Hello Overwatch Community! This is a bit of a tome, and perhaps a low key rant, but I think this community is in need of some serious discussion about the current state of the game. Most notably the state of tanks in Overwatch.

Tanks in Overwatch are in a very poor state relative to the experience that the majority of the playerbase has with them. Furthermore the trend of balance changes to the game is, and has been for some time, to continually make them more and more difficult, and less and less fun, to play.

If anybody doesn’t believe that this is true, I hope to be able to convince you otherwise. But first, I want to make it exceptionally clear that I am not speaking of Overwatch as it is played on an OWL professional level. I’m nowhere near qualified to speak about the game on that level, but as a mid ranked player who has played primarily Main Tank going all the way back to the Beta days, I think I’m as qualified to speak of the matchmaking experience of the average player as anyone is.

The Tanks

There are five tanks in Overwatch. Three Main Tanks (Reinhardt Orisa Winston) and two Off Tanks (D.Va and Zarya) Roadhog is not a tank. He provides none of the team protection/damage mitigation abilities necessary to fulfill a tank role in any capacity. I will be focusing on the Main Tanks in this post as they are experiencing the greatest woes and are most in need of attention from Blizzard.

Let’s talk about the general philosophy of a tank briefly. We need to understand what the job of a tank is so that we can discuss how the current state of the game is so untenable to them.

A Tank is defined by their ability to mitigate the damage taken by their team. They exist to shape the engagements, create space for their DPS to hit shots, allow their support to have a relatively safe place to stand, and above all else, Protect Their Team. A tank who cannot protect their team is nothing. They are a punching bag, an ult battery for the enemy team.

Given this, any ability/character/circumstance in the game which prevents or hinders the tank from protecting their team, must be viewed as an obstacle that must be overcome/outplayed by the tank.

Also, it is equally true that it is the responsibility of the enemy team to do all in their power to prevent the enemy tank from effectively doing their job. This is the tug of war of game balance relative to tanks.

Tanks in Overwatch primarily use barriers to protect their team, and they are prevented from doing so in three main ways.

1: The shield is broken via doing damage to it in excess of the shield’s maximum HP

2: The tank is forced to put their shield down in some other way (EMP, hacking, Shield Bash, Freezing, or just simply killing the tank)

3: The tank is removed from the area they need to occupy, generally via crowd control abilities.

Let’s tackle each of these issues, as I believe all of them have gotten out of balance and stacked the deck against tanks.

Too Much Damage

The simplest way to ruin a tank’s day is simply to shed the shield. Some heroes are obviously better at this than others. Bastion is of course the Grand Poobah here, where heroes like Genji are quite poor at the job all things considered. Of course it is now and always has been possible to build a comp based around the idea of demolishing the opponents shields, but over time, more and more heroes have been buffed to be capable of destroying shields, and the heroes that were already good at it have become increasingly prevalent in the meta. Let’s look at some examples.

D.Va: D.va has been a prevalent force in the meta for some time now. once, she was relatively unplayed, but then the days of unblockable 4 second defense matrix and 400 armor D.Va came. She has been absolutely everywhere ever since. This wasn’t always a problem for tanks but the recent addition of her micromissiles has made her a potent shield breaker. She also appears in an overwhelming amount of games at nearly every rank.

Orisa: Orisa is an interesting case. She has more potential shielding available than any other character in the game, possessing a shield of more HP than Winston and superior geometry to Reinhardt on an fairly short cooldown. However, with her immense clip size and playstyle suited to defensive spam heavy play, she contributes to allowing more Bastions, Junkrats, Torbjorns, and other long/medium range poke/spam characters to be played. She also contributes to destroying the shields of other tanks in a very large way, her near constant fire being reliable enough for little else.

Junkrat: Not gonna hide it, I despise this character. But I’m going to try to talk about him objectively. Junkrat has always been focused on area denial and putting out massive amounts of damage. Thus he was always a capable shield buster. But previously, he came with the built in weaknesses of a lack of mobility from having only a single mine, not a great deal of damage being done by that mine, and his grenades damaging himself. All of this combined to make him a situational character who could lock down an area but was vulnerable if directly engaged. A series of buffs have seen him become immune to his own damage, gain enormous amounts of mobility, put out even more damage incredibly rapidly, and remain as capable a shield breaker as ever, while becoming vastly more playable in many scenarios.

