'Overwatch' Bans Hero Stacking From Competitive Play: No More A-Mei-Zing Line-Ups

Blizzard will be banning hero stacking from Overwatch’s Competitive Play mode as part of its latest PTR patch, which introduced sniper-healer Ana Amari, buffs for several heroes and ult adjustments for others. Players will now be limited to one of each hero per team.

In a post on the Battlenet forums, game director Jeff Kaplan explained his reasoning:

“[In] Competitive Play, we feel that hero stacking is becoming detrimental and leading to some not-so-great player experiences. For example, we’ve seen organized teams on Assault and Hybrid maps use hero stacking to overtake the first point before the defense has a chance to counter. We’ve also seen players use specific stacked compositions just to frustrate their opponents or cause indefinite delays in overtime (among other strategies). While this kind of thing is certainly possible in any mode, the higher stakes of Competitive Play means these kinds of tactics were popping up more often than anyone would like.

Ultimately, we found that we agreed with a lot of the community’s feedback and believe that hero stacking is making the game less fun for competitive players.”

Hero stacking will still be available in Quick Play mode, so if you’re all Soldiers now or you gotta go ape or you just want to grief as Mei-ny people as possible, you can still do that.

“We’ve always liked giving players the freedom to select any hero, regardless of the team’s composition, because it opened up the possibility for tons of crazy strategies and match-ups,” said Kaplan. “In Quick Play, where things are intended to be more relaxed, this is fine.”

If the change works as intended by making competitive play that much less frustrating (and let’s face it: that much more interesting to watch), this change will be part of the upcoming Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC patches.

How do you feel about nixing hero stacking from Overwatch competitive play? Do you think it’ll make for more balanced and interesting pro games, or has Blizzard backed down from an interesting concept based on community pressure? Feel free to let us know in the comments section below.