Jessica S. June 27, 2019
Chan-hyung "Fissure" Baek, formerly of the Seoul Dynasty, has seemingly confirmed rumors that a 2/2/2 role lock is coming to Overwatch League.
On his stream, Fissure said, “I'm retired now so I'll say it. Next stage, four, 2-2-2 lock is confirmed.”
The Seoul Dynasty recently revealed that they had mutually agreed to let Fissure out of his contract. The former main tank then took the opportunity during one of his streams to confirm a 2/2/2 role lock that is rumored to be coming to Overwatch League, as was first reported by Upcomer.
Upcomer’s article mentioned that multiple sources in the Overwatch League had confirmed to them that a role lock was coming for Stage 4. OWL Analyst Christopher "MonteCristo" Mykles has been very vocal in support of the mechanic, which has caused fans of Overwatch League to debate the pros and cons of a potential implementation.
People who support the lock are tired of watching the GOATS composition, in which teams are made up of three support heroes and three tank heroes with no DPS. Fans have long been complaining of the composition being boring.
Those who object to the changes are afraid that it will be less exciting to watch because teams will be less able to find creative combinations to counter their opposition.
While Fissure may have confirmed a 2/2/2 lock for Stage 4, fans are still curious if this feature will be implemented into the competitive game mode for the general player base.
Ever since the GOATS composition became meta, Overwatch League viewership has dropped. The two aren’t necessarily directly correlated, as the drop could be a result of general lost interest or other factors, but some fans do admit that they haven’t been watching because the meta is not as interesting as last season’s.
With the latest patch, the developers at Blizzard nerfed some of the heroes commonly played in the GOATS comp, but the matches have remained similar in composition regardless. Fans were disappointed that it wasn’t enough to trigger a change or to add more excitement to games, and many have begun to doubt that Blizzard is actually capable of effecting this change through game rebalancing.
Overwatch League is currently in the fourth week of Stage 3, and will be heading to Atlanta for week five for another homestead week. It has still not been confirmed by Blizzard that there will be a role lock for Stage 4.