Overwatch finally got the message that Hero Pools aren't working and are finally removing them from competitive play indefinitely. Overwatch Community Manager Molly Fender confirmed this in a statement to players last night via the game's official forum.
What's going on?
The official statement from Molly Fender is as follows:
"We have a new update to share regarding Hero Pools. We’ve been listening to your feedback and constantly iterating on the feature behind the scenes. We initially implemented Hero Pools to address issues with stagnating metas and to keep match-ups exciting and fresh. However, we’ve found that the introduction of Experimental Card and increased hero balance updates has helped us work towards a healthy, changing meta in Competitive Play without needing to disable heroes.
Going forward, we’ve decided to make the following changes to Hero Pools starting immediately:
- Hero Pools will be removed indefinitely from Competitive Play, with no tentative date for re-implementation.
- Beginning June 13, the Overwatch League will utilize a single Hero Pool for the first two weeks of each tournament cycle, which consists of three weeks of qualifier matches and a tournament weekend featuring bracket play. Hero Pools will not be used for the week before each tournament or during tournament bracket play."
Fans and players of Overwatch rejoiced as the immediate removal of Hero Pools from competitive play marks a good sign that Blizzard is listening to the community (albeit very slowly).
We've covered extensively about the Hero Pools in overwatch, why they're not working, and how Blizzard needs to work with its community more, so this is a good step towards hopefully making the game great again.
READ MORE:
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The most important part here is how this will affect Overwatch Leauge. Overwatch League will continue to use a single Hero Pool for the first few weeks of each tournament cycle, with some additional changes to the format, which you can also see via Overwatch League's official post on the tournament rules.
From a player's perspective, this is great news. No longer will we need to have certain Heroes randomly banned each week, the Experimental Card is proving to be more of a success, so it's great for players, but professional players still need to endure Hero Pools, which again, isn't helping Overwatch League right now.
Let's end this on a good note. We've some Overwatch funny moments we're sure you'll like, and who knows, we might have another planned!
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