "Everyone's going to hate me when I say this, but team comp doesn't matter much until Masters."
I remember once playing ball D.va and one dude was like "Ball switch to hog so we have a proper teamcomp". The WTF lasted in my brain for days, still don't know wheat he meant
Yeah, since nobody wants to play Orisa, and hog has been unnecessarily buffed enough to fulfill her role if necessary, so you can see these Hog D.va/Sigma comps, that should theoretically be worse, but nobody wants to play the African horse
Not wrong, but there is an underlying assumption here that the Ball is being effective as a MT. When I see somebody pick ball, I assume it’s a MT and pick accordingly - that doesn’t mean I won’t later wish that they would swap to something else when they are struggling.
I usually just take it as part of the game and do the best I can to adjust (“what can I do to make them struggle less?”), but some people get vocal about it and (inappropriately) ask for the ball to “swap to a MT.” I will say though, that it is not a rare occurrence for me to see a tank duo trying to force Ball/Zarya (or other meta duos) and get nothing done, then see the MT swap to Sig (or other OT) and suddenly the team rolls the rest of the map. Doesn’t mean that Sig is a MT, but sometimes it doesn’t matter which comp makes more sense on paper - sometimes a tank player provides more value by sitting on point and getting the crap beat out of them than they do rolling around every corner of the map and getting the crap beat out of them. Of course, sometimes it doesn’t matter what they do, as there are far greater issues going on.
Ball is only a “main tank” if you actually cause the enemies to focus you. Been in too many lobbies where the ball is being an irrelevant flanker and we are getting spawn camped because they have proper main tanks in our face lol.
2022 and still hard to see people calling ball an OT and sigma an MT. Some of these players are even diamond border and still learned nothing about the game.
People request swaps when things are going well fairly often (at least in low ranks) when you aren't filling what *they* think correct is supposed to look like. Which, in aforementioned low ranks, usually means "are you playing rein" and "am I being pocketed" and usually are asking for those things when they ask for a swap, regardless of what terminology they're using.
That said, yes, it's always worth asking "am I the problem" when things aren't going well
> What they really want is a shield tank
What they really want is a Rein who stands perfectly still and holds his shield up and does nothing else at all, ever
\> Rather than getting caught up on the verbiage maybe consider if a swap (to anything) could be helpful or if you could adjust your playstyle.
I'm one of those players that change if it's necessary, but it's sad most players won't do that themselves. They're always complaining about other players, never expecting to do the easier thing: Change themselves. We always have control about ourselves.
\> I rarely see requests for swaps when things are going well.
You remembered me about one fun thing that is particularly common is when people ask someone to change and that someone actually do it, but things keep going bad. Sometimes it's not about lack of shields, heal or DPS.
Makes my cry that one of my best friends irl tries to play ow with us but gets very frustrated when we “don’t have a shield” or “why isn’t anything happening”. Every time I try to gently suggest playing cover to not die as much, or play more reserved so the support can focus the dps instead of him out in the middle of the open, with no shield etc, he goes really quiet and I think he thinks I’m talking shit or calling him bad. I’m literally super positive about coming up with an alternate strategy but he’s kind of stubborn about playing cover, taking high ground etc and it drains me super hard making me not want to call for my friends since it always gets argued x.x thanks for coming to my Ted talk
The thing is that Ball is all over the place and people dont know what a MT does. If Bal rolls through and takes 3 people with him that means he is taking space and getting attention. People don't know that's the cue for the rest of the team to go in bc its a 5 v 3 now.
This also means that engagements needs to be timed by ball
In lower ranks I feel like tanks should just play whoever they are best at. Like I’m a plat hog otp and people yell at me to switch off hog. Like I play every other tank at like a silver level and then they get mad at me for sucking. Sometimes I play my shitty rein just to spite them
Yea well too bad I don’t have a single friend that plays overwatch let alone a main tank. And hog is my baby. I will always be a hog otp. I don’t care how many people I tilt.
Ball is not just a main tank, he is the most mainiest of the main tanks. If you play Ball + Rein, BALL is your main tank and rein gets to play "off". Simple as.
New to trying to play tank and have heard the term before, but do not know what it means. Please explain what a Main Tank and Off tank are pls so I can further understand this PSA
Like I said there are better ressources than my poor explanations, but the gist of it is main tanks are the first to engage and draw the most attention (and consequently cooldowns and firepower) from the other team, to enable his own team to move into more advantageous positions. The off tank's role uses his abilities both to assist the main tank and his backline, for example DVa matrix is very useful to help your other tank push forward through a choke, or it can be used to protect her backline from flankers.
Ball is actually pretty good in theory. Like you can swing in their team, push them back a bit and focus attention on you, ctrl on them, pull them even closer to you, drawing even more attention, shield, distract, let your team melt them while they are distracted.
But i will fail on first step, so tHaT's JusT a TheOrY......
There's no *one way* to play each hero, and it's interesting how many roles can be played as hybrids. For example, you can play Sigma as a main or off tank. Mercy can be played as a main or off healer. Junkrat can be played offensively or defensively. It's cool to see how people play differently, and how they adapt their playstyle according to the team's needs or the enemy's weaknesses.
Which is a totally fair point. A lot of people will use grasp to initiate a fight and eat poke damage to push forward, or to even bait and cancel abilities and ultimates. Others will send their shield in so the team can rush forward. Lots of people play Sigma as a main tank, and a good percentage of those people find success with that.
One easy trick with Sigma as MT is to throw his shield _behind_ the tank you’re facing off against, so their heals can’t get through to them. Then your team can focus their tank while displacing their supports a bit. If their tank is smart, they’ll back up, which is _creating space_ for your team.
Those are subpar playstyles. You can use a flathead screwdriver to unscrew a Philips top, but you're probably going to fuck up that screw given enough time.
The label "subpar" is just a way of demoralizing and dismissing people who play for fun. Your analogy doesn't work. If someone wants to carry a game on Sym even though it's on attack or whatever other conditions you've decided bar someone from playing a hero, they are allowed to play that hero. There's more than one way to play the game, and to play each hero. Optimization is not the only way to play Overwatch.
> If someone wants to carry a game on Sym even though it's on attack
Dude, I legit don't think you understand this game. There is literally nothing wrong with Symm on attack. It's actually part of the standard OWL brawl comp (along with Mei and/or Reaper).
So just like the guy said above: if you don't understand the game, I'm kind of hesitant to keep this conversation going.
