I'd love to see your thoughts on how it can be less restrictive. As I said above, I feel like the game would just go nuts if they balance the defense heroes wrong even a little.
I'll leave this here for when you get back and whoever else is interested.
Basically, Lucio/Zenyatta are really strong right now and they enable certain types of strategies that are extremely difficult to counter. Lucio's speedboost and Zenyatta's discord combined open up a type of teamfight and engage that is extremely hard to beat. Basically, with characters moving that fast and Zenyatta being able to half the life of any character he chooses, teams can start a fight by speed boosting in and choosing a target to murder. Countering this type of strategy is very hard. Having a healer counter the damage is more or less impossible because it is so much damage that comes down so fast. Having a tank mitigate the push is the current counter people are running, but I'll explain later why this still isn't that great. That really leaves the way to play around it to kill the other team first, or to avoid getting engaged on like that. If you wanna kill the other team first, your best bet is to run the same Lucio/Zen strat as them so that it comes down to almost a mirror match.
So because of all that above, who do you pick with your Zen/Lucio combo? DPS is actually pretty wide open, but there are 3 heroes that specifically get major benefits from this combo. McCree with speedboost actually tank busts Rein very easily since he can flash over shield and FtH. McCree with Discord+heashot deals 210 damage a hit so he can insta-kill every DPS outside of Reaper and still tank bust basically anything. His interaction with speedboosted high noon is also really great for fights. Reaper is really strong because the best way to stop this rush strat is to stack tanks(other than running it yourself and winning the fight first). If Reaper gets to speedboost into a discorded tank he's going to two or three shot them. He also has good ult interactions with this team too. He's also good at holding ult in order to try and counter this type of push as well. It makes sense for him to be in meta this way. The last one that gets picked is Genji, and he's mostly picked because jumping on a discorded guy might mean he 100% bursts them, and he has a sword. He's also good on specific segments of popular maps. Admittedly, Genji is just kinda good on his own and has the ability to play into this strat well so he sees play.
Then you have the DPS that loses out. Pharah isn't picked because discord orb murders her. At the same time, the way Pharah contributes to the types of fights we're seeing now lacks impact compared to those listed above. She just gets isolated and dies. Then you have Soldier who honestly is not a bad character but he's just not good enough at the top 3 to be in meta. In solo q he's still pretty good though, just there's generally always a better option.
So now comes the tanks. Luckily, basically every tank has some place in the meta besides Roadhog, and Roadhog gets picked still. There are some major winners here because you got Zarya in the mix. She was already a top 5 character, and now she cleanses discord orb. Not only does she cleanse discord orb, she allows whoever she wants to dive into a team fight and get free damage on the discorded target. So the type of fighting Zen/Lucio encourage she excels at while also being able to fight against it. She's really good in this meta. Rein is Rein. He has a big square. He's less good now because McCree speedboosting into his shield deletes him, but he's still good at controlling fights before engages happen. Winston is a monster with the Zarya combo right now too. His bubble will isolate whoever he wants and he gets around discord by having Zarya shield him into a fight. D.Va is similar but works better for maps with more variable high ground. Roadhog gets crapped on by this meta, he's the only one to be noticeably worse. He only gets picked by teams that think they can rely on him to get a pick to stop fights from happening, and if he ever fails he auto dies. In the event of a push, he's next to useless. It's just how it is.
So, all the tanks have viability and most of the offense heroes, right? That's not so bad looking. But then you realize that they are all viable in the same type of fight and strat. With Lucio/Zen strats making them all good at this one thing, every match devolves into this one thing. Poke > pick > discord + speed > wipe. That strategy is so dominant and hard to counter that you have to pick a strat into it. The best counter strat is to have tanks like Zarya uses shields to disengage. I mentioned that earlier. That /still loses/ to this. The only real way to avoid this fight is to win out of poking with McCree or something but it just doesn't happen often.
So if this is the way all fights will be fought, where do defense heroes fall in? Torb turrets don't do enough damage to be a factor in a fight that happens this fast and will move past the turret usually anyways. Same story with Bastion, the fight just moves past him since he's so static. There is some cheese to sticking him in the back and pulling the fight into him, but the risk of doing that, combined to the fact if you want to engage yourself he's useless, makes him not worth it. Hanzo/Widow also can't benefit from this engage and flat out don't deal enough damage to stop it.
That leaves Junkrat and Mei. Junkrat actually sees some use on first point in some maps. His set up and area denial in certain areas stop this type of engage from being as strong and allow a team to poke more and stall out. That's what we want to happen, that's awesome. Only problem is this only works on like 3 maps, and if it fails there's almost no way to recover a fight. Also, like other defense heroes, if you're on defense and need your own Lucio/Zen fight he's pretty bad outside of ult. Mei is the same way, Mei's wall is the godsend at stopping rush strats since she can just plop a wall into the middle of the squad to isolate them. Again, if this fails and a full fight breaks out she's useless and it only works on specific maps.
None of those defense heroes are bad, they just don't work well in the meta that Lucio/Zen create. They're forced out. The other supports are also forced out to because they can't really fight it. Ana nade + Lucio amp it up are still not enough healing to stop a discord + speedboost rush. So why even pick Ana over Lucio/Zen? You don't wanna. You can try a three support comp, but then you lose DPS in those fights which can be an issue. Mercy rez was actually the old counter to Lucio speedboost fights, if you lose the engage you wipe on purpose to get Mercy rez. Rez is nerfed, Mercy's damage buff is way worse than Zen's, she can't outheal burst. She's out. Sym is the same story as junk and Mei. She's good and can work first point, but if it fails it's an auto loss and she can't fight as well. You might see a team forego a tank and try her to elongate a first point, but that's really about it.
And I think that's the cast. If you want the best core team it's spelled out for you there in almost any situation, there's no need to deviate from it. No need to run any other strat than Lucio/Zen death ball. Any hero that can't fit in that strat gets tossed out or is a niche pick that carries high risk along with it. KotH meta is similar btw, the only difference is Tracer > McCree due to the less lane like nature of fights.
My personal view on it is that I actually don't mind high pickrate staple heroes. There are only 22 heroes, it'll happen. But the fact the meta is built around a strat that auto locks in so many heroes and can barely be deviated from is a problem. Even if the game had mirrors each side every single round, it might be enjoyable if the strats could vary. But they can't, it's just whichever teams runs this strat the best xN wins. And that is shitty.
One answer to fix it is to develop a consistent anti-Lucio/Zen strat worth running, which hasn't happened yet and I dunno how it would outside of something like the Mei strat. The other answer is to nerf those abilities on Zen/Lucio and see if the game develops more varied strats/comps or if it settles back into the same old shit. I dunno what would happen in that scenario, but it's worth trying.
A third option is to buff defense heroes and other counters to that strat. Let's be honest here, the only way to buff Torb or other counter strats to this this level would also make them insane and not fun and break even more of the game in some places. It's why I'm not on the "buff defense" train, I don't want them to get buffed to some crazy extreme to combat something that is already a heavy outlier.
I dunno, those are my thoughts on the meta and why it is so strict and shitty
I would really really really love the game to open up so there's more room for more things to happen, but there just isn't right now. If you're low enough level to not encounter this strat every single game (I'm only SR70 on PC and I see it every single fucking game), then don't worry about it. Eventually it will creep down, or it will just become boring and people will stop watching tournaments or drop out of high level solo q.
