This didn’t last long. Overwatch is already saying goodbye to “Hero Pools” – there are no longer any banned heroes.
Since the release of Overwatch, many players have wished for a feature that is otherwise mainly known from MOBAs. They wanted to ban some heroes in Overwatch. This would change the meta repeatedly and not let it become so stale. That’s exactly what Overwatch introduced some time ago with “Hero Pools” – and now it is dropping it again.
What is changing? Last evening, Molly Fender, Community Manager of Overwatch, published a post in the official forum. Accordingly, there will no longer be hero pools in the ranked game mode. All characters are once again available at any time.
However, this does not apply to the Overwatch League. There, hero pools will only be used in the first two weeks of a tournament cycle, namely during the qualification phase. In the last week and the respective tournament final, there will be no hero pools.
More patches should help
What is Blizzard doing instead? Instead of banning individual heroes with the “Hero Pools”, Blizzard prefers to frequently adjust the balance to create more variance. This is supposed to lead to more frequent balance patches, where other heroes who might currently be a bit too weak can shine. The developers are primarily relying on the “Experiment” mode, where larger changes to heroes can already be tested in the live environment by all players.
Players respond positively: The general feedback in the thread seems to be predominantly positive. Most players are happy that they can play all heroes at any time again in ranked mode. Although some players still demand further changes – such as the removal of the “Role Queue”.
What do you think of this adjustment? Is it good to deactivate the hero pools again? Or was it a useful feature that should have remained? There is also discussion about the new hero of the game: tank and healer shortage in Overwatch, but they are bringing a DPS hero
