Russian-German DJ Anton Zaslavski, better known as Zedd, called out Blizzard Entertainment after seeing that the week’s hero pools for March 26 banned four DPS heroes and six characters overall.
This is the fourth week of hero pools with the first three banning only four heroes each. In the first week, two DPS heroes were banned. For the second, Blizzard removed two supports from rotation. And in the third, two tanks were unavailable. Now, the ante has been upped considerably.
Zedd, who is a Grand Master-ranked Overwatch player and even performed at the 2019 OWL Grand Finals, took to Twitter to voice his concerns: “Blizzard straight up trolling [with] these hero bans,” adding a laughing emoji.
The Widowmaker specialist continued in the replies: “IMO: if you have to remove 6(!) heroes just to make 1 hero more viable – it means your balance is simply off.”
The viable hero the DJ was referring to is likely Pharah. All of the heroes banned either hard or soft counter Pharah players firing rockets from the sky, with their hitscan weapons or incredible vertical mobility.
“Not to mention that I don’t even think removing those 6 heroes will accomplish the goal [to be honest],” he added, suggesting that the week’s meta won’t be as friendly to Pharah players as some would assume.
IMO: if you have to remove 6(!) heroes just to make 1 hero more viable – it means your balance is simply off.Not to mention that I don’t even think removing those 6 heroes will accomplish the goal tbh.I’m a noob so take that w a grain of salt but that’s just my 2 cents.
— Zedd (@Zedd) March 26, 2020
Subscribe to our newsletter for the latest updates on Esports, Gaming and more.
While Zedd was clearly against this week’s pools, Overwatch Game Director Jeff Kaplan did state that the first five weeks would be quite experimental.
“For the first 5 weeks, we will be trying a range to see what feel right. We’ve architected this system so that we can update the hero pools without the need to patch,” he said in a forum post back in January.
“So we’ll be monitoring feedback very closely, experimenting a bit with the pool and adapting our strategy as time goes on.”
With such a prominent voice speaking out, one has to wonder if Blizzard will respond to the 30-year-old performer.
That said, considering there’s still one week of this experimental period remaining, it will be interesting to see what the company has in store for pools in the future and what format they settle on.
