#gaming #overwatch #overwatch2
Support Ruined Overwatch
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Timestamps
0:00 Intro
0:39 Early Overwatch
2:00 Ana Nade
2:35 Moth Meta
4:48 Quad Tank
5:54 Brigitte
9:53 The Endless Winter
10:50 2/2/2
14:43 Baptiste
17:31 Sigma
19:40 2020
21:03 Content Drought
22:02 2021
24:01 Zen/Brig
24:55 2021 OWL Playoffs
25:47 Issues with 5v5
30:23 Sojourn
31:40 OW2 Beta
32:57 The Pro Issue
34:27 Kiriko and Queen
36:38 DLC Heroes
38:09 Truth About Support
42:27 Conclusion
Hey guys, Thanks for all the support on the video. Reading the comments actually makes me happy that other people see the issues with the game and it’s not just pro players. Hope you all enjoyed.
They say we are a loud minority but i think we are the silent majority
You didn't even mention the new support passive
If you haven't notice... supports are buffed to a large amount to give advantage to f3male players and attract the most people possible
@@RebellionBloodshed lmao it wasn't that, if anything a small factor, it's just for people in general having easy value is good for casuals
@@bambampewpew32 explain why there is no buff for Reaper, Mcree, Soldier 69? me playing Ana, Moira or any other support can do more damage than them
"Illari is balanced... That's why she's not good right now" Well if that doesn't sum up the game-
the 'blizzard cutting off their arm' analogy is so fucking accurate LOL
27:30 if anyone wants to know when
Yes, and the answer to when they discovered they needed their arm: "Just cut off the leg and attach it where the arm was". Rofl. Beautiful analogy that explains how Blizzard operates.
This is how every single hero "rework" feels like ngl
Blame the suits, all they care about is money so any other issue gets nothing more then a quick fix cheap and short sighted solution
This actually made me laugh a lot. Thats so true
playing tank in 6x6 was much more satisfying
Synergy between the main and off tank was unmatched. It felt so good man
highly disagree
@@Enkinanna then disagree in silence or write an argument after you make your statement. Why do you disagree?
@@NothingMeansNothingButNothingyeah ow2 players are scared of the thought of actually playing the game the way it was designed
6x6? Holy shit, my brother/sister/they/gay in christ found the sex update and isn't sharing. Truly despicable.
It’s so sad to see such a beautiful game ruined by bad decisions and development
indeed
It was always trash bruh
it was good from 2016-2018@@jollygrapefruit786
@@jollygrapefruit786no, It wasn't.
you mean a bunch of suits?
I love how this video was perfectly released right before season 9 and now tank is so miserable it's actually worse than back in double shield lol
Right? Now every role needs to do damage, support is having a very hard time keeping their tank alive, and the tank is having very little fun this season. But that is what everyone wants. Support kills OW they say. Now, take that L tank players and say thank you support for saving OW before
@@gungrave10 what what woah there did you even watch the video? lmao I mean if we had 2 tanks the dps passive wouldn't matter that much lol also if they just nerfed supports instead of adding the dps passive that would've worked too, but they didn't wanna hurt the support player's feelings
@@bambampewpew32 Yada yada yada, bla bla bla, can't change the fact that DPS season made everything feel bad.
I would prefer to go up against double sheild every game for the rest of my life than play another game of 5v5 tank.
The thing that makes me so mad about Double Shield and attempting to fix it with 5v5 is that the OW2 Orisa rework would have fixed it! Orisa-Sigma still theoretically could have been strong, but it wouldn't have been as oppressive with only one shield. I miss 6v6 and tank synergy so much. 5v5 has been so bad for me as a casual tank player that I actually just straight-up quit playing OW.
They literally had the fix to OW1 and double shield in their hands lol. And chose to proceed with 5v5 anyway. That's unbelievable.
I miss pre-moth Mercy. What's the point of flying around, if you can't save anyone, as everyone dies in second, before you even reach them?
Add Ram to the roster on top of the Orisa rework and double shield would be throwing meta
Wouldnt Rammatra kind of add to double shield tho, given he has a 1000 health shield and due to having his own similar kind of poke projectile stream weapon like orisa?
@@isaacargesmith8217 Yeah, I was mostly talking about before OW2. Orisa's rework that was released at the start OW2 would have fixed the double shield issue, had it been released for OW1. I'm not saying double shield wouldn't be a problem with Ramattra in the game, but at least before Ramattra the issue would be fixed.
It’s so funny to me that ranked and pro players think blizzard catering to casuals is ruining the game and casuals think blizzard catering to pro and ranked players is ruining the game. Like nah maybe the game just fucking sucks.
Blizzard has always catered to their own little circle of internet trolls and they tell everybody else that they're mean for wanting to have fun when they play a video game. I'm a casual who climbs to high rank in every FPS game I play and the thing I notice about most communities is that pros/tryhards and casuals think more a-like than they think. Devs just like hiding behind one or the other when they make bad choices.
@@daddykarlach so what you're saying is the people must stop drawing lines in the sand and work together to overthrow this dev team regime
@@Sandvichman. Exactly. And the content creators who play into it like YourOverwatch, SVB, Samito, and others who always defend the worst decisions that the devs make and call everybody that disagrees with them a sweatlord. They can't keep getting away with saying that the game is being dumbed down for casuals while casuals are unhappy too. Like maybe that's just not what OW players want?
@@daddykarlach breastie have you watched samito he is always on the dev team's ass extremely critical of the state of overwatch (rightfully)
@@daddykarlach I agree with your points, but you picked bad examples for KZheadrs who defend the dumb Sh** they do. I feel like more and more content creators and streamers, even if they get paid by overwatch, are speaking out against the corporation that ruined the game, always wanting the devs to make terrible design choices for the game for that extra sold copy. All-in-all, spread correct info, because you have it bro 🤙cheers🤙
but like, are we going to ignore how support ended up like this. You mentioned symm was a support at OW1 launch but we ignored that the community complained non stop that she was utility focused and not a healer, and when Jeff said more supports like her were planned there was nothing but complaints from the community. so instead of getting unique supports like symm was, like sombra was designed to be we got bloated healing kits which is what the community asked for (not the support community i might add) as a support main since OW1 beta, I agree with a tonne of this video but I think its important to recognise that the community did put pressure on development for all supports to heal and the devs did what they were asked to do. I think the whole support role needs to be reworked and we need dedicated healers and for some supports to become pure utility so that characters like bap who are able to block ults cant AOE heal everyone to full and are more focused on blocking those key abilities and have dedicated healers to recover the damage. Great video btw, Im hoping every day OW can recover because I truely love this game.
yup, never heard complaints about low heals from supports:)
Remind me of a saying " Players are very good at telling you what's wrong with the game. They are very bad at giving solutions to fix it.
That also gave me the idea of having the fourth role. Like how they were supposed to be attack defense tanks and support. We should bring that back but it should be attack, tanks,support and healers
if they introducde utility supports, this game will become league of legends i dont want that
@@Mediterranian1 umm... what?
At least Lucio never ruined anything
you forgot to mention movement creep in the game, where almost all characters that were added had movement abilities of some sorts, and older characters with old movement abilities cant catch up to them, like dive characters are there for high mobility gameplay to close the gap quickly between them and the enemy, but now most heroes who arnt in the dive category just use theirs to gtfo and u have the dive character become cosmetic.
also the quick mention of the off-tank role, through out ow1 zarya was one of the most balanced heroes, created to support another tank and provide high dps close range, but not so strong on long range maps. now she will feel either to powerful and delete anything or weak and useless. dva as u said is in the same boat, was there to dm and help the other tank, ball just a joke now, unless you are a god. as an off-tank main (currently extinct) i loved duoing w my main tank player where just would have fun and roll people or get rolled, but it was fun, now most tank experience is smth like this: i load my game, i wait and see what my supports go, i see for the 100th game in a row mercy, kiriko, illari or zen in any combination and i know instantly that the only tank i can play is sigma bc any other tanks would need support to play with you, but guess what all the supports are in Narnia doing their own thing.
I agree
holy fuck, the sigma thing is so true, i hate it. anything else i get instadeleted bc funny burst dmg and i myself cant kill shit and ofc i get insta counterpicked bc no drawback
@@captainrexicon8968 "ball just a joke now, unless you are a god" bro you cant do anything as wrecking ball unless youre chazm, and even he gets flamed by teammates. Its crazy how bad ball is.
This is what league feels like to me. XD Where so many people get a dash, so they need to give new dive characters 2 dashes, 3 dashes, cd reset on dashes and incredible burst to keep up with the targets they're supposed to try and kill, leaving every older character pretty much in the dust. Movement in any competitive game, is the single most versatile power you can give to a character, and should be given incredibly sparsely.
Moral of the story: Don't focus on marketing an esport, but on making a good game. As the saying goes, "If you build it, they will come."
I honestly wonder if Blizzard getting salty over losing Dota 2 made them insanely desperate and tried to aggressively esport Overwatch and Hero of the Storm.
