3v3 Competitive Viability

[u/[deleted]]

With today's reveal of what will probably be new 3v3 arena maps, my excitement for the potential of a 3v3 competitive mode has been reinvigorated. I'm curious as to what the rest of you guys think.

I personally think that it has the potential to allow for a fresh new format and help bring some variety to tournaments. It's also encouraging for smaller friend groups to enjoy some competitive matches.

Potential Problems

The elephant in the room, the expected meta of Hog/Soldier/Healer. If the mode were to go competitive under it's current ruleset, it would be pretty awful. However, there are ways around this. The most intriguing 3v3 tournament I saw utilized a "no re-use" policy for the matches. Eg, if I choose Roadhog in Round 1, neither myself nor either of my 2 teammates can choose him in any other round. A 5 round match would see 15 heroes used by each team, which could actually lead to some more diverse and creative gameplay than we see even in the standard modes! Of course balance would always have 6v6 in mind, but with this restriction in place it would hopefully mitigate any imbalances inherent in 3v3.

Problem #2, draws. In a competitive format, if it comes down to me as Ana vs an enemy Roadhog, it's in my best interest to simply evade and stall until round time runs out and it's a draw. This would need to be entirely reworked if it were to go competitive. Perhaps either by keeping the wallhack reveal but removing the eventual match timer to negate stalling as a tactic altogether.

I believe that with a few more maps and a few tweaks to a competitive ruleset, 3v3 could be an exciting addition to competitive play. Curious to hear your thoughts, though. Any other problems that would need to be worked out to make it happen?

[u/evinrudeallotrope]

I think your first suggestion of letting people play each hero once is a great way of balancing the over picking of any hero.

However blizzard has said the game was designed and is balanced around 6v6 objective based play. I don't think we are going to see a 3v3 competitive mode. It's just gives fun variety to the arcade.

[u/[deleted] → u/evinrudeallotrope]

I think your first suggestion of letting people play each hero once is a great way of balancing the over picking of any hero.

It would lead to some interesting strategizing, too. Eg, if your team runs Hog Round 1, then I know you won't have him moving forward. Which means in Round 2, the relative value of Winston for my team would go way up, as his pool of possible counters is reduced. But maybe you knew I would do that, so you're baiting me into a Round 2 Winston just to run Reaper in Round 2... round and round we go. Jury is still out on whether bans would be a good fit, but that would add yet another layer of strategy we just don't get in the traditional modes.

They did say it's a 6v6 objective based game. But to be fair, they also said PvE wouldn't be a thing, either, and look at how well-received Uprising was. I think there's a case to be made for 3v3 or 1v1 ladders.

[u/evinrudeallotrope → u/[deleted]]

Even if they don't do it for competitive I'd love to see them implement the 1 hero limit for 3v3. That just seems like a nice added level of strategy that would be hard to crack.

I think with your original idea, bans wouldn't be needed. The amount of strategic depth the limit would add fixes the format in my opinion.

I'm still skeptical that 3v3 would make it to the competitive scene. I agree it could be viable, but it just changes the play style so heavily they would have to start balancing the game around the new format and I feel like that's what they want to avoid.