Roughly a month after the release of Overwatch 2, the Overwatch League competitive scene is rapidly being reduced to teams of the same five heroes.
Earlier this week, Reddit user SomeoneTookTehroo flagged the extremely skewed data from the latest round of the tournament using the Overwatch League's official stats lab. Looking at data for all teams from this week, the go-to roster consists almost exclusively of Lucio, Sojourn, Kiriko, Reaper, and Winston.
All five of these heroes are sitting above a 90% usage rate for the week, with Lucio in literally 100% of teams, and Sojourn and Kiriko close behind at 99.8% and 98.4% respectively. Reaper is the fourth-lowest at a still-staggering 95% usage, and Winston is bringing up the rear at 92.6%. To put this into perspective, the sixth most-used hero is Brigitte at just 4.9%, followed by Tracer at 3.6% and Baptiste 1.6%.
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To be fair, this stats lab is technically in beta, and this trend does soften a fair bit if you extend the data range. The past three weeks of data still heavily favor Sojourn and Lucio, but we also see a healthy presence from Zarya and Genji, much more Baptiste, and a fair bit of Tracer and Ana. However, as of two weeks ago, the Overwatch League meta has firmly settled on the aforementioned team of five.
You can find mirror matches of this exact lineup in many recent games featuring totally different teams from multiple regions. It's gotten to the point that basically every match archive uploaded to the Overwatch League YouTube channel is bombarded by the same, stamped-out comments lamenting 'another match featuring this team.'
Lucio has been a staple since Overwatch 2 launched, and per our Overwatch 2 support tier list, newcomer Kiriko quickly rose through the ranks once more people got access to her. Many players reckon the rest of this meta team is the result of Sojourn being so incredibly broken that she warps everything around her.
"Winston is meta because it's the best tank at killing Sojourn," argues Redditor wolf495, echoing the thoughts of many players. "Reaper is meta because it's the best DPS for killing Winston. Sojourn is meta because it is overpowered."
"A weakened Zarya cannot effectively dive a team nor can it protect," damoreweed agrees. "While Zarya is trying to get a charge her team is getting distracted by a Winston who has a bubble containing DPS and heals, while the frontline is shredding. Hence the Reaper pick. Hence the Winston pick. Then it becomes a battle of Sojourn."
Blizzard just announced the first major Overwatch 2 balance patch, which will nerf Genji, Zarya, Somba, D.Va, and Kiriko to varying degrees. Lead hero designer Alec Dawson also said that the team is taking a hard look at Sojourn to see how to readjust her without ruining her hero identity.
Overwatch 2 is also buffing its weaker tanks starting with Doomfist, and Blizzard says helping supports is a "long-term focus."
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