After getting back after long years and getting back to some plat games in ranked, I have, as a tank player picked different points that are really annoying in OW2 ranked.
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Mauga is unhealthy for the game, DPS except bastion don’t want to challenge him much, because other targets are more interesting, so tank has to play hide and seek versus mauga, rotating cooldowns, or switch to a tank that can do that. Putting a hard counter to hog as he doesn’t have a kill combo is quite surprising, people complained a lot against the pig I guess. As is, we are often forced to switch to Mauga, because easy counter is free win, not by skill, just by counter picking, then the other tank switches etc. Even to come back to initial tank choices. Way to loose 1 minute to do so, bringing some chaos in between and hoping for the best, it is a free reroll when things go south, it shouldn’t exist. The games gets so slow with mauga on play, or he wrecks you, there is too much value for just picking him. In fact the problem is mostly you have to commit to cooldowns to try to put pressure on him to kill him whereas he basically walks and click fire, walkable unkillable gatling, seems like OW1 original bastion design with its own shield, there is someone in the design team that does not understand the balance at all.
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Orisa seems also unkillable, if your team has a dps diff in your favor, bringing the horse is mostly keeping the advantage. Again, when we die too much switching to Orisa seems like a classic fallback to soak damage and hope for the best. Tanks have to commit to take space, with some risk, not just walking and be unkillable (same critic with mauga).
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Counterwatch is way too important, solo tanking means you switch sometimes more than 4 times in a game, that is incredible, I don’t know if new tank players can play this game like that, because having a dive tank, a poke tank and a rush tank at some level is no easy task. I bet bliz thought that new tank players should just shoot as mauga, or be immortal as orisa, but it makes the game awful for all the other tanks that have to face them.
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the new clash maps are awful, you have to 360 around you to find the next point, it all looks the same, so not so easy to know where you are, why didn’t they put some unique visual details to know where you are? This is really lazy stuff, these maps cannot compare to say Volskaya or Hanamura for instance that visually were beautiful and you could easily find where you go next. They snowball so fast, and it feels a lot random, it doesn’t belong to comp for me, it should be an alternate thing, or bring lucio ball & CTF in comp too, at least these modes require skill and their maps are easy to understand.
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tank play is ugly, because of all these random stuff, and tank counters being everywhere, with supps like ana (like old OW1), dps with bastion, even tank with mauga, when some of your opponents make the choice to force you to switch, then you are forced to. No suprise tanks are bullied in chat, the gameplay is made to bully them, Bliz just gets this with their bully counterpick design. A lot of what unique plays that were fun in OW1 just disappears. As you are alone, if you die a bit too much, it is a loss, the stress on the tank play is way too much, and bliz has made them a bit too OP and they remain very unkillable compared to OW1 where reaper, mccree could destroy tanks with good position, which was fair.
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no shield meta (or poor shield meta) has removed the need to coordinate movements in a team so now it is way too often free for all. It has always been in OW, but now sometimes it seems nobody cares, some dps do their stuff far from you, and when you push as tank, you wonder if actually the dps will commit to the attack or leave you fending for yourself. Guess what, in OW2, the shield is made to protect mostly… the tank! And the whole push dynamic that was fun for me in OW1 is gone. Well double shield bastion was bad I know, but not all was bad.
OW1 had incredible memories, OW2 is just a classic good online game. We will see if 6 vs 6 will solve a lot of these problems, if not, then they should just create a special mode without any tank at all, that would solve their queueing problem, at this point I wonder why the 5 vs 5 with solo tanking exists, as the tanking experience is very miserable.