Hero bans won't make much sense unless you would know, which hero is banned or will be banned for given maps days before so you can actually plan substitutes. Also you would have to include this ban system in ranked (since people probably would whine ranked not being the same with pro play like last year) and to be fair that would be just chaos as people would just go insta tilt-mode, if their favorite hero is banned 5 seconds into game.

Also why even scrim at all, if you can't practice anything as you don't know, if this or that hero will be banned? Maybe, if there would be higher hero count for tank and support category.

Logix wasn't in LA yet though.

Just a in a month or so in my eyes Defiant turned from "Why care about this 7th team of full Korean roster more than some other full Korean rosters" into "Oh wait this team looks interesting now, lots of different flags" PS. I don't know how many full Korean rosters there is at the moment, but there's too many to care about all of them...

Since OWL and Ranked are meant to have same ruleset, if it goes live it goes for both (eventually in a short timeframe), but to be fair I don't really see it changing much for ranked. Unless they have huge changes coming for some heroes to make them viable in 2-2-2 I really don't see this making any sense.

Game still won't be fun, if a thrower/troll enters into your game (specifically for your team). Problem is mostly the people not the game though, what would change people and their attitude is different story though..,

I am not really positive about how it will work in the end. If looking at fun experience. Like how many of those Roadhog 1-tricks can actually play Dva or Zarya? If they switch a tank they probably pick Main Tank instead. Just like those games I have played at plat, when my healers won't even heal me as Rein, when I am just chilling at payload with 200hp and waiting for Ana to shoot me a little bit. but she walks past me...

One thing I do like with possible RoleQueue is each rank having it's own rating, but are you really 4k DPS, if you 1-trick Symmetra or Torbjörn? (or any hero really).

Once a upon Dive Dive Dive.... Dive

Yes they still remain bottom 1 so don't worry about that.

Diverse roster is always more interesting than generic Florida Mayhem roster.

It's a little bit shame with import limits, when teams would actually go this diverse instead of "traditional" import 6 Koreans.

Agree with it being unlikely for Immortals to do much for Outlaws, but wonder, if there's a new owner already in sight for Outlaws before season ends.

Philly is really being mediocre in all fronts at the moment. Maybe couple players does have few shiny moments, but as a whole not. They are also in a pretty weird position at the moment as Elk and Snillo are in Korea Contenders with their roster being only 7 players (Fragi being the bench). I'm kind of surprised they did not try to find some replacements players for their Goats as with this rate their hopes for even Play-In spot are slipping away.

Of course Fusion University players such as Alarm is 200% going to be signed to main team for next year and maybe everyone else too who are at age. So I can see the logic for not signing short term players, if their replacements are already waiting in their Academy team.

Does this actually mean Outlaws can do some changes to their roster now, if Blizzard approves the additions of Immortals might want to do for Outlaws?

So, where would this roster land in EU scene for now? I'm assuming Angry Titans, British Hurricane, Team Gigantti and Samsung Morning Stars are still Top-4 favorites, but not really sure in which order.

It's an interesting stat, but to be fair damn complicated to actually look details for each team, if wanting to see behind the numbers.

Interesting to look after whole season, if some teams had front- or back-loaded SoS as teams like Defiant was hot for Stage 1, but are falling hard ever since Stage 2. Is there a team that had tough start, but would rise up in Stage 3 and 4?

It's not necessary bad thing, if more teams move to KR Contenders with their Academy, but Overwatch was advertised as diverse game and current 60% Koreans in OWL (presumably rising) is not very diverse. It's just not good thing for the whole League, if no matter where you go every team is just another Korean roster, why not just have whole League in Korea in that case.

Well I don't think anyone is disagreeing with Koreans having largest pool of players at high level. They should and will be largest percentage of OWL players for a long time.

Well young EU or NA players (If looking at which 14-17 year olds are still in some notable teams) in NA or EU Contenders are basically Sharp, Mirror, Sugarfree, Saucy, Berd and Dridro. I don't know how good/average/bad they are compared to some other players, but those are first names I saw in some good EU/NA Contenders teams and were under 18. And it's pretty much same faces for most seasons unless Trials teams changes.

I just think that most players who are already 22+ are kind of stuck in Contenders forever at this point since it kind of seems like most teams are just banking on players under 20. It's a long term plan (can't argue against it), which is probably wisest choice, but makes every team look the same.

As long as it doesn't mean "we sign only Koreans" I don't see a problem with these kind of decisions. Not that there's really that many Western players under 18 who are noteworthy for Academy spots. Well Atlanta has some interesting players who are under 18, which shows that they have same plan than Fusion since they have been banking on Alarm for a while already as well as on WhoRU and Na1st.

You have to remember that, when comparing $50k/yr OWL player vs "normal work" $50k/yr is that OWL teams actually do pay their players living costs. So they don't really have to pay for rent, buy daily groceries etc..

Easily talking about double digit benefits for that.

Makes sense. After all they have been investing in Alarm for 2 years already. Gives them maybe more challenge than mediocre NA Contenders. Funny though, if they finish Top-3 in Korea... then there's going to be 5 "NA teams" in the Gauntlet.

I do like the part Philly committing with Contenders team being their primary talent source in the future and not for other OWL teams. That's how it should be.

Just like they left 3 spots empty for Season 2 (Flex Support, Off Tank and 1 DPS). Alarm is no brainer for Season 3.

Not getting even 1 point captured from Assault, Hybrid and Escort... is pretty bad..

This probably makes sense since would be kind of weird to have Homestand events at Dallas and Atlanta + LA, if Finals would be held in these areas too. I might have thought of Vancouver being option too, but not sure does it bring any problems being in Canada (visas etc.).