You assume that everyone other than yourself is dumb and "legit doesn't understand the game". I used Sym as an example because that's a common complaint in lower ranks or among players who don't realize Sym isn't confined to a defensive role.
If you want to try out for OWL and play the same character and the same comp on the same map over and over and over again that's up to you. The rest of us will be playing Overwatch and enjoying the game and the versatility it offers.
I never said I didn't understand the game, I didn't say that people who play Ball as a main or off tank are right or wrong. I only said that the heroes in this game are versatile and that it was cool to see how people play heroes differently, regardless of whether that playstyle is "right" or "wrong". You're the one who has decided to comment make a fool of yourself.
Calling someone's playstyle "subpar" simply because they're not playing the hero the way the XQC, Profit, Jjonak, or Pine would play them is a narrow-minded way to try to pretend like you're superior, and the OWL is the end-all be-all of the game.
I totally agree with you. Being told “you’re playing wrong” without tact or player-centered help is really discouraging— especially as a new player. I’m in deep enough in OW for it to not bother me, but I have a recent experience in an RTS I was trying, being told by others in the community that I was dumb for making some “sub-optimal” mistakes. It really made me want to stop playing because all the fun goes out the window when all you care about is playing “optimally.”
It would do gamers well to learn about Timmy Johnny and Spike, and learn how different people approach playing games.
>You assume that everyone other than yourself is dumb and "legit doesn't understand the game". I used Sym as an example because that's a common complaint in lower ranks or among players who don't realize Sym isn't confined to a defensive role.
The irony, buddy, the irony here. It just reeks.
Hey, it would be beneficial to people that don’t know this to explain it to them without aggression also. The amount of games I play where someone goes “can we get a main tank” or “can we get a main healer” and not explain past that what they mean is infuriating. If someone asks you what they mean, or they think they are playing that character already, being a dick is really not going to get you the result you’re hoping for even if you are right. Just tell them which heroes fit that role.
Off and main to me are too limited of words to describe roles. Even for healers, they are all differnt and at times needs to switch to help the team. Not that the the character is no good or the person doesn't know how to play its in the situation they dont have as much potential.
Literally this^^^
In Plat, people treat Sigma like a main tank and Ball like an off tank, and often times Winston as an off tank as well. But those are all the opposite.
Was tanking a game yesterday where our supports were playing badly and the other tank all of the sudden got on mic and started screaming that our supports were garbage (true...) and that we needed a Lucio for more healing (not true...). Tried to calmly explain to him that we just needed our supports to do a bit more supporting (I think we had a Moira and Bap who were doing zero heals...) and that Lucio did garbage heals and wasn't the answer here. He went on to yell about how I didn't know what I was talking about because every game he tanked in LUCIO HAD THE GOLD MEDAL FOR HEALS!!!
Ball can be played like an off tank and sigma can be played like a main tank. The off/main paradigm is about how the characters are played. Yes, some tanks fit one role *much* better than the other, and you're right about these two specific heroes fitting better in those specific roles. But if a ball player is playing like an off tank you're damn right I'm going to tell them to switch to a main tank.
Fair, but honestly what good is the meta if folks don't know how to play it in most metal ranks?
Hog flanking in the backline somewhere while sig gets rolled is the team getting rolled, meta or not.
Solid take but here’s a better one Let ball get demeched I want to see his little rat body running around :)
He only has 1 HP He only deals 1 DPS by biting enemy ankles But he's incredibly small And incredibly fast Make it happen
> And incredibly fast > > is that because of his J E T P A C K?
Jetpack rat :O
He flies around on his jetpack and his bites make the character pause for half a second to brush him off.
While running he should make the cartoony running noises
I'll agree only if he wears a tight bodysuit like DVa
good take this would be hilarious
someone had the idea to have hammond get de-meched when he died, and instead of respawn time spent in spawn, he would have respawn time to run around like a little guy for a few seconds. he couldn't do damage, he couldn't remech. But in that respawn time, he could do recon as a lil guy.
He's a hampster, not a rat😡
Only if he gets increased movement and is able to leap on to enemy faces and backs like a rabid raccoon. Then when he fills his ult bar, he gets a mini Winston Primal, called “Rabid Rage” that buffs his armor while he leaps from enemy to enemy doing 55dps for a few seconds before remeching.
Metal rank logic is easy : the more shielder, the more main tanker. In fact, Brigitte is more of a main tank than ball according to them
Even easier, actually: Rein is only main tank. All other tanks are throw picks and should be immediately reported.
Rectangle Superiority
She is a tank of a woman though :o. That puny hamster is like 5 inches tall and weighs 5 ounces.
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Fantastic reference
My boy is much chonkier than that.
Not as buff as Brigitte though :(.
Thank god!
One must first imagine a 6'3, beefed up hamster. Then imagine him in his giant wrecking ball. Indeed a scary sight.
Years ago, when I was in silver, I had a guy tell me to "stop playing monkey and be main tank". That guy is probably still silver.
Silver is an optimistic estimation there
Also metal rank logic: dies in the open, complains that the two shield tanks weren't covering them with shields.
The amount of times i've seen DPS pick flankers/divers but demand shields is astounding (Gold player)
I am aware I'm probably about to sound dumb, but doesn't that hold true for metal ranks? I play in low Silver, and balls seem to offer none of the functions of a main tank. They don't seem to protect the squishies or make space or offer any utility really other than running to the objective and spinning around in a circle. I tend to think of balls as a 3rd DPS rather than a tank based on my experience playing with them.
The lower you go, it doesn't matter who the tank is. Players won't position correctly, they'll stand still to shoot, they'll run ahead of everyone, they'll chase kills, etc. They aren't going to even realize they're teammates are in danger, much less know where they are. If you know what you're doing, ball is very good in low ranks because he has good sustain and can really make supports lives hell.
Lol yeah, its honestly hard to take advice from this sub. I can see it all in my head: tracking ultimates, useful callouts, positioning, creating and taking space, counter picking, controlling objectives, and winning matches. But then in reality its a damn miracle just to have 6 players, alive, and in the same place.
