Which Overwatch League teams will be affected most by hero pools

The Countdown Cup starts Friday and hero pools are back in play for the last tournament of the Overwatch League 2021 season. The four heroes that will be banned during the Countdown Cup are Sigma, Lucio, Ashe and Echo.

Hero pools create an interesting dynamic for fans because it breaks up any established meta that might have carried over all of the tournaments if hero pools didn’t exist. Sometimes it successfully breaks up a boring or repetitive meta, but other times it squashes a fun meta that teams brought into competition without the restriction of banned heroes.

For the most part, hero pools force teams to be creative in choosing their composition, and it can make for some really awesome gameplay. However, hero pools can also heavily favor or disfavor a team based on their roster and what they typically run. Here, we’ll look at the teams that are most affected by the current hero pools, using the stats provided by the OWL Stats Lab.

Based on high pick rates for these four banned heroes across the 2021 season, these are the teams that will be most affected by the Countdown Cup hero pools.

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Atlanta Reign

Affected heroes: Sigma, Lucio

Sigma and Lucio are the two heroes to watch with the Reign. Petja "Masaa" Kantanen has spent more than half of his playtime on Lucio. Although he is certainly skilled at other heroes, he is heralded as one of the best Lucios in the league.

Because the Reign have only two support players on their roster, it’ll be up to Masaa to find the hero that works best for him with Lucio out of the game.

Sigma is less of a worry for Xander "Hawk" Domecq, who has most of his playtime on D.Va, but it looks like Sigma is his shield character of choice. Not to worry, the Reign have Blake “Gator” Scott, who can play the other unbanned shield heroes.

Dallas Fuel

Affected heroes: Lucio

The Dallas Fuel have been dealt a crappy hand in hero pools before, but not so much this time, so fans aren’t expecting the quality of the Fuel’s play to diminish based on the hero pools for the Countdown Cup.

Seung-soo "Jecse" Lee is the only player greatly affected by the ban. He picks Lucio well over half of the time, and the only other hero he has played so far in 2021 is Brigitte. The Fuel is a creative team, so if he brings out a hero other than Brigitte, it will surely be exciting to watch.

Florida Mayhem

Affected heroes: Sigma, Lucio, Echo

Poor Florida has a ton of work to do when it comes to adjusting their roster. Sang-bum "BQB" Lee and Jun-ki "Yaki" Kim both have one of their DPS options banned in Ashe and Echo, respectively. BQB has other heroes to fall back on, and normally picks McCree, but Yaki has only played Tracer and Mei besides Echo. If other teams expect Yaki to choose Tracer, they may work on comps to counter him.

Sung-jun "SLIME" Kim has some work to do in bolstering his skills on heroes besides Lucio. That’s SLIME’s pick almost half the time, so he’ll need to figure out what healer will work with the rest of the group.

Beom-jun "Gargoyle" Lee will be relying on either D.Va or Zarya for the Countdown Cup. Although he picks D.Va half the time, he also chooses Sigma 36% of the time, which is no small amount. D.Va will probably be a popular off-tank pick for this tournament, so it may not affect Gargoyle quite as much.

Hangzhou Spark

Affected heroes: Echo

Although the Spark have an almost full roster of players to pull from this season, they’ve kept to their starting six the entire season. The problem here is that Zheng "Shy" Yangjie almost exclusively plays Echo, picking her about 72% of the time. Whether they will have Shy play a different hero or sub him out for one of their other DPS players is the question.

Joobi and the Outlaws will have to adjust without Lucio being available to pick. Photo credit: Overwatch League

Houston Outlaws

Affected heroes: Echo, Lucio, Sigma

We might just see Jake “Jake” Lyon sub in again for Enrique "Joobi" Triana if the map doesn’t call for a Mercy. That’s the only backup hero Joobi has played, although he has split his time with Lucio and Mercy in his previous picks. It’s possible he picks up some extra play time with a healer other than Mercy, or we could see Jake step in with Brigitte.

Dante “Danteh” Cruz will either have to rely on another DPS hero, or be subbed out since his main pick Echo is banned. However, Danteh is a talented DPS, and it wouldn’t be surprising if he pulled out another hero and played it just as well as he plays Echo.

Min-jun "PIGGY " Shin will need to select a different backup hero in case a D.Va doesn’t fit the bill for certain maps. He has Zarya to fall back on, too.

