| Country: | South Korea |
| Registered: | June 30, 2017 |
| Last post: | March 22, 2019 at 1:54 PM |
| Posts: | 220 |
Oh, I see. I did not know that they re-seeded after the match was completed. I thought they had the bracket set up so that the winner of NYXL/Seoul will compete with the winner of Vancouver/Boston.
I missed that part because I only watched the actual match, not the whole broadcast. It makes a lot more sense now. Also, I agree with you in that this way might be better when short qualifier can be biased based on the strength of schedule.
I don't get why the bracket is seeded this way. This would make 1st seeded team to meet the 2nd seeded team in semi final. Isn't most other sports tournament seeded like below?:
1st/8th --┐
4th/5th --┘ㅡㅡㅡ┐
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀┠
3rd/6th --┐ㅡㅡㅡ┘
2nd/7th--┘
Why is boombox not playing today?
I would assume this would only work for the live broadcast though? Does anyone know if you could select views like that to watch vods later?
Element Mystic's tanks are soooo bad. It's so unfortunate for Element Mystic that the meta was hugely against them this season. Their two best players, Sp9rk1e and Xzi, had to play the roles they are not best at due to meta.
Honestly, it's quite surprising that they were able to come this far. They lost Pokpo, Daco, rapel, and Jecse, and the players that replaced them are nowhere near as good. For the current meta, tank line is so important, but Alpha, takoyaki, and hanbin are pretty bad even at contenders level. Unique isn't that good of a support either. Sp9rk1e doesn't seem that comfortable at playing Zarya as he over-extended too often.
The fact that Element Mystic got this far just makes me think the teams in Contenders Korea are now no longer superior to NA or EU contenders. Nevertheless, I was really surprised at how well RunAway played this match. Every single player on their roster played so great, and MAG really stood out. He might get picked up by a OWL team soon since a good tank is always difficult to find. Or maybe he'll wait until the whole team can be picked up together just like the first RunAway team did. It seemed like the players grew a lot as the season progressed. I am curious to see how they will play once the meta changes though. Heesu and Schwi played really well as Zarya and Brigitte, but will they be good enough to be one of the top DPS players in Korean Contenders?
It seems like ryujehong is finally back in form now though. So I really hope Seoul can come back strong in second season. I feel like they need one more consistent DPS for that (Fleta is the only consistent DPS they have), but we will see.
Below are probably less popular opinions, they may even be unpopular, so I don't know which thread these will belong. I will just include them here.
If the GOATS meta persists, Shanghai might perform quite decent since YoungJIN is good on Brigitte and DDing can flex onto Dva, etc. But that seems highly unlikely as the meta is already beginning to shift away from GOATS.
And I guess your last point about Philly also depends hugely on the meta the games will be played in. I feel like they have really good players for 2-2-2, but for other comp, they would not be as good. But I still don't think they would struggle to make into the playoffs.
Paris Eternal will be the best expansion team, not Vancouver Titans. Both teams will be around 6~8th place.
I think Vancouver Titans is slightly overrated, and Paris Eternal is underrated. "Haksal," "Stitch," and "JJanu" are going to perform well even at the OWL level, but other players are somewhat overrated imo. I am not saying they are bad. I wouldn't rank them at 6~8th in OWL if I thought they were bad. I saw many people considering them to be near top, and I just couldn't agree with that.
Paris Eternal has a great core and should be considered just as good as Vancouver Titans, possibly better. SoOn was a star player from top performing OWL team. ShaDowBurn also played well in most of the matches he played. Only reason he did not get to play a lot last season was because he was competing against the top DPS players (Carpe and Eqo) in the league. Rest of the players are all also pretty good and have great flexibility. One concern is whether BenBest and lhCloudy can perform well on Winston. Paris seem to have great supporting staff as well, so I think they will be able to perform at similar level with teams like LA Valiant, San Francisco Shock, LA Gladiators, and Vancouver Titans.
