The season 9 changes have benefited tanks the least out of every role, considering they’re the easiest targets for DPS heroes to shoot at, so they need to be able to keep up if they want to stay alive. Which ones have the easiest time dealing with the new patch?

 

1) Mauga

• Incendiary Chaingun: Automatic weapon that ignites enemies on repeated impacts (72 DPS).
• Volatile Chaingun: Automatic weapon that deals critical damage to burning enemies (72 DPS).
• Overrun: Charge forward and stomp to launch enemies. You are unstoppable while charging (25 direct damage, 60 minimum damage and 120 max on stomp).
• Cardiac Overdrive: Nearby allies take reduced damage and heal by dealing damage (30% damage reduction).
• Cage Fight: Deploy a barrier that traps yourself and enemies.
• Berserker: Gain temporary health when dealing critical damage.

Hero score: 86/100

After the nerfs to Zenyatta, a slight reduction to the DPS passive and the buffs to his stomp, Mauga became a much better pick. He’s not going to be discorded all the time, he can give his entire team healing and 30% damage reduction every 12 seconds, he has better burst damage against squishies now and his overhealth makes him annoying to kill.

He can delete almost half of a 250 HP hero’s health if he gets a direct hit with overrun, he’s great at 1 v 1ing most of the other tanks in a season where the best strategy can be to bully the enemy team’s tank a lot of the time and he’s difficult to finish off himself. 

725 HP, 200 of which is armor, can take a long time to burn through. On top of that, Mauga gets overhealth when gets headshots or shoots ignited enemies, he has self healing, he can give himself even more DR when he uses Cardiac Overdrive and any damage his teammates deal during it heals him too.

Cage Fight is also a great ultimate, letting him trap any enemy he wants and usually getting a free kill on them unless they get enough support from their team, as well as give his teammates a temporary shield so they’re safe to shoot at whoever he has caged.

 

2) D.Va 

• Fusion Cannons: Automatic short-range spread weapons (146 DPS).
• Light Gun (Demeched): Automatic weapon (98 DPS).
• Boosters: Fly in the direction you are facing (15 damage).
• Defense Matrix: Block projectiles in an area in front of you.
• Micro Missiles: Launch a volley of explosive rockets (77 DPS, can do up to 198 damage).
• Self-Destruct: Eject and overload your mech, causing it to explode after a short time (100 minimum damage, 1000 max).
• Call Mech (Demeched): Call down a new mech (250 damage).
• Eject: Eject out of your mech when it is destroyed.

Hero score: 84/100

D.Va’s mobility is the lowest out of the dive tanks and her head hitbox is massive, but she has good burst damage and plays better into Bastion or characters with shotguns than Winston can. She’s also great for protecting her supports, which most other tanks don’t usually have the time to do.

The projectile size buffs make it easier for D.Va to block damage with her matrix, because she’s more likely to catch things like Ashe’s Dynamite or Ana’s grenade, which could be a little iffy before. Her matrix is relatively flexible, since it can be used to buy her team time to focus an annoying enemy, protect her supports or contest a DPS that’s on high ground.

Self Destruct can be used to scare the enemy team away from a place that you don’t want them to be, a quick remech if you’re low HP or to catch out of position squishies if you’re sure someone will die to it, but most of the time it’s probably best for forcing people off objectives.

While D.Va technically has a second life and you can use Call Mech to try and go for kills, it’s better to try and avoid spending too much time out of your mech, because she’s extremely squishy when demeched and you might get staggered if you die later than the rest of your teammates.

 

3) Sigma

• Hyperspheres: Launch two charges which implode after a short duration, dealing damage in an area (73.3 DPS).
• Kinetic Grasp: Absorb projectiles in front of you and convert them into extra health.
• Accretion: Gather a mass of debris and throw it at an enemy to knock them down (12 damage minimum. 40 max).
• Experimental Barrier: Hold to propel a floating barrier; release to stop. Press again to recall the barrier to you.
• Gravitic Flux: Manipulate gravity to lift enemies into the air and slam them back down (50 damage on lift, 50% of max HP on slam).

Hero score: 79/100

Sigma is great on maps that encourage poke, like Circuit Royal or Havana, and he’s one of the most self sufficient tanks so it doesn’t matter if his supports have a low healing output. He can use his shield to push up and then grasp to get overhealth from damage meant for it, all while playing from far away, so a good Sigma can be annoying to kill.

He has a harder time on short range maps, especially when the enemy team is running brawl, because he can’t make space well when the enemy team isn’t being outranged. If a Reinhardt, Zarya or Ramattra gets too close, he’ll have to back up or risk dying.