Huge disagree on the point that you made about role lock. Unless you play in an environment where people were in a team and knew who plays what without any issues, having 4-5 DPS every game (even in top 500) was not fun. I was literally flexing every goddamn game, since we needed a tank/support.
yeah role queue capped the amount of fun we could have (silly comps are great) but aint no way in hell did i have fun playing the roles i didn't want to play man 6v6 has a similar vibe, the BEST 6v6 was awesome and peak but the average experience was just not great that being said though bring Orisa pull back!!
open que was just 4 dps screaming at a lone mercy or 5instalock dps followed by a quick "tank and support pls"
i play support to this day because i had to be the 1 support with the 5 dps or we insta loss. happened all the time. if i remember correctly, brig was made because supports were getting destroyed by winston, dva, genji, tracer all diving and blowing someone up instantly. immortality suddenly popped up when it was grav/dragon combos all game
them making an anti dive character wasnt the problem the problem was the aoe healing brig output and how it broke the game, notice how the solution for 2 ultimates was 1 ability on a cooldown
yeah, Brig and Baptist were characters added to the game to deal with problems of the current meta at the time. This video is from the perspective of a pro player, and while his experience is valid, it doesn't take into consideration of game design as a whole. Truly, the entire video can be summed up with one quote "Given enough time, players will optimize the fun out of a game" but, ya know, for pro teams and supports, because bias
@@llllSNEAKllllyou shouldn’t add broken hero’s to fix broken metas. NERF DIVE. don’t add a support that just straight up Denys everything dive does because your too incompetent to fix the problem. it’s not player optimization, its blizzards refusal to actually balance and fix their game. bap is still the insane hero he was during double shield. he is arguably BETTER because of the window changes and burst healing on regen burst. they just don’t like nerfing shit.
Same here but with the tank roll!
@@heyheyhello3733 say that to Blizzard bro
Wait damage reduction lamp actaully sounds like such a better idea oh my GOD.
Would you believe it if I told you they tried it in an experimental patch one time?
Or make shooting the enemy player drain life from the lamp, so you don't have to switch targets. This makes lamp MORE effective against instant burst like DVA bomb or Junk tire but LESS effective against sustain damage. One Rein swing on 2 people plus lamp would kill it. And that's fine. And it removes the stupid lamp around the corner BS. OR alternatively, make lamp a 50% life/dmg share. So players still get damaged but only take half damage, lamp takes the other half.
@@elpapisaint They've also tried pulling rez back into mercy's ult but with all the nerfs that only made sense like needing LOS and having a cast time and EVERYBODY LOVED IT but no because the once in a blue moon chance to rez an entire team is oh so scary and definetly not as scary and bad for the game as having RESURRECTION ON A COOLDOWN So many experimental changes were unironically good and clean i hope to god they visit those ideas again.
Right
lets be real eventually people would complain about that too
Preferred queue wouldn't have solved anything. There were just more dps players than support and tank. The fact that you don't believe this was a problem is simply because you've been high rank so long. As you said you were gatekept out of high rank by being inflexible (for the most part). NA plat back in the day you had about a 10% chance of your first fight being 6 dps characters. The scenario you described with 5 dps and 1 mercy is I used to call "winnable". And yes I know 6 DPS would be my fault too. There was a reason I was stuck in plat for so long. I can't tell you how many games I won in plat playing 6 dps because the enemy team also had an equally bad comp. But far more often you would just auto lose or auto win because of people picking nonsensical comps. The saddest was when one guy would swap Reinhardt and insta die because nobody swapped to a support. This was common even during GOATS meta. That's the other thing that's missed in support being OP content. Back in the day when support "took skill" and had sharp tradeoffs far less people played it. It wasn't nearly as bad as the tank player numbers but there were still far more dps than support. Could they have fixed it a different way other than mega buffing them? yes but i think it's important to note that they were mega buffed for a reason.
I started playing Overwatch in 2017, and introduction of Brigitte was the worst thing happened in overwatch.
*Cough* Mauga
@@scumknight6074mauga is trash?
@@GearbieFPS So is brigitte... what is your point?
@@FairwellNoob mauga is WAY worse than brig?
Ball was worse.
The balance team’s ego is the reason why the game is the way it is today. Why did they not vault Brig at release? It would hurt their ego and they’d have to admit they wasted months creating a hero that would rot away for several months. Why didn’t they consult pros on new hero development? Their ego, of course. We know nothing, and they know everything (apparently). They didn’t want it to look like they didn’t know what they were doing.
Same could be said about not removing immo's, going to back to 6v6 or open queue, etc. The devs constantly double down on their bad decisions by making radical changes just like iron said i.e. not faulting brig but going to role queue and now the s9 changes. They just do not want to admit their wrong and they're willing to sacrifice their game for it (either that or they're delusional).
@@matthieunoordsij8826 I could have went on, but I didn’t want my comment to be 5 paragraphs. Also, it’s probably a mixture of both arrogance and ignorance.
@@justinoliveira3063 You're right, it's likely both.
consult pros? what pros?
@@RikatittarOfSkryre the OWL pros in anaheim
please bring back 6v6
No
Althoug its better we Will never get it
the problem isn't the format is the direction. they want make the game more braindead so bad players can enjoy and purch skins
I was on the 5v5 bandwagon but now I’m starting to think this format is reason so many players are in ranks they should have never touched EDIT: wanted to add on that specifically for support players, the format change+the ease of use of abilities like lamp, suzu, and pull and even brig packs to an extent makes it so even the worst players can have huge spikes in value by pressing a single key at the right time. Brig was what she was in ow1, but I truly believe that bap is just as guilty if not more for the current state of the game. He paved the way for suzu and pull. Rant over lol
@@nooaala-turkia5642 i completely disagree, we can get it back but the more people say "oh we will never get it back", then yeah its less likely they are to do it. If enough people were firm and loud about it then yes it could happen but thats not the case rn
Man I don't know who to believe anymore. I hears that everything ruined the game from the supports, to the tanks to the snipers, balancing the game around the pro players ruin it but not listening to pros also ruined it? oh and lets not forget that Sombra also ruined the game somehow. Did everyone ruin Overwatch or did nothing ruin it?
I think role queue was necessary regardless of goats, at least for regular solo queue player experience. You say that "everyone's DPS and I have to play Mercy" wasn't common, but no, it absolutely was, at least in my matchmaking bracket. So if you do want to play DPS, you either ignore everyone and play what you want, or you play flex tank/support perpetually. Suggested preferred queue solution sadly relies on players being honest and not exploiting the system to get the best queue times, and then playing whatever they wanted anyway. The only way to make player actually play what they selected, would be to make sure they can't select anything else. And besides, preferred queue already has to assume a certain team comp. Role queue does one thing - ensuring that player gets to play the role they want to play. It introduces queue times sure, but I think it is a necessary evil in a game where all roles are required to succeed.
You couldn't climb playing selfishly like that. If you were in a skill bracket without support or tanks you would be able to climb crazy fast by playing either. Also, don't forget that 2-2-2 was not a guarantee for a victory. I had my share of victories with crazy comps, like 1 support and 5 DPS, or 1-4-1. 2-2-2 flattened the game and removed alot of possibilities.
@@runehjelm9406 Well, when the choice is between "play what you want and don't climb, but at least you get to play and practice the role you like" and "play the role you really don't like all that much but someone has to" the actual solution is probably "play a different game". And yes, 2-2-2 is not a guaranteed victory, cause the other team is faced with similar problem. But, point is still that it's common for the team have six players who would rather play a dps, but someone kinda needs to at least heal, and also someone kinda needs to tank, which creates a shitty environment.
@@HaibaneKuu I have many times in OW1 experienced a 1-4-1 team steamroll a 2-2-2. It happened quite often.
Completelly agree, his way of thinking is probably related to ladder play or comp. in quick play it was outrageous to try test and learn shit when there were at minimum 3 dps per game. To make things worse in ladder some games were just unwinnable when the matchmaker decided to add 4 main support players to your team for example, 4 dps players and 4 tank players. Basically an auto loss. even seagull complained about this at the time so no if you played the game at the time you experienced this. Some players even dedicated themselves to be the filler/flex player to reduce this from happening.
I don't think the solution is to remove free will. You're unlikely to rank up that way, so not being flexible is therefore discouraged. I think open que is infinitely better and more fun than role que. But then again I am a tank main lol.
30:00 I'll never understand how junkrat can one shot a tank with his ult. In 5v5 it's literally a win button.
yeah, if you're in bronze.
@@Goldy01 junkrat main spotted
@@Goldy01 Damn I didn't realize skill level changed how much damage your abilities do that's crazy.
hes not even talking about his ult bro
@andrewb378 you guys really are disingenuous. You know they mean because it has a big hit box and eazy to destroy
A small part of me hopes season 9 is a bomb so they can seriously take a seat and look back at 6v6 and consider it. Nice video Iron keep it up bro
They won't. We could reduce the player population to 0 for a week and focus on filling the forums with a million posts that just say "Go back to 6v6" and they won't.
Welp season 9 is a massive success
Yeah, let's ignore the fact that they introduced 5v5 because tank population was critically low and DPS queue times where huge
This is absolutely insane. I started OW in like early 2019 and became a Brigitte main. For years everyone always, without fail, said she has weak healing and overall a bottom-tier hero no matter HOW amazing i was with her. Now I'm hearing Brigitte's been OP this whole time?? Feels like the time i spent on OW has been a lie or an alternate reality.
Many people left the game because of her
@@darklordish1 No. Brigitte wasn’t the cause, it’s Blizzard not knowing how to balance their goddamn game. If it wasn’t her, it would’ve been someone else.
@@AceKite00 what are you talking about wtf. I played it during that time. Many players from casual and hardcore communities left the game at that time. Brigitte was cancer character to face and her kit was OP. Everyone was fed up with her.
@@darklordish1 guess I came after all the nerfs. I was unaware of what happened before I arrived. Despite my experiences, I still highly enjoyed the game. Got over 800hrs on Brigitte. Nothings more satisfying than a DPS who think they can take me 1v1, only for them to try running away when they realize they’re getting their ass beat. 😂
I never understood the whole 'Brig OP' argument outside of her initial release, and even then, it was mostly just shield bash that was broken. Apart from that, I've always seen her as an unremarkable character
The one and only thing that truly ruined Overwatch is the fact that they try to make it into a competitive game. I don't care if I get a lot of flak for this, HERO SHOOTERS ARE NEVER WAS AND NEVER WILL BE COMPETITIVELY VIABLE. PERIOD. Ow, Apex, Val, LoL, Dota, R6...not a single one of them has competitive integrity. Other than that, the game was mostly fine except for a few times.
I disagree with your “starting fall of OW1” role lock saved the game for the lower ranks. How many games did people lose basically on purpose because there were 5 dps players and one Lucio player on a team, or 3 OTP’s for the same hero? Role lock saved the game in that regard, comp diversity only works when the entire team is on board, it does NOT work when people are whiney losers. I know you addressed “this” but if you were constantly a higher rank, you HARDLY saw it up that high. It was EXTREMELY common in Diamond and below
Yeah, but if you were below diamond you would either main tank or support or flex to get out of it, or just outskill. Any lobbies in diamond and above never had this 5 dps problem. I would actually get games diamond and above where we would all be tank and support mains (because that’s what would actually win the game) and people whould have to flex to dps. No joke. The game simply didn’t have to be ruined just because low ranks were mad that they didn’t want to play the game as it was intended. If you wanted to play dps only, no shit you’re staying low ranked. No one in high ranks complained about “flexing” because basically everyone knew and enjoyed multiple roles, and for the few one-tricks and whatnot the team would play around them because clearly their one trick was their best hero.
@@thinkmarkthink1314 that is a dogshit design philosophy which is the reason why many early players left the game. Also, I know i can disagree with this because I WAS the flex player who bit the bullet everytime and would play the off roles that I didnt enjoy but I did anyways because I wanted to win but it doesn't matter because there are 5 other variables on the team who can still pick 5 dps. In fact I have a recorded video of me playing back in plat/diamond where I had to pick orisa for my team with 4 other dps and one baptiste. I get wanting to make other people play roles that are needed but at the end of the day, most people are going to want to play the role they enjoy the most, which has historically been DPS since its the most fun role in the game. the reason that high ranked players complained about role queue because open queue is the queue that benefitted only them. Also, you know theres been an open queue for years right? Surely if everyone loves it so much you can just go right back into it. Oh right, its trash.
@tyreathian you're complaining about a you problem. Role lock only helped people who are too emotionally weak to communicate with their team.
@@samuelsmith9582 thats just objectively incorrect. "Hey we have 5 dps and 1 tank, can someone go support" "no fuck you" Like you're literally just wrong.
@tyreathian lmao, you're just deluding yourself to ameliorate your feelings. I was there too buddy.
What I hate about Kiriko is how her kit is overturned and basically goes against the rules of being a support character. (Speaking as someone who loves flank play style) When you catch a Zenyatta (old one at least) as reaper, he will die when you make a good flank. And mercy, she has to have a LINE OF SIGHT to actually escape. And when she doesn't. She dies. (Unless she gets lucky and kills you). Kiriko on the other hand is… just stupid. I catch her out and her hitbox is so small I can't hit her (skill issue duh). And not only that, she can just *snap* go to her teammates two countries away. Even if she has no teleport, she still out damages you with her 'hitscan' kunai shots and kills you in two or one hit. And as for her suzu… I absolutely despise it. It basically counters 95% of abilities and ultimate with just a single press. ''b-but you have to time i-'' Yes. And no?! Even if you throw it early, the vulnerability kicks in any way and saves you and your teammate. Supports in games shouldn't have huge DMG output and also be free to escape whenever they want on such a short cooldown. One time with suzu, I remember playing Orisa and catching the enemy off guard on the point and using my ult and just as I was about to slam the ground on full charge, bam suzu! And all that damage is neglected. Why?! It's so stupid. Kiriko doesn't require any skill or timing. It's just a saying to make themselves feel better than everyone. The only skill ceiling she has is her aim. And that's it. Not only that, but even if you manage to land a negative buff (like Cassidy's bomb) she can just cleanse it. Like. It's awful. I despise how their design philosophy just keeps going downhill with each release. Life weaver also counts into this. I don't care if it's underpowered to some, but it's a character that rewards bad positioning. If you had a bad positioning and fell down a hole. That's on you. Now you know how not to stand where you last stood and fell from. And continue playing. But duh! Life weaver can just pull you and fix your mistake. Yay! Also, his stupid platform just hard counters Orisa by just placing a platform under her. (I'm not an Orisa main btw. My most played hero is Reinhardt and you probably know how that character is in OW2) I don't know why I keep playing this game with the hopes of maybe one day hoping it will bring me joy. But that is… probably not going to happen. (Edit: I uninstalled overwatch 2)
I agree with the kiri and lifeweaver take. I main winston and the most frustrating thing is these bail out abilities. Nobody ever gets punished for a mistake because of these support heroes, so what's the point of diving a player who's out of position? I either feed and die or in the best case scenario I force 1 or 2 cooldowns and pray my DPS gets the kill. High risk, low reward. I wish every support was like lucio, ana or current brig (even though I think her "new" ult is a little busted).
@@abudgie6909dawg lifeweaver... its crazy blizzard looked at this character and actually put him in the game. I also played winston into a lifeweaver once it was like trying to swat a fly with a car antenna.
@averyterribleperson5292 he needs a rework ASAP. Super boring and annoying. The only value he ever gets is denying kills and making himself hard to reach.
@@abudgie6909go play cod
@governmentghost01 I don't know if you played overwatch 1, but back in my day we didn't have three different Immortality abilities. We didn't have any of them, actually. And the game was better for it.
As a casual player I always love watching what meta users worry about and it just doesn’t sound fun
12:11 Games before 222 were 5 dps/1 support in one team, or some weird hybrid of hog reaper mei soldier without support. At least on lower elo that is how games were. I would go lucio or tank every game picking last to see whaat rest are gonna pick. If enemy team run proper comp on a non open map game was lost from the get-go. 2-2-2 was the best thing happening to the game unless you were playing in top500 dps lobbies where you would have to wait forever. I would rather wait 5 more mins to play a balanced game than know I lost from start and have people arguing in chat we need a tank, go support and having to compromise every game. Q times not only increased by splitting roles, but also due to lack of updates, latest map being havana for years and no new content or heroes. Open q has been overglorified for no reason and people still complaining about hero lock is unreasonable. If it was that good, everyone would have switched to open q when they split the modes, but oh w8 top 100 at that mode was low diamond...
Either you were playing on the 1% lowest ELO or at wood tier or you only stuck to quickplay because this is just not true even within Silver. Everyone knows to get at least one healer and tank because any moron can play Mercy or Rein and even then someone will most likely pick Hog, someone will pick Zarya, someone will pick Ana or Zen, because there are so many tanks and supports designed for people who hate those roles. The only time 5 DPS was viable was when they let you stack heroes. You clearly have not played OW before 222 and if you did you clearly started after 2018. Not to mention this argument is basically, people are dumbasses so let's force everyone to be miserable instead of forcing players to learn the game correctly. But you're right nobody plays open que, could it have something to do with the fact that the game is now balanced for 222? Or maybe it has something to do with the myriad of reasons why we had to implement 222 in the first place
@@BlueLightningSky I played Overwatch since launch day. I fucking hated Overwatch on launch. There was no ranked play yet and every lobby was everyone stacking DPS and I'd be forced onto Mercy or Lucio, because healers were still absolutely required, but the variety of options was very limited. Zenyatta couldn't solo support so he didn't count. You could tell me that neither could Mercy or Lucio, but they were still more capable of it than Zenyatta was. I never played rank mode but I still came back for every new hero release to play quickplay and until 2/2/2 it was always like this, just the number of options for what to play as support opened up. Whenever I see people wax nostalgia for how good Overwatch was on launch, I can only view them at one of those dickheads who insta-locked Genji or Hanzo and would gladly play without a healer unless I was forced to be the adult and pick one of them so we could actually play the game. The few times I decided to be selfish, I'd get someone whining in chat about how they're always forced to play healer. Supports were always a problem for Overwatch, they always have been since day 1. Nobody wanted to play them but they were absolutely required. They added more options to get more people to actually want to play the role. Like I actually find Kiriko genuinely fun as hell to play and I enthusiastically pick her instead of feeling forced to. Doesn't mean the problems supports introduced are new. They couldn't just leave it at Mercy/Lucio sometimes featuring Zen forever. It was always going to become the problem it is now.
@@BlueLightningSky I advise you to stop making assumptions about others if you want to have a productive dialogue and be taken seriously. Game was as described on my end unless you stacked with people willing to flex. Even for gms non role q was rubbish. Imagine getting someone like Space or Hanbin on a team and enemy team having no tank player. What you think is gonna happen, is the dps or support player magically learn how to create space on par with these guys by playing tank or go yolo and have disadvantage from start vs enemy team? A game being lost from start is not a good game design.
