Despite Blizzard’s greatest efforts to introduce balance changes to Overwatch, they have consistently run into difficulties balancing their game in order to make multiple compositions viable. Their design philosophy has consistently failed to bring a balanced set of meta compositions to the table.

OWL Hero Bans



One team chooses to ban 1 hero every map (for both teams). Max 5 heroes for a longer series in OWL. 'Home' team advantage could be they get first ban. Bans could go back and forth between teams, or loser gets next choice of ban.



Adds strategy and variance — Chris ‘HuK’ Loranger (@LorangerChris) January 17, 2020

This past week, former professional Starcraft 2 player Chris “HuK” Loranger advocated for a new solution. Rather than introduction a 1-3-2 meta, or continuing going around in circles with nerfs, maybe it’s time for Overwatch to try a pick/ban system.

The nerfed barriers didn’t fix what was wrong

The barrier nerf had some positive effects on the game. It made Orisa more fun to play, it brought Reinhardt back into viability, and it generally increased the speed of team fights, since barriers break more quickly. That said, the change barely altered how people play the game.

The latest meta dominating the Overwatch competitive scene this past season was, of course, the double shield meta. Orisa and Sigma combined to create an incredibly powerful tank core, which essentially became the must-play combination. This meta was on display throughout the playoffs for OWL Season 2. After several months of this must-have combination, Blizzard heavily nerfed barriers across the board, leading to the brilliant “new” meta: Double shield…still.

Barriers are now weaker, but that didn’t solve the primary issue with Overwatch’s balance: a lack of compositional counterplay. If a team wants to win, players have to go the meta composition, and there is very little wiggle room when it comes to selecting an effective composition, which has been the case for years.

The real reason people are frustrated with Overwatch is not that they are shooting into barriers, it is the monotony of realistic team composition options. A healthy meta would ideally include multiple viable compositions and strategies and, ideally, would interact with each other in dynamic and interesting ways. In an ideal world, not every Overwatch game would play out the same. Sadly, the developers seem to be struggling to find the changes that will lead to a more diverse meta.

The problems with Overwatch’s design philosophy

Before the barrier nerf, a lot of characters were simply not viable. Realistically, the only competitive tanks were Orisa, Roadhog, and Sigma. Hitscan characters like Soldier: 76 or Ashe were basically useless. Genji wasn’t very good compared to heroes like Reaper, Mei, Hanzo, or Doomfist.

After the barrier nerf, Orisa, Hog, Reinhardt, and Sigma remain the most useful tanks. Hitscan characters like Soldier: 76 and Ashe are still basically useless. Genji isn’t very good, and Reaper, Mei, Hanzo, and Doomfist remain top DPS options.

In short, very little about the meta seems to have changed.

The barrier nerf did not make the game more dynamic or interesting to play. After the barrier nerf went live, former Overwatch League Pro Daniel “Gods” Graeser tweeted his discontent saying,

Weaker barriers only encourages the use of more barrier characters. The devs made a similar mistake when they tried to buff Reaper to be the GOATs killer, a buff that they soon reverted because it was breaking low level play and failed to kill GOATs at the high level of play. A Reaper buff seemed like a good idea, but it turned out that the counter to overpowered Reaper was GOATs. Thus, making changes to characters won’t inherently lead to the gameplay changes that the developers intend.

Overwatch has been trapped in a “mirror composition” situation for years now, because characters don’t counter each other like the original cast of Overwatch was designed to do. In the early days of Overwatch, if someone on the other team was playing Pharah, a Solider or other hitscan would effectively counter that Pharah. If someone the other team had a Winston, Reaper would counter that Winston. The list goes on.

At some point, after a deluge of meta defining characters like Brigitte, Sigma, and Baptiste were added, Overwatch started to become less about counters and more about playing the meta. Overwatch’s gameplay philosophy has lost its roots, and no amount of nerfing barriers can change that. The game was originally rooted in counter picking against an enemy team’s composition. Now the game is a much more basic process of selecting the most powerful characters and sticking to them, regardless of what the other team does.

It’s time to test a hero pick/ban system

Rather than repeating the process of nerfing and buffing various characters over and over, only to end up in the same place where we started, perhaps the solution is to introduce a hero ban system. People have been suggesting hero bans in Overwatch for years, and for good reason. A hero ban system adds an interesting element of uncertainty to the game that will bring back some of the dynamism, without requiring large scale changes to characters.

Here is how a pick/ban system works. Both teams have the right to ban a certain number of characters. For example, in Rainbow Six: Siege, each team is able to ban two heroes. In the case of Overwatch, due to the role lock and small number of heroes in some of the roles, it would make sense to only have one ban per team. Neither team can play any banned hero, which means that there is a certain element of uncertainty to what team compositions are possible.

There are a number of pros to this system:

A pick ban system helps overcome flaws in game balance by giving teams the opportunity to opt out of a particular hero. You don’t need a perfectly balanced game if players have more agency over the heroes who will be played in the game. Characters who are unbalanced are more likely to be banned, which gives teams more control over how the game will be played. The ban system also gives the developers a very clear set of data points for who the community thinks isn’t a balanced hero. It encourages a more diverse play style, since different games will have different hero bans leading to more dynamic meta play. This means that every game has the potential to be unique and special, in comparison to repeatedly grinding out double shield mirror meta games over and over. This solution scales with skill. Bronze players might ban Bastion while pro players ban Baptiste. This solution doesn’t pretend that all levels of the game play the same way, which is a key difference between this idea and the current philosophy of balance at Blizzard.

There are also some drawbacks to the system:

There is the possibility that this system devolves into a “ban meta”, thus defeating its own purpose. Nonetheless, teams would at least have some agency over those bans. It’s possible that your favorite character will get banned over and over, leading to frustration that you can’t play your main. This would discourage one-tricking any character, since at any moment you could be banned from using that character. That said, I am not certain one-tricking is an ideal way for people to play this game in the first place.

Would competitive Overwatch benefit from a pick/ban system? Most definitely 67%, 4 votes 4 votes 67% 4 votes - 67% of all votes

No, it'd make everything even worse 17%, 1 vote 1 vote 17% 1 vote - 17% of all votes

Probably wouldn't change anything 17%, 1 vote 1 vote 17% 1 vote - 17% of all votes Total Votes: 6 Voting is closed Poll Options are limited because JavaScript is disabled in your browser.

I am not sure if a pick/ban system would revolutionize the way Overwatch is played overnight. I do think that it’s an option that is worth testing out. A pick/ban system would cover a multitude of balance flaws and has the potential to revitalize the experience of playing Overwatch.