When a squishy is in the right range, he can use Accretion and his left click to combo them for 160 damage, which will either force them to back off or mean a kill if his team follows up, so heroes with 250 HP or less need to respect Sigma unless they want to end up respawning.

Gravitic Flux can also be a good way to get a few kills if you time it right, but you should probably stay behind your shield and near your team so that you can’t be stunned or hacked out of it. It can also lift the enemy team off the objective during overtime, even if that’s a little more situational.

 

4) Orisa

• Augmented Fusion Driver: Automatic heat based weapon (130 DPS).
• Energy Javelin: Launch your javelin at an enemy to stun and knock them back. More effective if the enemy hits a wall (60 initial damage, 40 damage against walls).
• Fortify: Gain temporary health, reducing all damage taken and becoming unstoppable. While active, heat generated by your weapon is reduced.
• Javelin Spin: Spin your javelin to destroy projectiles and block melee attacks, while also pushing enemies and increasing forward speed (20 damage on initial spin, 5 after).
• Terra Surge: Sweep in enemies and anchor them, gaining the effects of Fortify and charging up a surge of damage. Use Q to unleash the surge early (19.5 DPS during charge, 62 minimum damage and 500 max on release).

Hero score: 74/100

Orisa doesn’t have a consistent way to prevent herself from being hit with the healing debuff because she has low mobility and beam weapons can go through her spin, but she has two ways to give herself overhealth, her armor gives damage reduction and fortify prevents her from being headshot, so she doesn’t suffer quite as badly as she could. 

If she’s consistently being healed by her supports, which she probably will be, killing her can take a long time. Since focusing tanks is a lot more viable this season, having high survivability is important and Orisa has it in spades.

Her range is decent and she has multiple ways to stun or boop the enemy team, which makes her  annoying to go against for anyone that can’t poke her down from far away or access her backline easily. She can struggle against heroes like Sombra or Tracer, because they can ignore her and go for the squishies behind her, which makes it harder to get consistent healing.

Since fortify makes it impossible to crit her, she’s also a good counter to Mauga, because she can pop it when he sets her on fire and then stun him with her javelin or eat his damage and push him around with her spin. 

 

5) Ramattra

• Void Accelerator: Fire a stream of projectiles (125 DPS).
• Void Barrier: Create a barrier at the targeted location.
• Nemesis Form: Transform into Nemesis Form, changing your attacks and gaining bonus armour.
• Pummel: Punch, creating a wave of piercing energy with every swing (60 damage per punch).
• Ravenous Vortex: Fire a sphere of energy that creates a slowing vortex on the ground, damaging enemies within and pulling them downward (15 DPS).
• Block: Significantly reduces damage taken from the front and reduces movement speed.
• Annihilation: Enter Nemesis Form and create a deadly swarm that lashes out at nearby enemies, persisting longer when damaging enemies (30 DPS on the AOE).

Hero score: 72.5/100

If you want to run a brawl tank, Ramattra is usually your best choice. He can shoot while using his shield unlike Reinhardt, his omnic form lets him poke safely until he wants to push up and he can keep himself safe from the healing debuff, if only for a little while.

Pummel isn’t quite as good as it was last patch, taking 5 punches to kill most DPS or supports now instead of 4, but it still pierces and has a huge hitbox, which makes it unlikely to miss. Having a Lúcio helps though, because it means he can chase enemies better with the speed boost.

His vortex can also be used to slow enemies if you place it well, so it might be better to save it for getting kills with in Nemesis. It can be used to pull down flying enemies, but chances are characters like Echo or Pharah aren’t going to be playing near you often enough for it to matter.

Annihilation can extend Nemesis Form and give an armour refresh, so you can use it to keep pressuring an enemy if you’re already in range of. While it can work well against close range team comps, a lot of heroes can escape it and defensive cooldowns or ultimates make it hard to kill multiple enemies most of the time.

 

6) Junker Queen

• Scattergun: Pump action shotgun (106 DPS).
• Jagged Blade: When active, throw the blade. Re-activate to pull it back, along with any impaled enemy. Wound enemies hit by Quick Melee or Throw, dealing damage over time (65 direct damage, 30 bleed damage on direct, 15 bleed damage on recall + melee).
• Commanding Shout: Grants temporary health and movement speed to yourself and allies. 
• Carnage: Wound all enemies in front of you, dealing damage over time and reducing the cooldown for each enemy hit (90 direct damage, 40 bleed damage).
• Rampage: Charge forward. Wounds enemies, dealing damage over time and preventing them from being healed (40 direct damage, 90 bleed damage).
• Adrenaline Rush: Heal from all damage over time dealt by wounds.