@@panagiotisgoulas8539 role queue was a good addition IMO, i didnt mind goats tbh, but it did went on for far too long. I was a support player mainly. The only downside of going 222, was that you couldnt switch to a tank heavy comp if ur team was getting shit on by a widow player, sometimes u were forced to just wait out a match because it would come down to which teams widow was dominating. DPS queue times got long yes, but that was mainly a problem of tank not being enjoyable to play (there was too much cc and double shield was boring), had the meta been more fun for tanks (rein zarya, or dva winstion, or ball winston) q times wouldve been shorter. There wasnt really a shortage of support players at the time IMO.
i hated open q comp as well and would've never come back if role q didn't get added. So many games lost on hero select, 4 people pick dps, one guy picks tank and i have to fill a role i hate playing or lose i guess? I mean i wanted to be flexible but even then the comps were just horrible all the time. And even if the enemy team also has this: so what? It's a dumbed down stupid version of overwatch. Solo q comp pre role q at low elo was fucking MISERABLE and i am so sick of people saying it wasnt with rose colored glasses on. Yes, the good games were so much better than role q could ever do, but the average experience was so fucking awful its not even funny
It's funny looking back at it now, but I remember when we learned about Ana's mechanics. I was worried that the original 100% healing increase would lead to too much burst healing that could effectively negate the plays of DPS (plus you take away a lot of agency from anything that can heal), I was concerned that having a CD which can negate an ultimate means it provides as much value as that ultimate (not only sleep dart, but nade negating Zen's ult; it's not like you can bait it out and then immediately use it after to outplay as the team is dead by the time you could use it), and I was REALLY worried about the anti-heal mechanic itself and the long term implications it could have on the game (especially since some tanks had shields or the ability to eat the nade while others did not). Why 100% healing reduction? Wouldn't even 50% be insanely powerful? She was as close as you can get to giving a player everything, with only mobility and CD length to ride that fine line. I don't think any of those concerns are unfounded, especially knowing that the roster would increase overtime and there would be overlap. The healing on nade was too powerful and was nerfed. The concept of "negating" DPS plays is really rearing its ugly head as more and more abilities are able to do this, and is one of the reasons DPS doesn't feel great atm. In fact, we ended up with Suzu because of nade, which is an even greater offender. Anti-heal does remove a lot of agency from players., and less ways to try to counter it in 5v5 amplifies this. Abilities that can negate ults are an issue, and it will only get worse as more heroes are released. The anti-heal mechanic is a big problem, and if they add more abilities that have it things will get degenerate FAST. Queen having it on an ult is fine because of how rare it is, but for an ability 100% healing reduction is too much.
good take. Ana nade was one of the most powerful abilities in OW1, but enemy Kiri makes it pointless. I wonder if there's some meaning there, Kiriko, the new addition (made to counter some perceived flaw of the original), only worsens the condition it was meant to relieve. Bad medicine
the last time I had fun on OW was the 2020 October patch. That was some of the best OW i had played in awhile then they ruined it. I miss 6v6 and the strategy and communication that came between the 2 tanks.
Support main since 2016 and I agree 100%. I will fully admit that I'm not a very mechanically skilled player, and I mostly play Mercy and Moira. I knew that loosing a tank was going to be a nightmare for the balance of the game, but making every support stronger was a huge mistake. I used to be able to practice other support heroes without being a serious detriment to the team, but now since I'm not great at Bap, Ana, or Kiri I feel like I don't even have the opportunity to try to improve at other characters. At the end of OW1's life, I was able to flex relatively well to some of the mechanically easier tanks and dps. I stopped playing tank because I don't have enough tank flexibility to counter swap confidently, and I thought, hey maybe I can actually play dps now because the role is much less the 'star' of the show, but I realized that supports are basically just dps with heals at this point. I don't think that supports should be able to easily duel dps or tanks. But without that off-tank role to help keep flankers and snipers from dominating, you either duel or die now (unless you're Mercy and then you can just ping-pong around). The fact that snipers headshots were so oppressive they had to nerf them because they refuse to have 2 tanks is baffling to me. I'm 100% fine with some characters being out of my skill range, but I never want to be in a position where I feel like I am useless to my team because I can't (or don't want to) swap to the character required like tanks are now.
Well, nobody wanted to protect their supports, so they had to give them dueling capabilities. Otherwise you just won't have support players and queue times would be insane. Personally, once I realised, that supports are being pushed towards "dps, but with heals", Overwatch lost any appeal to me - I am not interested in dealing damage as support. And Mercy nerfs finished it, since 1 resurrect just never enough to push your team to victory.
@@ceu160193 If lower-skilled players aren't protecting their supports that's their problem. And it's not like the original overwatch cast's supports had no escapes. If you dove an Ana she could sleep you. If you dove a zen he could potentially burn you down but he should also be standing with his team so you can't dive *just* him. Lucio can wallride away. Mercy can fly away. I played Ana early in ow1 and she was great to play. And in lower ranks the highly-organized dives you saw in professional OW just didn't exist. It would be one monkey jumping onto you and any of those supports could deal with that, especially if their other support helped them. They gave supports dueling capabilities because they wanted supports that weren't just healbots. They liked the idea of supports that could heal *and* half-fill another role. That's why we got literally half-healer half-dps moira. That's why we got half-healer half-tank brigitte. That's why we got half-healer half-dps kiriko. You could even see this in the other roles. Doomfist was a half-dps half-tank because of all the shield he gave himself by doing damage. Even Junker queen was kinda half-tank half-support when shout was good. Very few of the (non-tank) new heroes actually squarely fit into one category.
@@ceu160193I main DPS and that is true. Sombra is a low effort rat that I hate so much I now tend to just mirror Sombra’s and wait until she 9 times out of 10 goes for our most vulnerable support atm and surprise kill her. I haven’t lost to a Sombra yet doing this and this is really how to deal with her not only for you but also your team bc you protect the targets she wants. HOWEVER whenever I play support most times I can expect absolutely no peels even if I position close. These “Dps but with heals” type supports don’t have to deal with this bullshit like Zen/Lucio/Mercy/ where you’re at the mercy of the Sombra and the dependency of your team affecting which heroes you can actually have fun on. It’s high rewarding a low effort gameplay that will always feel awful for anyone who enjoys the competitive aspect and learning the game as a whole.
I think this is an example of you can't please everybody. Making supports stronger wasn't just because no one wanted to help them peel. Since OW2 peeling is less possible in the first place. Maybe I'll just play Paladins more again, where as a support you can flex into a heavy healing or heavier damage playstyle depending on the comp. See the difference is in Paladins, is many tanks and dps can flex into a sustain heavy loadout, that doesn't replace having a dedicated healbot, but does make up for lower healing comps. Tanks and DPS in Overwatch can't. So allowing supports in Overwatch to do both is kind of toxic. They can have their cake and eat it too. I'm not saying it's top tier fun for a Reaper to jump you and knowing you're isolated and going to lose to him as a support, but I am saying it does feel kind of cheesy with how Overwatch is designed, that every support can comfortably duel him--the dps with lifesteal and an immunity of his own. By no means is it impossible to kill supports. But my best friend and I find ourselves complaining about "healers that don't do damage" every game. Because have of the roster heals PASSIVELY lol, like what are you doing in between? lol. All I can say, is if you ever played Paladins, you are currently staggered by how much the current OW team has been taking from them. Not because there's anything wrong with copying ideas, but because how some of these decisions are so out of context. @@ceu160193
@@rawkhawk414 Staying alive, that's what. I am all for not doing damage as support, as avoiding fights is my preference.
I miss 6v6 and pre role lock. I also miss the old Doomfist. Blizzard are too scared to take risks. They barely take any and since they rarely do, their risks are inflated to something worse (5v5 OW2)
They can't take risks because the community is constantly complaining for nothing lol. The community ruined the games. Top 500 skilled players wanted it to be easier and this is the result
We agree on preferring old Overwatch but you contradict your own idea of Blizzard not taking risks. The things you mention like 6v6 to 5v5, role lock, and Doom role swap are all big risks. Rebranding to Overwatch 2 was a risk, stopping PVE endeavors after promising PVE content was a risk, if the season 9 changes are real then that’s a huge risk, changing a ton of iconic heroes going into Overwatch 2 was a risk, reintroducing Brig bash and Cass CC nade are risks, reworking sombra and hog and pharah are risks, etc. Blizzard does take risks, they just aren’t the risks the OW community wants and usually these risks don’t improve the competitive health of the game. Videos and comments like these wouldn’t be made if Blizzard didn’t risk criticism by fundamentally changing the game. For real tho I agree with what you’re saying, I prefer OG Overwatch as well and hope we can revert bad changes.
