Here we are again Overwatch League fans, another season is coming to a close with a massive Grand Finals that we are all very much anticipating. With the four teams that have made it, the San Francisco Shock, Seoul Dynasty, Shanghai Dragons, and Philadelphia Fusion, the matches should be bangers this year. I am writing this article with a few predictions on how the first matches are going to end up going. The first set of rounds will be the Shock vs. Dynasty and Dragons vs. Fusion, and I think that these games should prove to be very entertaining, and I wanted to take a crack at my predictions on how they will go through.
Shock vs. Dynasty
The overall #3 ranked overall Shock will be taking on the #11 ranked Dynasty as the first match of the Grand Finals. The Dynasty did what I consider to be an upset during the early stages of the playoffs, not only beating the Hangzhou Spark, Guangzhou Charge, and New York Excelsior, but clean sweeping all three of these teams during their playoff run. Even with these recent accomplishments, I will not be predicting them to take down the Shock. The Shock have a common theme that seems to follow them, dominance AND consistency. The Dynasty had shown dominance a few times this year but showed me an overall less consistent year than the Shock. The meta coming up until the Grand Finals was a strange one that had never really been seen before to my knowledge in Overwatch history, and it led way to some underdog stories. This meta will not likely be in effect for the Grand Finals, as the recent Roadhog nerfs remove his extremely high damage output during a long fight and has weakened his combo and kit overall. This makes me believe that the meta will shift fully into the other composition that was being played during the playoffs, Winston D.va “rush” compositions. These compositions use dive tanks but the support line of a Lucio and a Moira to quickly isolate and take down targets, and this was overall effective during the playoffs, and led to the end of the Washington Justice’s playoff run. This composition favors the Shock heavily over the Dynasty. Smurf/Choihyobin being able to play what I consider to be two of their best heroes, with Smurf possibly being the best Winston in the world, puts the Shock in what I consider a favorable position. My guess for the meta composition goes Tracer (or Sombra)/Reaper/Winston/D.va/Lucio/Moira. This composition heavily favors the Shock, and if it does carry over into the Grand Finals, I do not believe the Dynasty to be capable of matching the Shock in this composition. However if the teams have found in scrims that another comp is even better, and my meta guess is off entirely, I still hold that the Shock will come out on top as they are one of the most flexible teams in the Overwatch League. My prediction is a clean sweep by the Shock over the Dynasty.
Dragons vs. Fusion
This match is the one I expect to be much closer than the other, and I must admit that I am torn in picking the winner, so before I say who I believe will win, I want to talk about what my predicted meta means for the two teams, and weigh the individual roles against each other. Let us start with the supports, and this category I feel is the closets of the three roles. I am predicting a Lucio/Moira meta and that means one major thing, that FunnyAstro and LeeJaeGon both get to play their best hero, and I could not be happier to see this matchup. Two titans of the hero going against each other, and it is hard to predict who will come out on top. On one hand you have the highly aggressive LeeJaeGon and on the other hand you have the all-around master of the hero, and they both excel at supporting the way their teams play. I believe that this matchup might come out to be a “draw” as both players are top class in Lucio play, and I cannot even see where one might overtake the other. The same argument can be made for the other support, Moira. This matchup will be the Fusion’s Alarm against the Dragon’s Izayaki. This matchup I must give to Alarm. He is probably the best flex-support in the League, and while Izayaki is up there in my eyes as well, I think that Alarm will just slightly edge him out on the flex-support role. With supports being a draw and a win, I give one point to the Fusion. Now let us talk tanks, which I will say I feel is a little bit easier to compare. Fearless and Sado are both amazing at Winston, and like the Lucio matchup I will be declaring this a draw. The off-tank position I feel is a bit easier to decide who will come out on top. Fury is an amazing off-tank player, but I do not think that anyone can touch Void right now. I truly believe that Void stand on top of all the off-tank players in the League and in the world. His Sigma and D.va are some of the best in the League, and that is just me talking about how he plays with these heroes individually, not even mentioning his play with his team. Void might be the single player in the League that plays the best with the rest of his team, and then when watching the Dragons play, it feels like watch six heroes controlled by one mind, and Void makes up a large portion of the reason for this with his teamplay that is just on another level. This matchup I have to say favors Void and leads me into giving the Dragons a point. Well, it is all tied up and we move on to the DPS role, and this role would be almost impossible for me to make a prediction if I felt the meta was going to be any different. Let me just say that I do not think that anyone will be able to completely take down Fleta on whatever hero he ends up on. He won MVP for a few reasons this year, and those being flexibility, consistency, and power at any hero he chooses in the selection screen. Nothing bad to say about the Fusion DPS, having Ivy, Carpe, and Heesu, they are all first-class DPS players even compared to fellows in the League. What makes me favor Shanghai in this matchup, and ultimately overall, is the meta and one specific hero I predict will be played for almost every map in the pool, Sombra. Lip is the best Sombra in the world and I do not think anyone can take that from him with how he has played this year. I don’t even know what to say, his Sombra play with the rest of his team is stellar, and I think it will be the difference maker overall, and I don’t feel like Heesu will be able to match his level on Sombra should she be a keystone in the playoffs meta. Point two for the Shanghai Dragons. Even though I am predicting the Dragons to come out on top of this match, I feel like it may be one of the single closest matches in the history of Overwatch League, and I am expecting it to go the distance. I am predicting that the Dragons will barely squeak out a 3-2 victory against the Fusion in an absolute nail bitter slug fest of a match.
So these are my prediction for the first set of playoff matches, and I think the Shock and the Dragons will prevail and face each other in the winners bracket the following day. These are my thoughts for the matches occurring on the 8th of October and I will try and write predictions based off what is seen in these matches. I want to hear what anyone reading this thinks, do you think I am correct, completely off, or something in between? Let me know and any feedback is greatly appreciated as I am new at writing articles and I want to make a career in esports, being that in coverage or news. Thanks for stopping by, hope you enjoyed!
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