Overwatch 2 Devs Testing Doomfist in a Tank Role
As little bits and pieces of the Overwatch 2 development process continue to trickle out to its invested community, one hero in particular noticeably remains to be seen in teaser images and videos put out by Blizzard — Doomfist.
This is not out of neglect or some sort of laziness, however. In fact, it's quite the opposite. As hinted at before by the title's devs in September, Doomfist is one of the heroes in Overwatch 2 that will indeed be receiving a major rebalance, so much so that the highly-mobile, powerful frontline fighter may be switching from their current Damage role to one of a Tank.
On Oct. 13, Overwatch 2 lead hero designer Geoff Goodman took to the r/CompetitveOverwatch subreddit to answer some questions from the community about the OWL playtest videos Blizzard have posted on YouTube in recent days.
In response to a question regarding whether or not any of the heroes would be switching roles in Overwatch 2, Goodman confirmed that Blizzard is in the midst of testing out Doomfist as tank.
"Doomfist's kit is full of crowd control effects and mobility," Goodman said, "which makes it difficult to tune and balance him as a DPS in OW2. As a Tank though, he can keep those key properties to his kit since those can fit nicely into a Tank role (mostly the crowd control stuff).
"Of course this means he'll be losing some damage and gaining some defenses. This is still being tested and iterated on, so I dont have a ton of details on it yet as it is still in the early stages. Some of the early feedback so far is that he's not really feeling like a tank without having at least one active defensive button (his main defenses are passive atm), so thats something we'll probably try next."
With Overwatch 2 switching the hero shooter to a 5v5 configuration, plenty of changes in the meta will need to occur in order for the two DPS, two Support and one Tank setup to feel balanced. Among the changes that have been announced thus far — such as the large majority of support characters being reworked with their healing output — all Tanks will be receiving a mobility buff in order to allow them to take on more aggressive, brawler-style role overall.
Additionally, Tanks will be receiving less ultimate charge for doing damage to enemy players and will have less protection to offer to their team as Blizzard wants players to use the environment more tactically.
With these changes in mind, it certainly makes sense that Doomfist may be making the switch over to Tank duty. Of course, we will have to wait and see just how much Blizzard is able to nerf a bit of his offense and buff a bit of his defense with perhaps an ability change, as well as hitbox, player model and health adjustments if this change were to go through.