> I hear that a lot. Why keep playing? Why play the meta? The onetricks seem to do well no matter what the meta is.

To compete at anything means making the decisions that put a contestant in the best position to win. A "meta" is the most optimal team composition for a given map. To play off meta is uncompetitive.

> Then a few don't, and the meta changes.

This is not how metas change.

So why did the Orisa buff result in a Rein/Zarya meta? She wasn't in the meta before, she was changed, she wasn't in the meta afterwards -- but the meta changed. What's going on there exactly?

Sorry, if you can expand on which Orisa change you're describing I'd be happy to explain what happened in that meta. Nonmeta heroes get changed all the time and do not change the meta (unless they get changed enough to become meta heroes).

The no-crits-while-in-fortify change. Probably just a couple patches ago at this point.

Ah yeah. The Orisa change was actually mostly irrelevant to the meta at the time. The change that actually had an impact was the 2nd of 2 big Hammond nerfs.

At the time, teams were running Hammond/Sigma/Tracer/Echo mostly. Depending on the map, Rush (Rein/Dva/Mei/McCree/Lucio) was also viable. After the change in the patch you referenced, Hammond was no longer optimal so Sigma/Ball stopped being played in favor of almost fulltime Rush.

More recently Double Bubble has become popular (Zarya/Winston), but Rush is still played a ton and the dominant meta.

The patch notes for that patch can be found here: https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/overwatch/t/overwatch-reta...