Competitive Overwatch Forbids "Hero Stacking"

Overwatch! With how often Blizzard's competitive hero-based FPS shows up on this website, I'd say we're all just about OVER WATCHING for new news! And yet, with the release of Ana, the medical sniper who is not Sombra, Overwatch is back on our plates--and while everyone else scrambles in eager excitement to try her out, I'm going to recommend that you don't try her in a competitive match: because as it turns out, pro players don't share.

Or, at least, they're about to lose the ability too. Blizzard has just announced a new change is coming to the competitive mode, which already enjoys some very, very different rules and gameplay than the more casual-friendly quick play mode. Namely, hero stacking--or picking multiple of the same hero on one team--is going to be banned. According to Scott Mercer, while talking to Gamespot:

"The big thing for Competitive Play is we're going to turn on one-hero limit, so players will not be able to stack more than one of the same hero within a Competitive match. It's not going to effect Quick Play at all, but it is something we're going to turn on for Competitive."

He continued, when talking about dropping Sudden Death entirely out of season 2 of competitive:

"We definitely want players to feel like if they had a tie, their time wasn't completely wasted. So we're trying to find the sweet spot of a lot of players feel like, 'Oh, well, we got something out of it,' but at the same time not create situations where players might collude and create some nasty situations there. We're still discussing that."

So, the divide between competitive and quick play gets even sharper. While that will no doubt make some people happy, it does mean the skills you pick up in quick play might not translate well into competitive, especially if you're only good at one or two heroes. So, think carefully before you pop onto competitive--after all, you'd hate for a bad score to be linked to your username until the day you die, right?

They might even put it on your tombstone. Just to really double down.