The Watchpoint Post Show is now live and the Watchpoint crew will be announcing the week 13 Hero Pool Draw for both Overwatch Competitive Play and Overwatch League.
In addition, Blizzard Vice President of the Overwatch League, Jon Spector, recently announced a new tournament system that will directly impact the league regular season standings.
Click here for the details on the new monthly tournament system they are planning for Overwatch League:
Rules of the Hero Pool Draw:
To determine a week’s Hero Pool, the Overwatch Development Team will compile hero play rates from high-level Competitive Play matches from the preceding two weeks. Heroes with play rates above a certain threshold will be eligible to be removed; the higher their play rate, the more likely they are to be removed.
The number of tickets each hero will have will be based on their average play time. The higher the playtime, the more tickets they will have.
The heroes removed from week 12 of Overwatch League will return to play in the next week and will be immune from being removed in the next week’s draw. (It is not known if Competitive Play’s hero pool that started last Thursday will be counted or not.)
Week 12’s banned heroes were Orisa, Echo, Tracer, and Moira
1 tank, 2 damage, and 1 support hero will be banned from play in Week 12 of Overwatch League, Overwatch Contenders, and the Competitive Play game mode in the live game.
The new hero pool will go live for Overwatch Competitive Play at Monday at 11 AM PDT/2 PM EDT
Heroes banned from Week 13
Wrecking Ball
McCree
Widowmaker
Mercy
The Week 13 Overwatch League Schedule has not yet been posted.
What is your reaction and how do these bans affect your competitive games in the week to come! Let me know in your replies.
Here is Overbuff’s Grandmaster Playrates throughout the week last week. Shaded heroes are the ones out of this week’s hero pool. (Note they have some play percentages as this includes the two days before the rotation.) While stats on Overbuff are a generally accurate representation, they will not be definitely accurate to actual play times.
Her pickrate is riding a high from the Echo week without Mcree/Widow/Rein in GM last week AND she was picked to pocket Pharah in this week’s OWL matches.
I’m gonna laugh when the overall least impactful/least meta support in OWL is banned, though.
I also think that from a pure luck perspective. It happened to Soldier. I’m being cynical but also I don’t think we’ll get a perfect week with all the most picked and impactful heroes banned.
