How are the tank buffs: a retrospective.

Now that it has been roughly two weeks with the new buffed tanks, how is everyone liking them? And as a bonus, how strong do all the tanks feel? I know we can compare the raw stats of each tank pre and post patch like most patch notes, but because of all the changes it feels like it is better to talk about how they feel together now that we have played with them.

Personally I feel like notable meta tanks are as follows:

1. Dva

2. Winston/sigma (which one is better depends on team skill and skill with dive)

3. Rein/Rammatra (both feel fairly competitive and interchangeable)

4. the outliers (queen, doom, ball, orisa, zarya, mauga)

?. Roadhog

I fell like dva was the greatest winner this patch both with the armor change and the buffs she got being incredibly strong, especially since her main counter zarya got her buffs stripped down a little, so she hasn't been affected too much by other peoples buffs.

Winston gaining more effective health with the armor buff is really nice against many of the threats he likes to dive, so while his buff wasn't anything crazy, he was already pretty good and the armor buff kept him good.

Sigma didn't get many buffs besides the blanket heal buff but he did get the rock damage buff. It hasn't done too much but does increase his kill potential with his combo. His survivability was already really good so having it unchanged is fine.

I will be honest, I main Reinhardt, so I might be biased, but rein is a big unexpected winner here, because not only are his pins Really good into opposing tanks if you get the opening and the connection, but being able to kill reapers in one shot or any squishy even if they have a small amount of overheal is nice too. The shield buff is okay, but nothing crazy since a good rein shouldnt let his shield break anyway. What really helped was again the armor and passive changes. Rein himself doesn't care about attacking into armor, but he now takes much less chip damage from soldier, cass, and other dps that are good at constant shield pressure now have a hard time breaking though armor. When playing rein it is night and day when you have armor up and when you dont.

Rammatra benefits from this patch too, increasing his lethality in nemesis, but some of the crazier buffs (like the hp and armor buffs on nemesis) got rolled back so he's not dominant. The armor change helps ram a lot in nemesis especially because you will be taking armor damage the vast majority of the time.

Queen is much better off with her survivability buffs this patch, but I dont think it was enough to bring her up alongside the other brawl tanks. She really struggles against armor, and she has none herself so she didnt gain as much. However, one crucial thing about this patch for queen is that she essentially heals 10 percent more because queen will almost always have the dps passive applied, so any reductions to that are good for queen. Even still, I dont think she is that good right now.

Doom is better in a vacuum, but the other tanks got buffed more. I dont play doom much, so I dont know his situation too well, so if someone could elaborate that would be great.

Ball never really needed the survivability buffs/damage buffs, since his main issue is he folds like a wet paper towel to cc, but these still help a bit. I would still say he's weak, but chazm has been slaughtering on ball so what do I know.

Orisa got her small buff, but the big buff was again to the armor. When fortify is active, she is essentially unkillable. She still has an uptime issue and lacks impact, so I dont think she is that good right now.

Zarya was a god among men, for about 5 minutes. Then her buffs were toned down and she is back to mediocre. She can play as an off meta pick into dva well, but she isnt meta herself. I would say she's decent.

I would argue Mauga is this patch's biggest looser. He doesnt have much armor, so he doesnt benefit much from that. He got a small overrun buff that doesn't do that much and he got a small rework to his shout that I would argue is harder to use but more rewarding if done right. The biggest issue he has is that he doesnt play well into dva at all. Dva can destroy his shout by eating the whole thing and killing his survivability. He has potential to be good, but with the crippling weakness to the top tank, he is far from the meta pick he was recently.

Roadhog confuses me. He is really good in the right hands (cough cough cyx) but rolls over and dies to some of the meta tanks (sig and dva) and if he still annoying mauga eats him alive still. He also did not receive any benefit from the armor change. But having played him a little, he feels... not bad? I honestly have no idea about him, he seems like a wild card.

If anyone thinks differently please say so, this is only the opinion of a former top 500 tank from ow1 that has only recently gotten back into the game as of season 9 and is still only diamond, so some of you probably have a better, more nuanced opinion than this (especially concerning the off tanks, I was a main tank main after all).