@@LordXalad they needed something to launch ow2
Hey true let's make 4 more brigs then for "innovation"@@_Couldnt-Care-Less
@@PeaceMakerChad?
outstanding video essay, the work and passion that went into producing this will not be lost on any avid early days overwatch enjoyer. blizzard really lucked out and accidentally made one of the greatest team fps of all time then committed a hall of fame level fumble in its stewardship by refusing to properly care or learn about what they had inadvertently created. fairly sure the season 9 patch will go down as ow2's "release brig" patch. the universal bullet size increase will do more to rip out the soul of the game than any change since, even role lock or 5v5. there will be a return of the devolved game state that happened in OW1 from GOATs meta on. boring, slow, sustain and attrition-heavy game flow that played nothing like the fast and dynamic state that was so beloved in its first years. ironically for the same reason as in OW1, refusing to address rule-breaking support designs that output severely imbalanced impact/value levels.
They should stop adding new heroes cause theyre all utter cancer
@@Horrorvaultyoutube Not only that, but if they want to save the game, they would have to delete most of post-release heroes. It will never happen and they will rather see the game run into the ground instead of doing that.
@@Horrorvaultyoutube adding new heroes isnt the problem, its making new heroes with insanely broken abilities like suzu that is so bad. Jq is the best example of ow2 having not only new heroes that are bad.
Man i feel like its impossible to play tank now. Dps feel too strong and i never get healed now so i just lose a bunch of games as Dva.
It’s really quite simple why games like this always fizzle out. The skill floor is just too high so the gap isn’t wide at all. People still around only care about playing META instead of just having fun
What is so weird to me is that they basically took so many ideas from Paladins. ....But still fail to see one of the most fundamental balancing aspects of that game: Cauterize a.k.a. antiheal. (well fail is not the right word, but I don't think they really understand its impact sometimes) In Paladins, antiheal was a purchasable effect from its item shop. This meant that tanks, supports, and dps could all have an antiheal effect on their weapon shots. It was so necessary that eventually the Paladins dev team made it into a global aura effect that applies to all weapon shots that scales with the length of the game. Currently, in Paladins, every hero applies 25% antiheal for approximately 2 seconds upon doing any weapon damage that by the last round will be 80% antiheal. Now the change to make it a global effect that scales up in strength over the length of the game nerfed many Paladins heroes who depended on sustain to be powerful. These heroes have needed partial reworks and buffs since. It was also a bit controversial for that reason as well as its existence in the shop representing some trust from the developer for people to express themselves. However, it freed up everyone for an extra item slot, allowing for some extra skill expression. Antiheal is not just a counter item. In Paladins, a game where you can run 5 healers still, it is a fundamental aspect of the game's balance. If it didn't exist, the game would be unfun. Team fights would potentially go on forever. Paladins lacks a workshop mode but of the "custom games" fans have created, none exemplify why Antiheal is core to the balance more than "sumos". "Sumos" is 4 tanks 1 healer, antiheal disabled, no attacking the enemy healer unless they step onto point, so endless point fight lol. So as of Season 9, Overwatch is approaching a balance state that is ... less developed than Paladins, a game which makes probably 1% of Overwatch's income, that was mismanaged horribly by Hi-Rez and the ex-dev team, and is currently developed by 4 to 12 people at any time. Blizzard arbitrarily increases everyone's health, hurtboxes, and hit volumes. Paladins already has this as it was designed initially to be more Moba like, like Smite. Guess what? It's a complaint Paladins players have had forever that devs have said is unchangeable for their current team without rebuilding the game. So lots of us have always been glad that Overwatch, Paladins' successful younger sister, always allowed for tighter skill expression when it comes to aiming shots and abilities. Some of these changes are just so baffling. The DPS antiheal passive Blizzard just added feels tacky and tacked on. If they are inspired after playing Paladins they should know without us having to test it that Tanks are going to feel literally miserable without it. Paladins has items in its shop for example that lower cooldowns, or increase EHP and reload speeds. Yet before the introduction of the global antiheal effect, you were HARD throwing or stuck in metal ranks if you thought you didn't need to first buy it as support or tank lmao. I feel like we're beta testing a 7 year old game lmao. And it's impossible to disagree with you that Ana is and has been one of the best Overwatch heroes ever. For me it's simple, she has always had a CORE mechanic from Paladins, one that is OBVIOUSLY always impactful in a game that ALWAYS has healers lmfao. Oh well. Interesting video dude! Nice perspectives.
It's cool to see someone mention Paladins in a positive manner
Paladins is the last standing man in the hero shooter games, the turtle that won the race@@Mr_Mistah
Funny. Team Fortress 2 also slows heal rate on recently damaged players of even less than 50% for 10 seconds. Which makes Blizzard even slower on adding such a mechanic
Couldnt agree more iron ow
This guy is preaching to the overwatch choir, i started playing in 2016, i automatically starting loving this game when the end of season 3 and beginning of season 4. Tried out rank and was hooked on it. 6v6 was THE BEST THING that ever happened to overwatch and bei g able to switch from tank to dps or support was AWESOME. 5v5 just seems like its too fast and when one person gives up its then a 4v5 down to people leaving and youre the last one in the match. I remember having to group up with people and making a squad from scratch to try to get wins. Thise were the days.
Don't really agree but still a well put video nonetheless. A few remarks : - Past the honeymoon phase of OW1, the open queue style of play was miserable in low ranks (meaning low diamond and below), literally 10 people playing deathmatch as DPS and one in each team trying to actually play the game correctly. This was a terrible learning experience and a lot of people became tank main or support main because nobody else would pick these characters, support especially. The reason why role queue had big queue time is because OW1 bread the mentality of "being the one that makes the big play killing everyone", so nobody wanted to be an enabler of plays. Role queue improved the lower rank experience greatly. I think it's fair for high-rank players to say that their want for 6v6 isn't just nostalgia, but it definitly is for low-ank players. Unless you were the DPS playing deathmatch I guess - I don't think role preference like you're describing would work because same mentality, people would just want to be the DPS and lower rank play would keep being miserable. - If they were to bring back 6v6, they'd need to find a way for lower rank play to not be "stack behind a shield/your tank's ass and shoot from the middle of the road. It taught the game super badly, encouraged actual missplay, and made any low rank game never about playing the map. - I agree healing needs to be nerfed across the board, and I think healing boosts and anti-heal need to be rethought. But it shouldn't mean that supports should be fodderized for the enjoyment of the other two, which i how tank feels now. Support should be able to outplay people diving them, it's how they outplay that's problematic. If the meta becomes "make the support explode in a second by diving them", maybe it'll feel good for tanks and DPS, but it would just be shifting the issue. Oh and yeah, nerf Baptiste, rework his lamp and remove regenerative burst. - "It's an easy baby role" why are we talking like kids on a playground here ? Seems like a weird thing to say while the rest of the video is well thought-out. I enjoy 5v5 overall (I flex most of the time, solo q and with friends), but I agree that there are core designs that need to be rethought. Hiring pro players would be great, but you shouldn't balance for scrims only. A top-down vision is good, but you shouldn't make a change if it makes the gameplay of the majority of the player base miserable. Still a nice video though.
What are we even talking about? Why is everybody always onboard of this you shouldn't balance for pro-players train? The whole point of Overwatch's entire marketing/advertisement campaign always focused on how it's a professional competitive e-sports experience the entire time, and then the community comes in and starts justifying terrible changes using casuals and accessibility which we are only bringing up because the game is not doing well. Had the game been doing great competitively and didn't have all this disaster preceding the current state of it which deserved plenty of criticism - nobody would even make a peep in favor of new players or accessibility. The only reason it's used now is because of the current state that it's in.
@@Nayutune The game is played by mostly casual players, and most of them don't care about esports. If you don't make the game enjoyable for them >too
Are you silver or gold perchance? Also cs n chess both prove your niche arguement wrong. The dont let pros balance train is literally just people like you that dont really have a indepth knowledge but also assume the pro's will only do whats "best for them or there rank" which has been proven wrong with almost every single game that cares enough to listen to there pros.
@@Pes._ No but I used to be, so I know how these ranks work. Chess isn't remotely similar, and the way CS plays make it so balancing for both level of play is way less tricky. I didn't say "don't let the pros balance", not even "don't make them part of the balancing". I said that OW isn't a game you should balance for scrims >only
@@SekundesCCFFVII Overwatch is already quite niche despite their focus on casuals. You say role-queue was a good change for casuals but in my opinion it's the opposite. 6 tanks or 6 soldier's running around may have been stupid but that's what people had fun with. You take that out and now casuals are forced to play proper heroes or they'll get flamed. No, they would rather just stop playing instead. People that are left playing right now - most aren't really what you would describe as "casual". They are competitive players who call themselves casuals because they don't really care enough to improve at the game. I feel that very casual people have left long ago around 2019-2020 and never came back.
super high quality and engaging vid. i hope you do more in the future!
I think it’s the lack of variety in the support role. In other role based/ moba type games the supports don’t just heal they provide a good amount of ways to buff your team and debuff enemies but in overwatch all it feels like they know how to do with supports is make healers.
I think my absolute fav balance moment was on Bap, for MONTHS "hey hes kinda op guys, lamp, shift, dmg, aoe heals, please nerf!!!" they then nerfed EXOBOOTS... AND THATS IT...
I was GM back in season 6 of OW1, but over time it seems like the devs are really scared to do what is ultimately necessary which I felt like was seriously nerf healing and sustain, and it led to me quitting the game. I think the devs are being led astray by a loud minority of support players. Glad to see someone with serious credentials has a similar opinion.
Bring back 6v6, nerf all 2018+ Supports to the ground, kill off Sojourn and restart Mauga from scratch. That's it. That is literally all this bloody game needs. No bullet size changes, no extra health or universal regen buffs; none of these beating-around-bush duct tape changes.