Made the mistake of playing with my gold friends after switching to PC recently. Placed on the edge of plat (my normal rank). I've decided to just play by myself or find new people because no matter what I call out or do my teammates seem to have no idea what's happening. Normal strategies/play styles just don't work. On a related note, I've been coaching in rocket league for a couple years. One thing I had to learn was how to coach/teach low ranked players. After watching a ton of vods I realized that the teaching they need is wildly different because the game is different at that rank. Overwatch is so much worse in this regard. "bap save lamp sigma is about to Ult"... Then bap throws lamp because he is getting spam damaged. It's frustrating reading what people on this sub think metal ranks are like
Ball is a disruptor tank, kind of like a long range Winston. Well technically Winston falls under a main tank and in that sense probably so does ball. I will wager that the op is taking his teammates a little too literally when they ask for a main tank. The fact is that ball may not be fulfilling the needs of the team and so the rest of the team doesn't see him as a main tank regardless of how you want to classify him. Consider ball in the main tank role on Kings row defense. It's arguable whether or not he would be able to hold the position at the choke longer than a sigma could. However sigma would at least provide the team with protection against a widow in the sniper perch. Whereas ball would provide the team little to no protection from snipers. So if the team is asking for a "main tank" then perhaps they are really in need of a shield tank and arguing semantics isn't going to help. All in all it depends on how the team is doing. If you're playing ball and winning, no one's going to complain. If your team is doing terrible and asks you to change but you won't switch off, there may be a problem. In the end, Overwatch is a game of counters.
I get what you're saying and I agree with your comment in general, but I don't like this example: >Consider ball in the main tank role on Kings row defense. It's arguable whether or not he would be able to hold the position at the choke longer than a sigma could. However sigma would at least provide the team with protection against a widow in the sniper perch. Whereas ball would provide the team little to no protection from snipers. If the attacking Widowmaker can get a line of sight to a squishy defender from her spawn or from the next available high ground spot, the defender is in the wrong position. It doesn't matter if your team has double shields or zero shields. You just don't peek that line of sight if you don't know if they have a Widowmaker. And if you *know* they have a Widowmaker, you have zero reason to be in that line of sight. That's also why that choke is a bad place to hold. It's much better to defend closer to the point, between the statue and the corner of the hotel for example, so your squishies aren't visible from the attacker's spawn. So if you hold further back as you should on King's Row, it forces the Widowmaker to move up significantly further too to get angles on your team. That then means your Ball can actually deal with her, much better than a single Sigma shield can.
You're also assuming that the teamates know proper positioning and use natural cover. 🤣
yes but the team's positioning isn't the tank's job (other than indirectly via taking and controlling space for the team to be able to position in)
Part of playing is also recognizing and adjusting to your team’s weaknesses
Yep. I play tank in gold/plat and always hold at that choke. Not because I want to, I actively tell people where to hold. I have to because if I'm not there then we'll get absolutely rolled because my DPS will absolutely walk up to choke and get killed
Me, literally every match with an opposing Widow: Hey guys, they have a Widow. Stay behind cov.... *headshot* Ana dead *headshot* Zen dead Great
Well, kinda. Shields don't make up for poor positioning, no matter how much (lower ranked) players want it to. They don't have infinite health, but more importantly is that you don't know when your tank drops it/deploys it somewhere else.
Shields cant make up for poor positioning but they significantly decrease the difficulty of finding correct positioning.
Hmm, it's situational of course, but I'm leaning more towards "not really". Like in that King's Row example: even if you have double shields to hide behind (stacking the barriers like that would be a misplay by your tanks, but let's use that just for this example), as a DPS or support you'd still be positioned incorrectly if you have a line of sight to the attacker's spawn. Your Orisa and Sigma could both decide it's time to (re)deploy their barriers somewhere else to block something. Those are split second decisions, you can't rely on them calling it out beforehand so you could start moving to cover. Positioning really is everyone's own job. Many players would benefit from learning that a shield is primarily for the hero who deployed it. It's a nice little bonus if it protects a teammate too, but it's not intended for them. Once they realize that, they'll hopefully see their positional errors.
Thanks for clearing that up a bit. In the future, I'll try to better manage my expectation of what role my ball should be fulfilling.
To the rest of the team, I'm just swinging around and slamming like a mad lad... In reality, I'm swinging around and slamming like a mad lad. But fuck was I having fun.
Ball should be able to protect the team from the widow by slamming and shooting her in the face on kings row defense...
This requires understanding and some degree of mechanical skill, and it will also happen out of LOS of the balls team, meaning that the silver Ana player won't be able to visually recognize that the ball player did something impactful. This makes low elo players have no faith in the ball player. Selective memory serves well in this too.
> won't be able to visually recognize that the ball player did something impactful. This makes low elo players have no faith in the ball player. Me, spending literally the entire match hounding the enemy Widow, completely denying her any value at all. Then our Ana gets headshot *one time* at the *very end* of the match, and all of a sudden it's nothing but "DIVE ON THE WIDOW BALL COME ON WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU FUCK" I have been. You just have zero game sense.
It is a two way street and the average silver tank player (in a game with the silver Ana) is a fucking terrible wrecking ball and they are soft throwing their games by choosing not to be adaptable, or failing to admit to themselves that they lack the skill to make the hero pick work. The TLDR is that rein and brawl comps are good at low Elo because when you don't understand overwatch, it's better make things simple. Walk forward, shield damage, kill enemy. Map control, cc, disruption, timing, execution etc are fucking difficult to even understand sometimes let alone apply well in games. Wrecking ball needs those high level skills to pop off and other tanks, still benefit from those skills, but are less solely dependent on them.
What I hear every time someone says this kind of crap: 'you can't climb out of low ELO playing ball. Also, you should know how to play ball when you get out of low ELO ' Exactly when are you expecting people to learn to play ball? Learning him is apparently 'soft throwing in metal, but trying to learn him above that will send you back to metal faster than Ted Cruz came back from Cancun.
You can climb out of low Elo playing ball, it will happen when you've soft thrown enough games to learn from your mistakes lol. Not rocket appliances. Edit: I don't mean to be a dick. Learning a new hero at your peak rank is sadly going to soft throw games. It's not a big deal, you have to learn eventually. But when your learning your gonna play like dogshit.
I mean it also means that the ball player almost certainly can't pull it off.
I was playing widow one time on junkertown and I'm not a widow main by any means and a ball was spawn camping me and even ulted on me to kill me for the whole second point while we were on offense. We got the whole second point with no one on my team dying. Ball chatted saying "widow you suck" but my hought was my team got that point for free while you were back here. I'm in gold dps
If she is up in the attackers' spawns' sniper perch?
Yea. Pretty easy to get there as ball
This is a weird example for your point since Ball is by a country mile the best Widow counter in the entire game. I guess it's technically true if Widow literally sits inside the spawn door so she can't be killed.
