Blizzard introduced hero pools to Overwatch, back in March, a rotating list of heroes that would be banned from competitive play and map pool late last year. Few changes are taking effects, after April 13th, after feedback from players and analysts.
“We’ve received a lot of helpful feedback since hero pools came to competitive play that the system was achieving our goal of shaking up the meta from week to week — but we’ve also heard that some aspects of the system are confusing or unclear, including why certain heroes or roles are rotated each week, or why the exact number of heroes available is inconsistent from week to week,” developer said in a blog post. “In addition, having separate hero pools for competitive play and the Overwatch League in the same week led to a confusing or disjointed experience for players who follow the league.”
Unifying the Hero Pools
Starting April 13th, Overwatch will feature one single hero pool that covers all Overwatch Competitive Play matches.
Starting next week, the Overwatch League, Contenders, Open Division and all Overwatch Competitive Play matches will share the same Hero Pool. Each week, four heroes will be removed from play.
⚔️ Two Damage, 🛡️One tank, and 💉One support pic.twitter.com/o143ls21Dy
— Naeri X 나에리 (@OverwatchNaeri) April 9, 2020
How will it work?
- To determine a week’s Hero Pool, we’ll compile hero play rates from high-level Competitive Play matches from the preceding two weeks. Heroes with play rates above a certain threshold will be eligible to be removed; the higher their play rate, the more likely they are to be removed. Based on that, one Tank, two Damage, and one Support will be randomly removed from play. (Note that heroes will not be removed two weeks in a row.)
- At the end of each Sunday’s Overwatch League matches, we’ll announce the Hero Pool that will be used that upcoming week for both live Competitive Play and the Overwatch League. That pool will go into effect in the game Monday morning.
- This process will occur every week of the Overwatch League regular season; during weeks that there are no Overwatch League matches, the same data will still be used to determine the Hero Pool and you will find out Monday morning.
Retiring Map Pools
Map Pools was implemented to greatly reduce the number of matches played on Paris and Horizon Lunar Colony and to give each competitive season a bit more flavor and differentiation, to give them more distinct identities.
The goals was achieved, but the two months rotations were too much and to simplify competitive experience, Overwatch is no longer have rotating Map Pools starting April 14. Competitive Play will include all of the maps, with the exception of Paris and Horizon Lunar Colony that needs adjustments to improve their play and be allowed back in the competitive play.
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Source: Overwatch Blog
