The Roles & Overwhelming Heals, Damage & CC. A Formal Complaint and Discussion From a Tank's Persective

[UvealPear202]

Hi y'all, This won't be the shortest opening post, but I want to provide some credentials as background for my perspective. In Season 1, I peaked Diamond 1, and ended diamond III as a tank main specializing in Hulk, with decent skills as strange. I have also started an alt account for this season to DPS on, where I am specializing in wolverine and Mr. Fantastic, with scarlet witch as a backup (I have terrible processing speed and suck at aiming, so characters that focus on game sense and cooldown management are better for me). My experience on support is limited but when I do I play everybody's favorite War-criminal Jeff the shark. The main issues with the game I want to cover are threefold.
First, I want to talk about my views on role balance instead of just individual hero balance, and how I think each role should feel to play as and against as well as what their role actually is.
Next, I want to bring up my views on what counterplay should be available against "counters" to your character, this will often be from the lens of a hulk vs his counters as that is what I am familiar with.
Lastly, I am gonna go on a bit of a miscellaneous concerns about my favorite role, the tank role, and what it means to be a tank in this game, as well as what comes with it, and to just educate people about what hardships the tanks go through that are often not discussed as often as DPS & Support hardships. Alright, time to get started!

Good job making it this far, let's talk role balance, starting with everybody's favorite/least favorite, depending on if they are getting diffed or not, DPS. The DPS role, ohhhhh the DPS role, lets begin with calling it Duelist just once, there, said it, its DPS again now(It's the former OW player in me, I can't stop it). DPS are the ones that are gonna have the most presence on the scoreboard in-game, which means they are the easiest both to notice when they are doing well, and when they are doing poorly. This is a double-edged sword for both the DPS player, and their team.
I think we all know that this was coming, but the bandaid must be ripped off. ON AVERAGE, DPS players are typically the most vocal about their complaints about their team, and tend to be the most toxic. This is simply due to the sheer volume of you guys, so bad apples appear more frequently.
DPS also tend to have a lot of self-confidence, you have to, you have to believe that you can get the kills in order to get them, the team depends on you, you are important, if you don't get a pick, the fight falls apart for your team.
I think that DPS do in fact need to get kills, a shocker I know. But, there is more than just getting kills that is sometimes overlooked. I believe, that eliminations while an indication, do not tell the full story of a DPS's performance.
What really matters is contextual kill to death ratio (KD), and Damage to Elim Ratio Points, shortened to DERP for both convenience and my own mild amusement. KD is often mentioned, but DERP should be the star of the show, 20,000 DMG sounds awesome sure when heroes only have 200-400 HP on average, but 20'000 DMG with 6 elims just means you were shooting the tank and he kept getting healed without dying.
Ideally, you have Lower DERP, and a high KD, but the game shoves KD in everybody's face. So DPS's role is to do damage, have a low DERP, High KD, and remain positive for the team, however tilting looking at the scoreboard might be.
Playing the role should feel good, as should all roles. DPS fun is based around the BEEG numbers, and the satisfying elimination sound, and the QUAD notification on the side of your screen. DOPAMINE DOPAMINE DOPAMINE. When playing as a DPS, I should feel a risk and reward, if I go for the low risk option, I am not getting a lot of value Ideally, if I am not putting myself in harms way at all, the reward should be proportionate, with low damage overall and less value provided while preserving my own life, the fun is finding the balance in this, and these kills should feel earned, because its more fun if the elim was hard won or a result of a good play or exploitation of the enemy (cough cough, not Hawkeye & Hela).
Ideally, my playing well should not suck too much fun from the enemy team, while also rewarding my skill and decision making.
Now as for playing against a DPS, they should feel threatening but not like they don't allow you to play the game, examples of that unfun experience may include Hawkeye & Hela, Ironfist for supports, and wolverine for tanks. Good DPS that I think allow for this are psylocke, Ironman(non-boosted), punisher, and others. Overall I think the DPS role is "Fine" right now with some outliers.