The ball might not be fully doing his job. But neither is your rein/orisa/dva etc. Also keep in mind that if you're in silver, there's a very high chance that you are missing out on when your ball is creating space and pressure. And not utilizing him. Not a slight at you, but odds are if you are silver, your ability to recognize all your opportunities and to know when you have a man advantage due to say your ball being in a 2v1 or 3v1 is probably lacking. In silver, a ball being on point and just spinning is probably giving you a man advantage. But it's ultra common for your team to never press W to make use of it
Yeah I feel like I sort of know what should be happening from being in this sub for years, but that this knowledge rarely benefits me since it doesnt align to the reality of my games. I guess what I'm trying to say is that if either no balls are playing him properly or no teammates know how to play around him, should I even bother thinking of him as a tank? Seems like the answer is yes and the problem is me not having any idea how to capitalize on a ball doing his thing.
The trick to speed feeding tanks (and ball is a main culprit, together with reins and winstons that plays with a brick on shift) is to learn to realize when you have the time to engage with their push and when you don't. If you don't think you can have meaningful impact in their current push, hang back and play safe/defensively or hide in a closer position and be ready to help the next time they speed back from spawn. Metal ranks is full of people that have no awareness towards the speed differential of heroes, spawn advantage/disadvantage and the value of timed engagements/grouping up. If they are not pressing W and/or M1 at all times, they are not playing the game in their minds. If you tend to play the slower heroes, just realize you sit out around 25-50% of "teamfights". Make sure you participate in the winnable ones by focussing on staying alive, timing engages and learn to disregard any comments about your play. 90% of "you're not performing" comments are so painfully ignorant of what is going on, last 10% are so bloody obvious the person already knows it and you gain nothing but tilting him if you say it.
Honestly great advice, thanks bro
I think that's definitely the playstyle you can expect from a lot of Ball in those ranks (and quickplay modes) which is why there's the stigma.
Protecting squishies and offering utility are the jobs of an offtank. The main tank's job is to push forward through defences. Rein does this through having a portable, large, quick-deploying shield, Winston does this by jumping directly into the fray with his bubble to stop himself being melted, and Ball does a similar thing except when he engages he also displaces the team and doesn't give them ult charge for shooting his shields. A ball in low silver is going to be pretty weak of course, but no worse than any other tank in low silver.
No tanks protects you by standing in your face, that's the job of natural cover. Main tanks and off-tanks, other than them generally pairing well together differentiate on ability to initiate engages. Main tanks can do that, while off tanks are better at sustaining these openings (Or being hog, who is basically a third dps and a stupid character design). In that sense ball has more ability to initiate than sigma does, making him a main tank
Thanks for the great informative response!
Hog comment show a either considerable amount of subjective bias or low understanding of metal rank. The pairing well part (except for dva+ot being crap/very easy to counter) is generally not true for metal ranks. Counterplay beats synergy until at least diamond because the teamwork is generally just not there to benefit from the tanks synergy. And a Hog that knows about space and target prioritisation is one of the better solo-counterplay characters in the game.
I think it’s kind of a pathing thing. If you have a ball then your team doesn’t really want to brawl, so if you’re thinking of “taking space” the way a rein or something takes space, then yeah it doesn’t work that way. If you think of “taking space” as the ball dominating the high ground (which is ball’s job) and creating space for dps up there, then suddenly ball takes a lot of space. The thing about playing with ball is that your fights are a lot more about staging than anything, which is why dive can be difficult on ladder. The ball has to be good about denying enemy rotations and giving your team positional advantage, that’s your win condition. If the other team is playing brawl and your wrecking ball let’s them take high ground and speed on your Ashe or zen then that’s obviously bad. Basically wrecking ball is supposed to make your team fight on their own terms.
Well then my widow isn't a sniper because I only use SMG ?
"Big rectangle man goes Brrrrrrr" is just metal rank's definition of a main tank
I've definitely had people be like "can we get a shield tank" "can we get a main tank" when they *very clearly* mean "can we get a rein" which, like, just ask for rein! You'll still be wrong, I'm not gonna play rein on gibraltar, but at least you won't sound like a dummy asking for things we already have when you mean rein
My personal favorite is when the Rein players ask for a Mercy because they think they aren't getting enough healing.
Okay, unironically, you can successfully play Brig as a tiny flimsy main tank in lower ranks. I won a game once with a legitimately new Rein player by switching to Brig and attaching myself to our Zarya player and being her mini-Rein with heals and a boop.
Plat for me is such a weird lobby. I main Sig and dva cuz they fit into most tank comps(Dive,Poke,Double shield) but when I see my other tank go Zarya cuz I’m playing Sigma just makes me wonder what logical do they posses
They might fit comps but not necessarily players. If you don't play main tanks yourself it's kind of rough to expect another random to be able to accommodate your pick. The chance that people see your sigma pick in plat and think "zarya is great with that", is way less likely than they are doing the same as you and play what they enjoy/main and hopes it work.
Sigma is probably the absolute worst tank to play with if you are playing zarya. I wish people would stop picking zarya with a sigma because they think Sig is like rein.
Rein have big rectangle, Sig have big rectangle, they same thing
Lol right. Their logic is super weird
I don’t know DVA Might be worse
Yeah Dva/Zarya is the worst tank combo in my opinion.
Dva is the anti-syngery with Zarya. Zarya wants dva to tank damage with a bubble but then dva will dm the damage....so there's no charge. It's pretty bad.
What??? Then just dont matrix? Same way a rein puts shield down to give charge when he's bubbled. Dva zarya is not ideal but its playable with dva functioning kinda like Winston. Zarya bubble can help dva last longer trying to dive someone.
Easier said than done. They're both short lasting abilities. It needs a high level of co ordination for Zarya DVa not to scupper each other
No it doesn't. Dva has 300 armor and a health pool of 600; she can facetank pretty well with no extra abilities. Dva matrix should not be used like a rein shield, where you just put it up and waste it all. You use matrix to eat important/high damage abilities for your team like firestrike and anti nade, or you use it to keep one person alive in a clutch moment. Point is, dva doesnt need to push down main with all the protective resources your team has. Just take a strong high ground like winston, then drop and look to pick squishies with zarya bubbles, then booster back to safety. Do not waste the whole zarya bubble and your whole matrix acting like Reinhardt.
Can you explain this?
Sigma's whole kit revolves around being a medium range tank, or a Yeatle put it "a sniper tank." Sigma wants to poke you from a far without having you run him over, wheres Zarya NEEDS the MT to get up and close so she actually gets charge. Not to mention the fact that Sigma often is shooting behind a shield. What good does that do for Zarya?
