That’s a shame. I was hoping we’d get to play the weekly OWL pools.
But why even ban most of the roster? If you ban anyone other than Rein, Zarya, or Dva you essentially have no ban.
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These are just the heroes from the previous meta (exception of Mei who is still meta), did they not reevaluate ladder pickrates after the Orisa/Sigma/Bap nerfs? Orisa and Bap pickrates/winrates were in the gutter after those.
…I’m 99% sure it’s the other way around.
I think it’s to discourage bunker and to not start a riot by banning bad heroes instead of banning good and popular heroes.
Imagine if they banned Rein and Mercy on week one. IMAGINE.
Why did they throw two bans away on two of the worst heroes? Lol.
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I am shocked it was not Ana or Lucio / Reinhardt / Mei and some other DPS NGL.
One of the lowest picked tanks and supports cause they got gutted.
The only actual meta pick this week is Mei.
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Rioting on week 1 is a good way to get the feature removed, and bad PR for a feature requested by many notable members of the community (namely content creators) is not on blizzard’s agenda. Imo it’s a marketing tactic.
Ban two heroes that are widely disliked by the playerbase (remember all the spamzo and “I can’t win agains Mei” threads?), then ban a support and a tank that have fallen out of the meta and nobody really plays anyways so the tank and support playstyles won’t change too much. Then week 1 is smooth sailing and they can explore banning better and more meta heroes as the weeks go on.
Boom chill first week. Positive reception, forums aren’t blowing up with REEEEE WHY IS MERCY GONE DURING PLACEMENTS or REEEEE ANA IS GONE GM IS UNPLAYABLE etc
13% currently at the end of last week she was at 17%
Meta shifts and everyone below Plat doesn’t even pay attention to meta. So yes, any/all bans will mean something to someone. Even Sym.
Well, at least Mei is gone
I’d say the point is to shake things up and keep things fresh and new. Banning Bastion wont do that 
For the person who is a Bastion main it will. And any/all people & ranks need to be considered.
Why anybody???..this has little to no effect for most players that don’t really play at ranks where metas are super important
I think mainly they want to stick with 2-1-1 ban arrangements that change key parts of the meta without flipping the table completely. Assuming they intend to never ban a hero for consecutive weeks, they’ll also need to spread out some of the core meta bans (in other words, save Reinhardt for later), because they unfortunately can’t ban Mei every week to control it.
So, for example, Reinhardt might be gone next week, along with some more fringe stuff in other roles, like Widow or Doomfist.
Hopefully Rine is banned next week again. Knucklehead is such a cancer to the game.
This is a good thing because it won’t radically alter playstyles during initial placements on day one or week one when the most players are playing on their main accounts. I for one play lots of Orisa so I’m considering doing tank placements with ball or abstaining. My win rate with Orisa last season was like 80% or so but I exclusively paired her with Rein which is her only strength these days.
Honestly if Lucio or brig were banned first week I’d lose my frickin mind, and run to the forums to passionately express my extreme distaste for the hero ban system. Instead, I’m actually not opposed to it right now. I’m sure lots of players who play the more popular support heroes would’ve lost their minds if a popular support like Ana, Lucio, or Mercy were banned first week and I think there would’ve been a lot of “I can’t do my placements because you banned my main!!” Threads instead of all these “lolwut I am confusion” threads.
Most players who played Baptiste in his heyday was a meta slave so nobody’s gonna miss Baptiste and that’s why he was the best choice for the first Support ban.
If Rein were banned first week, the tank role would be a bleep show and would very quickly explode because some players can’t cope without Rein atm. I don’t wanna say the tank role is busted, but there are several players who believe that if you don’t run a Barrier you’re throwing or that Rein is the only viable Barrier tank atm. Maybe he’ll be banned the week that sigma receives his slight “buff”
I don’t see many players running MonkeyBall or dva ball either so…
I’m optimistic to see where this goes because it’s only a matter of time before Blizzard steps out of the kiddie pool and actually nerfs several meta heroes in a single week or begins to target very specific comps. (Granted, you could say this ban pool targets the “MeiZo bap zen Orisa” comp that was popular like a month or two ago)
Hanzo and Mei I can understand, but Baptiste and Orisa are very questionable.
Overwatch devs are the biggest goofs ever, lol.
Do we know how long the pools are going to last?