PHF-LDN= 2-3
NYXL-BOS= 4-0
SEO-LAG= 1-3
SHD-HZS=3-1
TOR-HOU= 1-3
ATL-FLM= 3-2
DAL-SFS= 1-3
CDH-GZC= 3-2
LDN-PAR= 3-1
WAS-NYXL= 0-4
LAV-HZS=3-1
VAN-SHD= 3-1
HOU-BOS= 3-1
PHF-ATL= 3-1
SFS-LAG=3-2
SEO-DAL= 2-3
If I were to rank the teams in playoff, I would say
1 Samsung Morning Stars
2~4 British Hurricane, Team Gigantti, Winstrike Team (all extremely close, but if I have to rank them, it will probably be in the order I wrote them)
5 Shu's Money Crew EU
6 Angry Titans
7 One.PoinT
8 HSL Esports
Let's start some new threads! This site used to be a lot more active, but I hardly see any new post now.
Now that all of the qualifying teams for Contenders Europe playoff are decided, I am curious about people's thought on how the playoff will go. Here's my prediction.
Quarterfinals
One.PoinT >> HSL Esports
I think One.PoinT was somewhat lucky to be on top of Group B because I think four teams from Group B are all pretty close. But I think they are still strong enough to win over HSL Esports. I think it will be 3-1 victory for One.PoinT.
Team Gigantti < British Hurricane
As long as the playoff match is played in same patch as the group stage matches, I think British Hurricane will take the victory. But if the match is played with 1.31 patch which include massive nerf of Doomfist, the match might go differently.
Samsung Morning Stars >> Shu's Money Crew EU
Shu's Money Crew seemed to have improved as the season went by, but I think Samsung Morning Stars are the strongest team this season. It's hard to imagine the game going the other way.
Angry Titans < Winstrike Team
Result can be different if Angry Titans find a way to effectively counter the Mei strategy by Winstrike Team, but I think they will struggle to deal with it. So Winstrike will probably take the victory.
.
Semifinals
One.PoinT << British Hurricane
Samsung Morning Stars >> Winstrike Team
I can''t really see these semifinal matches going differently unless one of the teams massively under-perform.
.
Grand Finals
British Hurricane < Samsung Morning Stars
Samsung Morning Stars have been quite impressive this season, so I think they deserve to win this Contenders.
Yeah, but I just hope that there will be more support and media attention toward tier 2 scene. And that cannot happen without Blizzard's help.
Unless we have more support for the tier 2 scene, the level of training the players will get will be drastically different, which would make the players in OWL much more superior when in reality, there may be many players in Contenders with better potential. Since most of the players in the OWL are Koreans, that might make it seem like Koreans are just better, and teams will continue to focus on getting more Korean players.
I really hope to see more cross-regional tournaments for Contenders teams because that will for sure make more people be interested in Contenders teams.
I am excited to see YangX1aoLg and Lateyoung in the Overwatch League. I don't think Baconjack will shine as a star, and I don't know much about other players. I just hope this full Chinese roster will be better than Shanghai Dragons from season 1 because I really want to see more region based teams like this.
Introduction video with the highlight plays of the players for the final OWWC roster
https://youtu.be/xwCxmOWdJzg?t=78
Well, I don't think the soft region-locking will change things much. If you think about it. There aren't that many teams with more than 4 players from other region in Contenders anyways. The only teams that this prevents is teams like Lucky Future Zenith, which kind of makes sense. I wasn't fan of an idea of teams moving to weaker region to win the tournament money.
I just don't know how the Pacific region will work now though. Will Australian teams and Korean teams be allowed to play in the Pacific region? Or would it only be for the countries without designated Contenders regions?
I really hope at least one of the Chinese teams will represent the best talent of China. It was really disappointing to see the only Chinese team not representing the best of China during season 1.
28 matches per team sounds like each team will play two matches against the teams in the same division and one match against the teams in the other division.
