Tracer, Sombra, Reinhardt and Zenyatta will not be part of the June Joust OWL tournament. With the new hero pool in place, OWL will see a significant change in meta for the ‘June tournament’.
The Overwatch League has revealed changes to the League’s format in a new blog post. The June Joust qualifiers start on May 21 and will continue for three weeks. The June Joust tournament takes place from June 10-12, 2021 and will also use hero pools after careful consideration of the May Melee picks.
June Joust hero pool changes
The May Melee tournament had all heroes available to teams. The League is reintroducing Hero Pools for the June tournament based on the data from the May Melee. Tracer, Sombra, Reinhardt as well as Zenyatta will not be in play during the qualifying and tournaments.
Hero pools use a rotation of playable heroes to showcase more hero diversity and strategy in matches. The heroes to be removed were also randomly selected from a group of eligible heroes based on play-rate data from the previous tournament cycle of Overwatch League matches. Only heroes that were played regularly—10% or more pick rate—were eligible. No hero can be removed more than once during the season.
Hero pools allow the League's meta to evolve throughout the season. One of the most common complaints in the past was the stale meta and the boring gameplay over the duration of the season. The Overwatch League had already introduced the rules for hero pools in the 2021 season. While the May Melee meta was largely balanced, four new hero bans will definitely spice up things in the June Joust.
What’s the June Joust Patch and Map Pool?
The Overwatch League June Joust matches will take place on the 1.59.1 patch. The patch brought about changes to several heroes such as Baptiste, Moira, Orisa, Reinhardt, Sombra and more. As a result of these changes, it will be interesting to see which teams come out on top in the 'June tournament'.
Here is the map pool for the June Joust tournament cycle:
- Control: Busan, Ilios, Lijiang Tower, Nepal, Oasis.
- Escort: Dorado, Junkertown, Rialto.
- Assault: Hanamura, Temple of Anubis, Volskaya Industries.
- Hybrid: Eichenwalde, Hollywood, Numbani.
Tiebreaker Changes
The League has also introduced a few changes to the tournament qualification rules. Here are the new tournament cycle tiebreakers:
- The first tiebreaker is the map differential between the teams.
- Head-to-head records in qualifying matches; for ties among three or more teams, this step will only apply if there is a head-to-head sweep (i.e. if one team has defeated each of the others or lost to each of the others).
- League points of all opponents within the tournament cycle; the team with the most opponent league points will qualify.
- The next step will consider the Map differential of all opponents within the tournament cycle. Therefore, the team with the highest opponent map differential will qualify.
- If a tie between two or more teams remains, postseason tiebreakers will also be applied.
The June Joust tournament kicks off with the match between Paris Eternal and Toronto Defiant on May 21 at noon PT/ 3 p.m. ET.
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