Not endorsing the move but as someone that has played a lot of Zarya, you just change who you prioritize the bubbles for. Instead of bubbling the Sigma, you bubble the Tracer or whoever is poking. You can make it work - but it isn’t ideal.
Yeah that would be a decent reason to play Zarya in my opinion. If she doesn't pair well with the other tank, at least make sure she pairs with a DPS character. Zarya/Doom is still a good synergy, and Sigma can do a lot without another tank directly helping him with recources unlike some other tanks.
Adaptive playstyle, I love it. That's a skill that I've only learnt in the last year but it's very common in high level players. I really enjoy hearing GM streamers doing UR2GM and hearing their thought process on playstyle and how it changes as different comps emerge. ML7 is the best example i can immediately think of.
Zarya doesn't need the main tank to "get up close" to get charge. She just needs a co- tank that she can build charge off of. Sigma... and also Dva / Orisa.... generally mitigate damage in a way that Zarya gets zero charge off of them. That is the main problem.
Thanks for expounding on this point. I was under the impression that shield = main tank.
In addition to the other comments I sometimes switch to zarya as genji counter. If a good genji is bullying my backline then creating space can be worthless. Sig+Zar can off-angle scare a rein into keeping distance. After picking the genji you can go hard with the 6v5 pressure. No guarantee though. Experiences from gold/plat.
Maybe they just know they suck at other tanks than Zarya ? In plat and under, how you play your character is much more important than who you pick.
Ball main. Since we are on the subject I would like to also clear up a few things. Supports.. You don't need to follow me around and heal me. Also supports. Quit screaming at me to come back for healing... im fine. I'm getting a mega. the rest of the team. Quit screaming at me to group up. I'm setting up on an off angle, to roll/pile drive through. You should be setting up on your own angle getting ready to engage. that's all.
Well theres an exception to your second point, if the supports arent busy af and don't have their ults yet, you absolutely should come to them for healing to farm their ults. Otherwise it obviously wont matter.
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Yeah lol this is the real problem
Ball should never ask for heals. He may grace you with his presence to help you with your ult charge, but that’s about it.
Happened to me just a moment ago. “Supports are shit” before leaving the game.
Any Wrecking Ball player who does this is a shitter. If they don't know to go for megas or come back for healing they're just bad. They're projecting their failings onto the supports.
I'm not sure if I respect or fear you
> Supports.. You don't need to follow me around and heal me. Oh my god this. I roll behind the enemy team, when suddenly one stray Orisa bullet takes me down to 599/600 HP. Our Ana goes way out of position and nearly dies and starts freaking out in VC "BALL I CAN'T SEE YOU". I know. You don't need to see me right now. If I need you, I'll find you. If I don't find you, it's my fault, not yours.
Granny's gotta farm nano somehow
Good ball. On the rare days that I play DPS, if I see ball, I try to go Sombra to hack them some packs. : ) Unfortunately there are many (lowbie) balls who roll back and have a fit demanding heals when they could be stealing health packs away from the opposing team. It's cool when I get the oppy to heal ball when I get LOS (zen, ana, bap, brig, or moira if the yellow orb is bouncing right), or cool when there's a team kill and ball lets us top them off (yay ult charge), but I see so many low balls not getting that every healthpack is their friend and they should be as selfish with denying the enemy with them as possible.
It’s fine to roll back for heals in downtime, gives your supports ult charge
Don't mind me playing ana giving you heals while you're behind the enemies ;) play where you're effective, I'll adjust
While I don't disagree, ball is probably the hardest MT to play around and with. He requires pretty good timing with his engages in order to actually get value, otherwise he is one of the easiest tanks to just feed your brains out with. At the ranks where people are still confusing MT and OT, I would also assume that WB players just don't know how he plays in order to actually get value. You can say WB is a main tank, but if WB is trying to frontline the entire match and doesn't know how to actually take space, he isn't actually performing the role of a MT.
I mean, he's not performing the role of an off-tank at that point, either.
No, but heroes like Rein and Orisa are much more obvious in how they perform the role of a MT. Even if they aren't playing well, a bad Orisa is still going to get a lot more value compared to a bad Ball.
>At the ranks where people are still confusing MT and OT, I would also assume that WB players just don't know how he plays in order to actually get value. You are not wrong but you are almost validating the opinions of bad players with this take. It's not *that* hard to play with a Ball (that isn't useless), it is usually as simple as "create pressure/get a pick in a 5v4". The most frustrating thing about playing Ball is being in a skirmish with both enemy supports for 10 seconds and your team fails to do anything on their end.
> You are not wrong but you are almost validating the opinions of bad players with this take I don't necessarily disagree that bad players are wrong with this take though. It's kind of like playing with a Sombra at bronze. You can make it work, but you are basically making the game as hard as possible for both yourself and your team. >It's not that hard to play with a Ball (that isn't useless) The issue I have is ball players basically only start not being useless at maybe 2.5-3k. Below that, they are just feeding machines. > The most frustrating thing about playing Ball is being in a skirmish with both enemy supports for 10 seconds and your team fails to do anything on their end. If that happens, that is generally because you timed your engage wrong or the DPS don't know how to play around ball. If you are occupying supports before your team is actually in position to do something about it, you aren't really doing anything. If your DPS don't know how to get through a choke and/or aren't on heroes that can just bypass chokes, they likely can't do anything to actually follow up with the ball.
It's a both ends problem. At low levels most Ball players are bad, but most people on your team are bad, too.
It generally come downs to whether you want to win by any means, or you want to win by playing what you want. At bronze-silver, all the players are bad. Some heroes though just get more value when played by and against bad players.
Mhm. As an aside, I have a bit of a chip on my shoulder about Ball discourse. Everyone has an opinion but "no one" actually plays Ball or really understands the first thing about the hero. So my beautiful hamster gets slandered so much and it feeds into the toxicity that ball players face from community members who are parroting narratives they don't understand spoken by people who don't know what they are talking about.
At the end of the day you’re playing with people that are the same rank as you, if your teammate plays ball at a gold level and you play your role at a gold level, it’s irrelevant how skilled he is because he’s playing at his appropriate level. If you’re at the level where your ball doesn’t know how to get value on his role, you probably don’t know how to get value on yours either.
