..Is hero stacking. And to be clear i'm talking about the concept of having 2 or 3 of the same hero. Not 6 of the same hero. Currently the most competitive setup players use in the competitive games is double mcree, double winston and mercy with lucio. How is hero stacking a problem? The biggest issue it creates is it completely bypasses the biggest balance mechanic set in place. Cool downs on abilities. For instance Mcree has a very powerful flashbang. But if you cause him to miss you can easily punish. However if another mcree is on that team they can buddy up and flashbang you again if the first missed. OR they can combine their flashbang to destroy a coordinated push. It also makes call outs extremely less viable. Because you could take out one tracer and relay this to your team. And then get gutted by another one and be left scratching your head. Even if your team is aware of double tracer killing a single tracer doesn't eleminate the tracer threat. and any call out about where you see one is pointless. Since the other one can be somewhere else and throw off the team. Having an effective hero stack often results in your team having to stack as well. And while yes the game is about counter play the effect of switching to do so is far more felt if more then one person on your team does it. You have to run more then a single person back to the point. and you lose any ultimate progress in the switch. Which is a massive advantage for the team who started stacking first. Certain ult's like Zarya's can counter a stack effectively. But that requires you to have an ult ready to begin with. And if you arne't really killing/damaging the stacked team you won't get it anywhere as fast as you need it. So why not just remove it all together? Or limit hero stacking to pub matches only? Well one of the dev's had pointed out that "stacking isn't effective" because a team of 6 of the same hero is highly exploitable. Which isn't the balance issue at hand. They also said "well what if you had 2 bastions and you need a genji to counter but your teams genji is terrible? you can't switch to it." This is a fair point. But most heros have more then one counter character. How about.."i'd be mad if I can't play my favorite hero." a valid point. However the game is all about counter play and switching heros when needed. It's not really the games fault you don't diversify yourself. If we limit it just to competitive the "meta" will get stale. Well it already is stale. Since most competitive teams come down to running the same team comp. with or without stacking. The problem with limiting it to a single mode though comes with hero balancing in general. Winston is the best example here. Right now he's pretty weak as a solo tank. His shield has a long cool down and is easily broken. and his weapon does low damage. However 2 winston's become a serious threat since they can stagger their shields and double the damage being done. Winston was actually nerfed in alpha/beta because his good solo play made him unbarable in stacked play. And honestly in my opinion playing against a stacked team effective or not isn't fun. I've countered a team nearly full of hanzo's and another nearly full of bastions. Countering isn't the only aspect here. The unfortunate reality is that there is no perfect solution for this. If any tweaks are made to characters specifically with stacking in mind you can either make the hero a god in solo or weak in solo. And out right removing it takes away fun for some people. Not to mention it limits the average players choice. Which is something no company ever wants to do. I'm not saying some hero's shouldn't be tweaked. They are/will be. But we both have to acknowledge the problems stacking comes with but also ignore the problems they present. Because you can't do a damn thing about them without ruining something. I've never played something like overwatch before. So i'm not sure if stacking has always been an issue in other hero style games. However, if I had to fault the game for anything (other then some character balance) it would have to be this. In my opinion i'd much rather it be gone completely despite what issues that would bring. But that's just me.