The biggest topic of conversation at the Washington Justice homestead this past weekend was hero pools.
McCree, Widowmaker, Reinhardt and Moira were the four heroes banned during Overwatch League competition. All four heroes will return into the hero pool next week, with four other heroes banned, selected at random among heroes that saw a 10+% usage rate in Overwatch League.
We asked some players, coaches and GMs their thoughts:
Elliot "ELLIVOTE" Vaneryd, Washington Justice tank
I don't like the random factor. Last week we had two characters, Mei and McCree, that had 80% above play rate, and one of the heroes that got banned [Moira], only had 10. What I would like to see is, the tickets, when they do the draw, if they have a lot of percent time played, then they will have more tickets for that specific character.
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Corey Nigra, Washington Justice DPS
The hero bans is going to be moreso how well your team adapts and changes the play style inside the game. Your structure, and what you've practiced. You don't want to ram your head into something that's not working the entire time just because you've practiced it for only a week. Adapting is going to be a really, really important skill moving forward.
Kim "KuKi" Dae-kuk, Florida Mayhem head coach
"It's hellish. Basically, to describe my day to day as a coach, I prep for our matches on Saturday and Sunday, and then on Monday which is supposed to be my off day, now I'm [spending it] thinking all day about what the hero pools will be, how that affects our team, how that affects the other team[s], so I don't even get a day off. And then Tuesday we go straight back into practice for our next match[es]. And it's going to be like this for the rest of the year. The responsibility of a coach has certainly gotten a lot heavier with the hero pool[s] coming out. I do foresee a very difficult season in terms of workload."
"After hero pools come out, we have two to three days of preparation max. There are two options that you can take: it's either you find the best meta possible, or you kind of predict what your opponent for the next match is going to use, and come up with a meta that counters that. For us, this week we went for the countering option and we think it worked pretty well."
Pan-seung "Fate" Koo, Florida Mayhem tank player
"You're going to start seeing teams pick metas that fit their play style and their hero pools best. For example for Toronto, we saw dive, but for [us], we came out with a more defensive, passive, countering meta. And also with the hero pools changing every week, we will also see heroes change within whatever meta they decide to go with. But their comps will be more dependent on style."
Albert "YeHHH" Yeh, Florida Mayhem GM
"If the objective is just to be entertaining, I think this fulfill that purpose. You'll see new comps every week, you'll see head coaches lose more hair throughout the season, but the end result is lots of different heroes being picked, lots of comps. From a spectator experience, it makes everything a lot more unpredictable, which makes it more entertaining. [But] you can make it entertaining without forcing it to be chaotic. I think that comes from balance. I think this is like oh, if you just want to guarantee entertainment, this is a way to do it. I would prefer balancing, but I think for Blizzard, they tried to kill goats for a year, it didn't work, then we introduced 2-2-2, then GOATS 2.0, like Orisa-Sigma, right, so it seems like they said 'what's a surefire way for us to not have the same heroes every week? Let's just ban them. IT added a little bit of randomness because 10%, so it's not just whatever heroes played the most. I think there should be a threshold. If it's above a certain percentage, it should be an auto ban. For example, if we were to do that, maybe 80%, anything over 80%, clearly it's a must play. This week, [heroes like] Lucio and Mei for sure would have been banned. We were able to use Mei this week. Mei is still super powerful. I think a threshold ... I don't know exactly what that number is, say 80% or 90% would make more sense."
Andreas "Logix" Berghmans, Toronto Defiant DPS player
"It was definitely interesting. I'm definitely happy I was able to play Tracer, it had been a long time. I would say, overall, it felt pretty comfortable for us. I'm very comfortable on Tracer, Surefour is very comfortable on Soldier [76], and we'll see each week what [comes]. [Hero pools] definitely benefits the players more. It's makes the job harder for coaches. We had our mindset on one comp, but even at the end of the week, yesterday we were trying [different things], so see what worked better, what struggled, what was weak. Some teams might throw some weird things at other teams. As a player, it's definitely enjoyable."
