Anyone who watches the Overwatch League (OWL) knows how boring this season has been. The most likely reason being that most of the professional teams stuck to a meta of GOATS composition.
For those not familiar with this comp in OWL, here is a brief explanation. GOATS is named after the team that made this comp famous. It consists of the pro players picking three heroes from the tank category and three from the healing category and having no DPS on the team for the current map. A classic example of the GOATS comp usually consists of D.Va, Zarya, Reinhardt, Moira, Lúcio, and Brigitte. The only real counter to GOATS is to use the GOATS comp as well.
Due to the low ratings and overall fan displeasure of this season of OWL, Blizzard and the league have decided to do something about changing the way OWL players can select characters moving forward.
A video surfaced that was meant for tonight’s OWL’s Watchpoint segment showed the new role lock system, which will start during the next stage of the esport. The video was quickly removed as it was an apparent leak, but not before some screenshots were captured.
OWL Role Lock
The new role lock system states:
- All compositions will be two damage heroes (DPS), two tanks, and two supports
- Players cannot change roles during a map but can change heroes within a role
- Players can change roles between maps
- Facing Stage, players will be seated: 2 Damage, 2 Tanks, 2 Supports
This new system now allows the players to pick the characters that are best at and form comps based off of those skills. Fans can once again get excited to see their favorite players break out the characters they love to see them play.
This 2-2-2 comp goes back to the original meta for OWL and was dominated by New York Excelsior in season 1. With this change, will we see if the NYXL can go back to dominating the competition? Either way, it will be exciting to see how each team adapts in order to go back to this type of play.
So far there hasn’t been any news on if this coming to regular competitive has been announced, but could mean that a role queue system is in the works. More information should be coming during tonight’s Watchpoint show. So tune in.
What are your thoughts? Is this a lazy fix for Blizzard since they can’t balance their heroes properly? Are you excited about the new role lock and stage 4 of OWL? Let us know on Twitter or Facebook.
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For the most recent updates on Overwatch Role Queue. Check out PlayOverwatch.
