Ranked play-
Solo Q- Play Lucio; Play tanks. While laughable, teams with facile lucio (aka. mr. ez, the loose unchallengeing effortless simplest hero to play) almost always will beat teams without him as stated by PCGamer. He is the ez mode hero even more than bastion or torbjorn. It is best to tweak compositions to heroes that are easy counters on your flex position. (such as 2 reinharts against mass torbjorn, or 2 reapers against mass winstons.) While extreme more commonly there is a less extreme standard composition to play out matches, 2 tanks, 2 supports or a flex, and 2 dps Zeromus from teamliquid mentioned in his Introduction that optimal 2-2-2 compositions and fenn3r explains what the 2-2-2 compositions are in the videos posted above. This means that off the 21 heroes 4 of the slots will be occupied by 8 heroes. With zenyatta used only on king of the hill maps, Symmetra only used defensively, and D.va and roadhog being played little in competitive play.
This implies that overall mercy, lucio, reinhart, op McCree, and winston/zarya are used almost every game. It is cray cray to think that of 21 heroes, almost always you should be playing 8 of them. (occasionally zenyatta.)
Why the 2-2-2 meta?
According to Planet overwatch, the most 10 most played hereos in competitive play are Mercy, Op McCree, Reinhart, Widowmaker, Lucio, Winston, Pharah, Zarya, symmetra, Junkrat. What do they have in common? All 3 tanks have shields that prevent them and an ally from taking damage. Both healers can heal and stay out of combat. All three dps are able to give damage over multiple targets in a small period of time reducing the shield effectiveness. Symmetra reduces the snowballing effect on offensive maps, one of the key ez mode mechanics in the game. Often the other position is played by a flanker to prevent the team from getting a healer into combat such as tracer, genji, or reaper. Thus the theme of team games is almost always stack teams with shields and healers and supply burst damage and aoe onto a point in the map to take it. The least played heroes struggle against the shields, heals, burst aoe combo and have very hard counters (bastion, mei, torbjorn, D.va, and Hanzo) Mei is like the techies of overwatch which only slows down games and needs to run with other heroes to be effective. Bastion and Torbjorn are not good at pushing into a position. Tracer, genji, and soldier are often chosen to slow down the pharah, junkrat, and widow, but are not as strong as op McCree.
The future needs of Overwatch-
Hero diversity and and The game has several heroes played, 2 supports rarely, 2 tanks rarely, and about 10 classes are picked very situationally. The skill cap is heavily diminished as the snowball mechanics kick in. Very few support and tank choices exist for the number of players in a game resulting in an extreme of composition and player experience redundancy. There is unlimited ammo, energy, and ultimate usages. Teams can run and mass multiples of the same heroes. There is no hero picking or banning. The pickup system is very limited. The payload heals the offensive team and not the defensive team. There is no final scoreboard with k, d, a, or abilities used. There are no secondary objectives which could empower a team giving them a reason to leave the payload or spawn point such as capturing something could give your team unlimited ammo, charge your ultimates twice as fast, give your team 50% more health, etc. I feel like that there is a direction that makes sense to move forward then which may change a lot the mechanics of the game which can be used to change the competitive nature of the game. Having a static 2-2-2 meta with 7 standard heroes is not necessarily a bad problem actually. THE GAME NEEDS MORE TANKS AND SUPPORT OPTIONS. But I would propose some things for gamers and blizzard to think about in overwatch with the goal of reducing the 2-2-2 meta and offering a higher skill cap for competitive play. As an alternative to just adding a lot of tanks and supports, I think you could change the style of the competitve play to reduce the 2-2-2 composition.
Proposed changes to overwatch to reduce dependence on the 2-2-2 composition.
1. Add support classes which give ammo, charge secondary energy, teleport players to them, or allow teammates to shoot through shields.
2. Running 2 heroes of the same class diminishes their effectiveness.
3. Pickups should be placed on maps for secondary attributes.
4. Scoreboards should be added to the game.
5. Secondary objectives should be placed on maps.
6. The snowball mechanic should be diminished by splitting teams up and forcing them to leave the payload/objective for pickups or secondary objectives.
7. Time trials to complete payload pushes. Victories and defeats decided by comparing the distance of the two payloads.
8. Players can only switch heroes once they charge their ultimate abilities before using it.
9. McCree's stun should require multiple pickups. As it is effectively an ultimate as a secondary ability.
10. The offensive healing of the payload should apply to the defensive team as well.
There are other wishlist things that would be nice to have.
A. premade camera positions on the map for quick viewing.
B. Replay system
C. In game, team logos for purchase for professional teams
D. Jerseys or the characters. (I.e. player name, number)
E. Shot type explanation and hit boxes
F. Dual Control point maps
G. More environmental changes. (Bridges, locked doors, sky defenses, securable turrets, Securable cameras, Securable ancients, etc)
H. Map Editor.
Thank you for your time and if you would like to look at my credibility I have other posts, which I made before the release of Overwatch. I have one on the map Route 66, one on the live action release, one on hero compositions, and one on Team communication.