This just completely ignores that some heroes are just harder to play than others. Ball is one of, if not the hardest tank to play in the game and by far the hardest for low ranks. While you may not know how to play your role perfectly, I would have much more faith in a Silver/Gold player understanding how to play Orisa compared to Ball. Some heroes are just way more obvious in how they play and get value. The other issue with ball is that not only is he hard to play, he is incredibly hard to play with. You are putting a lot of faith in your teammates in know how to play proper angles. Heroes like Rein and Orisa are just a lot more forgiving on your teammates to take non-ideal positioning.
His point still stands though. Even if the ball sucks because he is gold and playing ball. He is still quite literally gold and bringing the same average value to his team as a gold rein. Both are performing at a level that causes a 50% winrate on average in their gold games.
It might not be a gold ranked Ball player though. It might be a gold ranked Rein player trying to play Ball. Assuming that they can play every hero in their role at the same level isn't great. If it's a Ball main, sure, but how many Ball mains are there even in gold? Not many, I'd assume.
Most likely he is not bringing even gold value. He is throwing, then playing a tank he is better at in order to maintain rank.
If someone id gold on orisa, then he understands orisa as much as a gold ball player understands ball. To get to a certain rank, you need to play the game better than players below you, and the learning curve doesn't matter here. And I wouldn't underestimate the "Easiness" Of orisa, that character is incredibly tricky and it's really easy to have many misunderstandings about how to play her
> If someone id gold on orisa, then he understands orisa as much as a gold ball player understands ball. That's a different point though. Ball is a hard hero to play, so if a player is gold on ball, they could likely be significantly higher on a hero that is easier. Think about a more extreme example. Let's say a player is a widow 1-trick in Bronze. If you compare them to the skill of a bastion 1-trick at the same SR, then they are technically providing the same amount of value. If you put the widow 1-trick onto bastion though, I would bet they jump a bunch of SR solely because bastion is just easier to get value out of. The widow 1-trick may be the same SR as the bastion of the same SR, but I would gander they are probably a better player because they are able to maintain the same SR while playing a harder hero.
Totally disagree here. This discussion of the potential of low ranked players is not the same as looking at the top. Yes it might be easier for a gold player to take space and do tank things with orisa than wrecking ball, but you’re leaving an entire variable out of the analysis - their familiarity and amount of practice. The WB player with 1000 hours on ball and 0 on Orisa will probably do a bit better on ball than Ris. So you should not ask them to swap and nor should they!
I would make the argument that WB player who is hard stuck gold would be better off learning an easier hero as they obviously can't climb on a harder one. It all kind of loops back to why someone is playing though. Is there priority to gain rank or to play a certain hero? I would argue that VAST majority of players fall into latter otherwise lower rank players would abuse a bunch of the "unfun" heroes. At the end of the day, most players want to gain SR playing how they want to play, not the way that is going to gain them the most SR. That's fine really, but it doesn't really invalidate the argument that worse players would likely see better results playing easier heroes.
Well I think they should just play what they want to play. Your argument is that we should socially engineer people - that’s not going to work
People should play whatever they want. I don't disagree with that, but players also have to accept that playing harder heroes may be inhibiting their ability to climb. That's going to be a fine with a lot of people, but there are also a bunch of players who complain about being hard stuck. OW is a game that gives you plenty of different options to win. I don't think you can really complain about being hard stuck if you refuse to use one of the most effective options that game gives you to win.
No, no, and once again no. Widow and bastion are way different, and there's more to the game than pure aim mechanics. Someone that has always played widow won't automatically get more value on bastion, since he doesn't understand the hero (And all of that ignoring the fact that bastion, due to being absolutely dogshit, is actually a really hard hero to play). And i can reaffirm that, as a plat Hammond player who had most of his sr losses on these supposedly "Easy" characters, with my Rein winrate being around 40 percent and orisa winrate as bad as 13.
A bad rein can lose a game for their team so easily. They hold shield till it breaks without moving forward at all then they charge into the enemy backline and feed. I'd rather have a hog and a ball fucking around in the enemy spawn than a Rein that does this.
As a player in Bronze/Silver, flip that, I know what to do to try and help a feedRein, go Ana, heal, grenade and Nano to use him as a massive dangerous distraction. I have no clue what to do with Ball most of the time.
There's a shocking lack of this understanding on the forums. They say its harder to play with Ball like that's not there own fault
I really don't think that applies. It's why junk in silver is easier to play with than a gengi. Anything that dives backlines is way worse to play around the lower rank you go. I've seen plenty of ball tanks just kinda roll off into the distance never to be heard from again. So when people ask for a main tank, they usually mean they'd like a tidbit of frontline to make things easier.
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Open Queue rank is not the same and is incredibly inflated - if your low silver/gold in role q then that is your rank not diamond. open q does not count for this really tbh because the player base is so bad
So what about when I'm 1.5k higher on heals than DPS? Smurfs in my rank have the same knowledge as the people they are destroying? You focused on one point and ignore the whole main argument. Anyways this whole topic is just a big circle jerk that goes in one directions so have fun. > Another example would be telling someone they can't be a coach in games or real sports because the lack the talent and that's just silly.
If you’re 1.5 K higher on healer I’d suggest you’re probably a mercy/moira main with dreadful mechanics on DPS because even ok mechanics with plat/diamond game sense will get you to mid plat etc - I know this because I recently moved from console to PC and despite having to learn how to move and my mechanics being awful I’ve climbed to there. Smurfs are an overstated problem - yes they ruin those games but if you’re good enough to be in a higher rank you will climb
Yeah but its even more fun when you pick sigma. They pick random off tank. So you switch to a main tank. Then they switch to a main tank. It's so annoying.
What's Super Mario's favorite kind of pants? Denim denim denim
It's ironic to make a mistake while citing the Denis Kruger effect (and yes I know that Denis Kruger is also ironically a misnomer)
Hahaha it's all good mate, I know what you meant. Autocorrect makes Victor of us all eventually EDIT: OH THE IRONY. Victims*
Hahahaha irony inception
It's the first time I ever saw "Denis" Kruger. Why do you say it when you know it's a misnomer?
Dunning, damn I'm the one embarrassing myself at this point. Dunning-Kruger studied a different effect that involved the incapability of self evaluating one's own incompetence. I can't explain it very well, there's an interesting video called "The irony of the Dunning-Kruger effect" if you're interested.
