The current state of tanks in Overwatch 2 is unanimously considered miserable by the community.
Recently, a thread titled "Playing tank in OW2 should be considered community service" went up on the Overwatch subreddit and garnered a lot of attention and sympathy from most viewers. The thread which has only been up for a day and has around a thousand Upvotes.
What's surprising, or perhaps unsurprising considering the game's state, is that most of the comments will echo this sentiment, with barely anyone disagreeing; the result is a sad little pity party for the state of tanks in Overwatch 2 right now.
The original post states, "The entire purpose of losing a second tank was to help DPS and support players have lower queue times. Remember that when you pick tank you aren't being the team leader or anything cool like that you're being a sacrifice to the other 4 people on your team so they can play a round."
The latest Overwatch 2 update has been extremely ambitious and made a ton of balance changes. DPS characters got a healcut passive, which has made playing as a tank even harder. Tanks are now expected to use cover rather than being able to heal through everything.
While other roles seem to be doing well with players enjoying Overwatch 2, it appears Tanks have been left behind in the dust. "Tank has turned into being a meat shield thats just charging your ult to finally do something." said one Redditor. Another user added "Tank is essentially a cosmetic role at this point. You're just a DPS that gets targeted more."
Most players are simply unsatisfied with the level of aggro they must take as tanks without any tools to mitigate it. A common sentiment found throughout the community is wanting the return of two Tank roles. The team at Blizzard has been keeping a close eye on the state of affairs, and we've seen some hotfix patches.
Hopefully, these balance issues won't persist for too long, or playing Tank in Overwatch 2 will be too miserable for anyone to pick up the role. So next time you queue up, remember to be nice to your Tanks. They're going through a lot.