Los Angeles Gladiators

Affected heroes: Echo, Lucio

Kevin “kevster” Persson will have to live without Echo in this tournament and rely on one of his other picks. It’s likely we could see him on Tracer, or we could see Gia Huy "Chris" "MirroR" Trịnh subbed in and out based on the map.

Grant “moth” Espe is sure to be disappointed in this tournament since his favorite character, Lucio, was banned. He’ll either select a different healer or pass the torch to Kim “skewed” Min-seok to play Brigitte.

The Gladiators are a good team and definitely a contender for the playoffs, but they rely heavily on Echo as their second DPS character, so this might force them to center their play around hitscan specialist Kim “birdring” Ji-hyeok and hope that their other DPS player can carry the weight.

Los Angeles Valiant

Affected heroes: Echo, Ashe

It will take nothing short of a miracle for the Valiant to even have a shot at the playoffs, and it’s made worse by the banning of Echo, who Liao “MoLanran” Yang has played almost exclusively this season. Cai "Krystal" Shilong will also have to live without his favorite pick, Ashe.

The Valiant have no other DPS to field, so it will force the Valiant to get creative in their comp. For a team that needs everything to go exactly right in order to have the smallest chance at the playoffs, this isn’t a promising development for the team.

Philadelphia Fusion

Affected heroes: Lucio

Although this hero ban won’t affect the Fusion that much, it’s worth noting that poor Daniel “FunnyAstro” Hathaway finally got his visa, finally finished his mandatory quarantine, played in four whole games, and then had his staple hero banned for the next tournament. He might be subbed in to play on Brigitte, or we could see a duo in Kyung-bo “Alarm” Kim and Jinmo “tobi” Yang, which was the setup before FunnyAstro arrived in Korea.

This is an important tournament for the Fusion, who are sitting right on the postseason play-in cutoff line, so they will be using their roster to the best of their ability in order to solidify a chance at the playoffs.

San Francisco Shock

Affected heroes: Lucio

The Shock are fairly unaffected by these bans, mostly because they have a stacked DPS roster and can deal with Echo and Ashe being banned.

Their token Lucio, however, won’t be available to them, and having Brice “FDGod” Monsçavoir do what he does in important matches will be a bit of a blow to the team. FDGod himself joked about the ban on Twitter, saying a short and sweet “bye.” At least he’s a good sport about it!

The Shock will probably be just fine with Support duo Minki “Viol2t” Park and Juseok “Twilight” Lee, but fans might be disappointed to not see FDGod gracing their screens.

Seoul Dynasty

Affected heroes: Ashe

The Dynasty will have to figure out what Dong-eon “FITS” Kim will play instead of his favorite Ashe for the Countdown Cup. Nothing else really affects the team too much, and FITS is more than capable of coming up with another hero to play, but they will have to cultivate their composition around a more concentrated pool of heroes since Lucio, Echo and Sigma are all regulars on this roster as well.

Vancouver Titans

Affected heroes: Lucio

Anthony “Fire” King will have to adjust to using something other than Lucio for most of his playtime. Although he does play Brigitte and Mercy sometimes, he picks Lucio more than half of the time, which will put this already down-on-their-luck team in more of a tight spot.

The only upside to this hero pool for the Titans is that none of the other banned heroes will have much of an effect on their composition.

Washington Justice

Affected heroes: Ashe, Echo, Lucio

The Justice are another team that got a lot of their favorite heroes banned in the Countdown Cup. Echo is a favorite of Kim “Assassin” Sung-won, Lucio is a favorite of Wonsik “Closer” Jung and Taehee “Jerry” Min favors Ashe in a lot of matches.

None of these are particularly devastating by themselves, because each of those players has demonstrated high skill on other heroes as well. When looking at the bans as a whole, it seems that the Justice will have a lot of experimenting to do to see what works for the three players who have had their go-to picks banned.

Who got the short end of the stick?

It is impossible to predict who will and won’t do well in the Countdown Cup. Hero pools throw in an element of mystery to matches, and fans won’t know what each team has come up with until they see them play in the tournament.

However, the two teams that will be affected the most by these bans are likely the Mayhem and the Justice.

Aaron “PRE” Heckman, general manager for the Justice, put out a stat of his own on Twitter recently. He took minutes played into account when coming up with his most affected players and teams, and it looks like based on minutes played, the Mayhem are the biggest loser here.

Overall, the Justice still have a lot of work to do for their roster, and they’ll need to be creative in order to navigate the hero bans, but the Mayhem are right there with them, which makes these two teams the biggest losers in the Countdown Cup hero pools.

Lead image credit: Activision Blizzard