If I had to power rank them all right now. Now once some of these rosters don't work and they pick up AKM and others, this will change. SF and Houston are both very capable of improving their changes with some slight roster tweaks or teamwork changes. Valiant and Shanghai are both also very capable of choking although I doubt it.
1/2: Dallas and Seoul
3/4: NY and London
SF is actually insane because the only players on their team that deserve to be there over available free agents are Sinatraa and Dhak and maybe Sleepy. Every other player has a better free agent available.
IDDQD/Babybay - AKM/Buds/
Danteh/Nevix - Shadder/Zza/
Nomy - Knoxxx/FCTFCN/Mesr if you could get him to play again and poach him off coach
Sleepy - roolf/adam/fahzix
Super - tougher but there are some pretty good flex players on there/Gods/Harb/Winz
This roster makes no sense at all.
you have no idea what you are talking about.
Babaybay>buds, some would say that i iddqd is better than buds too, but he hasn't played in a while so who knows?!
nevix>shadder and danteh>zza/shadder at tracer, and they needed a tracer player until sinatraa can play...
you say they needed to pick adam instead of sleepy when they dont even play the same role?!
i agree that roolf is probably better than sleepy, but fahzix isn't really OWL worthy, anyway we didn't even see sleepy play in any tournaments, for all we know, he can be the best zen in the world.
you want them to pick up winz for offtank when all he played for a year is lucio, OK.
also akm was LFT after they already signed iddqd and babybay, so that's pretty pointless.
so the roster you want is siantraa, dhak, winz, zza, shadder2k, buds, knoxxx, fahzix. this roster won't have a tracer player for half of the season and will have an offtank player who played lucio for a year .
this comment makes no sense at all
My thought:
Boston Uprising:
Great backline: Neko really carried the foxes on last apex. Also kellex is a great lucio but if they need double flex they can easily go with Neko and Avast. Snow can reveal himself: he is young and with the good enviroment he can upgrade. But right now he is not OWL level ( but if he has a really good mercy as someone said this can change things)
Tank side: Gamsu is really good both with Rein and Wiston( but they dont have a sub like a lot of others team).
Kalios is a good Zarya. I dont know about his Dva but i think he is not so bad some people said he is really good overall.
NotE seems like he is not at OWL level: he not really impressed me under TO eSports but i think we will see.
Major problem is on dps: Mistakes is a tracer god, but out of she the other dps are not T1 level. Striker is also a good player who can play normal hitscan ( so good on ticket Mistakes/Striker as for LA Valiant Soon/GrimReality) Also Striker can plays a good Doomfist but i am not sure about his genji and phara). Dream can plays a lot of heroes but no one at really high level.( anyway as sub until Striker turn 18 can be decent). Dream can play a pretty decent phara but his genji never convinced me.
Pro: Good support and tank line. Their tank duo is better than a bunch of others teams and the support both main/flex or flex/flex seems pretty solid.
Against:Problem comes on dps: Mistakes god tracer but they dont have a projectile specialist and this would probably hit them if genji return strong on meta or if tracer out of that.
They will not performed bad as people said but neither they will have easy life: their hope is a good cordination between supp and tank who bring them to be able to compete on the mid tier level, if this doesnt happen their future will pass from mid season sign term.
I think it's pretty insane to speculate the quality of any owl team that is a culmination of free agents or the Shanghai team a month away from the preseason with having absolutely zero clue of synergy/chemistry, strategies etc.. There are also a lot of players that we don't know how good they can be because they haven't had any opportunity to show themselves yet. Take DreamKazper for instance.. how can anyone actually know how good he is?- he has only played for Tempo Storm and some more obscure teams and hasn't been able to play with top talent on his team so he could be amazing, or maybe we won't even see him play a single map no one knows. It's fun to discuss the potential of each team but a silly amount of the OWL posts on these forums have been baseless hot takes
I don't see why we wouldn't be allowed to speculate on how we think these teams will perform. The lack of information, results or data in general is what leads to speculation, and there's nothing wrong with that.
The structure of your argument suggests you're defending Dream as an example, and that's quite OK, you have a right to disagree. However, your opinion isn't more, or less, valid that anyone else's on this forum, remember that.
I made 4 Teirs, Teir 1,2,3, and 4 for OWL.
Teir 1: 1-4
Teir 2: 5-7
Teir 3: 8-9
Teir 4: 10-12
The top 4 are obvious. London i put above Seoul because of how well GC Busan did.