Great video, you got my sub. Everyone who played overwatch for multiple years from the start knows everything you mentioned, but I don’t think i’ve ever seen it compiled so well like this. Obviously 5v5 and role queue are just worse, but even before that I think the biggest problem in overwatch has always been the release of new heroes who (relatively) require no skill and get way too much free value. Personally I mained lucio and zarya in overwatch 1, and because lucio was always my best and favorite hero, I was always so baffled by the release of new supports that required less than half the skill but got just as much or even more value (and not even compared to just lucio, this applies to ana and zen as well). Lucio required amazing movement and experience in order to thrive, zen was a glass cannon and ana relied heavily on good positioning, good aim, good decision making, etc. with her sleep dart being an all or nothing ability which if she hit would save her and if she missed she died. Basically, all three had high skill ceilings with medium to high skill floors. Then compare these to moira, brig, bap, and it's such a joke. I could never understand what the devs were smoking when I would get in a 1v1 with a moira and have all of my skill in movement negated by auto-aim that would melt me, meanwhile moira could phase away at any moment and either heal herself with orb or hit me with even more auto aim in the form of damage orb. When diving on lucio you could just get bashed by brig and all your speed canceled so you insta-die. Even when you compare the ults it’s no contest. Brig ult just gives you a lot of heals, moira ult can be popped in any situation. Sure nano is pretty easy to use but it would get most value by ult combo-ing (actually playing together) or using it to save a low teammate or a teammate getting dived. Lucio ult had to be correctly timed to get value because ult too early and it was for nothing, too late and your team died already. Zen ult was pretty much the same thing but a little easier, but this made sense because zen is inherently one of the easiest targets in the game. It always felt like the new supports they were adding to the game made it worse rather than better, especially as someone who’s best role was support. As a zarya main, obviously the bread and butter of the game was being off-tank, which was one of the most enjoyable experiences in overwatch as a whole. I can’t believe they literally deleted it with 5v5. You’re definitely right. If the devs took even a bit of advice from pros maybe they wouldn’t have made the game worse with every major patch. I haven’t played overwatch 2 since trying out the beta and immediately realizing that 5v5 was clearly worse. I actually swiched to valorant, a game that was actually designed for 5v5.
Something to consider is that at launch, Mercy had the highest sustained single target healing in the game. She had high healing, Zenyatta had a set-it-and-forget-it healing orb, and Lucio had aura healing. They each had drawbacks: Mercy couldn't attack while healing, Zen had no mobility, and Lucio didn't heal very much without his cooldown. It was so balanced. When Moira dropped, she had all three and none of the drawbacks.
Weird. Back in 2018 when I said, a character that did cleave damage, stunned, booped, did quick low aim single target heals AND aoe heals along with, at the time, a 600 pt shield was game breaking. And i was told repeatedly "get gud"
Funny how the season 9 changes made a lot of these problems even worse, spot on video.
The big question is… should ow be balanced based on top500 / pro games gameplay or based on the majority of players who are not in that bracket? The majority will bring in more income than top500?
As a non top 500 player I am having less fun now than ever and have even quit. As a tank main I have never been more miserable and most tank mains will say the same. They should have listened to the top 500 on some of this.
No, you should balance around top level play. certain heroes will always be closed off to bad players, ex widow. But that is okay, because there can be heroes designed to be super accessible but not strong in higher elos, ex. old symetra. They added in a lot of easy supports, but they shouldve made them weaker than the harder to play supports because people dont get angry with they lose fairly, but to something they think isnt fair. for example, most people dont expect supports to fight a dps in a duel reliably, and so, in order to win that as a support, you have to land hard skill shorts, frag or outplay, but generally you would lose that 1v1, especially towards similarly skilled players. Which is why, if a zen frags you back in the day, when there was a lot less sustain, when you were on tracer or genji, you didnt feel too bad about it, same with when ana was balanced. Nade and sleep were on long cool downs, so in order to win a 1v1, they had to land a shot, a sleep, the another shot and nade, or frag shots. The difference mainly between ana and zen and kiriko and bap, is that the latter have a lot of escape AND damage/ duel potential. Ana and zen only have duel potential but no escape (except trans). this means that ana and zen MUST outfrag you or die or be in a much better position in the map (but the whole point of flankers is to pick them off when they are seperated from their team). Kiriko can run away from 1v1s she is losing in addition to being good at them, bap can use immort in a 1v1, basically forcing the dps to stop damaging them and go for lamp, or to retreat. Take away immort from bap and hed be much more balanced. Take away Suzus invulnerability and kirikos ability to teleport to teammates out of line of sight, she would be much more balanced.
@@starhaven1881 i quit in season 5, i tried season 9, played one game and just uninstalled when i died. Im not even that tempermental usually but damn is overwatch just pure garbage. Its literally a rotten animal corpse.
@@averyterribleperson5292you need therapy
Tldr
as a support main i think the problem is mainly the reactivity of support cooldowns characters like bap, kiri, and life weaver all have very reactive cooldowns and how they can save people from all sorts of situations this is compounded by the abilities having some offence utility ex: bap using imort to keep himself alive,kiri using suzu to also keep herself alive while healing is pretty overtuned, but overall that is something that i think can be fixed by adding more counters to healing or outright reducing it
This video makes the most sense out of any video I've seen on this matter; your takes are quite good and really interesting to hear. Unfortunately I think Overwatch is just going to continue on its decline, however. So much lost potential, because Blizzard preferred band-aid fixes to real solutions. I also like how you focus on the game's history to clarify balance and player reward. I guess history will have to repeat itself until Blizzard gets their memory back. This was a great watch, I'd also be interested to hear your take on the upcoming Season 9 patch notes.
NEW ANGLE OMGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG
bro had to get that last second mew in there
While OW1, Support had to take care 6 players(include support self since support didn't have selfheal passive). Mercy had 20 hps when she doesn't take damage for 1 sec. Now in OW2 supports need to take care only 3 people(Tank/DPS1, 2) most of time because of support's selfhealing passive. Mercy have 17.3 ~ 70(valk) selfheal while healing team. It's just painful to watch enemy mercy just not dying because of this. 6v6 was so much better than current 5v5.
It seems like the best way to describe this entire game is like that Tim Robinson ghost sketch “You can’t just keep changing the rules because you don’t like how I’m doing it!”
Disagree a bit on brig. Sure she caused issues but we never talk about why she was made in first place. People complain about her and what not but not talk about how oppressive dive was and blizzs refusal to nerf dive heroes. Starting of OW was filled with just winston dva tracer every game and it was horrendous to play against. Plus, even if they had deleted brig at that point, i doubt goats would have died. Pro players would have definitely come up with some other variation of goats without brig (probably with moira or bap if he was released later on).
Great video, however I think it's worth mentioning some elements which feel a little short sighted. It's great to have such a solid recount, but at the same time, we are mostly just recounting the hand we were dealt, not the alternatives. I.e. If the game was so easily fixable by nerfing brig and bap, why would blizzard be so obstinate in doing so? I think the problem they ran into, but we didn't have the setting to see is what would the queue times look like without brig, and later on bap? Would enough players play support? I don't know if we have a 'blizzard babying support problem' as much as 'they feared the alternative'. I think the problem with character design blizzard have, between multiple dev teams at this point, is "how do we make supports players enjoy playing into, that players also enjoy playing?" I think part of that balance problem is that the typical sentiment is that "dying feels worse then getting cucked the kill, so do we balanced that outcome by proportionality, ease of access, or reciprocative threat?" For the longest time, I've stilled parroted that healing is far too necessary, and only manages to aggravate: no-one wants to heal, and no-one wants to need healing. This upcoming patch is a step in that direction, where damage overall is going to be more consistent, but not healing. Bigger healthpools means less one-shots, and less burst impact, but lower healing means ordeals need to be more consistent and will be decided sooner. Only part I fear is that with healing being less impactful, we'll have more uptime on unfilled healthbars. Some extra points which are worth mentioning: - do we actually believe kiriko being strong is the main reason other supports needed buffs going 5v5? - Did players actually know the problems with brig on inception. The characterization I recall is that inspire was one of the last things players actually concluded on being the problem. As much as we know it now, we can't be so "I told you so" in the past about it, after they nerfed everything else. (I don't watch all, so there may be some outliers) - A lot of the examples mischaracterise and/or idealised events, where exaggeration shouldn't be necessary. An example of this was the bap healing; bap cannot heal 6 players given he is one of them, his heal had 60 on impact, but less on splash, the splash is far tighter than would fit into a teams positioning. Don't get me wrong though bap's output is too much for how independent he is. - I don't know exactly what a lot of OW's balance problems are, I often agree where to point to, but sometimes the language we use mischaracterises the issue. Like AoE healing being the problem, but lucio's being an exception. For these instances we should find what the difference is between abilities, and complain about that element. - Another example of this conflating problem is Suzu as an Immo. Now, I don't have so much of a problem with suzu, but I'm also not so attached to it that I'd complain about it going. We are conflating a .75 second immortality with that of baptiste's, which of I agree; his is both lame to fight, and I assume lame to use. We should also compare other non-hit abilities at this rate as 'invulns': Iceblock, moira fade, reaper fade, doom fist ult. Deflect is effectively an invuln unless we pretend his back is left open most of the time. Zarya bubble counts right? Does anyone get my point? I don't think Suzu is the main issue kiriko has, I think it's the lack-there-of punishability afterwards, and maybe the ease of reactive use against ults.
