PSA: Regarding Hero Pools

Competitive Discussion
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To preface; I’ve been seeing a lot of confusion, anger, and general questions regarding the balances teams decision to ban two supports out of seven, when it had seemingly been stated beforehand that they intended to make it one tank, two dps, and one support.

I will link these, to start with.

Now, i understand what might come up.
“Those were random posts made in reply to a thread on the forums, weeks ago! They should have included this in an official blogpost or something!”

While yes, i agree.
They should have been more transparent with their intentions behind the first 5 weeks of Hero Pools.

What stands presently, is their intention.
Their intention was and is, to test out banning more heros, less heros, change things up, etc.

And, I’m not making this thread to poo-poo anyone making outrage threads, condoning the banning of two main healers.

In fact, those threads made as feedback to this weeks round of hero pools are very much needed! We need to voice what we like and don’t like about hero pools.

I wanted to make it more clear to those who might not have known.
And also to bring more awareness for the coming weeks!
We might see something else a little more wild, like banning 5 damage and 2 tanks.

TL;DR Jeff Kaplan stated in a thread on Jan 30th that for the first 5 weeks of hero pools, they would be “testing out” a variety of combinations, which wold include banning two supports.

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They didn’t seemingly state it at all. They absolutely stated it:

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They (they being Mercer himself in this interview) also stated in this article you posted, if you’d kept reading it:

“ We have a lot of flexibility—if we need to take more or fewer heroes out of rotation, we’re not fixed into one tank, two damage, one healer. How often pools change isn’t fixed”

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Then they need to change the introductory paragraph of the article because it completely contradicts that statement.

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Or just read the whole thing instead.

Mercer’s comment is literally there clarifying to the interviewer “ya were not fixed on 1 tank 1 support 2 dps”

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That statement contradicts the opening paragraph. It’s not a clarification. It’s a contradiction.

The clarification would come after the fact.

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The statement in question is posed by the interviewer- and Mercer literally comments over the course of the interview that they’re not set on that format and that this is a tool that allows them flexibility.

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The article is attributed to Blizzard Entertainment, so we have Blizzard on one side saying 1 tank, 1 support, 2 damage and then, in the very same article, we have Blizzard contradicting that.

That is why there’s confusion surrounding hero bans and that is why clarification from Blizzard was needed.

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The confusion is there because you didn’t read it.

If you had- there would be no confusion.

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The confusion is there because the article is contradictory.

What you are seeing as clarification is not. What you are referencing is the contradiction.

Clarification comes after the fact.

And I wasn’t referring to me when I was talking about the confusion. I was talking about the community in general as evidenced by the large number of threads and posts about this week’s hero bans.

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It’s not confusing at all if you actually read it.

Literally the article reads

Interviewer: They’ll be doing 1 tank 1 support 2 dps

Followed by Mercer (principal game designer) in the interview more or less going actually- if we need to take more or fewer heroes out of rotation, we’re not fixed into one tank, two damage, one healer

There nothing confusing about it.

You just had to read it.

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That’s the two contradictory statements, yes.

Again, maybe not to you, and that’s great for you that you’re taking it as clarification and not contradiction, but the sheer number of threads and posts about this week’s hero bans clearly indicate there is confusion for others.

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Notice that the two contradictory statements were made by two different people. One was more of a question or request for clarification. The other was clarification.

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Chief- I understand that the statements are in contradiction to each other.

The second statement however is made to clarify what they’d intended to do to the interviewer.

Again,

They’re not confused because it’s contradictory.

The fact that no one is asking “well did they mean THIS, or THIS?”, indicates that.

They’re confused because they didn’t read the article.

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Again, that’s your assumption.

Without asking every individual that’s made a comment about the contradictory nature of this week’s hero bans you cannot know this for certain.

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This is an assumption as well:

The difference is that your assumption is based on the assertion that people are confused about “the contradiction”

Mine points out that no one is really even bringing up the so called “contradiction” in the first place.

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you don’t need to “test out” banning 2 main heals to know it’s a bad idea. The same way I don’t need to whip up a batch of beef and carrot ice cream to know it will be disgusting. Use your brain! I’m not sure who’s in charge of this whole thing, but it seems solely designed for people to stop playing comp

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That is not an assumption. The article contains two statements that are clearly contradictory.

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Yes. It absolutely is.

You are 100% assuming people are confused “because it’s contradictory”- unless you’ve gone and asked every individual.

And you’re assuming people are confused by this.

They shouldnt be- because it’s quite clear that the second statement made by Mercer to the interviewer is explaining that they’re NOT going to actually lock themselves into it always being 1 tank 1 support and 2 dps.

Now I can understand how this might confuse you, but you’re assuming others were confused by this as well.

Either way- there’s nothing to be confused about.

Mercer is clarifying that they’re not going to limit themselves to that.

And we’ve already seen that they’re not going to.

Cheers mate :slight_smile:

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No, I said that the article being contradictory was not an assumption because it isn’t. It’s clearly contradictory.

As for community confusion, I already said that statement was based off the number of threads and posts about this week’s hero bans.

It’s not an assumption when you look at the number of threads and posts about this week’s bans.

People are clearly confused by it.

That statement is what’s caused the confusion because it contradicts the earlier statement in the same article.

No, I’m not, because there’s a lot of forum threads and posts that show there is indeed confusion.

Maybe not for you, but there are many others that have posted on the forums are obviously confused over this.

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