Only you can decide what Overwatch hero to play. Even if your whole team is shouting at you to choose a healer, you’re not going to get banned for picking Torbjörn—as long as you try your best.
One-tricking in Overwatch, which is specializing at one hero and choosing that hero the majority of the time, is an extremely contentious subject in Overwatch. There’s been a lot of confusion as to if one-tricks can get banned for the behavior, and the answer is no. You can pick Torbjörn or Symmetra in every game, but you can’t be an asshole about it.
Overwatch community manager Josh Engen stepped into the Overwatch forum in an attempt to clear up the confusion.
“We believe players can choose to play any available hero during any game at any time, and that their choice of hero alone is not a behavior that should be penalized by our customer service team under any of the player report categories (including griefing, inactivity, or poor teamwork),” he wrote.
Related: Can you get banned for one-tricking in Overwatch?
Regardless of the hero chosen, players will be actioned for intentionally feeding with any hero. “If a player is staying in the spawn area, refuses to attack the enemy, or refuses [to] support those that are, you should report that player for inactivity,” Engen wrote. “If a player actively refuses to play the map’s objectives or communicates to the team in a negative fashion, you should report that player for poor teamwork. If a player communicates in a hateful or harassing manner with ANY hero, you should report that player for abusive chat.”
But if a player chose a hero you didn’t want them to and they’re “actively trying to perform well on their hero and help their team, they should not be reported under any category.”
Sending in a false report about a one-trick player is a disruption to Blizzard’s efforts to punish players that actually are behaving badly in game, Engen said. The Overwatch team will continue to make improvements to its system to detect false reports, as well as continue to take action to protect one-trick players that aren’t causing disruptions.
“Your teammates can respectfully provide their opinion and suggest using a different hero for the gameplay situation that your team is experiencing, but the final decision about which hero you want to play with is yours alone,” Engen added.
Overwatch is a game about teamwork, and Engen wrote that it’s best played when everyone works together to setup an ideal composition, even if that means not always playing your main. Blizzard won’t action you for only choosing your main, but Engen noted that one-tricking is not the most ideal way to play Overwatch, especially in a competitive setting.
