[Update]: Overwatch Archives 2020 update has now suddenly arrived, bringing with it PvE challenges and some truly amazing new skins.

In an effort to keep Overwatch fresh and interesting, Blizzard recently announced that they will be releasing more frequent balance changes, as well as adding curated hero bans. These Hero Pools will be controlled by Blizzard themselves, and will remove five heroes (one tank, one support and 2 DPS) in Competitive Play for a week or two. The goal, as you might imagine, is to constantly mix up the meta and ensure no strategy gets to remain dominant for too long.

The first batch of hero bans has now arrived alongside the start of Season 21, and for a little while Hanzo, Mei, Orisa and Baptiste will be unavailable in the Competitive Play mode. The DPS picks are good choice for obvious reasons, while the already underplayed Baptiste and Orisa feel like they've been thrown in there just so Blizzard can better judge how this whole system will impact tank and support play as a whole.

Besides the hero bans, Season 21 has also brought in a brand new map pool for Competitive Play. You can find the full list right below, and thankfully, there is no Paris!

Assault

• Hanamura

• Horizon Lunar Colony

• Volskaya Industries

Control

• Busan

• Lijiang Tower

• Oasis

Escort

• Dorado

• Junkertown

• Watchpoint: Gibraltar

Hybrid

• Blizzard World

• Hollywood

• King’s Row

Those aren't all of the changes, however, as Blizzard has also added another Experimental game mode with a bunch of new balance tweaks. A lot of these are copy-pasted from the current PTR, but there's also a couple of buffs for Ashe, Sombra, Orisa and Baptiste thrown into the mix as well. You can read more about them over at the official website.

Good luck with your placement matches, and enjoy the current Mei-free meta!