Soldier 76: This one is old school and the changes to him were quite long ago, but I vividly remember having soldier’s damage buffed as he suddenly became much more prevalent and better and shutting down shields. This buff was well over a year ago, but no corresponding improvement to tanks defensive capabilities has yet come.

Roadhog: Also an interesting case, a strong argument can be made that Roadhog’s shield breaking potential changed little or not at all after he was changed to decrease his damage per shot but increase his rate of fire. Mathematically, the potential of Hog to break shields may not have changed significantly, but as his balance has shifted him away from a hook focused pick-off hero, his playstyle has gravitated more towards shield-breaker focused.

Phara: Rather than a direct damage buff, the significant change to Phara was to her jetpack and rocket jump, allowing her essentially unlimited time far above and out of range of barrier characters, while retaining all of her potent shield breaking capabilities.

Other characters such as Bastion, Hanzo, and Torbjorn, may not have had changes to them to improve their damage capabilities, but they were originally and have remained respectable shield-breaking threats. It is also worth noting the talked about and likely-seeming Hanzo rework on the horizon of a rapid fire arrow, which sounds potentially like a strong shield-break tool.

Now as counters to all this new damage, Orisa was added, who has immense shielding capabilities requiring intense focusing to break long enough to be relevant. But as discussed, she does as much to enable spam damage and shield break comps as she does to counter them. Winston also has access to his barrier slightly more often than he once did, but his barrier was never meant for long lasting point presence, and thus the increase to damage does relatively little to the balance of his shield. Reinhardt however, has been completely unchanged and suffers from these damage buffs more than any other character.

All in all, damage and shield-breaking capabilities of the cast have become steadily stronger and more commonly seen in the game with little to no relative change to shield strength. This has created an overall progressive weakening of shielding and an increased difficulty in the life of tank players, going back many months.

Disabling the Shield

Not every ability nullifies a shield as directly as shooting it. Often a better solution for the enemy team is to simply kill the tank. The game has also seen a steady increase to other ways to simply remove a shield from the field of play that are worth noting.

Sombra: Likely the worst offender in this category, Sombra makes up for her lack of shield breaking capabilities by having a far better option all together. Sombra was brought into the game seemingly as a direct counter to Reinhardt, who was still by a large margin the dominant tank of the day. Her hack forces Reinhardt to drop his shield regardless of health, an option that previously had been the sole possession of Mei, while requiring far less commitment from the Sombra than it does from the Mei. Recent Sombra buffs have improved her hack to insane levels and against a determined Sombra, a Reinhardt may as well not even exist. Her EMP extends this problem to every barrier in the game, and until recently was the easiest ultimate to charge in the game. Recently EMP has become much harder to charge, but it remains a potent counter to tanks of all sorts. Hack and EMP also earn the notable distinction of being every bit as effective against D.Va, who relies on Defensive Matrix rather than a barrier.

Mei: Mei freeze has always been and remains a potent counter to tanks. It is equally effective against Reinhardt, who must drop his barrier when frozen, and against Winston/Dva, who are robbed of their vital mobility when frozen by a Mei. Her ult has this effect in a wide area and has grown harder to escape. Until now, Mei has been a fairly uncommon enemy in the current meta though, for a variety of reasons I wont get into here. But her current buff have the express aim of bringing this tank counter into a more prevalent position.

Reinhardt: Though largely unchanged by balance patches beyond a notorious amount of bug fixes, Reinhardt remains one of his own best counters. A Reinhardt pin is one of the surest ways to get the enemy Rein to drop his shield. His pin has gone through repeated ups and downs in terms of reliability, but, while not quite perfect, it is currently in one of its better places and is a potent way of preventing a tank from doing its job.

Junkrat: As potent at slaying tanks as he is at breaking their shields, Junkrat is an extreme danger to any tank who gets to close to him. No longer held back by the threat of blowing up himself as well, Junkrat can simply kill any tanks and make an extremely rapid getaway. Also, His Ult is one of the best and most reliable ways of removing a tank (or anyone else) from the game instantly and is so hard to counter that even professional level players fall victim to it nearly every time. It also charges incredibly fast.