Hero score: 71/100

Junker Queen is still a good pick even if the DPS passive makes it a little harder to get value with her self heal, because her smaller hitbox means she won’t be hit with as much random spam as other tanks will. Her knife is easier to hit and she has good burst if she combos it with Carnage, so she has some of the highest kill potential out of all the tanks. 

She also has a decent matchup in to dive because she can use her shout to help her teammates and she’s not as easy for Genji or Tracer to poke at for ult charge. Winston in particular struggles with her, since her shotgun can kill him quickly.

Playing around walls is especially important this patch, since she doesn’t want to be forced to use her shout too early to close the distance or keep herself alive. If possible, it’s best to use it during the teamfight so that you have more consistent uptime.

Rampage is also incredibly useful if you use it well, since it prevents healing entirely and can bleed multiple people on the enemy team at the same time, so you can kill squishies quickly once the animation is over. If you’re playing against a Kiriko, you should probably be sure suzu is on cooldown before using it though.

 

7) Winston

• Tesla Cannon: Left click is an electric frontal-cone weapon. Hold right click to charge, release to fire focused electricity (75 DPS on left click, 15 minimum damage on right click and 50 max).
• Jump Pack: Leap forward into the air. Landing on an enemy damages them (1 minimum damage, 50 max).
• Barrier Projector: Deploy a protective energy dome.
• Primal Rage: Gain immense health, but you can only leap and punch enemies (50 damage per swing).

Hero score: 68/100

Winston needs the most resources out of all the mobile tanks, so it might be a little more difficult to run him with support combos that have low healing, but his jump is great for contesting high ground and his bubble can help him engage safely or make a soft dive to poke for ult charge.

His DPS is also slightly higher this patch if you combo in melees, so he can kill squishies a little faster than he could before. If he’s 1 v 1ing someone, Winston should drop his bubble and prevent them from getting healed, then either distract the enemy team for long enough to make space or get the kill and jump back out. 

Even if his damage was buffed though, Winston struggles if the enemy team has high mobility supports that can escape his dives. Moira, Kiriko and Lúcio are strong right now and he’ll have a hard time finishing them off because of how slippery they are, so he might be forced to back out early.

Primal Rage is an easy ultimate to mess up, especially if you use it alone or if the entire enemy team shoots at you, but if a low HP enemy is in a closed room or corner, it’s unlikely they’ll be able to escape when you juggle them because there’s a movement lock and they’ll be body blocked by Winston’s huge hitbox.

 

8) Doomfist

• Hand Cannon: Short-range weapon with spread. Reloads automatically (73.3 DPS).
• Rocket Punch: Hold to charge then release to launch forward and knock an enemy back. Damage increases if an enemy hits a wall (25 minimum + 75 max direct damage, 10 minimum + 40 max damage against walls).
• Seismic Slam: Leap and smash the ground (50 damage).
• Power Block: Protect yourself from frontal attacks. Blocking heavy damage empowers Rocket Punch.
• Meteor Strike: Press Q to leap up into the air. Move the targeting circle, then press ability 3 to strike the targeted area (15 minimum damage, 300 max).

Hero score: 65/100

Doomfist is good in theory, but the amount of bugs his kit has make him hard to get consistent value on and you need to know a lot of his special techs to justify picking him over another dive tank.

His power block makes him an easy target for Sombra’s hack or Cassidy’s grenade, so Doomfist needs to time his pushes well or else the enemy DPS can punish him. Then his squishies are left vulnerable, especially if the enemy team is also running another high mobility tank.

If you manage to get a game without his abilities bugging out too badly and the enemy team doesn’t run any counters, he can bully the enemy supports, particularly Ana or Zenyatta. It’s best to make sure they’re alone first, because being caught out with nothing but his power block makes him easy to burst down.

Meteor Strike lets him make riskier plays than usual, because if it looks like the push isn’t going to work out, he can use it to cleanse himself and go back to his team or heal and reset his cooldowns before trying again if he has support.

 

9) Zarya

• Particle Cannon: Left click is a short-range linear beam weapon. Right click is an energy grenade launcher (95 DPS minimum + 195 DPS max on left click, 47 DPS minimum + 95 DPS max on right click).
• Particle Barrier: Create a damage barrier around you.
• Projected Barrier: Create a damage barrier around an ally.
• Graviton Surge: Launch a gravity well that pulls enemies to it (5 impact damage, 17.5 DOT).
• Energy: Damage blocked by barriers increases Particle Cannon damage.

Hero score: 63/100

Zarya has the highest DPS out of all the tanks at high charge and she works great if the enemy team keeps charging her, but she has low range and struggles on maps with lots of high ground. Because of her inconsistency, she’s usually a counterpick instead of a hero you start out on.