I'm missing 6v6 and my friends who used to tank together. It's cool to see tanks together again in open queue and I think shows another tank belongs. With the rework on all the tanks I'd definitely like to see that a 6v6 would look like in OW2
When Brig came out I remember just getting a sinking feeling seeing the kit reveal.
Looking back I have so many mixed emotions. Nostalgia, grief, anger. It is actually crazy they changed the whole format rather than fixed the character causing the issues
I started Overwatch 1 as a Hog main at launch. I loved being an off-tank. Junker Queen is perfect for 6v6, but in 5v5, she just feels... outclassed. It's very strange. She can work in certain super-aggressive setups but other than that, she feels like she just stalls out, loses momentum and dies if there's anything that can resist her. Another tank to support her would make her SO much more threatening.
God I remember those days after launch of OW1. Reaper and McCree (Now Cassidy) were the heroes I was the most excited to play as. Reaper isn't awful nowadays, but Cass suffers a lot due to his low ammo and limited Magnetic grenade reliability now. I won't get into detail of how I would change things, but as of right now post launch OW1 should be a major reference to how the game should be balanced. It was so much better back then because of the lower healing outputs. Everyone had the ability to make plays because of that as you say, but nowadays you have to use so many abilities/resources just for one kill sometimes.
Hey, OW2 Player here. I buied OW1 in 2021 and played it casually with Friends for a few hours. The Idea of the game is one the best FPS in the market but even as a Player who started at Ow2 Release i can feel the frustration of playing Tank in 5v5 and the huge Support Power creep. I am a Support main myself. At the start of Ow2 i fell in Love with Zen because He was very fun to play imo and i am still a Zen enjoyer to this day. I have played him every season even in His "worst state" compared to other Support heros. I have watched Samitos Videos about 5v5 and how the DLC-Supports (Ana Not included) ruined the game. And after playing this Game for over a year now i want to go Back to 6v6 too. Most Support heros are way too op, DPS feels terrible to play because you cannot pierce through all the sustain and Immo abilities by yourself by making a good Play (Not to mention that theres no off-tank for making space and take duels first) and Solo-Tanking in 5v5 feels miserable and way more 1-dimensional than the other two roles. Not to mention that counter Picking in 5v5 Is way stronger than in 6v6. And finally someone agrees that Most heros dont have an identity anymore because of the 5v5-format. DVA, Zarya and Ball just dont work as a solo Tank. They can be "countered" Just by Picking a certain Hero so easily even in lower ranks. Zen has lost His identity too compared to ow1. Hes not this "glass-canon" Support anymore. He has 225HP and His snap-kick because why would you prefer a high-dmg Support Hero like Zen (Discord orb Not included and even this ability had to get nerfed because its way too op on a Solo-Tank) when there are heros Like Bap, Kiriko and illari with high-dmg, high healing, good Mobility, high sustain. The effort you have to Take in to get value and the risk to reward on Most of the DLC-Supports is Not comparable to the OG Supports (Lucio, Zen, Mercy, Ana) and even these Supports had to get buffed to compete with the other Supports or to Work in 5v5. I wish Blizzard would fundamentally Change Most of the Supports to make them more fair to play against. And imo all role-passives should get removed in the First place. And i am very scared of season 9 because most changes dont address These core issues and will probably cause more issues. More and more heros like Junk and Hanzo will lose their identity. The Tank role will get destroyed even more because of the new DPS-Passive and more HP on Tanks wont change anything about it. And the skill ceiling of the game will get destroyed too because projectiles/bullets will get a bigger hitbox. I dont think Blizzard fundamentally understands their own Game and why the game became Game of the Year in 2016.
Maybe I'm really dense. but what is the main problem with all the healing? is it really that much?
the main problem was that nobody died, and on top of that they added abilities that quite literally stopped people from dying, so nobody died
People can make positioning mistakes and never get punished because they get suzu'd, lamped or life gripped. You can't punish mistakes anymore.
Great video. All the pro highlights from back in the day made me nostalgic
I miss duoing Winston Ball-ing with my brother on double tank... :( This was a really well thought out video, and I agree with everything you outlined. I really hope that someday we revert back to when things were fun and stable instead of this bandaged up mess where problems are tackled incorrectly and only create further problems, much like with Double shield causing low pickrate, and their response to get rid of a tank instead of addressing double shield
If you want to see what Overwatch 2 would look like if it stuck to a 6v6 format, come check out 6v6 Adjustments. Games are hosted multiple times a week on a custom made balance patch. I haven’t played vanilla OW2 in over a month because of how much better this is comparatively.
Dawg same before i quit the game browser was my go to. I loved it so much lol i miss tiny ow tho
I’ve been saying this for years. As a tank main it’s so frustrating that my favorite role always took the blame for every degenerate meta
As someone that’s been playing since release I don’t really agree, healing and keeping someone from dying adds another level of things to take in account and I find it fun tbh.
Ow2 2022 finals was basically a 1v1 to see which team had the better sojo. Lol
Great video you for sure know what you’re talking about. Actually crazy how blind blizzard is to there own game and how they causes their own downfall. Even crazier how most of the community fails to acknowledge that brig, Moira, bap (aoe healing) is literally what caused the double shield sustain meta. But no tanks must get punished for a support problem every time.
In Paladins, Overwatch's poorer sister, there is no role queue. So there's still a lot of freedom with team comps. However, the meta is almost always Point Tank, Off tank, Main Support, Sustain DPS, Burst DPS. With lots of variations. I just wanted to stress that among people who actually like playing good team comps in ranked to win, everyone still values the off-tank and finds joy in the teamwork. Paladins has always been 5v5. Yeah, there's lots of people that will just not even pick a healer when it's needed...in a game with no in-round swaps lol, but they are typically rarer in comp and since it's a smaller playerbase those people will get called out next round lol. They are the minority but sure they exist in metal ranks at an alarming rate. Why? Because they don't trust their teammates. And honestly, although I hate fragrantly not picking a role that would help the team, sometimes they're right to just pick a random DPS they're comfortable on. Paladins at least has the option for players to have created a sustain based card loadout for almost every champion.
but people have won even without healers, i have won multiple times in a pure dps comp, bc we deal so much damage no healer can deal with it
@@cesar6447More often than not, dps only groups get stomped. Napkin math doesn't apply much in an actual match. There's a reason dps only groups are considered throws
One of my fondest OW1 memories was on illiois, we picked 6 DPS and absolutely steam rolled the other team who ran a normal comp to start. Dude in chat was so mad, but wanted to play soldier. By the end of the game his mind was blown. I agree with the priority queue point. Also if you weren't doing to hot on a specific role, you could switch roles with a teammate that might've been good at a hero that you weren't. Now you almost have to know how to play every support/tank in the game if you want to play those roles.
This is such a well put together video that had so much love put into it that i think is only held back by the headset mic.
Im an ow2 player, never saw the og. But i really wanna see what 6v6 can do. Especially with a lot of the tank changes, i think tanks are a few minor (health) nerfs away from being pretty good in 6v6 format
I quit with the roadhog nerf way back in OW1. Making hook into primary unable to kill showed me there was a fundamental misunderstanding of the role the character filled.
Ive mained healer in every single game where being a "support/healer" is possible simply because im the youngest out of all my friends so that means I got stuck with roles that none of them wanted. I can say with the UTMOST confidence and a dedicated life long healer/support main, IVE NEVER SEEN A GAME WITH HEALERS/SUPPORTS AS STRONG AS THEY ARE IN OVERWATCH. Its actually insane. Every single game that has a dedicated healer/support role, has come with the very traditional trade off. By yourself, you are extremely weak and basically a free kill. However, with teammates and coordination, you are the strongest most important person in the game. Overwatch breaks all traditional healing rules, and takes it a step further.
Kingdom of Hearts stream when?
amazing video
When game devs hire pro players to their balancing teams, you get destiny 2 pvp
they gave mitigation abilities to supports instead of off-tanks since off-tanks no longer exist. they need to bring back 6v6 to return to what made overwatch great: big plays, quick deaths, and quick respawns.
Guess which mains buys all the skins in the shop.
Your comment about off tanks contesting flanks is so goddamn true dude, trying to contest damage and cooldown as 1 tank feels like I’m reliving the end mission to Halo Reach just getting my shit pushed in from all directions
they've power crept the game to such a horrible amount. there's so much damage now because they wouldn't stop amping the healing and invulnerabilities and damage from supports, add in the fact that like you said, there's no off-tank to contest, it's just butt fuck the tank to death while healers pop every CD to try and keep them alive.
To me, the biggest problem of the OW1 release was the lack of counter play options. They tried to fix it by adding supports that could negate. It started out great with Ana; like you said: a well designed hero with clear counter play. But as the game progressed it became clear that, with easier and easier negates, there came knock-on effects that flat out brought the game to an impasse. In my opinion, only soft negates should exist in a game that allows you to freely swap heroes. Hard negates do not work in this format, yet they are rampant. It isn't fun. It isn't skilled. And, as any dive hero main can tell you, they are comically o.p. If you play Tracer it's painfully obvious that Kiriko and Lifeweaver are fundamentally problematic. In no universe should a lousily timed button press counter an ultimate. The hero design philosophy simply cannot coexist with the current format. Something has to give.
do it all charachters should just simply not exist, sigma is still worse than mentioned. edit: also echo as a dps still shows insane power creep until very recently that its giga nerfed.
