Blizzard has noticed that tanks in Overwatch 2 feel squishier than ever, and they have decided to reveal their plans for balance changes to address the elephant in the room.
The latest Director's Take from Blizzard mentions that players are talking about tanks – a lot – and most of what is being said is quite negative. The role of a tank in Overwatch 2 is supposed to be strong enough to mitigate massive incoming damage from the opposition and has been “in a tough spot” since season 8 ended, according to the devs. They state,
“That's not to say that tanks were in a perfect spot before Season 9, but the problem now is that most of them just don't feel as 'tanky' as they should. 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.”
Through their analytics, they noticed a trend that the player's feedback on the fragility of tanks aligned with their in-house data on deaths a specific Hero actually experiences compared to how many deaths they should experience. Though they do like the previous changes implemented in earlier seasons, such as headshot damage and knockback reduction on tanks, they agree that tanks need work, and are putting together a patch that will target the “tankiness” of tanks.
Rather than update things that would apply to all of the tank Heroes at once, they will be adding things to each Hero as an individual, such as Reinhardt’s shield getting a health boost. Alongside the mention of these balance fixes to tanks, they state that damage-doing Heroes such as Pharah for example, have a win rate of 58%, while each tank has a win rate of between 50-55% equally rather than one being exceedingly more powerful than the other.