Reaper: Expressly given as the primary “tank buster” in Overwatch, Reaper has been repeatedly tweaked to be even better at his job. The change from his original collection-of-souls style self heal to his current heal-with-damage style, means that any tank unlucky enough to find themselves in close proximity to a Reaper is going to be having a bad day. Reaper was already quite effective at this job and now has received buffs to his Wraith Form making it harder than ever for a tank’s teammates to effectively deal with the Reaper before he is able to close the gap and annihilate a tank.

The game allows for certain characters to completely deal with a tanks shields without the need to burn through them. Tanks have little or no ability to react or outplay these options and have been given no options to deal with these things, and they have been and still are being buffed to become stronger and more commonly run.

The Rising Tide of Crowd Control

The recent additions to the game are perhaps the most damaging and the most troubling as they are the strongest and most obvious trend, at least to my eyes. Namely, the ever increasing amount of crowd control present in the game, with zero counterplay available. These abilities are generally extremely easy to land on tanks, with their big fat character models, and they are also those who can least afford to be moved away from where they need to be.

Reinhardt is physically attached to his shield and so if he is moved, so is his shield, meaning that his team is left unprotected and vulnerable and Reinhardt is useless. Winston may be able to keep his barrier down, but the bubble dancing is such a large part of his kit that if he is beyond it, he is melted extremely quickly. Orisa is perhaps the least affected of the tanks, as her shield remains, and her fortify grants her temporary immunity to crowd control and damage reduction. however, the cooldown of fortify is far longer than most CC abilities and there are often far more than one such ability on an enemy team.

Doomfist: The king of crowd control, Doomfist was perhaps the games most hotly anticipated release of a new character, and boy did he come in hot. After they added him, he was rocket punching his way through everything. His abilities are unique in that they are crowd control booping abilities, potent damaging abilities, and melee abilities, meaning they completely ignore barriers. Though he was nerfed from his initial strength, he has been steadily buffed ever since and is becoming more common, forcing tanks to watch helplessly as they are booped to the other side of the map and their teammates are without the protection they so badly need.

Phara: Perhaps not the strongest CC ability, Concussive Blast is still a strong threat to tanks on certain maps such as Lijiang Gardens, Ilios Well, and others. Such boops are potentially a threat to everyone of course, but tanks suffer disproportionately, being extremely large and easy targets, and with Reinhardt/Orisa having none of the potential dodging/recovering abilities that many other characters have, nor any ability to threaten the Phara away from their space.

Junkrat: Showing up once again, Junkrat is a potent crowd control threat capable of using his mines to send his helpless tank opponent flying in any direction. Junkrat posesses two mines and they are on such a short cooldown that it must be assumed that he always has one available to him, rending a Reinhardt completely useless, and any other tank far enough out of position as to be easy pickings or otherwise ineffective.

Lucio: Also one of the slightly more old school buffs, Lucio’s boop used to do only horizontal knockback, but now provides vertical knockback as well, drastically increasing its potential for ruining a tanks positioning or claiming environmental kills.

Brigitte: Brigitte is new to the game, but already present one of the most potent counters to tanks thanks to her shield bash. Capable of not only giving boop crowd control with her whip shot, her shield bash is a straight up stun like McCree’s Flashbang, forcing Reinhard back and to drop his shield, canceling Dva’s rocket boosters and defensive matrix, canceling Winston’s jump, it is a devastating ability to tanks, making them incredibly difficult to play.

Roadhog: The OG crowd control threat, Hook may not be what it once was when it could hook you through the seventh dimension of hell, through space, time, and that one bus on Numbani to pull you to the waiting arms of a Roadhog in Nepal, but it is still a relevant threat to any tank caught without their shield for a split second.

Orisa: one of the best environmental kill abilities in the game and synergizing well with Roadhog hook, Halt may not have the capability of pushing/pulling as far as some CC abilities, but it is a threat to be aware of nonetheless.

Reinhardt: Though Reinhardt must also drop his own shield and vacate his positioning to commit to his crowd control ability, getting a pin on an enemy tank is devastating enough to win entire team fights, forcing a tank out of position, potentially forcing down a shield, and doing often lethal or near lethal damage in the process.

Zarya: Notable for having the best ultimate in the game, and by extension possibly the best CC ability in the game, Graviton is incredibly potent and devastating to tanks (and everyone else) it catches within it.