Under this structure, having two divisions finally make sense. Overall team standing will have some bias due to uneven strength of the divisions, but I think that problem will be mostly taken care of by having playoff matches. It's good to see OWL moving in the right direction. I just hope that the Pacific division won't be too weak in comparison to the Atlantic division.
I wish Russia was in this group instead of Poland or Italy. Then the groups would have been more balanced, and this group would have been a lot more interesting to watch. But who knows. Maybe some of these teams will surprise me by being much stronger than what is expected from them just like Denmark did.
Why do they sub in Pine in place of SBB if they wanted to play so much Tracer?????
No OWL found a way to deal with NYXL yet. Will any of the national teams be competitive enough to give them a fight?
I hope Birdring recovers soon. He's been most consistent DPS player in London imo. Profit is excellent when he is in form, but since the OWL started, his form has been shaky almost half the time, and except for very few games, Hooreg hasn't impressed me as much as many top DPS players in OWL.
I really hope all of these trades and new signings while stages are going is only for season 1. It just makes it difficult to track who's on what team. Maybe they can add an extra week or two between stage 2 and 3, and make that mid-season signing window.
What is LAV doing??? They're selling Soon AND Unkoe to get Bunny? AND they are also looking to trade off Envy? I really don't see LAV benefiting at all from all these trades.
????????
I am confused. I think Envy is one of the better off-tanks in OWL. Why is LAV trying to trade him off to a different team??
If I were to include people who are over 18 already as well, I think Stitch, Twilight, NoSmite, and GodsB are also good enough to be part of OWL.
No Flow3r? I am kinda lost why he's not in XL2 because I thought they announced him to be part of XL2 initially.
Also explains why Philadelphia is doing much better in stage 2.
Now that Mercy is not as OP as she was in stage 1, there are more instances that dive comp is necessary, and I think that is exactly why Outlaws are not doing as well. They simply do not have top Genji or Tracer. Linkzr's Genji is worse than most other OWL team's Genji player. Linkzr, Jake, and Clockwork can all play decent Tracer, but they're just not at the top level to compete with the likes of SoOn, Profit, EFFECT, Saebyeolbe, Birdring, Carpe, etc.
Houston really need a better Genji. Linkzr's Genji is mediocre at most. For Phily, Shadowburn came in to carry the team whenever the team needed the most. Linkzr was never able to do so as Genji. I think Linkzr is an excellent hit scan player, but not so great Genji.
So are they getting those new players added for the second stage or not? Does anybody know? The new players are not listed on overwatchleague.com yet, which makes me to believe that those roster changes will take place after the mid-season signing, but I am not sure since it would be weird to announce those new additions now if it weren't taking place until after second stage is over.
So are these roaster changes going to be in effect for stage 2? I thought mid-season signing wasn't until after after stage 2. Anyways, I am happy to see all these changes!
Why swap off to Janus when Mano was playing so well?? Janus got picked off early so many times. I think NYXL would've taken the trophy if they kept playing with Mano.
I just got a chance to watch this game, and I think it's more of Verbo to blame for the loss than Agilities. I mean, yes, Agilities under-performed, but so did Soon, Envy, and Fate. But I think a lot of that has to do with Verbo as Mercy getting picked off early in the fight too often. With out that burst healing, dive-heavy LA Valiant could not survive long enough to be lethal to the other team.
I really hope they can get Unkoe (and silkthread) back in the game next week. I think KariV's Mercy is much better than Verbo, so if they can bring in Unkoe to play Zen, which would allow KariV to take the Mercy role, Valiant would look much stronger than they did against Boston.
One thing I don't like about Seoul ever since their Lunatic Hai times. They try to bring in obviously less talented players on games and not sub them out even when it isn't working.
I kind of understand why they do it. If some of the players don't get any play time, they'll lose motivation, which might have bad influence on the entire team. Also, if they sub out players when it's not working well, that could also hurt the player's morale. So they just keep playing with it with hopes that they can come back and do better in the later part of the game.
