The Problem with Overwatch 2 Hero Balance

Tanks are unplayable, supports are overpowered, and Mauga is the worst release we've seen since Lifeweaver. Overwatch 2 is in an awkward state and I think I know why. In this video, I talk about what I believe is a clear problem with the Overwatch balance philosophy. Straight to the point: The game has become too oriented around defensive play. Too many heroes have inherently safe playstyles, and it's not worth taking many risks at most levels of play.

00:00 Intro
01:30 Hero Design Basics
03:20 The Problem with Recent Hero Design
07:28 Not just the New Heroes
09:10 How do we fix this?
11:56 Outro

[Tikatee]

I've been getting more burnt out with Overwatch lately than I have at any point in the game's past, this video covers one of the major reasons why. Are you guys still enjoying the game? Am I crazy and is everyone having a blast holding M1 all game as Mauga? Let me know what you think!

[fuwameanssoft]

The line at the end where you said “No wonder Tank feels awful, there’s so much damage coming at you, and it’s not worth anyone else taking the risk of stepping up” perfectly put this whole concept into words in such a concise way, and it’s condensed a feeling that I’ve had with the game for a long time. A lot of things in the game right now just “aren’t worth” in comparison to these much safer options, and it makes things feel unfun, as the amount of value you can get from brain dead picks (Bastion etc) is almost as high as incredibly skilful picks, but requiring about 1% of the effort to play

[speedyazi]

Removing 2 tanks has, in my opinion, been detrimental to the game flow of Tank gameplay and putting an absurd amount of responsibility on 1 player.

[johnharwood]

I think the largest reason tanks have to have the "sit back and shoot" playstyle is because the second they play aggressive they get antied and explode. I'm a gm4 tank and I literally don't even consider doing anything until that cooldown is out.

[Lahsood]

this is quite literally the only time i've seen someone accurately explain the state of the game, much love, great vid

[stryker]

This is so accurate, it kinda comes down to "why would I do this, when I can just do that with the same effectiveness and half the effort" for ex, why play tracer and sweat ur ass off to get 1 shot by half the cast, when u can just play sojourn and do the oneshotting...

[totallynottemirlan]

I totally agree with you, I think OW2 should incentivise players to actually engage in gameplay with high calculated risk, high reward situations more often to actually make players feel like they can express their skill beyond just shooting from far away

[eligreg]

Mauga has caused me to drop ranks. If you don’t have Mauga on your team and your team doesn’t focus him at the start of the fight you’re bound to lose

[nuj]

This summarized alot of my thoughts with the game as well. Overwatch to me has always been fun when there is "give-and-take". On Tracer and Genji you have windows to engage and if you don't succeed, you are forced to have downtime which enemies can capitalize on. Now the game is just played by heros that take advantage of sustain and win via war of attrition. Season 1 of OW2 was such a great example of how I like the game. It really is getting worse with every season.

[daleg_-_]

The game was designed to be played 6v6. Trough out the years the game was balanced based on playing 6v6. They changed few legends made it a 5v5 game and demolished years of twitching and tweaking. If ow 1 was still alive no one would be playing ow2, that's why the shut the game down so they won't be forced to reflect on their mistake

[qoobied]

Newer heroes seem to be designed in a way where their weaknesses are seemingly obscure. What’s baptiste’s weakness? His long cooldowns! But, he has vertical mobility, insane damage and healing output on top of being able to use those cooldowns for himself. He doesn’t need those cooldowns to actually be able to live because his standard weapon is overtuned.

Kiriko has two super strong cooldowns as well, and when consumed can leave her vulnerable. But what prevents her from dying so much? Obviously Suzu, but she also has vertical mobility excluding tp, high damage and a stupid skrunkly hitbox!

Im not gonna say immortality isn’t an issue, but what im gonna say is their standard weapons and passives are tuned to the level of their cooldowns where they can survive just as fine as if they needed to make a choice to live

[Invictus_OW]

the fact that mauga cant be slept or stunned while charging says enough...

[adalwolf]

I think it's very problematic that Blizzard is afraid of nerfing anything for some reason, and instead focuses on crazy buffs (like what happened with Mauga). We're in this perpetual cycle of powercreep; Blizzard buffing damage instead of nerfing the overtuned defensive abilities.

I think damage across the board need to come down massively, especially with supports. The amount of one-shots and high-damage abilities is way too many. Then Blizzard can focus on reducing the power on the insane defensive abilities like Suzu and Lamp, which are sadly mandatory if you don't want to get instantly melted right now.

[damianvaldez]

Mauga hitting ranked was the nail in the coffin for me. I couldn’t believe that in this state in the game they made ANOTHER (Hog and Orisa) shieldless huge blob with low mobility. And they gave him tank killing damage😬

[billykann]

I think 6v6 would solve a few of the issues listed. A second tank to take the pressure off the main one, who can then be the one to go offensive while the main tank holds the line, that would allow for a good mix of play styles

[pietie]

I think doomfist is the perfect example for this. Im maining him and if you want to be really good with doom, you have to only play him. But it feels like i get mid value with 500 hours on him, tracking cooldowns etc while a 10 hours sigma can do the same/more

[Joeyisagonnawin]

I remember back in the original, there was a listing of the healers and how they survive.
Mercy can fly away. Lucio can boop and wall run. Anna can sleep. Zenyatta kills or is killed.

[extremelight]

As a Ramattra enjoyer, I would've been fine if they designed his entire gameplay around his "Omnic/Mage" form and made Nemesis into his ult. I could see it working if they changed a few things here and there.

[inksicle]

I feel like the more passive supports do have a place in the game for people who prefer that gameplan but their preformance should be bottlenecked in exchange for their reliability. Like supports who take more risks should be rewarded greater in relation to the risk and the more passive supports should have a lesser potency in exchange for their consistency

[gloomily]

I've only started playing Overwatch in the past couple weeks, and it's been rough. I'm absolutely a tank player, and I really want to get good at JQ, but it's just so frustrating when it feels like my enemy just has to hold M1 to get kills and sustain, but for me it feels like I need to play around my cooldowns and the environment in order to do half as well. I know that part of this is that I'm new and I suck, but it also really doesn't feel like the enemy Mauga needs to play well to get more kills and more healing than me. Also I really don't like the attitudes around swapping to counter people, it's frustrating when my own team shames me for sticking with something suboptimal... though once again I do kinda suck ;-;