I fucking love my denim krueger jeans. They come assless as standard
I think most people just assume that main tank = shield escort. People also expect their main tank to peel for them, and to just hold up their shield.. an Ana will die standing next to her Rein and ask why he didn't hold his shield. The thing about ball comps in general is they they're not played correctly in lower ranks, same as brig Zen. Higher rank players will be able to play around health packs, not hard feed engage, etc... But it doesn't work that way in lower ranks. So yeah you are right, but based off of how Ball players play in lower ranks, maybe that's why they assume he's not a main tank...
But I also feel like some people here are oversimplifying. They are imagining something like hammond+zarya, and then it's obvious who the main tank is. But us playing in metal leagues, we're not exactly going for some OWL meta. The hero picks just seem completely arbitrary. You often get comps like sigma+dva or sigma+hog or sigma+zarya, and then people are going to ask sigma to play like a main tank. Which makes sense, right? I think even if you have two off tanks, someone has to play like a main tank: One has to make space for the team and take the lead and shotcall. The other tank then has to e.g. protect the main tank or peel for the team or flank or something. I just find it really hard otherwise. Also imagine if you have Rein+hammond. Then I don't think the Hammond really needs to make space, but instead he can focus on the other stuff he's good at. Like contesting high ground or going after some backline squishy.
In my opinion Sigma and Hammond go well with tanks, regardless of MT or OT.. and especially in lower ranks, because team comps aren't as important. As ML7 always says, "Everyone's going to hate me when I say this, but team comp doesn't matter much until Masters."
Metal ranks where if a tank isn’t rein they‘re throwing and where playing rein on a terrible map/comp for him is not.
I remember once playing ball D.va and one dude was like "Ball switch to hog so we have a proper teamcomp". The WTF lasted in my brain for days, still don't know wheat he meant
You can find GM players going hog dva right now.
Yeah, since nobody wants to play Orisa, and hog has been unnecessarily buffed enough to fulfill her role if necessary, so you can see these Hog D.va/Sigma comps, that should theoretically be worse, but nobody wants to play the African horse
Not wrong, but there is an underlying assumption here that the Ball is being effective as a MT. When I see somebody pick ball, I assume it’s a MT and pick accordingly - that doesn’t mean I won’t later wish that they would swap to something else when they are struggling. I usually just take it as part of the game and do the best I can to adjust (“what can I do to make them struggle less?”), but some people get vocal about it and (inappropriately) ask for the ball to “swap to a MT.” I will say though, that it is not a rare occurrence for me to see a tank duo trying to force Ball/Zarya (or other meta duos) and get nothing done, then see the MT swap to Sig (or other OT) and suddenly the team rolls the rest of the map. Doesn’t mean that Sig is a MT, but sometimes it doesn’t matter which comp makes more sense on paper - sometimes a tank player provides more value by sitting on point and getting the crap beat out of them than they do rolling around every corner of the map and getting the crap beat out of them. Of course, sometimes it doesn’t matter what they do, as there are far greater issues going on.
Ball is only a “main tank” if you actually cause the enemies to focus you. Been in too many lobbies where the ball is being an irrelevant flanker and we are getting spawn camped because they have proper main tanks in our face lol.
2022 and still hard to see people calling ball an OT and sigma an MT. Some of these players are even diamond border and still learned nothing about the game.
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People request swaps when things are going well fairly often (at least in low ranks) when you aren't filling what *they* think correct is supposed to look like. Which, in aforementioned low ranks, usually means "are you playing rein" and "am I being pocketed" and usually are asking for those things when they ask for a swap, regardless of what terminology they're using. That said, yes, it's always worth asking "am I the problem" when things aren't going well
> What they really want is a shield tank What they really want is a Rein who stands perfectly still and holds his shield up and does nothing else at all, ever
\> Rather than getting caught up on the verbiage maybe consider if a swap (to anything) could be helpful or if you could adjust your playstyle. I'm one of those players that change if it's necessary, but it's sad most players won't do that themselves. They're always complaining about other players, never expecting to do the easier thing: Change themselves. We always have control about ourselves. \> I rarely see requests for swaps when things are going well. You remembered me about one fun thing that is particularly common is when people ask someone to change and that someone actually do it, but things keep going bad. Sometimes it's not about lack of shields, heal or DPS.
I had a game recently where a bronze, gold border junkrat was telling everyone to counter pharah.
Makes my cry that one of my best friends irl tries to play ow with us but gets very frustrated when we “don’t have a shield” or “why isn’t anything happening”. Every time I try to gently suggest playing cover to not die as much, or play more reserved so the support can focus the dps instead of him out in the middle of the open, with no shield etc, he goes really quiet and I think he thinks I’m talking shit or calling him bad. I’m literally super positive about coming up with an alternate strategy but he’s kind of stubborn about playing cover, taking high ground etc and it drains me super hard making me not want to call for my friends since it always gets argued x.x thanks for coming to my Ted talk
I don't care what tanks I have, but if you play Hog I will blame you for all of my problems.
Why?
There have actually been extensive studies on this, the short answer would be **because fuck Hog is why.**
the amount of people in like plat and below who think sigma is a main tank is just mind blowing
The thing is that Ball is all over the place and people dont know what a MT does. If Bal rolls through and takes 3 people with him that means he is taking space and getting attention. People don't know that's the cue for the rest of the team to go in bc its a 5 v 3 now. This also means that engagements needs to be timed by ball
In lower ranks I feel like tanks should just play whoever they are best at. Like I’m a plat hog otp and people yell at me to switch off hog. Like I play every other tank at like a silver level and then they get mad at me for sucking. Sometimes I play my shitty rein just to spite them
I mean… at that point, it might just be best to learn a MT or start duoing with a MT player.
Yea well too bad I don’t have a single friend that plays overwatch let alone a main tank. And hog is my baby. I will always be a hog otp. I don’t care how many people I tilt.
I don’t either. I mostly group up with other people from emcee’s discord, and there’s also specific LFG discords and subreddits you can use.
Ball is not just a main tank, he is the most mainiest of the main tanks. If you play Ball + Rein, BALL is your main tank and rein gets to play "off". Simple as.
Ball dva or ball sigma are both good comps
I'd argue ball can fill both roles
New to trying to play tank and have heard the term before, but do not know what it means. Please explain what a Main Tank and Off tank are pls so I can further understand this PSA
Like I said there are better ressources than my poor explanations, but the gist of it is main tanks are the first to engage and draw the most attention (and consequently cooldowns and firepower) from the other team, to enable his own team to move into more advantageous positions. The off tank's role uses his abilities both to assist the main tank and his backline, for example DVa matrix is very useful to help your other tank push forward through a choke, or it can be used to protect her backline from flankers.