5-7 i put because they have multiple threats, not just the dps, but the tanks and supports are outstanding, like Boombox, Unkoe, Shaz, Fragi, etc. In combination with great dps players will lead them to the top, this area is pretty competitive. But i need to give Valient the lead because they've been a team for the longest, then Philly because of the pure star power, and Gladiators last because Surefour, in a meta of Tracer specialists who hit 2-3 man pulse bombs, i don't know how highly id rate S4, and Hydration is pretty 1 dementiomal, and they only have 7 players.
I put Houston 1 level under them because while the rest of the team is solid, they don't have a outstanding Tracer specialist and Clockwork was the weakest part of FNRGFE, he may drag the team down, depends all on if Clockwork proforms, if he can bring a Soon/ Snillo level proformance they can break into 5-7 teir. Same situation for Shanghai, they can break into teir 2 if the players perform, i don't follow Chinese esports much, but based on the China-Korea Tournament with LH and C9KD for Korea and MY and that other one that got crushed. Along with world cup performances (ik the visa issues and lack of practice, but still) i don't rate them that highly.
10-12 i put SF because they lack a strong Off tank and Sinatraa and Super can't play yet. I put FL next because they lack a strong Tank/Front line, Logix doesn't show up on LAN at all, and the supports on my honest opinion are meh, no Boombox proformances, just meh over all, plus they don't even have a single sub so they're easy to prep against and if someone gets sick or injured there's no one to take their place, It's a risky move and it makes them one dimentional, especially when we have great players like FCT, Zappis, Adam and Roolf not in OWL. Lastly, Boston, do i need an explanation, every thing about them is just meh, they cleaned up some Support issues, but i don't have faith in them. They look better now then when they got announced, and they may place above SF and FL, but they don't have a chance of getting above 10 in my opinion.
Well, i get that APEX isn't that great of measure of how good Dallas are because they were in a different country and they were crammed into hotels and what not, it wasn't a good environment to practice in i guess, stuff like that that KYKY said, but having koreans go over to NA could be a small boost for Dallas, but the Koreans have just been more consistent and more team oriented, no one knows how good they'll be, but based off of the Seoul cup and GC Busans play, i'd give the edge to the koreans, but NA isn't far behind, if anyone is goimg to beat them its Dallas though, new meta, anything can happen.
London and Seoul are about even. Without knowing what the meta will be throughout s1, it's be hard to distinguish between them. I put London ahead purely based on history. Seoul will beat them if Ana becomes
Dallas could contest the top two particularly if Pharah remains in the meta. Triple dps comps benefit Dallas more than other teams. Harryhook is uniquely suited to switching off of Lucio, and it shows in that in contenders s1, Envy ran more Lucio-free comps than any other team. I put them below the two Korean teams because Korea has dominated the top of OW for more than a year now, and I don't see why that would change.
I have absolutely no idea how good NYXL is, given that we haven't seen their players play in a while, but talent-wise they seem to be pretty good.
5-8 are all very close, but I do think there's a good reason to put Philly above the others: Shadowburn. He is still one of the best Genji players in the world, and his Pharah is very good as well.
We shouldn't forget how dominant Misfits were throughout most of contenders S1. Florida is not going to be a bad team.
Houston will do well if clockwork and bani do well, and I think a team house environment will greatly benefit them both. They won't be as good as Philly, since they don't have the same star power, but they could potentially win more games than they lose.
I'm not highly sold on LA Valiant. Immortals wasn't a great team for most of contenders, and while Agilities is certainly a great player, he's not quite at Shadowburn's level yet, and the rest of the team doesn't seem good enough to consistently beat teams like Florida and Philly. Sadly, I feel like the two Rogue players they picked up won't do enough.
LA Gladiators have very good supports and decent enough tanks, but I'm not sold on Hydration/Asher. They could be good, but they could also be significantly worse than Valiant. The fact that they only have 7 players on their roster hurts them.
Shanghai makes no sense. Why would the Chinese team not have any of the players from the best Chinese team? Are all of MY under 18?
SF Shock has at most 2 good players until Sinatraa and Super turn 18.
Huk is either an idiot or playing 8 dimensional chess with that Boston lineup.
Side note: The fact that there is an OWL player named bani and an OWL player named banny is actually hilarious.
There are really only two tiers: the top 4 (Dallas, Seoul, London, NY) and the rest. Anyone in the second tier can beat each other depending on how they're playing that day, I really don't think there is a huge gap between any team in this tier.
Also, I think the Boston roster will surprise a lot of you. Maybe it's a homer pick from me, but I wouldn't judge the skill of the players based on their previous teams. There are so many factors that play into team results and we're pretty much guessing at individual performance without a good way of accessing player statistics (apart from Winston's Lab).
I have posted my prediction on other thread before, but I made adjustments based on added players and OWWC performance.