I have been playing OW since the beta as Mercy and Lucio main. Before the issue was that no one wanted to play Support because it was boring and too dependable on tanks, there was way too much stun and you depended way too much on your Tanks to stay alive, one mistake of a tank could lead you into getting picked easily then get blamed for that, leading to frustration. Nowadays Supports are just DPS with Self-Healing and an extra ability to support allies, which just means that there is no distinction between Support and DPS roles, having the game being 1 Tank + 4 DPS, which is not what OW used to be. Overwatch needs a full reboot or reset to square one, to go back on fundamentals. If they stripped every hero to just their base with a few extras and reworked them to work in a 5v5 or return to a 6v6 I know OW would become a timeless masterpiece right there and then, they need to understand that being Support doesn't COMPLETELY mean having HEALING as the Support option, that's why I loved Symmetra back then, her Support was an impactful Teleporter to bring everyone quickly back to the fight or an important player while providing weak turrets that slows enemies push for a few seconds and a small shield as HP (It should've been that it swapped 75HP for shields and not GIVE +75HP as shields, that way she still has pseudo healing) but in their infinite wisdom they transformed what was a Support Hero at its core into a DPS one and look what happened, she was in rework hell for almost half of the OG game's life, when they could've easily added a Symmetra clone to the DPS roster that had today's skills and they made Sigma out of her moving shield, so also a Tank. There isn't TOO many changes they would need to make that would strip characters off their identity either, but with this said I'd love to see Kiriko becoming a Cleansing + Buffing Support with her Ult and Susu now giving big cooldown reductions and a very small one respectively, Bap could become the "immortality" Support that controls ONE lamp as his ult for one ally or multiple but cuts its length, but gives invulnerability to damage before breaking but not to knockback (Pretty much the Ubercharge of the TF2's Medic) and buffs allies' DPS with his small square wall for a few seconds and has no healing. And Lifeweaver become a reposition focused Hero with mobility in mind, where he can save allies by pull/push/lifting allies to safety while very slightly healing them and giving armor as his ultimate until it fades or gets destroyed. And so on for the rest of the cast, they could focus on every hero having 1 or 2 things that are their own and not bleed too much into another hero's kit. Overwatch is on death's door imo, nothing since it became OW2 has made me feel like it was the same game I once played back in 2016 thru 2018. I love how the new tanks would've been infinitely funner or enjoyable if there was another Tank to rely on, though the healing would've made them a nightmare for DPS. But the devs thought the 2 chonks were the problem and not the other 2 ants keeping them alive and took away one chonk but kept the overhealing ants, very cool Blizzard thanks.
I’d love to go back to 6v6, I miss my fellow tank players and only seeing them all as enemies isn’t great. But it would probably be Herculean task since it isn’t just about balancing the tanks for the format, a lot of tanks would need a rework though. Orisa, mauga, and hog simply can’t exist with another tank in their current state. it’s making it so that people actually want to play them because it would mess up queue times again, and that, I don’t know how to do.
iron gaming 🔥
The problem is, despite the OWL existing; Overwatch has never been a competitive game. You need only look at the design philosophy from base, and especially more so with each release (as you so state in the video) to see this. When Tracer is arguably the only hero in the entire game that they correctly designed (proven by how little they've changed her over the years), you know the game is systemically fucked from top to bottom. OW was at it's absolute best as a casual game where everybody was bad at it. People becoming good at it and having an eSports scene forced exposed the game for how much of a flawed experience it really adds up to be. The game did not generate a comp scene naturally, it was forced by its own devs with money. You talk about them not using pro player feedback to foresee why char's like Brig and Sigma should not exist on live, but why would they? It's a casual game. It sucks for pro players sure, but this is what happens when you invest stock into a game that clearly was not meant to be played at the competitive level. Don't get me wrong, the devs were absolutely incompetent I agree, no matter what. But that pro players could not see where Blizzard's priorities lie I think is on you guys. You should've had the foresight to see this game was not enjoyable at the comp level, and you're only now seeing it after many years of coping. Players getting angry when they lost and not feeling any sense of enjoyment when they won, support power creep, increasingly aids hero design, 2/2/2, 5v5, all the signs were there. This game should not have had a comp scene period (or atleast should've had one barely bigger than the size of Paladins).
In general, any game that is built upon unique characters with abilities, is and will never be competitively balanced just by nature of how how they interact with the game. Rainbow six siege is a good example, it's a tactical shooter but also an hero ability shooter, so people always pick the one with the most meta ability, when that gets nerfed, they pick the one with second strongest ability. Humans have a limit, most pro players are already operating at the mechanical peak of knowledge and aim, so the only major difference is choosing the right characters to win. Characters in overwatch are not on the same level and balancing becomes way more complicated when those characters unique ability has to interact with 40 other unique abilities. Every change single is an indirect change for 2 other things. However at the same time, completely disregarding their opinion because they're pros is not a helpful solution either. The devs did force a competitive scene and spent hundreds of millions of dollars building it, that clearly shows they care about it, so ignoring the people they've invested so much into his weird. If you're going to give the players exclusive access to early content, under the guise of getting feed back, then ignore everything they've said, how is that the pro players fault? They should just call it what is, it's glorified hype click bait so content creators can get early accesses to content to hype their fans.
The majority of OW players are not pros. They have other responsibilities and only a certain amount of time to dedicate to OW as a game. Even if they play competitively, the vast majority of them cannot even approach the top players unless they fully dedicate their time. Which, if they want to, good on them. But to expect every single player in every single match to have this mentality is insane. Trickle-down balancing simply doesn't work because most people do not play on the level of pros. I remember back during GOATS rarely anybody in comp (mid to high Plat was where I was at) actually ran a proper GOATS comp. But what was consistent was that any comp without Brig lost to a comp with Brig. I'm not saying pros don't have good insight into a game, nor am I saying a game should be balanced around bronze players. But I absolutely agree that Blizzard tried to force an esports scene onto the game instead of letting it grow naturally. If they focused on making *a fun game* instead of a "balanced" one maybe things would've been different. As I always say, optimization is the death of fun.
Great video! Love that you brought up how terrible double shield was for lower ranks bc there is a false notion it was only for high ranks.
I agree with this. The biggest mistakes blizzard made were introducing new heros to nerf metas. They should have rebalanced / nerfed / buffed champs to defuse op metas instead of just keeping it as strong and releasing a must pick counter support (or tank)
Oh and obviously buffing literally 90% of all the heros cuz 1 or 2 heros were too strong instead of nerfing the op picks.
go harder on support players.... Devs are delusional sure yes... but support communities are if not more delusional than devs themselves. support communities also are factors of this games failure.
I only played Overwatch 1 in 2017 back when I mained Lucio and I don’t play many online games in general but could you explain the problems in the community, I like playing supports in most games and I’d like to be aware of problems to be aware of
Unfortunately you couldn't be more wrong about 5 dps games. Low ranks were absolutely fucked with the old open queue. Losing games off the rip was just unfun bullshit Still agree with most points in the video however
I don't see a problem with this honestly. Yeah lower rank players preferred choosing character they like over what's meta and that's okay. If they want to do that - then let them do it, where is the problem?
@@Nayutune The problem is that you either play the role you want and get bad team comp that doesn't function hoping the opposite team also doesn't run a good comp, or you play what team needs, but don't get to play what you want. If you go second route, you probably don't even get to practice the role you like enough, because most of the games you'll be forced to flex. Therefore you will be encouraged to play selfishly and disregard the team comp entirely.
@@HaibaneKuu Yet in 2-2-2 and even now in 5v5 (1-2-2) it's the same shit. People still don't always play what they are supposed to. They may be playing as 2 supports and 2 dps roles, but is it the particular heroes you actually need in the match to win? It's still the same problem with a different coat of paint. So now what? Should we make a system which also locks-out all of the heroes which don't flow well with what's on your team?
@@Nayutune there's already a mode for just playing what you want and having fun It's called quick play
@@VisorDaddy That's funny because from everything I've seen recently - people have been saying that in QP everybody is often playing sweatier than comp.
I played at launch, stopped playing a little before Orissa was added, then started playing again a little after role queue became a thing (to try out my new monitor). I didn't play for long because it didn't take me long to pick up that healers had too much power creep while I was gone. I think I stopped playing again a bit before Echo was released so I missed that nightmare, and I heard that Blizzard actually did address the power creep and the game was briefly in a much better state, but I didn't return a second time. When I look at OW2 I wonder if I missed out on what was the actual best time to play Overwatch. Did I?
Lucio used to have insane heals. He range was basically unlimited lol (just line of sight that was so large it basically was just LoS period), his healing rate was pretty insane too. So there was AoE heals back then, in fact he was actually a heal bot and when people started seeing "reddit lucio", a lucio that actually does damage and is agile, that was a meme at the time.
5v5 was a gigantic mistake. I'll die on this hill.
support easiest role to get gm change my mind.
As a flex player who stopped playing for a couple years after role queue was added, thank you so much for talking about the impact role queue had on the game.