Why you should consider playing tank and why playing tank feels miserable

General Discussion
1

Tank is arguably the most impactful role in the game and basically if you play one you have the most agency in where and how your team should play and should form a strategy around you and your pick and your position, you dictate the win condition for your team.

why it feels miserable to play tank is for 2 reasons.
either you have no understanding how to play that tank correctly to it’s strengths or your team isn’t playing as a team and even if you do, that doesn’t guarantee success, but atleast it’ll be a lot more enjoyable.

so the lack of teamwork is most of the time why tanking feels miserable because it makes games a lot harder.

but as a tank with so much agency, you can impose teamwork upon your team wether they understand what’s going on or not, and that is something you can’t really do on any other role and that’s why you should play tank because you can actually make miserable games where everything seems hopeless into a game where anything is possible.

and being able to clutch out games like no other role can and do some crazy maneuvers and being able to create plays off of your teammates no matter what they pick is why tanks atleast to me have become the best role.

you are not only the biggest health target, you have amazing abilities and the ability to enable not only yourself but your team aswell.
as i see it, tanks are what makes overwatch the game that it is.

Now i’d like to hear your reasons for why you find tanks boring and why they aren’t worth your time and maybe just maybe i can make some of these conceptions of yours disappear.

2

Reasons why playing tank is a chore

  1. team won’t listen, won’t push when you do, push before you do, etc etc

  2. DPS feel entitled to everything including heals which should be on you, because they should be behind you not getting damaged

  3. healers have no clue what they’re doing and you get melted in 0.00000001 microseconds flat

  4. you get bashed about like a ball bearing in a tin can, pushed, shoved, booped, hooked, flashed, frozen, trapped, etc etc etc etc…

  5. far too much spam damage flying around in this game, as soon as you break cover to push, you get melted

  6. flankers like genji and tracer are far too mobile and do far to much damage, with very little in the way of tank heros able to stop them from running roughshot over you, and your DPS don’t have the skill to take them out before they maul your healers

  7. everything is your fault, not the widow sat in the back whiffing every shot, not the reddit lucio playing dance around the roadhog on their team, not the suicidal junkrat who just has to dive bomb their ana, its your fault for getting insta nuked trying to save said junkrat, or pressing your advantage in the vein hope that your team will follow you nope… its your fault, you are trash and you should uninstall the game (at least thats what im always told by the clueless healers and entitled DPS who i get teamed with, despite filling the role no one wants to play that even gives them an opportunity to play theirs

need i go on?..

no… i don’t think so

3

Tanks fun. Just play Ball and do Ball things.

You can just run about while your team does what it needs to do, then as they engage you come flying in.

Yeah, comms and coordination help, and are nice… but even without you can just watch and wait.

If playing with friends then ill play Anyone else they need or want usually Zarya as one of them a rein main.

If you go in correctly and you die because your team didn’t follow you. Then next push, wait till they push… if you still lose, avoid them and move on.

Also, remember. Just because you play tank, doesn’t mean your call is right. No one has to listen to any calls if they choose not too. If you really don’t want someone in your team again, the avoid button exists.

4

1, team don’t have to listen, you can just keep tabs on them and look at the killfeed and see what’s going on.

2 dps will want healing like everybody else, i don’t blame them, there’s a reason why people don’t count on enemies having below their respective max hp.

3, healers can do much but they can’t heal you through fire and flames, a popular thing supports say “you can’t heal stupid”.

4 this happens to everybody, you just happen to be more resilient to dying instantly to just one of those so it feels like it’s more cc than it is.

5, there is a lot of damage, but that’s because there’s a lot of countermeasures, it’s a game thing, not a tank thing.

6 depends on what tank you play, sure not every tank is equipped to hunt them, but basically every tank has something to mess with them with, it’s a team game.

7 now imagine playing any other role and imagine how much less power you have in actually making the game winnable when that is the hand you’ve been dealt, and the “blaming” basically happens to everyone randomly depending on who’s the flamer of the day.

i mean if you want an easier game sure, but if you aren’t challenged, then what’s the point?
might aswell smurf and stomp people who don’t know the difference between a hybrid map and a payload map.

true enough, calls is just there for information, not a command.

5

yeah no… i play tank for the priority tokens, and nothing else, its a thankless chore… not fun, ever

6

fun is what you make of it.

i played for the initial years since launch mostly tank because no one picked it and i didn’t enjoy it at all, however nowadays it’s basically the role i have the most fun on because i’ve made it fun for myself.

i’ve been there, but basically being negative about playing something is never gonna make you have fun especially if you limit yourself into some imaginary constrictions you’ve made for yourself by being convinced by a bunch of other people that also think that X thing is boring or pointless or is a chore.

i could for example say that widow is extremely boring but i know a lot of people who don’t feel the same way, i’m not technically wrong or right saying so, and they aren’t really either wrong or right thinking widow is fun.

but yeah, i can’t force people to play tanks, i can’t advocate for people to do it either, the only thing i can do is to challenge their preconceived notions about it and maybe just maybe they’ll see things differently and maybe they’ll find something to enjoy about it.

just as how i’ve changed through time trying to find the enjoyment within it, and my answer was to just challenge myself, don’t limit myself by my own preconceived notions about the characters and experiment.

because really what’s the harm? worst thing that could happen is that i don’t find a way to make it fun for myself and simply just stop playing the game and let it die which really doesn’t bother me.