Her bubbles can cleanse her or teammates from the DPS passive too, which gives her supports a little bit of time to heal someone that’s close to dying without the debuff. They’re low HP and only last 2 seconds, but that’s usually enough time to get someone back up to full.

She’s also a decent pick against D.Va dive comps, since her left click can go through Defense Matrix and she can bubble whoever the flankers are going for. Winston, Doomfist and Wrecking Ball are better picks against Zarya, because she can’t break bubble quickly enough to do much and Ball or Doomfist can just ignore her most of the time.

Graviton Surge is one of the best combo ultimates in the game, since it goes well with most offensive ults and it’s good for killing an enemy squishy or two if you use it by itself, but D.Va or Sigma can eat it and things like suzu or Sound Barrier can make it harder to finish off people you’ve caught.

 

10) Roadhog

• Scrap Gun: Short-range spread weapon with a medium-range shrapnel volley (200 DPS).
• Chain Hook: Drag a targeted enemy to you (5 damage).
• Take A Breather: Heal yourself and reduce damage taken (180 HPS, 50% damage reduction).
• Pig Pen: Launch a trap that slows and damages nearby enemies (60 initial damage, 30 DPS when standing in trap).
• Whole Hog: Damage and knock back enemies in front of you (896 DPS if all pellets hit).

Hero score: 58/100

Because he’s easy to focus down if he spends too long out in the open, Roadhog has to spend a lot of the game playing corners or cover, otherwise he’ll take too much damage to take space and have to keep using his healing just to stay alive.

His range problems aren’t quite as bad as Reinhardt’s because of his hook and the 2nd burst of damage from his left click, so he can still apply pressure on maps without too much high ground or against heroes that play in hook range, but he has to be careful about his timing or else he loses out on the kill and doesn’t have his cooldowns.

Ana and Zenyatta also make playing Roadhog difficult, because he already has to right click constantly to stay healthy, so removing his healing entirely or making him take 25% more damage ruins any chance of getting value when the enemy team is paying attention to him.

 

11) Wrecking Ball

• Quad Cannons: Automatic assault weapons (125 DPS).
• Grappling Claw: Launch a grappling claw to rapidly swing around the area. Enables high speed collisions to damage and knockback enemies (50 damage when high speed).
• Roll: Transform into a ball and increase maximum movement speed.
• Piledriver: Slam into the ground below to damage and launch enemies upward (20 minimum damage, 100 max).
• Adaptive Shield: Create temporary personal extra health. Amount increases with more enemies nearby.
• Minefield: Deploy a massive field of proximity mines (130 damage per mine).

Hero score: 55/100

Wrecking Ball has always been best when your supports have a low healing output, and this patch has made him a little better because of his survivability, since he’s got some of the best mobility in the game and the self healing passive benefits him the most out of all the tanks.

His kill potential is a little low since he doesn’t have much burst damage, so he can struggle to put enough pressure on the enemy supports, but he’s good for making space because the cooldown for his grapple is short and he can choose his engagements easily.

Piledriver can also enable his DPS, since his snipers get a free shot on anyone that he knocks into the air and they’re locked out of movement for a little while unless they use abilities, so it gives his flankers an easy chance to follow up on his pushes.

If the enemies pick heroes that can just ignore him because of self sustain or high survivability though, it might be better to swap, since Ball is a hard hero and it can take a lot of skill to make him work when he’s countered. It’s also a lot harder to get value when they have heroes with hard CC, like Sombra or Brigitte, because they can stun him out of his grapple.

 

12) Reinhardt

• Rocket Hammer: Devastating melee weapon (100 damage per swing).
• Charge: Charge forward and smash an enemy against a wall (50 damage if no pin, 275 damage against walls).
• Fire Strike: Launch a fiery projectile (100 damage).
• Barrier Field: Hold right click to deploy a frontal energy barrier.
• Earthshatter: Knock down all enemies in front of you (50 normal damage, 150 damage close range).

Hero score: 52/100

Reinhardt has been tough to play the last few patches and this one isn’t very different. His damage was buffed to help keep his kill pressure the same, but that doesn’t matter much if he doesn’t get to swing most of the time.

Almost all of the good heroes are going to be playing outside of his hammer range and the ones he might be able to go for are probably just going to outdamage him. Even if they can’t, the DPS passive will force him to put his shield back up anyway. If you’re playing him in to dive, he has no way to help his backline and he can’t do much to contest poke comps other than keep shielding.

He’s playable on shorter range maps if you have supports like Kiriko or Lúcio, since having a speed boost makes it easier for him to get a few swings in before having to back off, but he’ll still need plenty of healing to enable his pushes. He struggles to stay alive unless he’s constantly kept topped up.

 

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