Next up is Support, Tied with tanks for most blamed role if the team isn't doing well, if not slightly ahead. Supports have many tasks, but many of their tasks and jobs, are not reflected on the leaderboard until post-game, notably, their healing numbers. The only stats you are seeing from the supports that are on the post-game leaderboard that matter, are their assists and their deaths. This can lead to not being able to tell what they are doing with a quick glance, this is a design issue, and not the fault of anybody but the UI design. what is people's fault with them, is deciding that since they can't see anything on the leaderboard other than damage and elims, that their support are DPSing.
When all you can draw on is isolated and often, (but not always) misleading information along with personal experience in a fast paced game. You are gonna come to the conclusion that they are not healing you.
Guess what, they may not be, they are either dead to a ironfist, fighting for their lives from an ironfist, or healing the tank who is protecting EVERYBODY from the 6 angry people with super powers shooting them, a tank that, if they go down mind you, loses the fight for everybody. sometimes they are failing at their role yes, but hold off on accusations of low heals until post game okay? You can't change your teammates mid match, work with what you have, don't make it even less effective by tilting it over.
As for how support should feel to play, it is hard for me to say, as it has never been a role I enjoyed too much, so if I get something that support mains that see this want to correct, its a discussion for a reason. I think that support should feel like a squishy form of tanking, you want to support your team and watch the beeg heals, and assist counter. You want everybody to live BECAUSE you were there with them, everybody's wins become partially your wins, because you enabled them to do that. Everybody popped off because they had a great person in the backline supporting them. I think that that's a good goal for what it should feel like to play support.
The elephant in the room and one of the main topics of the post, healing. It is an integral part of playing support to heal people enough to stay alive, but no matter how good it may feel for the support, their are times when you are able to save people that had no reason to be able to be saved. The fact that somebody can make a big play that required a lot of skill, and some of these supports just have a big fat "NO" button is really irritating to play against. This is especially true for heroes that have to do a lot to secure a kill, if a psylocke for example makes a mistake and goes in too deep to my backline, and I am chasing the highly mobile and evasive character with cooldowns and jump mechanics, and I get her to one hp, and in the middle of my last swing she doesn't go from 1 to half, but 1 to full...Gonna be honest, that feels like ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, flat-out. I made every right play in this hypothetical, and the psylocke misplayed, but I was unable to punish because Adam warlock just pressed the e button and then shift and there was no counterplay to that.
I also can't kill either of them for a duration now, and am now back to square one. This is part of what feels bad about playing against supports. Saving people is in their job description, but saving stupid people should be much harder. I hope that makes sense. It is also important to note that the ultimate of a few of the supports, are frankly, just absurdly strong.
Luna is the first one that comes to mind, that thing lasts 12 freaking seconds, and she can't be stunned out of it, knocked back, or slowed, and she can provide not only absurd healing, but a damage boost. 12 seconds, is a freaking eternity in this game. say a match lasts 5 in game minutes, and luna and loki chain ults to use luna ult twice. That is 24 seconds out of 320 seconds in the match, that is 7.5% of the match, assume they get their ults 4 times, not unfeasible with how fast support ults tend to charge, that is now 96 seconds, that's THIRTY PERCENT 30%!!!!! Thirty percent of that match, Nothing on your team, could die without extreme levels of co-ordination.
all for the effort of pressing a button after the previous person finished their button press, and playing in a large circle near the luna or loki. Extrapolate the ramifications of that. I think that sustain needs a minor nerf in this game.
I don't know the exact numbers, but let’s start with either nerfing how often these ults happen, or how long they last. I don't want ultimate's to feel useless, but they can't last this long specially not ones this impactful. Moving on

My favorite role, and most peoples least favorite role, the Tank role. In my very biased opinion, the unsung and forgotten about players. The tanks receive a lot of blame though, and that's because they have the same problem as support.
Elims and deaths are important for tanks sure, but its not their main focus. The magic is in the damage blocked to death ratio. If I am blocking 5,000 dmg or more before every death, that is damage that did not go into killing the DPS & Support, but unless you are the one blocking that damage, you don't see it to the full extent.
Especially as a DPS. As a tank, my fantasy with that role has always been as the protector, the big chunky guy that protects the team by taking the hits for them, and doing enough damage to scare people that try to fight me. I make space for the DPS and Support to do their thing. I protect the support when I can, and be a menace to the enemy as well, I block the damage that would have killed my entire team with well placed abilities and well executed movement. To quote a giant german man with a hammer: "I AM YOUR SHIELD!!!!".
I should feel powerful, and threatening as a tank, and chunky, like I can take a lot of damage. I should not, explode when fighting 2 people, let alone 1 (looking at you wolverine). I also, should not be unstoppable, I don't want to roll people over, or nuke the entire map.
I want to live long enough to do my job, punishing misplays and occasionally making plays of my own. My fun however, should not come at the cost of other peoples fun, and vice versa. Tanks biggest issue right now is the amount of CC in the game. It is hard to have fun, when you dive when you are supposed to, but get webbed by penny, pulled by spiderman, frozen by luna, launched in the air by magik, and/or shall you say, taken advantage of by a wolverine (I'm not mad, you're mad).
Right now, with the burst damage from certain heroes, and the super healing, I don't feel threatening, I don't feel beefy, and I am not having fun. If you want people to play tank, it needs to be a fun role to play.

