Japanese Overwatch pros’ meme comp is so good other teams are running it

An unexpected team comp is dominating Overwatch esports after originating from one audacious Japanese team.

Meta in Overwatch is usually rigid with not much deviation, but one innovative team comp from a Japanese Overwatch team in the Overwatch Championship Series (OWCS) seems to have caught on and inspired other teams.

Please Not Hero Ban (PNHB) notoriously ran “off-meta” team comps prominently featuring Symmetra, Torbjorn, and Wrecking Ball during their initial OWCS matches, and have unexpectedly dominated their games with these heroes. While other teams aren’t exactly mirroring PNHB’s comps, certain heroes have risen in play rate.

Is off-meta the new meta?

Symmetra and Torbjorn are rarely ever prominent in Overwatch esports, but PNHB’s insistence on running a Sym / Torb DPS comp for nearly every game has seemingly caught on with other teams. PNHB typically runs this comp with Wrecking Ball and a support lineup of Illari and a flex pick. Korean teams seemed to take inspiration from this comp and ran variations of it during OWCS’s most recent matches.

Korean team Crazy Raccoon used a variation of this comp during their match against T1, often picking Symmetra, Torbjorn, and Wrecking Ball into the traditional Hazard comp.

Torbjorn is one of the tankiest DPS characters thanks to his Overload ability, and Symmetra’s teleport is able to weave into the backline and harass utilizing her teleporter. With Wrecking Ball being self-sufficient and a self-peeling backline of Lucio and Juno, and this team comp is a surprisingly effective Hazard counterpick.

Aside from the potential against Hazard comps, it’s possible teams just see value in these characters alone. Two teams, New Era and Vec, mirrored Symmetra and Torbjorn during each of their matches, pairing these DPS with numerous different tanks such as Reinhardt and Sigma.

As other DPS characters like Sojourn received gradual nerfs while Torbjorn and Symmetra were slowly buffed over a number of patches, it seems as if teams believe these two characters might be the strongest picks. Torbjorn is absurdly tanky as a DPS, and Symmetra’s teleport is more effective in a coordinated environment anyway.

As the OWCS continues, it’ll be interesting to see how dominant these once forgotten characters are utilized in future matches. As Hazard remains dominant, we might see this trifecta of underappreciated characters remain in the spotlight.