Justin “Jayne” Conroy will, once again, be hosting the Tournament of Future Champions. But this time, the curious eyes of the Overwatch world will be paying even more attention, as the tournament will be implementing hero bans.
The curious eyes of the Overwatch world will be watching The Tournament of Future Champions, as the event will be implementing hero bans.
The idea of banning certain heroes has been picking up steam in the Overwatch competitive community. With the growth of GOATs during this current meta, some have grown bored of seeing the same team composition over and over. Introducing hero bans to Overwatch could be a way for the audience to get a more varied game to watch.
Each team will get one hero ban and one hero protect that will last for a single map. The higher seed with get the first protect followed by the lower seed. Then, the lower seed will get the first ban while the higher seed will follow.
The pick and ban system is nothing new to the esports scene. Both League of Legends and Dota 2 use it to add another dimension of strategy to the metagame.
The knockout stage of the Tournament of Future Champions will take place on January 19-20.
Should Overwatch Use a Pick and Ban System?
The theory behind a pick and ban system is sound. You can take away certain strategies and heroes from your opponent and make them adapt on the fly. It works great in LoL and Dota – but there is one massive difference between Overwatch and those two MOBAs.
LoL currently has 143 champions. Dota 2 has 115. Overwatch has 29.
Simply put, Overwatch doesn’t have the depth in the hero pool to truly implement a pick and ban system. That’s not to mention that Overwatch has seven tanks and six support heroes. Taking one of those away does not diversify the heroes used, it starts hindering how effective tanks and supports can be.
And, to be frank, people are calling bans in Overwatch because of GOATs. There is no need to sugarcoat it. Is GOATs the most entertaining competition? No. But it works at the highest level because of coordination and sheer brute force.
If bans are to be implemented in Overwatch. The meta is just going to shift again – likely back to dive comps (or just a variation of GOATs). And if you remember, people were complaining that dive comps were killing Overwatch too.
The meta is constantly changing in Overwatch. Dive, Beyblade, Death Ball, GOATs. The reality is, every meta-defining comp gets stale. But – hindering the ability to use these does not help. Blizzard nerfing and buffing appropriately helps. Players finding out new and creative ways to defeat the dominant comp helps. But limiting an already small hero pool is not an effective solution.
