I’m not sure who is the smart person at Blizzard that thought hero bans were a good idea. The entire concept of Overwatch revolves around adapting and changing strategy based on the enemy team — including hero swaps. Now, for example, you’re stuck facing an enemy Orisa and D.Va with almost no effective counter if Zarya is banned.
This update is just frustrating. Matches that were previously winnable are now lost because you’re unable to adapt to the enemy composition. Personally, I’m uninstalling the game, and I know others who are doing the same in hopes Blizzard reconsiders and removes hero bans.
Until then, enjoy the chaos — I just hope Blizzard stops pushing out these kinds of poorly thought-out changes in the future.
I agree that hero bans are the worst idea they implemented but disagree with why.
If a game against a dva or orisa is unwinnable without counterswap cheese, they deserve that win. Counterwatch is awful, and perverts the competitive ladder. That orisa or dva should crush you, and climb out of your ranks, until you only have orisas and dvas you can win against in your rank.
The solution is remove hero bans, and ban counterswapping entirely by introducing hero lock into competitive just like in stadium. Then let the ranking system do its thing and give you players you can beat.
So you want matches to be decided simply by what heroes people start the match as? Like yes counter swapping is a problem to some extent, but being locked into a hero into counters all match is so much worse.
I agree with everything you said, bans are an amazing implementation in Overwatch, and the game feels amazing now that the community finally got the feature it asked for so long and deserves.
Such a healthy tool that Blizzard gave us, Overwatch is born anew and everyone rejoices.
Long live the holy bans, and don’t forget to ban Mercy to be happy !
Not necessarily. I want people to play their mains. None of the match ups in this game are harsh enough that you would lose an entire game off of them. Most are 7-3 at worst. Team work, communication, coordination, positioning, and mechanics are all relevant and can help you against a bad match up.
And besides, it happens anyways with counterswapping. I have to play against full Star Wars compositions if I one trick Genji regardless. Giving people the option to take a free win against me is sort of stupid when I handily school them on their mains…
Real competitive games do not let you swap to a counter mid-game, bruh. Could you imagine in a fighting game if you went up against a Guile as Zangief, lost round one, and decided, “dang, I guess I should swap to Cammy for round two?” Lol, like, what?! This has to be a joke. I am being gaslit.
Instead of adapting to the enemy composition by consulting tank_counters.xml and changing to Zarya, it’s now necessary to adapt by using the remaining tools we’ve got.
Orisa-D.Va hasn’t been a common tank duo in my experience, but I don’t remember having issues playing Ram or Sig into them. It’s certainly not a foregone conclusion.
Oh, yeah, I meant 1v1. That being said, we (a Junk OTP and I) smoked a (double pocketed, Mercy/Zen) Pharah and Echo when I was on Reaper. That’s actually the problem with this ranking system. The Junk and I were good at our heroes. The counterswapping losers were hard boosted by being able to cherry pick their experience. That’s just another reason ranks are a joke. I am betting on team boots on the ground any day of the week if they actually play their own heroes instead of constantly crutching easy mode nonsense at the first sign of adversity.
While a perfect player like you my King could smite any Pharah out of the air, the matchup is still very one-sided and most of the time, PharMercy will win.
Having hero locks will enforce meta to such a ludicrous extent.
That’s true. The game is not well designed enough to handle such a feature. They would need to rework most of the roster, I imagine. It’s just a pipe dream because I am bored of playing against 4-6 counters just because I am the only person in the lobby with a functional brain. It feels personal when they clap my cheeks and make them jibble.
Another Sombra main who refuses to swallow the fact that she was merely tolerated by the community out of necessity and the vast majority of us “85% on PC and 93% on console” feel the game is far better without that cheap crutch of a character.
Sombra was a mistake when she first hit PTR and because the devs refused to address what makes her a mistake and instead double down on her being Moira/Mercy one tricks first training wheels DPS hero she remains a mistake today.
I see that it is being claimed earlier in this thread that the current run of hero bans is the first run of hero bans for OW
The first run of hero bans in OW was in 2020, in a system called Hero Pools. This system banned heros, and as such, it was and is a hero ban system…any system that bans heros is a hero ban system per how the english language works
Signed. I won’t play again unless they remove bans
Why add them? It literally makes 0 sense. I guess because they lost so many players to marvel they were like, “oh, maybe that’s a good idea lets try that.” Even though, it’s HORRIBLE for OW.
One of the few times yes haha. I really don’t know what they were thinking. Like, I can’t even fathom what makes them think it was a good idea, lol. I’d love to hear them speak as to why though.
I honestly think it might only be because marvel did it. And the devs that are left working at blizzard maybe aren’t the brightest. Microsoft needs to step up their game
No one, they just do what the what the community (mostly DPS mains) want. They cry out for bans cause “Sombra antifun”, “Zarya too OP”, “Ana jar too strong”, so they just put it in.
I know that, you know that, DPS one-tricks don’t. Rather than swapping of Genji cause enemy has Zarya they’d complain how unfair she is.
Bruh, you still have Ram and even Winston. Both got “beam” attacks that ignore mitigate-projectile tools.
Haha, good one there. It took till last season to get lootboxes back in any kind of way and we still don’t have 6v6 back in all queues.
They won’t. Same thing happened with 5v5 - “double shield 2stronk”, so Widow is running wild cause your only tank is Doomfist.
Surely you’re tired of typing this already. I’m definitely tired for reading it OVER AND OVER again from you. We know dodo, you don’t like hero bans and you have your thing about explaining hero bans vs. hero pools every time someone mentions it.
But going by the forums, most people do like the new ban system. You can go on and on all you like, but it’s unlikely to change anything because it seems, by my estimate, that they are popular and only a few people are, like you, going ON AND ON about them being the worst thing for the game.
You’re not fooling anyone creating a brand new account for this topic and then responding to yourself with this! Sad.
In my view, hero bans ARE one of the very worst things to be added to this game, and I am - like any forum member - permitted by the forum rules to state my position
I know of no valid data that supports the claim that most people like hero bans, but I do see a lot of posts both here and on other internet discussion sites expressing huge dislike of hero bans
Regarding the specific item quoted: no, I dont respond solely due to a mere mention. I offer the clarification when there is a denial of them as hero bans and/or misinformation is dispensed about them
