This past weekend saw the Overwatch League make its return to play after transitioning to an online format following week five. The new weekend of play saw a variety of comps due to the week eight hero pool which found Lucio, Soldier 76, Sombra, and Winston delegated to the bench. After an interesting two days of matches, the new hero pool has been determined and everyone can rejoice. Mei finally received that long-awaited ban.
Mei will not be available for play in weekend nine of the Overwatch League. Joining her on the bench is Brigitte, Wrecking Ball (sorry Ameng) and McCree. The wild-west gunslinger can’t seem to catch a break as he becomes the first hero to be banned for a second time after he was selected for week five way back when. The true hero of all this, though, was Overwatch League host Soe Gschwind’s cat – Nori, who purrfectly chose Mei as one of the two dps to be banned.
Aside from a charming guest-spot from Nori for the hero pools, it’s interesting to note what type of heroes were actually banned for the upcoming matches. Three of the four heroes each have a crowd-control aspect to their kit. McCree has the flash-bang. Brigitte has her shield-bash and whip-shot. And Mei, well, she tends to have everything. These heroes can typically counter strong dive heroes which is what Wrecking Ball is, but he is also banned. Because of this, teams might run a more traditional dive-comp with the likes of Winston and D.Va at tanks, with a variety of super-mobile heroes like Tracer, who has also seen a resurgence of play recently.
Dive comps have been regarded as one of the best types of team compositions in all of professional Overwatch and a while some teams have made their marks this season on variations of dive, a more league wide approach to it might make for an exciting weekend of matches. There is still Lucio, Reinhardt and a variety of other incredible strong heroes in play, though, and if the first few dips into the hero pool has shown anything, there will be quite a but of variation to come as well.
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