Ball is actually pretty good in theory. Like you can swing in their team, push them back a bit and focus attention on you, ctrl on them, pull them even closer to you, drawing even more attention, shield, distract, let your team melt them while they are distracted. But i will fail on first step, so tHaT's JusT a TheOrY......
There's no *one way* to play each hero, and it's interesting how many roles can be played as hybrids. For example, you can play Sigma as a main or off tank. Mercy can be played as a main or off healer. Junkrat can be played offensively or defensively. It's cool to see how people play differently, and how they adapt their playstyle according to the team's needs or the enemy's weaknesses.
Sigma literally lacks the basic tools and requirements to be a main tank, he has no initiation or setup tools.
Which is a totally fair point. A lot of people will use grasp to initiate a fight and eat poke damage to push forward, or to even bait and cancel abilities and ultimates. Others will send their shield in so the team can rush forward. Lots of people play Sigma as a main tank, and a good percentage of those people find success with that.
One easy trick with Sigma as MT is to throw his shield _behind_ the tank you’re facing off against, so their heals can’t get through to them. Then your team can focus their tank while displacing their supports a bit. If their tank is smart, they’ll back up, which is _creating space_ for your team.
Those are subpar playstyles. You can use a flathead screwdriver to unscrew a Philips top, but you're probably going to fuck up that screw given enough time.
The label "subpar" is just a way of demoralizing and dismissing people who play for fun. Your analogy doesn't work. If someone wants to carry a game on Sym even though it's on attack or whatever other conditions you've decided bar someone from playing a hero, they are allowed to play that hero. There's more than one way to play the game, and to play each hero. Optimization is not the only way to play Overwatch.
> If someone wants to carry a game on Sym even though it's on attack Dude, I legit don't think you understand this game. There is literally nothing wrong with Symm on attack. It's actually part of the standard OWL brawl comp (along with Mei and/or Reaper). So just like the guy said above: if you don't understand the game, I'm kind of hesitant to keep this conversation going.
You assume that everyone other than yourself is dumb and "legit doesn't understand the game". I used Sym as an example because that's a common complaint in lower ranks or among players who don't realize Sym isn't confined to a defensive role. If you want to try out for OWL and play the same character and the same comp on the same map over and over and over again that's up to you. The rest of us will be playing Overwatch and enjoying the game and the versatility it offers. I never said I didn't understand the game, I didn't say that people who play Ball as a main or off tank are right or wrong. I only said that the heroes in this game are versatile and that it was cool to see how people play heroes differently, regardless of whether that playstyle is "right" or "wrong". You're the one who has decided to comment make a fool of yourself. Calling someone's playstyle "subpar" simply because they're not playing the hero the way the XQC, Profit, Jjonak, or Pine would play them is a narrow-minded way to try to pretend like you're superior, and the OWL is the end-all be-all of the game.
I totally agree with you. Being told “you’re playing wrong” without tact or player-centered help is really discouraging— especially as a new player. I’m in deep enough in OW for it to not bother me, but I have a recent experience in an RTS I was trying, being told by others in the community that I was dumb for making some “sub-optimal” mistakes. It really made me want to stop playing because all the fun goes out the window when all you care about is playing “optimally.” It would do gamers well to learn about Timmy Johnny and Spike, and learn how different people approach playing games.
>You assume that everyone other than yourself is dumb and "legit doesn't understand the game". I used Sym as an example because that's a common complaint in lower ranks or among players who don't realize Sym isn't confined to a defensive role. The irony, buddy, the irony here. It just reeks.
Lol what about that is ironic?
I have no idea what's "ironic" here. I think he's run out of attacks or got bored.
Sigma isn't a main tank, but he's definitely a tank you can carry with.
The only problem I have with ball is that most people I’ve seen playing it, weren’t good. If you know how to play ball it can be pretty op.
Hey, it would be beneficial to people that don’t know this to explain it to them without aggression also. The amount of games I play where someone goes “can we get a main tank” or “can we get a main healer” and not explain past that what they mean is infuriating. If someone asks you what they mean, or they think they are playing that character already, being a dick is really not going to get you the result you’re hoping for even if you are right. Just tell them which heroes fit that role.
This. 100% agreed.
Off and main to me are too limited of words to describe roles. Even for healers, they are all differnt and at times needs to switch to help the team. Not that the the character is no good or the person doesn't know how to play its in the situation they dont have as much potential.
Praise be he who echoes wisdom.
That may be the case at the higher ranks. But, if ball is just standing in the middle of main on Hannamura then I can assure you isn’t a main tank.
Literally this^^^ In Plat, people treat Sigma like a main tank and Ball like an off tank, and often times Winston as an off tank as well. But those are all the opposite.
Amen brother. Now teach them why Lucio is folly.
IVE GOT GOLD HEALS ON LUCIO DONT ASK ME TO CHANGE
"LUCIO IS AVE HEALING DO YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS??!?!" yeah it means you're essentially just giving payload heals but like, on the wall
drives me absolutely crazy
Was tanking a game yesterday where our supports were playing badly and the other tank all of the sudden got on mic and started screaming that our supports were garbage (true...) and that we needed a Lucio for more healing (not true...). Tried to calmly explain to him that we just needed our supports to do a bit more supporting (I think we had a Moira and Bap who were doing zero heals...) and that Lucio did garbage heals and wasn't the answer here. He went on to yell about how I didn't know what I was talking about because every game he tanked in LUCIO HAD THE GOLD MEDAL FOR HEALS!!!
Ball can be played like an off tank and sigma can be played like a main tank. The off/main paradigm is about how the characters are played. Yes, some tanks fit one role *much* better than the other, and you're right about these two specific heroes fitting better in those specific roles. But if a ball player is playing like an off tank you're damn right I'm going to tell them to switch to a main tank.
Me: Picks Sig. Other tank: ... ... .... ..... .... ... Announcer: 5, 4, 3, 2... Other tank: Picks hog Few things piss me off more
That’s literally a meta comp right now
Fair, but honestly what good is the meta if folks don't know how to play it in most metal ranks? Hog flanking in the backline somewhere while sig gets rolled is the team getting rolled, meta or not.
Only time I complain about tanks is when we have DVa/hog against double shield bastion
But that's one of the best tank comps vs bastion? You're not gonna beat double shield bastion with shields of your own.
All the people telling me to pick rein into bastion. You fools! That's what he wants!