During a match of the Overwatch League, there were loud boos. These reflect the fans’ dissatisfaction with the current state of the meta.
What led to the boos? On Sunday, February 25, there was a match between the Houston Outlaws and New York Excelsior in the Overwatch League. Both teams are among the better teams in the league, with New York remaining undefeated in Season 2 while Houston is currently struggling.
Nevertheless, the match created excitement as the teams faced each other on the map Temple of Anubis. Excelsior played defense with a GOATS composition, which the commentators typically refer to simply as “defensive line-up” for understanding.
Houston wanted to start the attack with Pharah and Tracer on their team, which earned them loud applause from the audience. However, after seeing the enemy composition, they quickly switched to GOATS themselves and were booed for it.
This is what it’s about: GOATS is a composition consisting of three tanks and three healers, which originally (from Team GOATS) consists of six precisely defined heroes:
- D.Va
- Reinhardt
- Zarya
- Brigitte
- Moira
- Lúcio
The composition combines strong shields and a lot of health with enormous healing. Due to its strength in almost every situation and the lack of effective counters to GOATS, this setup has been the meta of Overwatch for a long time.
According to former pro Seagull, even the hero Tracer is to blame for this.
This frustrates the fans: At least in the competitive scene of the Overwatch League, many fans have hoped for variety because of this. But even here, GOATS dominates, even though Symmetra recently made her first appearance in the Overwatch League.
GOATS is a defensive composition that robs the fights of both dynamics and action. Offensive heroes with flashy plays currently have no place in the meta; the fights are very static.
In the end, it’s all about which Zarya can set a Graviton Surge first so that the opposing team is wiped out. It’s a constant back and forth until a team makes a mistake or gets lucky.
Watching such a defensive play style is simply boring – a problem eSports fans also know from Fortnite, which caused a tournament to flop. It remains to be seen whether the Overwatch League will suffer a similar fate.
What do you think of the meta? How would you change anything? For more information about the game, visit us on our Overwatch page on Facebook.
Perhaps the new hero will bring some variety:
