Field Level Media - Professional sports content solutions | FLM

Blizzard’s announcement that the Overwatch League is shifting to a Hero Pool system likely will make the league more exciting for fans, but it could cripple some ill-prepared teams.

The league’s third season opens Saturday, with the Hero Pool concept — groups of four heroes (one tank, two DPS, one Support) — being implemented on March 7. They will be randomly selected from a group of eligible heroes based on play rate and usage from the previous two weeks of Overwatch League matches.

In this way, Blizzard has taken an aggressive step toward making sure the meta doesn’t stagnate by introducing “micro-metas” every week. For viewers, this should help keep interest high as everyone will, in theory, see their favorite heroes get playing time despite not being traditional top-tiers, and it will also make for more exciting games.

But the Hero Pool concept might not suit each team.

Teams built like the San Francisco Shock and New York Excelsior (solid starting core, deep bench of players who could come in and perform, strong coaching staff and structure) put themselves in positions to succeed. To this effect, the Philadelphia Fusion and Atlanta Reign made good offseason moves to pick up elite starters — Taehun “Edison” Kim for Atlanta and Junho “Fury” Kim for Philadelphia — as well as good bench depth at key positions.

Look for these teams to finish the year strong as they battle each other in the Atlantic South.



But not all teams made such strong moves, leaving franchises such as the Seoul Dynasty and Vancouver Titans with questions.

For Seoul, not adding another main support to back up Jinmo “tobi” Yang is problematic considering that the legacy Lucio player played at a middle-of-the-pack level last year, and his performance on other supports was subpar. In pools where the hero Lucio is removed, which might be more common than other support heroes considering it’s a core staple of one of Overwatch’s historically dominant playstyles, rush, look for Seoul to struggle.

For Vancouver, letting all of their main tanks go was a sign of a potential rebuild or a retooling, with the core of the team of DPS Hyojong “Haksal” Kim and supports Sungjun “Slime” Kim and Juseok “TWILIGHT” Lee remaining intact.

However, the Titans only picked up one main tank in the offseason, and it’s the controversial Chanhyung “Fissure” Baek, who came out of retirement to join the Titans. He has yet to finish a season in the Overwatch League on the team he opened the season with, and he was fined $3,000 this offseason for revealing sensitive information.

The Titans also tied up a lot of their money in acquiring Korean legend Jehong “ryujehong” Ryu from the Dynasty in free agency. With TWILIGHT playing at an elite level, it’s unlikely that ryujehong sees much playing time, potentially leaving Vancouver in a situation where they are without a backup main tank should Fissure leave the team as he has at previous stops.

What’s more, Fissure’s hero pool isn’t immaculate, as his Orisa and Wrecking Ball are at a middling level compared to the rest of the field.



Hero Pools will force teams to utilize specialists on their bench to avoid superstar fatigue come playoff time, where there are no restrictions on available heroes.

Hero Pools trade the expertise and mastery of metas in favor of constant change and excitement for viewers at the cost of practice time for players. Hero Pools might break some teams that fail to adapt or didn’t construct a complete roster that can utilize their bench.

Those that did will have a leg up on the rest of the competition.

–Noah Waltzer (@pairodicegg), Field Level Media