Hero Pools removed from Overwatch Competitive Play

Blizzard has announced that it is removing Hero Pools from Overwatch’s Competitive Play effective immediately.

Hero Pools were introduced earlier this year as a way of shaking up Overwatch’s stagnating meta. The system limited the heroes that could be chosen by players in Competitive Play with the available heroes changing on a weekly basis.

“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,” community manager Fender wrote in a forum post. “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.”

As for the Overwatch League, from June 13th, a single Hero Pool will be used for the first two weeks of each tournament cycle. The pool will then be removed for the week before each tournament and during tournament bracket play. More information regarding Hero Pools in the Overwatch League can be found over on the league’s official website.

Overwatch is available now on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and PC.

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