Christmas Winding Down and Tank META Shift
- Dec 29th 2016
- #Overwatch
- Rrunner
I hope everyone enjoyed the Christmas event and got new skins. But lets dig into the big changes that happened in December. Symmetra got the re work that we all wanted and she needed. The new changes seem to be widely accepted and she has even made some appearances in some pro games. Lets review what they did briefly:
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New Ultimate - players will be able to toggle between two and put up the old Teleporter or a Shield Generator. This is a built object just like the Teleporter but it is a much more substantial shield than her previous one. It will shield all teammates within radius and it ignores line of sight. They also added more health to the Teleporter and some shield health.
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Photon Barrier - This will replace the shields, that she placed on each player. It will be similar to Reinhardt’s or Winston’s shield but is instead projected on a track of movement.
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Sentry Turret - You start with/Store six rather than three (Previously). Each will also regenerate in ten seconds instead of 12 seconds which is the current regen time.
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Primary fire - has more range.
And with a few other changes last patch, there has been a major META shift in the US, EU, and Asian pro teams. The META has gone to the tanks, a lot of teams have shifted to 2/4 (Tanks) - 1/2(Support) - 0/2(Damage). So most of the time you have Reinhardt, DVA, and Road Hog as your base line tanks with Zarya coming in as the 4th. This is a huge shift considering it was almost always Reinhardt and Zarya before. The Healers are the usual, Lucio most of the time and the Ana/Zenaytta battling for use. The your Damage is usually a Soldier 76 with Tracer/Genji/McCree/Mei fighting to replace of fill the secondary slot.
So why the shift? Because of the changes to DVA, she has been able to deal a lot more damage and gained a ton of survive-ability. This combo-ed with Road Hog still gives you a lot of damage output and a lot of big bodies with huge health pools for your healers to hide behind. This also frees up Reinhardt to use his hammer more as he is no longer trying to protect 4 squishy (Low health pool) characters. Also with the changes to Soldier he can put more damage and with more accuracy, can stay out of the action, and in tight situations he can heal as well.
Does this mean You should start playing Tanks more? Maybe. METAs shift and change with updates and this may happen with the next one. But it never hurts to have at least one character in a class you can fall back on. But when it really comes down to it, some play styles do not mix with certain people. Playing the characters you are best at is usually a better choice as you will perform better regardless. I hope this was informative and keep working on achieving Diamond, I believe in you!