That has been part of how Lunatic Hai managed to stay on top for so long. They were able to keep the players motivated, and the players that were once seen as less talented came in at times when regular players were under-performing (like in the case of Gido in APEX season 3).
However, I don't get why they need to do it in games that are this important. They could try subbing in these players against weaker teams, or after they already got 3 points and secured a victory. That happens all the time in real sport, and that does sufficient enough job of keeping players motivated.
I think it has a lot to do with current meta. HarryHook is one of the best Lucio (probably 2nd best after Tobi), and Chips is one of the best Ana. But both supports are playing the characters they are not comfortable on right now.
EnvyUs was so strong because they had one of top DPS players, one of top support players, and quite competitive tanks. Now, pretty much all OWL teams have top notch DPS players, and it's the tanks and support who need to step up and bring the difference. I don't think tanks in DF are above top OWL teams, and supports can't do much better in current meta. So it's not really a big surprise that Dallas Fuel isn't doing so well.
I'm not sure how much meta change will occur with the Mercy nerf, but if we start to see more Lucio and Ana, I think Dallas Fuel will begin to show better performance.
He also plays great Pharah and Genji. But yeah, I am not sure whether he can play it as well as he did on Widow and McCree.
But is his McCree as good as Pine's? Pine really surprised me a lot last week. I knew he was amazing on Widow, but I didn't know he was also god on McCree.
All of the match ups today are so interesting, especially this one! I think this will most likely be the battle for the 3rd best team in the league. I think current patch slightly favors LA Valiant since KariV is so good on Mercy.
But like most people said, I think this match will be very close, 3-2 either way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BeMdYxojwU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzUsi9O1c3g
Yeah, he's always been good. It's not just his aim. He has amazing game sense and broad hero pool. And it has been known for awhile to the extent that many people (including myself) have been saying that he should be picked up by Lunatic Hai. Not sure why he stayed in FL for so long, whether it's his loyalty to the team or the reason Loco mentioned above
50% to Blizzard and 50% to the teams.
But I think many people misunderstand how the revenues are divided between the teams. Even if you buy a jersey from a certain team, that does not mean 50% of the revenue from that goes directly to the team you bought the jersey for. All of the OWL purchases are collected into one revenue pool, and it is divided evenly among the teams.
Source:
https://news.unikrn.com/article/overwatch-league-merchandise-sale-tomorrow
If it's for the entire season, then
But for the stage 1, I think San Francisco will do slightly worse (most likely just behind LA Gladiators, maybe even behind Florida and Philadelphia). I think Sinatraa is the only top tier Tracer they have although I know Danteh can be decent.
Compared to most people, it seems like I predicted NYXL and Florida to do better, and Dallas and LA Valiant to do worse. So short explanation for each of them.
-- NYXL: In the preseason, NYXL had Libero playing the flex support role. He has never played that role in pro scene, and it was quite obvious that he wasn't doing that well on it. JJoNak is known as one of the best Zenyatta and Ana. Although he has never been tested at pro level, I think he would do better than Libero on those characters. Since he turned 18 just after the preseason, he should strengthen the team quite a bit. Also, that means Libero can go back to the roles that he feels comfortable in, and Libero should add great amount of flexibility to the team for DPS.
--Florida: Yes, they did poorly in the preseason. To me, the main reasons for their poor performance seemed to be CWoosh and Logix. Logix can't really do well on anything other than Tracer, and even on Tracer, he has failed to do well on LAN. But I believe his strength on Tracer will start to show again once he gains more experience of the big stage, and it is difficult to imagine that Tracer will ever fall out of the meta. Since TviQ can play almost anything, I think this DPS duo can prove themselves to be lethal to other teams. Also, CWoosh performance was quite different from how well he did in the contenders. I believe how he did in preseason does not truly reflect his skills.