Seoul Dynasty
Addition of Munchkin, Fleta, and Wekeed should supplement the weakness of the team. Also, the Mercy nerf and the Ana buff should help ryujehong to come back to his prime form.
London Spitfire
I am not sure how they are going to combine two very strong squads. I think the main strength of GC Busan came from the team synergy, and I am worried that the mix of squads will affect the team harmony. In the end, I think this team will only be slightly stronger than GC Busan (as I think Birdring and Rascal are stronger than Hooreg for most heroes). But who knows, maybe great coaching staffs will help the players to bring greater synergies together, in which case, I think they will take the top place.
Dallas Fuel
They have great players and great team synergy, but I think their tanks are a little behind the top two. Unless Taimou enters one of those periods that he gets tired of the game again, I think Dallas should be strong enough to take the third place.
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-Top 6~8 closely contested between Houston, Philadelphia, and LA Valiant
Houston Outlaws
I think they have solid players all around. Although I think Muma is decent, I was never impressed with him to the degree that many people seem to be praising him at. Maybe he will prove me wrong and take the team to the higher spot.
Philadelphia Fusion
Very decent roster from the name value, but I am concerned about the flexibility of the DPS. ShaDowBurn only showed his supremacy on Genji and Snillo only on Tracer. Yes, Carpe can play multiple heroes to somewhat compensate, but his form seems somewhat inconsistent. Also, tanks are decent, but could be better.
-Top 9~12 closely contested between Boston, SF, Shanghai, and LA Gladiators
Boston Uprising
I don’t really agree with Harsha’s comment about the Boston team being very weak. Their DPS may be a bit lacking, but their tanks and supports are pretty good. Maybe he was talking about the team before Kalios was added? (as it seems like his addition was later than other players). Addition of Neko should also help the team greatly as his Ana is outstanding.
San Francisco Shock
This is the team I am least sure about. I don’t really know how good iddqd, nomy, Super, sleepy, and Danteh are. So this is just my rough guess of where I think they would end up. I think LA Valiant could easily take their spot unless they truly live up to the hype.
Shanghai Dragons
This squad has decent talents all around, but I don’t think they are stronger than MY. If the whole MY roster was joining OWL, I would’ve predicted them to be around fifth~sixth strongest in the league, but this roster will still be competitive enough to challenge other teams in the league.
Philadelphia Fusion:
DPS: amazing dps side with the only true god ShadowBurn on genji and phara( he is also really good on mei and reaper).
People are complaining about snillo/Carpe overlap heropool tracer... but in reality they can both plays really good hitscan and their tracer playstyle is totaly different. Carpe is an outstanding "standard" tracer ( so he go from tracer duels and weak points of the other team) while snillo is a "focusing" tracer as seen on the World Cup( he always go against the most strong part of the team....against canada he was the Surefour nightmare...). So if they are gonna play against LA Valiant probably Carpe would be better( duel with Soon and going against Unkoe) while against LA Gladiatort snillo is a better choices( shut down Surefour and LA GLadators will lose all his dps power). Eqo is a really a god as mechanical player but he need to learn more game sense... but with these players and coaches he will learn fast how to win. He can plays projectile hitscan and offtank ( while is maynly knwoed for his projectile). Maybe an hitscan god is what the team dont have right now( but just wait Eqo and Snillo improve a bit and they will have it).
Tank: Offtank side perfectly cover: Zarya and Roadhog with the amazing Poko and the Dva with Hotba. While main tank is more uncertain: Fragi reinhartd god but with the Sado drama ( dont know if he will play or not) if they only have taked a wiston god( like KnoxX or Mowzassa or Tonic ) or a more Defensive main tank (FCTFCTN ) they would probably be a lot more dangerous.
Support: absolutely amazing. Neptuno/Boombox could be the third best support duo( besides Seoul and Dallas). Neptuno can flex a lot( main supp flex supp but also dps and offtank) and he has also an amazing sombra. He is knowed as the best mechanical lucio in EU...but they also have the more focused shotcaller lucio with Joelmeister. Also DayFly is probably a better ana than Boombox( while Boombox is untouchable on the zen).
Personaly i think they coul easily be in the top five(depends if Florida put off their best value or not) and also put off some great fights against the big three/four( Dallas Seoul London and maybe New York). And also they will probably have the greatest amount of european fans( While Florida loses a lot of fans with the Reinforce drama and the only 6 man roster).
Pro: they are almost complete and they can compete with everyone on papers.
Against: maybe they needed a better main hitscan not tracer (but their players will improve a lot) and they could have taked a main tank not Sado. (also, from the heart, they haved to take the two partners in crime Zappis and Fragi togheter)
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