7

fun is being able to play the game, not be stuck babysitting people who don’t know how to play and blame you for it despite you being the enabler of their game

8

You choose to babysit them. Just don’t join voice and enjoy playing they game.

Or play another game.

9

tanks keep people safe, its the job to babysit them otherwise you’re just a massive target…

10

I dont baby sit on Ball… no one complains.

11

that’s because you treat it as such, i mean teammates are teammates, you have to kind of treat them as such even if you don’t get along with them.

that’s how it is with every team game, the only way to not treat them as such is to not play the game proper.

sure you can get hung up on the protective side of things that tanks can do, but then you’ll miss the fact that there are more characters than just tanks that “babysit” other players or that tanks have really good abilities and really fun creative ways to use them.

but yeah, i can’t change that view for you, that’s something you’ll have to figure out for yourself, if you hate tanks that much then don’t play it, i mean i’ll still get instant qeue, would just be a shame if the game died because of a lack of tanks because people just blindsided each other to how fun they can be.

i mean as long as tanks are necessary to the game, the game kinda rides or dies on that point that people play that role, so why keep a game from dying that you don’t enjoy anyways?

12

ball is just fat genji, not a tank

because when i get to play my heros without a genji on the enemy team, its fun

13

Ball is a good tank. He absorbes cool downs and escapes while his team moves in. Also displaces and distracts.

Face tanking. As it is called.

Basically, you can only enjoy the game if others aren’t allowed to enjoy the game? So thats better than you not enjoying the game, but them having fun?

14

i mean sure, but i don’t think you’ll last thinking this way.

1 Like
15

It’s all about freedom.

As a dps you’re free to play how you want and at most suck at it, as a tank/healer your role is narrowly defined and people can call you out on it or report you if you stray from it. As a dps, you’re independent and can ignore the others, as a tank/healer you can’t.

I like people’s expectations of me to just be “kill stuff”. And even then, at most I suck at it, or practice if they troll as a result of my pick.

16

A version of this theory plays out in the highest ranks where “meta” comes into play.

atm, tanks and supports are locked into a very narrow choice of Ball, Orissa, Sigma with Bap Brig… After that DPS can do as they please as a long as they can get picks. But it is the constant tank of Sigma that will do the bulk of the damage, with a Tracer or Echo usually finishing people off.

But in most games, if you have a player constantly telling others to “do more” of whatever they think that person should be doing… They are probably playing pretty badly themselves, and are just mad and can’t blame themselves for the issues.

17

i don’t actually agree that dps have anymore freedom than the other 2 does, sure if they don’t care about teamwork or winning, but basically every character is more free if they don’t do that.

the whole game is a moving puzzle where people have to work together either intentionally or by accident.

i’m not convinced that this is the case, i simply think it’s a lack of proper experimentation, honestly as soon as i hear “the meta got stale” to me that just sounds like lazy people wanting other people to please them instead of coming up with their own ideas.

18

I see your point.

Butcthe meta comes from team scrimping, then those players playing ranked and needing to practice those heros and it filters down from there.

They play those comps because the teams have spent hours with coaches, analysts and team mates working out the best options and studying the vods and data.

So sadly, metas do get stale when changes to the game are not drastic enough

And atm, the meta is pretty much locked in Ball Sig Bap Brig, with orissa on a few maps.

But Masters and below you can pretty much get away with playing anything you like, as long as you’re good. Hence why Genji is popular in lower ranks, but they don’t touch him in meta play as he’s actually far too weak to work in that comp right now.

Like you can make monkey work…

But even the best monkey players won’t play him in meta games as he will just get melted instantly.

19

I like tanking in OW. There’s a sense of responsibility. Perhaps not all tanks equally though. But every tank should be babysitting his team whenever possible.
A lot of people play tanks like a dps hero which is very possible but a waste of abilities.

Tanks are mom and dad basically lol

If you don’t get to decide pace and direction because nobody’s following you can always adapt and pick another tank to support the team differently. Not saying this is always the best solution though, I’m saying tanks in OW cover many different play styles.
You don’t always have to lead to support your team.

20

this is actually somewhat true, but the thing they didn’t really do was find the best option or come up with a strategy, because if you’re losing to something the easiest way to make sure you’re not losing because of the strength of a comp is to just mirror it.
but mirroring doesn’t really allow you to get an edge against the people you play against.
so it’s really not the best option, but it’s the safest which means metas get stale because people are lazy and scared to practice something that isn’t the current norm.

every patch though people have wiggle room because people are trying to find the next op thing to throw resources at to exploit as much as possible to get easier games and easier wins.

and scrims and highest part of ladder are actually quite different, it’s not really practicing the comp really if you play on the ladder, it’s basically just polishing the mechanics on x- character so even if someone scrims and plays that character on ladder doesn’t mean that comp is any better on ladder than anything else because ladder is a different beast.

but i agree, on a competitive level it is safer to not go outside the box or take chances, however i don’t think that applies to ladder.

as i see it, it’s just teammates and playing the game right you should treat your teammates as teammates.
as tank you don’t have to lead, but as everyone else it’s in your best interest to cooperate.