Crowd Control represents a disturbing and exponentially growing threat to tanks. With three of the last four heroes added to the game representing incredibly powerful CC threats and only one single and quite inadequate ability (Orisa’s Fortify) being added to deal with it. Furthermore, in addition to making tanks more difficult to effectively play, it makes them much less fun to play. CC abilities are often directed at tanks as they are both the easiest and most high value targets to hit, making the experience of playing a tank feel a lot like playing as a pinball.

Other Misc. Threats

Also of note, is the ability of certain kinds of damage to just ignore shields all together. Moira with her orbs and ultimate is the most notable offender here, and is disturbing based solely on her effectiveness as a character and her incredible prevalence in the meta. Symmetra’s orbs are another example, and given rumors of a Sym buff on the horizon, she could soon become more than the non-factor she currently is in most games. Winston is another notable offender here. His Tesla cannon ignoring shields goes a longer way than most realize to invalidating Reinhardt/Orisa comps in favor of the Dive meta we all have been trapped in.

There is also the overwhelming power of high ground in this game, which makes it all but impossible to play most of the tanks in the game on a very large portion of the maps in the game. This is a large problem of map design and game philosophy than balance and may not have a simple answer besides a widening map pool with more maps conducive to other comps and restrictive to dive. But this is not a problem for all tanks, just with a subset, and deserves another discussion at another time.

Conclusion and a Plea to Blizzard

I love Overwatch. I love its aesthetic and in most cases I love its game and character design and I’m very happy to be a player and fan of the game. I want to see the game become as good as it can and allow players of all roles to have fun playing the game and feel like a potent and valuable part of their team.

Unfortunately, as a Main Tank player and the biggest fan of Reinhardt I know of, I feel and have felt for a long time that the game has been continuously evolving to the detriment of Tanks as a role. It feels miserable to play them in matchmaking. I can rarely keep my shield up long enough to make a difference in the face of an ever greater amount of mindless can’t-aim spam damage. Between Sombra and Brigitte, I cant keep my shield up regardless of the damage coming at me these days, or get out of a dive situation in time to keep myself alive and win a fight. And more and more I just feel like a useless pinball to be booped around by every Doomfist punch, Lucio boop, and Brigitte bash.

I hope by this point, I have been able to provide enough examples of continuously added counters to tanks and a lack of new options or power for tanks to compete that you as a reader can agree that tanks have been consistently beaten down by the balance changes to the game. And if you don’t share my point of view, I hope that you can at least understand where I’m coming from.

I understand that the majority of the community is DPS mains and that it must be frustrating to have characters running around who are relatively difficult to kill, but I implore you, give the tanks a chance. They are necessary to the game design and this continual nerfing of them, direct or indirect, will eventually be the death of the game we all love.

To Blizzard, if anyone relevant is reading this, Please consider helping out the tank players here. We aren’t in OWL. We don’t have reliable coordinated dps and supports behind us to protect us from every one of these threats. Most of us are like me, trying desperately to solo tank for four dps and a zenyatta and feeling like a glorified punching bag.

To hear talk about nerfing an upcoming tanks meta, a meta that doesn’t even exist yet and I think is unlikely to ever exist given the current state of the game, is more than a little terrifying. Adding more characters and abilities and adjusting current characters to better deal with tanks is extremely worrying to me. It’s hard enough for me to have fun in the game as it is. I love Overwatch but the game balance is just pushing me out because the skill set I have and am trying to develop is becoming more and more difficult and less and less rewarding. I’m not trying to one-trick a niche hero. I’m capable of and willing to flex, but I shouldn’t have to play Tracer to enjoy the game.

If anyone in the comments feels the same, please join in the discussion! I would love for this to gain some traction.

TL:DR Tanks, specifically main tanks are in a bad spot in Overwatch given an uncoordinated matchmaking environment. Damage, CC and other abilities that render them useless have been continuously added/buffed with no sign of slowing down and no corresponding strengthening of tanks to make up for it. Tank is slowly becoming a miserable role to play, more akin to feeling like a glorified punching bag than any kind of “hero”. We need to stop talking about nerfing a nonexistent “tank meta” and start talking about how we can make tank an enjoyable and rewarding role for the average player.

Save the Tanks!