The change that the community has been crying out for years now, more aggressive and frequent balance changes have finally been implemented. A meta will always exist in Overwatch, there is no avoiding that, players, especially those wanting to make something out of the game, will always look for the most optimum way to play the game. Having a meta is not what has been wrong with Overwatch. What has been wrong, is that there have been predominant metas that have lasted for way too long and has caused a monotonous feeling within the player base. Three main metas have survived in the history of Overwatch for an extended period; dive, GOATS and bunker meta.

While not many complained about dive being in the game for so long due to its fun nature in both watching and playing it, the length at which it was in the game was too long. In the long-awaited attempts to nerf dive, eventually, certain heroes grew in power but it did not seem to have too much of an effect on the meta until the release of Brigitte which ultimately saw to the death of dive and the birth of the infamous composition GOATS and its variations.

While Blizzard kept trying to destroy GOATS, something they seemed to be starting to crack, with the increase in playtime of other compositions and the success of the Shanghai Dragons in the Stage 3 playoffs of Overwatch League (OWL), defeating the New York Excelsior, Vancouver Titans and the San Francisco Shock, playing alternative compositions to GOATS. That did not seem to be enough for them and in came the implementation of role queue. While role queue was necessary for the overall improvement of Overwatch in a general sense, it seemed all too strange that it would only be implemented after the community had been crying out for it for so long.

The lasting effects of GOATS meta are still around with teams preferring to stick to compositions that rely more on sustain during fights as opposed to outright damage or dive. To be fair, dive is once again being played in OWL showing encouraging signs that Blizzard is starting to make the right balance changes. However, there has still been a power creep especially for heroes like Mei and Reaper who have seen and still continue to see a large majority of playtime in professional matches since 2-2-2 was enforced.

This is why more aggressive and more frequent balance changes are necessary, especially ones that target the meta specifically just so that the game has more variation to it and players do not get bored of playing the same heroes over and over again or get constantly flamed for wanting to play an off-meta hero.

Even if a hero is deemed too strong, at least this way it will not be for too long where it becomes unbearable. Of course, there will always be people who think certain heroes are too powerful because they do not have a great experience against them, but generally in the community there is an agreement on which heroes are too over buffed.

An age-old question that comes up is, do you predominantly balance the game off the higher or lower ranks? I think overall for Overwatch, this is less of a problem than games like Starcraft 2, where the overall hero strength is similar throughout each rank. The only discrepancies come where some heroes will be classed as easier than others making them more viable in the lower ranks. In Overwatch, there are heroes that are described as having a low to high skill ceiling. Some heroes are not necessarily hard to learn but once they are learnt they require far more practice to perfect them.

Thanks to this change, players should no longer be subjected to being stuck in *insert hero* jail, wherein the sense players are forced to play the same hero for most of their playtime. For one tricks this might be frustrating as their hero might face some time being almost a throw pick, but at the same time, this encourages players to become more versatile in the heroes they can play, as such expanding their range of heroes.

As a player, this is the change I’m most looking forward to and hope that Blizzard will approach this in the right way because as much as they have promised it, there is no guarantee at how aggressive and frequent they feel the balance patches need to be. Overall this is a very exciting change to the game, it will be interesting to see how the different players and one tricks develop their hero pools and playstyles accordingly. This will make the game far more diverse and thus make it more exciting for the players and viewers alike.