"Players have been pretty vocal about disliking (different heroes banned in ranked vs OWL). As a player, having Overwatch League be one pool, and then having the heroes you need to practice banned in ranked, is a very frustrating experience. Pretty much every person that I've asked so far has agreed that bans should be equal. At least in the top of the ranked system. It would help the Tier 2 scene and the top players in the game practice for their matches. "
Jaeyoon "Aid" Go, Paris Eternal assistant coach
"A lot of the heroes that we were using before got banned. So it was definitely hard for us to train for the event, especially within the one week period because we didn't have a lot of time to practice. It was hard for me to coach but definitely hard for the players as well. "
Harsha "Harsha" Bandi, Houston Outlaws head coach
"Personally I don't actually like it that much because I like when teams can master metas. It feels really cool to watch top teams push each other. But then, to be honest, hero pools really favor our team a lot. We have players that are good at thinking on the spot. We have a lot of different DPS players, two flex supports that play very different styles. So we just have the right pieces to be successful in hero pools. All of our players will be able to show their best performances now that we get to cater to them."
Chris "Dream" Myrick, Houston Outlaws assistant coach
It benefits us, but it sucks. Hero pools are awful. We only had one match, so we didn't have to practice a whole bunch of different maps. That also makes things easier for us. If we go into a week where we don't feel so comfortable on one style and that style will just beat all the other options, and we have a bunch of maps we have to play, and we're rotating in different players because they have different strengths, so that stops us from gelling immediately vs. having 2-3 weeks playing on the same comps all the time. So even if it's a different map we know how it will translate, I just feel like having even the hero pools last two weeks would make things so much better. The change every week just feels chaotic and so bad. It's really unfortunate for Paris, my understanding is they had issues with illness, which we have also been affected with this season, but not when we had to learn a new meta in a week. So having players that aren't at their full capacity, not being able to scrim as much was you want, while traveling and having hero pools, it's disastrous. It lowers the level of play so much.
A big part of hero pools is obviously going to be adapting every week and getting a read on the meta early. We decided we wanted to play this sort of dive comps with [Zenyatta] on Tuesday, the first day we scrimmed. We decided that's where we were gonna go. We were fortunate in that not only are we comfortable on those comps, but the Zen comp in general beats the Orisa style. So teams that opted into that style early are going to have trouble this weekend against the Zen comps. If we can continue to get good reads early in the week, and we get a couple extra days scrimming on the best comp on that isolated meta, that's going to continue to give us a big advantage. That's a huge reason why we were so comfortable coming in today, because we committed to one style early in the week, as the week went on in scrims we were more and more successful with the comp, no matter what our opponents were playing.
Walid "Mouffin" Bassal, Boston Uprising flex tank
I think it's way too fast, honestly. I think they should do a two week thing for teams to practice. One week is way too [fast of a] time frame for team to actually find out what's good here, there. There are so many variables for so little time. I dislike it. I like the idea of hero pools, but it's way too short.
Rollon "Mini" Hamelin, Boston Uprising assistant coach
You have to spin the wheel, what is the best [comp] for your team. Each team and coaching staff have their own read of the meta. It's pretty difficult I will say. How much can you change on the fly? Like today, we [didn't] adapt, we didn't win. A thing for me in the future needs to be about players adapting on the fly and taking risks.
Terence "SoOn" Tarlier, Paris Eternal DPS player
"If you play one game ([n a weekend], you only have to manage four maps. Our coaching staff [this weekend] had to manage 8 maps, and two different play styles because it's two different teams. One or two matches, it doesn't matter, I can play three matches in a row, it doesn't matter to me. [But] for me, it should be equal for everyone. If I play two matches, the enemy team has to play two matches. Everyone has to be equal."
Christopher "ChrisTFer" Graham, Philadelphia Fusion Assistant Coach
[Hero pools are] tough. I'd love to blame the hero pools as the reason we lost, and obviously it's a factor, but to be honest, Paris had it so much tougher than us, we can't use that as a reason for the loss. [Hero pools are an] equalizer in what it is, it puts every team into such a crazy panic. I've spoken to a few coaches about how they've prepared for this, the same as us, (['m hearing the] same stories, two days in they feel confident and then something happens and also every team goes into a panic. It's completely different, the way we look at a week, the way we prepare, it's so different to anything else in Overwatch. But we just have to learn from it. Next week it gets even tougher, we have one day less practice.
I'm not trying to sit here and make excuses. Over time, I promise you in ten weeks, once the best teams understand the structure of hero bans, they will rise to the top. We're in a pretty horrible situation, it's week one. If teams keep learning and don't press the panic button, eventually, the best teams will rise to the top for sure. And in playoffs, every team can go back and reset their mindsets on how they play strategically and look at a meta where everything is available and with maybe more time to prepare.