Counters and counterplay, what does it mean. It’s really simple honestly. I don't think hard-counters are good. So I don't think wolverine or hawkeye is healthy. I think soft counters like punisher are fine, I can play around a turret, I can play around and be cognizant of the shotgun. It is not fun to not be able to play a hero because the enemy team selected a counter hero. This is what happened to tanks in OW, don't let it happen here. Good job making it to the end of this. Rant and conclusion below.

That's it for the structured stuff, if you don't want to indulge me in my rant, the conclusion and comment section is below. Still here? Okay, I warned you. Tanking is the most ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ irritating role to play. It is so freaking stressful man, okay, listen. I HAVE 60'000 damage blocked, and only 5 deaths. I need people to get kills while I am doing that, what do you want from me, I jump the backline, I am not there for heals, dps aren't peeling so I have to, Oh while I was peeling everybody died? My bad I guess, I was busy doing 18 different jobs because nobody else is willing to swap, why is the DPS that is 2/18 with 20k damage not swapping, why why in gods name. I NEED A FRIEND. I can't handle the wolverine on my own guys, please ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ shoot the enemy wolverine, the tank is dying more becuase wolverine is kidnapping him and not being helped. The tank is not fine, yes I have 1500 helath in mega hulk form, but that DOESNT MATTER WHEN ITS PERCENTAGE BASED DAMAGE, it is actively harming me. Dont you get it guys, I CANT DEAL WITH THE WOLVERINE, I CANT DO MY JOB WITH HIM UP MY ASS. HELP. ME. PLEASE. Also, yes, please, PLEAAASE thank your healers sure, but can the tank get a thank you as well. You think its easy managing to stay up every game with your DPS dead in the first 5 seconds and an ironfist on your supports while trying to gaurd the frontline. cause it isn't, I am trying so hard every game. I am adapting to the stubborn people who wont swap off, I am not flaming anybody, I am suffering in silence. and when I ask politely if the dps would please swap to a tank to help me out, or at the very least a dps that is not hard countered by half their team. Okay I'm chill. Thanks for listening

Okay, this initial post is long, like scholarly essay long. I hope at least one person here makes it far enough and responds. I like this game, and I want to continue liking this game. I just don't want the same things that ruined overwatch, to ruin this. If you guys have anything to add to the discussion or to respond to me on, please do. Thanks for reading all of this. Let's work together to keep this game good, and make it even better by discussing problems with it and possible solutions. I fear not a rivals that I actively dislike, but one that I feel nothing towards, Apathy is the enemy, not each other.

Edit: due to complaints, I added some breaks in the paragraphs.

[Valegor]

I read it all and I agree. I mostly play tank and support myself, so I feel your pain.

It is quite frustrating sometimes when as a tank, the team doesn't seem to want to kill the things killing you, or they decide to go for a wide flank... or worse, they keep running into battle one at a time, just getting wiped over and over because they don't want to regroup.
On the flip side, it feels very rewarding for your team to wipe and the enemy is at 95% on the point, you come charging in and hold it long enough solo for a healer to just make it in time, then the DPS comes and stomps the enemy to secure the win. Those are the kinds of moments I want more of as a tank. To feel like my ability to absorb damage is impactful.
As far as characters go, I think Venom should have some sort of indicator when an enemy is within reach of his tendrils and his ULT could be a touch more reliable.
Doctor Strange really needs a buff to his shield as his self sustain feels really lacklustre compared to Venom especially. It would also be nice if his cloak had some forward momentum and/or a movement speed buff so his Maelstrom of Madness could be more reliable.

