This is a bit of a long one, so buckle up, its about making comp less of a repetitive cesspool.
While my friend and I were playing competitive this season, and for the last few, we have been continually frustrated with the almost identical comps considering the low number of players in our rank. I am Diamond 3 (whereabouts#1531) and my friend is Platinum 2 (ToastySponge#1237). The main problems we think need to be addressed are pre-made comps, 1-tricks, a lack of new and interesting characters in play, a lack of bans, and flexibility of people and heroes.
Now, the solution we think would best benefit this, a pool of heroes banned out each week. Similar to the 16 Free-to-Play heroes each week, there would be 16 heroes banned from the competitive pool each week. It would be a random selection with a balanced amount from each role. Ok, before you start complaining in the replies, please read through our reasoning.
- Pre-mades would be harder to create.
If a random 16 heroes were banned each week, stacks of 4 or 5 people could not go into a competitive game with a stun-lock composition that is highly coordinated to be the most efficient to take on our lowly 2 stack. - Less viability for 1-tricks.
While it is impossible to completely eradicate 1-tricks from the game, it would be nice to occasionally be free from their characters. The pool of players in our ranks is not very large, especially considering we are both college students and we typically play before we go to bed. So seeing an enemy who we know one tricks a hero means we either ban the hero, and leave open other annoying or unbalanced heroes, or leave it, and hope to deal with it. - There would be new and interesting heroes in play.
With a random pool of heroes being banned, some of the main heroes that get played nearly every game are likely to get banned each week, and will not have to be worried about as first pick/first ban. New heroes may be shown as a counterpart to the heroes that are banned, possibly because they were countered by one of them. This allows for a broader game, and more enjoyable and diverse games, getting us farther away form the repetitiveness of League of Legends. - There would be no need to increase ban numbers.
Having the number of heroes grow at what can still be considered a decently high rate, there has been an issue with too few bans being available to counteract the numerous heroes that seem to always get played. If 16 heroes are banned from competitive each week, there is no need to increase ban size, because odds are at least a one or two of these heroes will not be in the pool, so no need to increase the ban size. - Backs up the idea of trying heroes in different ways.
If a hero that you like to play at a given time is one of the 16 heroes banned for the week, then you will be forced to try a new hero, but this is NOT a bad thing. By trying out similar heroes, or even those completely different, you may experience them in a new way that you had not thought of them before. For example, ToastySponge is a support main, and typically has a set of healers that he prefers to play. However, at one point he decided to try Kharazim, which he did not particularly pride himself in. He tried out a different build, and it worked much better than he had before. It was a different play style, and he enjoyed the character so much more. If people are forced to try these things, they will likely experience the same types of game-changing realizations as well. - It already happens in Overwatch
In Overwatch, there is already a pool of characters that are banned each week, and it shifts the meta a considerable amount. AND THE POOL OF CHARACTERS IS ALREADY SO MUCH SMALLER. If it works in Overwatch with a much smaller pool, why could it not work in shifting the way Heroes of the Storm is played as well.
I write all of this out hoping that its something that at least gets looked at and tried. My friend and I are getting extremely tired of the same compositions over and over again, and we want to have a diverse and changing game. If we could try this out in the PTR at some point, I am sure it would at least gain a little traction.
Thank you for reading through my TED Talk.