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It’s nice to be right. There’s a sense of satisfaction that comes from having your deductions confirmed, which is how a large swathe of the Overwatch 2 community must be feeling right now. There have been complaints about the game’s tanks for a few seasons, with them not appearing to feel right. In an update posted today, Blizzard has confirmed that this suspicion is correct – tanks do need some work.
In a post on the Overwatch 2 site, Blizzard goes into some detail about where tanks are right now in the multiplayer game, and where it would like them to be. Firstly, the post confirms that players have been right to raise issues with tanks, as they have been struggling since the end of season eight.
“The problem now is that most of them just don’t feel as ‘tanky’ as they should,” the developer update reads. “Many times, both Support heroes need to focus solely on the tank just to keep them alive. In this scenario both the Tank and Supports can feel like they have limited options in their gameplay, as they are essentially tied to each other.”
The post then goes on to explore a little more about how Blizzard is monitoring the situation, with a brand new metric it has introduced recently. “We’ve come up with a new metric since Season 9 that we simply call “tankiness.” It’s roughly the number of deaths a hero experiences compared to how many deaths they ought to experience,” Blizzard continues. “There are a lot of stats that go into determining what an expected death is, and I’m not able to go into that level of detail here. The point is that your experience and our data are aligned.”
There are several changes which have impacted tanks over recent seasons, including passive health regeneration, knockback and headshot damage reduction and a few others. These have all culminated in every hero being less able to soak up damage across the board, but tanks – whose sole reason to exist is to do precisely that – feel like they’re not able to perform their role correctly.
Thankfully, Blizzard is looking into tanks and plans to release a patch that should target this particular complaint. “We’re putting together a patch that is targeted at increasing the tankiness of many of these heroes, but we’re doing it through individual changes to each of them. Ideally these changes would build on a hero’s fantasy. Increasing the health of Reinhardt’s shield is a good example of accomplishing both of those goals,” the post confirms. “This is a priority for our balance team, and right now we’re targeting either mid-Season 11 or Season 12. We’ll have more details on some of the changes to expect and more concrete timing soon.”
This means that hopefully – before too long – tanks will be able to take to the front of a fight again without being constantly topped up by a pocket healer. If you’d like to check out the full post, head over to the official Overwatch 2 site to get the lowdown.
You can also get a leg up in your game with our guide to all Overwatch 2 characters and our detailed Overwatch 2 tier list, which should help you get ahead in your next match.
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