As a support, my frustrations are mostly from a complete lack of protection at times. They'll let the enemy infiltrate the back line and take out the support, then complain about a lack of healing. The support can't do their job effectively if the whole team ignores the safety of the support. The role feels fulfilling (or not) based on teammates rather than game balance I think. Healing can be overwhelmingly powerful, in some cases the enemy feels like they're immortal, but that comes down to teamplay. People need to try focus a single target or eliminate the healers instead of trying to have their own 1v1s. Prioritise targets.
At a character level I think the balance is decent, though a few tweaks are needed. I think Adam Warlock needs a slight buff on his healing, Luna's ULT needs some tweaking and Jeffy's ULT needs a smaller radius and a reduced time to hold the enemies (or have the time remain the same when stationary but movement reduces the hold time faster) because grabbing 5 people and jumping off the edge of the map just feels cheap.

I don't have much to say about DPS since I don't play it much but from the perspective of the other classes, the DPS that do damage in a wide area around themselves should have that radius reduced a little. Iron Fist, Magik, Psylocke and Spider-Man, and also possibly Scarlet Witch and Star-Lord. I think the amount of damage they do is fine, but since they don't have to aim, it is just large AoE... the radius should be reduced to keep their power more in line with other DPS heroes.
Iron Man at least has to aim his ULT and Moon Knight's has a reasonable area, but nothing is guaranteed to hit.

[UvealPear202]

Originally posted by Valegor:

“On the flip side, it feels very rewarding for your team to wipe and the enemy is at 95% on the point, you come charging in and hold it long enough solo for a healer to just make it in time, then the DPS comes and stomps the enemy to secure the win. Those are the kinds of moments I want more of as a tank. To feel like my ability to absorb damage is impactful. “

UvealPear202: This, it’s like you held out enough for the cavalry to arrive and win the fight. So good

I don’t know how to do this properly on mobile

[Toybox]

The primary issue I have with the way Support works as far as numbers is that there's no way for an individual to quickly see what healing they actually got during a game.

I was in a game where I went 2-14 as Hawkeye, (Which is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ abysmal, I NEVER finish a game with a negative KD, generally speaking) and the support was trash talking me for it. I said I rarely got healed and was getting ganked at spawn with absolutely no help, which is what was happening. The support went on to point out that they had 10k+ healing so that was a lie, but my friend ended up crunching the numbers based on damage taken/deaths/total character HP and concluded that our Winter Soldier, who was top of the board in kills received 6.5k healing during the match while I received only 1.5k total between both healers and the medkits I picked up during the match.

So what was happening is that our healers were pocketing the Winter Soldier, basically ignoring me and my friends who were playing, then claiming WE threw the match.

This is why pure healing numbers don't tell a complete story.

[Sibirian]

I think the biggest problem, is and will be the mindset of players.
No blaming or so but its like in OW, people refuse to swap or adapt to match situations.
As example my biggest loose yesterday.
It went 4-5 and enemys won.
They constantly flanked with hela und strange, broke our backline and then killed the rest.
We had a moonknight that did a good job in helping backline and tried to swap to namor on defense to sturdy our backline as much as he could but our 2. Dps stayed on mr fantastic and always was even deeper into the other frontline then our tanks did (yeah sure thus heros needs to get close but its no big thing to react to flanks instead of going for the enemy tank when ypur supps die)
Every time they flanked the backline he was deep in the enemy frontline dying cause we as supp needed every bit of attention to not die to strange/hela.
Even after round 3 (were we barely managed to get push a decent amount) he refused to adapt on the situation and instead blamed the me and the other supps for not picking defensiv ults (i switched to luna after 2. Round away from c&D and the other supp switched to rocket as he/she wasnt happy with invis woman and we needed way more heal and he/she feels more comfortable on rocket) and letting him die.
He didnt even acknowledge the fact, he mostly stood right infront of their spawn and overextended more then once instead of playing the objective.

I dont care about OTP, that do their job but the amount of people that dont even try to adapt and atleast react to the way enemies play (when they hard flank all the time, just staying way more behind isnt a big thing) is hilarious.

