How Heroes Should Be Categorized

In my last post, I briefly discussed how heroes would likely need to be re-categorized if role select was implemented into the game. Here, I want to dive deeper into why I changed the roles and why characters were placed into given roles. If you missed my last post, here are my suggested roles:

Pesonal Overwatch Hero Categories
Offense	Tank	Healer	Support
Domfist	D. Va	Ana	Sombra
Genji	Orisa	Mercy	Symmetra
McCree	Reinhardt	Lucio	Mei
Pharah	Winston	Zenyatta	Torbjorn
Reaper	Zarya
Soldier: 76	Roadhog
Tracer
Bastion
Hanzo
Junkrat
Widowmaker

First, lets take a look at the offensive category. For the most part, this category makes sense to me. The primary objective of an offensive characters is to provide kills for the team. All of the current offensive characters do just that, but so do some of the defensive characters. Windowmaker's primary job is to get eliminations and provide damage, as is Hanzo's and Bastion. Finally, after Junkrat's most recent changes, he can do quite a bit more than just dump damage into choke points. Now that he has two mines to toss out, he can finish off characters quickly and be more of an aggressive attacker. His mines allow him more mobility to get out of risky situations, exploding himself backwards towards his teammates. Not to mention, his bombs no longer hurt himself, so players can be less worrisome when jumping beyond enemy lines. One could have argued that the old Junkrat could have been placed in the support category (within my own interpretations of categories), but with his improved and more offensive skill set, the offensive category fits nicely.

Similarly to the offensive category, the Tank category is well organized. What is a tank's primary job?
 Protect the team and absorb damage. All of the current tanks do that. They are all large characters that provide some sort of shielding. Whether it be via shielding that is provided by Reinhardt, Winston, Zarya and Orisa, or an ability provided by D. Va's defense matrix and Roadhog's take a breather, all tanks have the option to provide protection for their remaining teammates.

Healers. Do I need to explain? Ok, sure, I will anyways. Healers have to have the ability to heal directly. All of the heroes in this category heal in a direct manner. Yes, Sombra can hack health packs that are only available to your teammates, however you have to go find those health packs. That's not direct healing, it could be considered indirect healing, making a health pack only available for your team. Another way to look at it is how would you feel is if any character was your only healer? You would feel relatively comfortable with each of the characters under the healer category, but would you feel the same if Sombra or Symmetra were in that slot? I know I wouldn't.

Finally, the support category. My interpretation of a support character is one that provides the rest of your composition support that is not healing. So what type of support do each of these characters provide? Sombra provides the hacking of health packs and enemy characters, which allows for the rest of your team to take advantage for extra health or a temporarily watered down skill set. And, of course, her ultimate hacks all enemies in a given area, allowing for better team ultimate usage and preventing enemy ultimates for a given time. Symmetra provides a teleporter and turrets. The teleport assists in getting teammates back to the point or choke in a hurry, creating a huge advantage. The turrets significantly slow down and distract enemies. allowing for your teammates to finish up kills, and ultimately can slow momentum from an enemy team. Mei provides a wall that can soak up damage, split a team in two or hault an enemy push. This can allow your team some extra time to recuperate before the enemy team makes a push towards the point, or split the team in two and allow your teammates the time to prioritize enemy heroes. Her primary fire slowly freezes enemies, making them the easiest of targets for teammates to follow up on, and her ultimate does the same in a larger radius. Lastly, Torbjorn provides heroes with armor packs and his turret provides consistent accurate damage that slows team pushes and chips away at enemy health to assist teammates with damage.

Do you agree? Let me know your take on how the heroes should be categorized!