A new mechanic called Hero Pools will be making its way to Overwatch’s Season 21 of competitive play, which could end constant meta riding and start an age of fluid team composition and adaptation.
After six long months, Jeff Kaplan and the Overwatch have come out with a new Developer Update video introducing the new mechanic. Hero Pools will make its way to competitive Overwatch in March and ultimately promises big changes for the game’s eSports scene. This new mechanic features a unique system wherein Blizzard decides what heroes you will play for the week.
When the system is implemented, one tank, support, and two damage heroes will be temporarily unavailable for competitive games. The unavailable heroes won’t be gone for too long, since the removal cannot last two weeks. Players will be warned one week of next week’s hero rotation. Subsequently, heroes that are most regularly picked will be taken out temporarily.
Hero Pools are entirely different from other games’ pick and ban modes. In Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege or League of Legends, players pick and ban which characters/heroes will be allowed during that specific match. In the Hero Pool mode, Blizzard will be making the decisions of which character is to stay or leave on a weekly basis.
Accompanying the surprising change, Jeff Kaplan announced stronger and more active balancing. He explained how two of the main complaints the Overwatch received would have to do with balance and the meta; specifically, that players wanted more frequent and aggressive balance and meta patches as opposed to the minor and infrequent changes that the dev team would roll out. He explained that Hero Pools are a part of the team’s plan to target the meta more actively in response.
Why Is The Hero Pool System Overwatch’s Competitive Redemption?
The Overwatch League is slowly descending in popularity, and the game is declining in players. But the Hero Pool system might solve everything.
Overwatch, like other eSports games, relies heavily on a healthy meta. If a game has a stagnant meta, the need to have a particular composition and hero alignment gets exhausting and repetitive to play. Overwatch’s slow-changing meta has always been a major complaint among players and is one of the reasons why it’s been slowly plummeting in player count and interest.
For example, GOATS (sometimes called triple-triple) is one of the most enduring team compositions in competitive Overwatch. It’s based on have three tanks and three healers to maintain high health and defense while defeating the opponent via slow attrition, and has been the total snowball tactic that has won multiple professional and non-professional teams countless games. The constant abuse of these kinds of tactics has been one of the major criticisms from fans, but it’s not like the players have other options - because of the unchanging balance of the game, the choice is to use a well-known meta or lose.
What the Hero Pool system does is eradicate overpowered meta’s by eliminating critical components to those builds. It essentially breaks the meta and, at the same time, creates smaller meta’s and builds. Teams won’t rely on a full six hero build to destroy their opponents, but instead, three or four hero builds will take its place. By essentially resetting the availalble builds each week, Hero Pools gives birth to creativity and adaptation. It forces players to think out of the box every week, change their playstyles, and experiment with what they have.
This change affects the Overwatch League as much as it affects Overwatch competitive games. Although the updates won’t come during the midseason tournaments, they will prompt professionals to prepare when it arrives in the next competitive season. The pros will be pushed to the limits of their adaptability and creativity to win with Hero Pool, making for what might become the most exciting season of OWL yet.
Overall, Overwatch may have dug itself out of its grave with this update. It promises innovative strategies, builds, and new meta’s that don’t want to make you smash your keyboard — further inspiring people to play the game again and watch the eSports competitions. It’s uncertain exactly when the change will be implemented, but the community predicts it to hit the test servers around late February.