--Dallas: They have great players on all heroes, so it is difficult to think that they would do bad, and I agree. But one weakness is that each player tend to have a specialty in certain heroes (EFFECT on Tracer, Taimou on McCree and Widow, Seagull on Genji and Pharah, Custa on Moira and Mercy, etc.). For example, Taimou is the only one who is good on Widow, and he tends to have good and bad days. So in his bad days, there aren't other players who can substitute him on Widow.
--LA Valiant: I think their great performance in preseason has a lot to do with how well the tanks and KariV's Mercy did. Fate's Winston is well know for the extreme aggressiveness, and when that works well, that helps the team greatly as we saw in the preseason. But as other teams get used to his style, they would deal with it more effectively, and when they do, Fate's aggressiveness might not work so well anymore. Also, Mercy is currently so OP, and since KariV is one of the best Mercy, he was able to do so well. But I feel like Mercy will be nerfed soon or later and will be less powerful.
If I were to vote for Semi-final and Final based on this result,
Detroit > Sejong
This is pretty tough to pick, but I believe Detroit has better DPS and slightly better or about equal Tanks. Although their supports aren't the best, DNCE, Kris, GILY, and BeBe all tend to do well when DPS and tanks are winning the fights.
Amsterdam < San Diego
I don't think there is a huge gap between the two, but I think San Diego has slightly stronger players overall.
AND
Detroit > San Diego
I think main difference between the two is presence of top Tracer. Detroit has Nenne who is better than Saya, GodsB, and ArHaN. I also think NoSmite is slightly better than Evo. For the support, Quatermain is one of the best Lucio, but I haven't seen how good his Mercy is. Unless his Mercy is as good as his Lucio, I think the level of supports are about same as well. So in the end, I think Detroit will take the win.
Beijing < Detroit
Detroit probably has the strongest DPS line out of the teams listed here. Their support lines are a bit weak, but I don't think that is enough to have them beaten by Beijing Imperials. Detroit has the core of X6 gaming which took the Nexus cup by defeating Kongdoo Panthera and Lunatic Hai who have beaten Element Mystic and Miraculous Youngster. Since the core of Beijing Imperials is Miraculous Youngster, I don't think it is much of a stretch to believe Detroit will take this match.
Sejong > Toronto
Individual skill level of the players would not be hugely different between two teams, but I think the coordination and flexibility would be better on Sejong side.
Gangnam < Amsterdam
DPS of Gangnam is a bit weird imo. Recry and Saya both mostly play hitscan. Although they both can play Tracer, I would not say they are one of the top Tracer players, so is ArHaN. Decay is probably the best Tracer out of the DPS in this team, but ArHaN is the only one who is decent on projectiles. It would be tricky to put DPS line that is flexible with this pool of players. Tank lines are good, and the supports aren't bad, but I would say Adam and Greyy can do just as well.
Busan < San Diego
I would say Busan has better support, and San Diego has better DPS. For the tanks, I think they are about even.
https://us.battle.net/forums/en/overwatch/topic/20760635934?page=1
this link has clips of him throwing in case anyone wants it.
I feel like his temper has been getting worse lately. I know he has always been crazy loud and all, but he still tried really hard to stay competitive in his matches. He really needs some mental support. Unless he get proper supports, he seems to be getting pretty close to do something like what Dafran has done. He actually is an incredibly talented player, which was shown again in the preseason. I just hope he can get some help with his mental stability.
https://i.imgur.com/a5gkBP1.png
Looks great!!! Thank you! :)
All matches will consist of four-map sets
The map pool for the entire season will be announced before the season begins
Source:
https://overwatchleague.com/en-us/news/21108384/the-inaugural-season-explained
Based on what's on the overwatchleague website, the map pool is most likely going to change for the regular season and will be announced before the beginning of the season.
I don't think this is the case since they have been announcing all four maps for the match prior to beginning of the match. But I couldn't find any info on how they are decided, so I'm not sure whether it has anything to do with home&away teams or Blizzard just decides the maps for each match.
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