OWL Week 6 Bans
Just a quick post before I finish my overall thoughts on hero pools. As bad as it looks I do have some hope.
This week Winston, S76, Sombra and Lucio are banned.
On the tank front, not too big of an impact with Winston being taken out of the pool. The first thought is that this may protect enemy widows a little bit more but with the current state of widow in OWL is that if shes viable, the only way to deal with her is with another widow. I don't see any team going full dive with their tank line to deal with widow so overall, no real loss here.
The DPS bans are even worse. With widow, mei and mccree in the pool there is little to no use for Soldier 76. Make no mistake, Soldier is still very strong, he's just weak when compared to the meta heroes. This is why the latest patch is a little concerning, no nerfs on the DPS line up. Sombra is in the same state, few teams are running her against the current meta line up. While she has utility she lacks damage for an up-front fight which is where rein/dva/mei really excel. She's a little too cool down dependent as well as dependent on her ultimate.
Now the excitement, Lucio is banned for support! Why am i so excited for this? One of the main points to the hero pool is to see the impact a hero has on the game at the top most level. The problem is when you ban all of the meta heroes then you truly don't know what effect a single hero has. Week 5 of OWL showed that while Mei wasn't banned, without going against rein she didn't feel as oppressive as before.
Well lucky us, all other bans are useless so now we get to single out Lucio to see the effect he has on the game. I can't say if the games will be fun or interesting but at least from the data mining side we will be able to gather data to see if Lucio is a prime contributor to the meta. My hope is that most teams will run d.va/rein but the other team will run a more mobile composition that can out maneuver them without lucio speed. Ironic as it is, Soldier 76 would have been a great pick to test this theory out.
The other side of the coin is that maybe teams will run more long ranged compositions, that which can out range a single d.va booster. Without an immediate way to close the distance its possible that ashe,widow or hanzo will be more of a threat. Immediately i'm reminded of rein shield and Mei wall to block line of sight, so lets not get our hopes up about that.
This week Winston, S76, Sombra and Lucio are banned.
On the tank front, not too big of an impact with Winston being taken out of the pool. The first thought is that this may protect enemy widows a little bit more but with the current state of widow in OWL is that if shes viable, the only way to deal with her is with another widow. I don't see any team going full dive with their tank line to deal with widow so overall, no real loss here.
The DPS bans are even worse. With widow, mei and mccree in the pool there is little to no use for Soldier 76. Make no mistake, Soldier is still very strong, he's just weak when compared to the meta heroes. This is why the latest patch is a little concerning, no nerfs on the DPS line up. Sombra is in the same state, few teams are running her against the current meta line up. While she has utility she lacks damage for an up-front fight which is where rein/dva/mei really excel. She's a little too cool down dependent as well as dependent on her ultimate.
Now the excitement, Lucio is banned for support! Why am i so excited for this? One of the main points to the hero pool is to see the impact a hero has on the game at the top most level. The problem is when you ban all of the meta heroes then you truly don't know what effect a single hero has. Week 5 of OWL showed that while Mei wasn't banned, without going against rein she didn't feel as oppressive as before.
Well lucky us, all other bans are useless so now we get to single out Lucio to see the effect he has on the game. I can't say if the games will be fun or interesting but at least from the data mining side we will be able to gather data to see if Lucio is a prime contributor to the meta. My hope is that most teams will run d.va/rein but the other team will run a more mobile composition that can out maneuver them without lucio speed. Ironic as it is, Soldier 76 would have been a great pick to test this theory out.
The other side of the coin is that maybe teams will run more long ranged compositions, that which can out range a single d.va booster. Without an immediate way to close the distance its possible that ashe,widow or hanzo will be more of a threat. Immediately i'm reminded of rein shield and Mei wall to block line of sight, so lets not get our hopes up about that.