After the announcement of the first Hero Pool in Overwatch League, it's now time for bans in Overwatch! The first Hero Rotation is already available in Competitive, and will only impact this game mode.
For the moment, banned heroes won't be available for one week, and will be replaced the following week by other heroes. They won't be banned for more than two weeks in a row, and their ban will be decided by Blizzard. The selection process is quite complex, and takes into account both high level and low level games. All the parameters taken into account — number of banned heroes, duration of the ban etc. — can be modified according to feedbacks and the efficiency of this feature.
With Hero Pool, Blizzard offers a new method to keep novelty in-game. Metas won't last for long for a greater diversity in compositions and strategies. In addition to more regular updates and patch notes, this feature seems to be the solution chosen to address one of the biggest issues of Overwatch: a highly static meta.
It's now official, the first banned heroes of this new competitive season will be:
- Orisa
- Hanzo
- Mei
- Baptiste
They won't be available during the entire week (March 5-12), before being replaced by four other heroes.
Next week, the Hero Pool will be officially used in the Overwatch League. One Tank, two DPS and one Support were selected by drawing from among the most played heroes. Moira, McCree, Widowmaker and Reinhardt will be the first heroes to be banned!
