You know, I used to play a wider array of video games until Overwatch jumped into my life like a Winston with no cooldowns, but now I've logged ~700 hours on that single game. And I still suck at it. Well, my Reinhardt is pretty scary.
OH! Those poor fools running into my ultimate!
If you play any Overwatch recently, then you know the big talk of the town is the incoming 2-2-2 role lock change. For those of you who don't know anything about Overwatch, that means soon you'll have to declare up front in a match that you will play a dedicated role for the group, either Tank, healer, or DPS. 2-2-2 means that your group will now always have two healers, two tanks, and two DPS. It's a "beauty" of an idea that's had a "beast" of a debate, but overall people feel it's going to improve the game.
I'm sure it will . . . and if not, well, there's always Overwatch 2.
From what I understand, you'll actually do your competitive placement matches now on a per role basis, which is interesting. In my comp group I play heals about 80 percent of the time, the other 20 percent of the time I play either Mei or TORBJORN!
IT WAS TORBJORN KILLED THE BEAST!
Oh my gosh I love my new summer skin so much.
Anyway, our comp group has done a lot of switch-on-the-fly calls in the past where if a certain defensive team isn't working, one of our swaps is to a team where I play a more offensive role. It's still a 2-2-2 comp for us, but once PTR hits live, we can't do that. I'll always be playing healer. That's OK in the long run, but it feels like flexibility for the group took a big hit. On the other hand, no longer will we see a 6-DPS meme team in comp mocking us for not being able to handle them.
One cool side benefit from all this is that, now I could play Comp outside of my group of friends in a totally different role (like tank) if I wanted to and not have to worry about getting out of the SR range our comp group needs to play together . . . either in the positive or negative . . . I worry more about the negative.
There's some speculation over on the Overwatch forums that the real losers from 2-2-2 are those that only play DPS roles, since that's the most popular role to play . . . or so it seems. Will there really be 20-40 minute wait times for a game? I have no idea. Those that enjoy it say it's to be expected and will be worth the wait.
All I know is that I'll probably have to take my love for the beast, aka Torbjorn, over to the arcade where apparently the old mode of quick play will still be sticking around. That's a beautiful compromise.
Happy Dueling!
4 comments:
We never got into Overwatch at our house. My daughter wanted to play it when it came out, but she had an iMac at the time and it was one of the few Blizz products with no MacOS support. Then, last summer, I built her a Windows 10 box and then they had a free demo weekend and... she didn't like it. But she and her friends were already into CS:GO and Rainbow Six: Siege at that point, so somehow it did not fit with them.
@Wilhelm -- Nice! A lot of people say Overwatch is a Team Fortress 2 ripoff. I wonder if your daughter would like that or the game Paladins? Both are right along those lines, but it sounds like she's perfectly happy playing with her teams in CS:GO and Rainbow Six. I haven't followed the e-sports teams for another other game, but for some reason, esports on Overwatch has me hooked. (Outlaws fan)
I'm really glad for the 2 cubed comp/role-lock to come into play, especially as a main Tank player. It becomes a bit frustrating when you have a gigantic hitbox, but then 4-6 speedy glass cannons can easily shatter you, even though they're not a Reindhardt!
Plus, the whole point of tanking is to protect one's team from damage, but there's only so much protection you can provide before it caves in. Thus, in a way, it forces tanks to swap to either Healer to support, or another DPS, to keep up with the opposing team's speed and damage output.
As far as DPS players feeling bottle-necked by "long queue times": when used correctly, even a Healer or Tank can be a nasty DPS. Lucio is a perfect example, being one of the best (if not THE best) duelist in a 1v1 situation, and Moira's damage orb, channeled attack, and Coalescence can wreck a group despite whatever barriers exist. Warthog, Winston, D.Va, and Reinhardt are all deadly in their own way, especially when left unchecked.
@Kevin -- KEVIN!! Always so good to see you when your name pops up, my dude! You make good points all around.
I'm predicting dive to come back around, but it'll be interesting to see what comps happen with the 2-2-2. Any predictions?
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