Less than 24 hours ago in a surprise announcement, Baek “Fissure” Chan-hyung, retired from his position of main tank for the Overwatch League’s Seoul Dynasty. His retirement comes in the middle of the league’s third stage, where the Dynasty currently sit in 7th place, with a record of 3-2.
The Dynasty bid farewell to Fissure on Twitter account Wednesday evening.
https://twitter.com/SeoulDynasty/status/1144078036502867968
Fissure joined the Seoul Dynasty before the second season of Overwatch League, having previously played main tank for the Los Angeles Gladiators and London Spitfire. His play during season one for the Gladiators was credited with turning the team into one of the top contenders for the league title, and earned Fissure runner-up in the league’s MVP voting.
Apparently now that Fissure has retired, he isn’t very apt on keeping the League’s confidential information, well confidential. Only a few hours after his official retirement the former Overwatch League player claimed on his personal stream that the much talked about role lock is confirmed for stage four of the Overwatch League, which begins July 26.
Role lock is a feature that implements a 2-2-2 system, requiring each team to have two heroes of each role — tank, damage, and support — at all times. The feature has been rumored to be coming to the Overwatch League for some time now, and a number of fans has asked Blizzard to implement it in Overwatch’s competitive mode.
Having this role lock will make it easier for Blizzard to balance heroes, due to not having to account for some many different possible combinations being fielded. Perhaps even more exciting is the fact that this feature would break the current meta, the dreaded triple-tank, triple-support GOATS composition. Balance and meta issues aside, having a new system in place that forces teams to utilize every classification of hero, would undoubted encourage more creativity and see teams field new compositions that fans have never before seen.
Overwatch game director Jeff Kaplan has noted in the past that the game’s developers like the idea of a role queue, but we’ve yet to see it come to the game proper. It’s entirely likely that the Overwatch League will act as a preview for devs to see how the feature will effect the game at-large.
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