[Zopfus]

Welcome to the Video game world of commerce, where bad Players no longer exist.
Everyone is constantly being told, what a good Player they are, regardless of whether they can tell a Donkey from a Bicycle.

Bad Players stop playing a Game, they are bad at and the paying Customer disappears, so you are constantly being told "what a Pro player you are".
You don't have to improve to move up the manipulated Rankings (what a Joke), the Time you play determines your Progression.


For MP Games, where you could only Progress by constantly improving your own Skill, you are a few Decades too late (before Video games became fully commercial).

Now EOMM is in Charge - for maximum commercial Gain (Balance doesn't make Money) + it works perfectly !!

[UvealPear202]

Originally posted by Toybox:

The primary issue I have with the way Support works as far as numbers is that there's no way for an individual to quickly see what healing they actually got during a game.

I was in a game where I went 2-14 as Hawkeye, (Which is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ abysmal, I NEVER finish a game with a negative KD, generally speaking) and the support was trash talking me for it. I said I rarely got healed and was getting ganked at spawn with absolutely no help, which is what was happening. The support went on to point out that they had 10k+ healing so that was a lie, but my friend ended up crunching the numbers based on damage taken/deaths/total character HP and concluded that our Winter Soldier, who was top of the board in kills received 6.5k healing during the match while I received only 1.5k total between both healers and the medkits I picked up during the match.

So what was happening is that our healers were pocketing the Winter Soldier, basically ignoring me and my friends who were playing, then claiming WE threw the match.

This is why pure healing numbers don't tell a complete story.

Okay, first off, based for spawn camping a Hawkeye. Second, healing received stats could be good for both parties, so I like that idea, though it would be a completely new stat to track so it probably wouldn’t be implemented immediately even if the stars aligned and the devs viewed this post as gospel.

[fenrif]

Why do you need an alt account to play different characters?
Do you also need alt accounts for each type of gun in COD?

Also, dude, I don't mind reading a wall of text at all. But you need to break it up into paragraphs more. They exist for a reason. A paragraph shouldn't be a full page. Let alone a page + 1/2.

I skimmed what I could but honestly it was too hard to read.

I think a big improvement to the game would be the addition of a "OBJ time" entry on the scoreboard at the end. I want to see if my DPS was ever on point, or if he was flying around the enemy spawn trying to 1v6 the whole team.

I think we agree that too many DPS players think the game is TDM and believe that more kills = job done when it's not necessarily the case.

[UvealPear202]

Originally posted by fenrif:

Why do you need an alt account to play different characters?
Do you also need alt accounts for each type of gun in COD?

Also, dude, I don't mind reading a wall of text at all. But you need to break it up into paragraphs more. They exist for a reason. A paragraph shouldn't be a full page. Let alone a page + 1/2.

I skimmed what I could but honestly it was too hard to read.

I think a big improvement to the game would be the addition of a "OBJ time" entry on the scoreboard at the end. I want to see if my DPS was ever on point, or if he was flying around the enemy spawn trying to 1v6 the whole team.

I think we agree that too many DPS players think the game is TDM and believe that more kills = job done when it's not necessarily the case.

The account was also made in order to avoid out leveling a friend. She wanted to play comp with me, so I made another account to play by myself and learn new stuff.

This was done in one go at night, I’ll probably reformat it later, you are essentially looking at a rough draft.

An objective time stat would be huge.

[Mochan]

TLDR

Also paragraphs.

[Coth]

people whining for paragraphs is the funniest ♥♥♥♥ ever, ow ow me head hurt me no read many word me need less word to read hahaha

[UvealPear202]

Originally posted by Coth:

people whining for paragraphs is the funniest ♥♥♥♥ ever, ow ow me head hurt me no read many word me need less word to read hahaha

I didn’t know this was a scholar reviewed forum. I’ll have to hire editors

[RobAlca]

didnt read,anyway u are for sure wrong and skill issue is uor problem

[UvealPear202]

Originally posted by fenrif:

Originally posted by UvealPear202:

Not exactly a fair representation, I had spaces and commas and periods. But it’s better now.

I was talking to Coth. You didn't mock me for pointing out that your original text was difficult to read... Because you agreed with me that it was hastily formatted.

He seemed to think being averse to grammar is some sort of badge of honour so I thought I'd take it to it's logical conclusion.

Fair enough