Blizzard is making a major change to Overwatch that should make many, if not most players very happy. The change has to do with Overwatch's Competitive Play restrictions that limit which characters can be chosen into distinct Hero Pools. Blizzard's decided that all Competitive tiers below Master and Grandmaster will no longer have to deal with Hero Pools. That's the vast majority of Overwatch players no longer having to worry about limitations regarding which hero they want to pick.
As for the reason why Blizzard is making this change, it's surprisingly simple. Blizzard says that tiers lower than Master already have a good amount of hero diversity in their team compositions. The Hero Pools function simply isn't necessary to encourage those players to diversify their team compositions. As for why this wasn't recognized months ago when Overwatch players were so frustrated with Hero Pools, Blizzard doesn't say.
The implication is also that at Master and Grandmaster tiers of Competitive Play in Overwatch, Hero Pools remain necessary to keep team compositions diverse. That's perhaps a hint that Blizzard believes its heroes are inherently unbalanced at high levels of play. If Blizzard balanced the game around high-level play, many heroes at low level play would probably become unplayable.
Blizzard wants to make the change to Overwatch Hero Pools soon, but unfortunately the patches haven't aligned. The new implementation, with Hero Pools just for Master and Grandmaster, will be added to the game at a later date. Blizzard has a fix for the immediate future, however. It's going to be disabling Hero Pools for all players, Master and Grandmaster included, starting Monday, May 4.
There's another change that's also being planned to Hero Pools. Going forward, once the changes are fully implemented, Hero Pools will be based entirely on the Overwatch League hero usage. Once the OWL season ends, it'll go back to using Competitive Play data as well.
It remains to be seen whether the removal of Hero Pools will actually work out better or worse for Overwatch Competitive Play. Allowing players to pick what Heroes they want is obviously going to be well-received. But frustration is bound to crop up when players go up against more organized, oppressive team compositions. Either way, Blizzard is likely to reevaluate its planned changes and make changes as necessary going forward.
Overwatch is available now on PC, PS4, Switch, and Xbox One.