At least Philly seems committed to OWL by building Fusion Arena so might be one way of Blizzard showing their gratitude to let them host Finals.

OWL Schedule is biggest reason why World Cup schedule is like this. I highly suspect that for 2020 we might be having OWL teams getting a chance to host World Cup qualifiers in their own venues, if they fit them into yearly schedule differently than for this year. I mean we have France/UK, Korea, China and USA/Canada as locations so it doesn't sound unrealistic for future, but might be too soon.

Personally I think best move would be Tournament with Top-16 teams (at this year), but question is how do you determinate, which teams are Top-16? Taking Top-100 accounts for each country based of SR is not really going to get us 16 best teams. It's kinda given China, Korea and USA being at top-3, if we rank countries based of SR of Top-100 accounts, but that's not necessary Top-3 for Tournament. Neither would Sweden be rank 4 in reality like they have been couple last years for group draws.

I think only flaw with old system with 4 qualifiers in different parts of world was that certain countries got unlucky, because Korea, China and USA were kind of favored in the group draw so whichever countries from Europe avoided all 3 of them got pretty lucky and last year that was France and UK. Since qualifiers were basically split into groups based on region, but EU having so many countries not all of them could been in same qualifier at France. I can't really blame how they made the system for previous years since you want to have a lot of people in your LAN events and streams. Having USA/Canada in NA and largest EU countries in France qualifier, China in Bangkok qualifier. Korea was playing in Seoul too. That did sure help a lot with interest for people to watch streams or attend LAN surely, but didn't really make groups "even".

Although I think we did see 2017 (32 teams) and 2018 (24 teams) that at most 20 teams might be at competitive level even, if they would not win any matches, but might win some maps. I'm waiting to see though, what happens, if only about 15-20 teams will attend. Would Blizzard offer to pay those extra 5-10 teams travels?

That Top-10 paid travels/hotels etc. doesn't sound too good, but since they made it "open" for all teams who want to attend means there could have been something like 50 teams, if Blizzard would have said "we pay it all".

And to be fair there is only 10-15 countries, which are competitive enough to field a full 6-man roster for each spot. Not sure, where to draw the line for support in country numbers though.

Personally I do like 32 team formats (similar with World Cup for Football.. or Soccer for you Americans...), but skill gap currently is not large enough for such many teams. Maybe 16 or 24 teams is good format for OW at the moment, but I'm pretty sure rankings Blizzard used for past year from ladder SR of Top-100 players (or was it more than 100?) of each country doesn't really give up real picture, which countries are good.

I believe that is biggest reason of age limit being 18 for they can be signed for OWL next season. Believe Flower is good example for this as everyone wanted to see him play in OWL after World Cup 2017, but he was too young to play for Season 1 and he didn't really shine in Contenders last year. So we had to wait like 1½ years for his debut in OWL.

Maybe it's easier for some other reasons too to have players only 18+.

Philly getting owned by NYXL doesn't really tell you how low Philly should be ranked compared to other teams. Philly is average at the moment, but basically any of those other teams right below them are not any better.

Valiant ain't as bad as you think though. As you clearly are thinking them to be dumpster tier with Outlaws, Justice and Mayhem :P, but they are just tier above them :D Justice might be out of dumpster tier for next stage though they seem to be improving slowly.

I just hope winner will stomp every NA team in Atlantic Showdown even though I still hope Gigantti wins...

I can buy this power rankings. Wouldn't disagree with most of them. Maybe with few teams, which haven't played many games in Stage 2 yet or played vs weak/strong teams.

Although about Top-4 and Bottom-2 is easiest to guess :P

Nah, Fusion is about where they should be with their most recent performances. (+/- 1 spot is not really a big deal).

Toronto however might deserve to much lower, but hard to tell yet. You can see Toronto is already placed 5 spots lower than last time and that's justified.

Personally I don't really like these (be it a player, coach, GM, staff member or what ever) "retiring" after one or two stages...

Sure some people surely had a good reason to retire for their mental health or some other reasons, but in a way people not being committed for whole season makes esports as whole not so serious in my eyes.

I get it, if team does badly they have to make some changes in staff or players section, but don't think this kind of thing happens in traditional sports that people just say after couple months "this was just not my thing".

there's only 2 regular season games + Contender playoffs, which in Legion case is probably 1 or 2 games

Makes more sense that way.

Wasn't there supposed to be 3 import limit? As far as I can see is 4 flags outside NA (Denmark, Belgium, Brazil and Latvia). Or they allowed to have more than 3, but can only field 3 each week?

Why am I not surprised?

But since Mayhem have only 7 Koreans so far they are technically counted in roster as, if every team was meant to have at least 8 players? Either way I don't like it. Just wondering

It's not really realistic to have all 28 games as EU friendly time. Also Chengdu being marked as "home team" might be the case for this specific match.

I am actually wondering the same. I mean are Apply, McGravy and TviQ still in roster before someone else picks them up or are they actually out already?

I am not sure I totally understand this trade.

Sure NotE is probably a little bit more proven on DvA (since that's what Off-Tanks play...). But, if there's some more trades/changes coming for Dallas or Boston this trade might start making sense, but can't say I would have expected this trade. Unless Boston was given chunk of money.

I wonder, which DPS player they end up getting for backup. Would hope EU talent, but probably ends up being someone from NA Contenders without visa issues.

Correct me, if I am wrong, but Dafran was basically their Tracer, Zarya, Soldier, McCree etc. player, but which of these heroes ErsTer and NLaaeR can not play at high level? NLaaeR was their widow player, but I have no clue of his other hitscan heroes and I am not familiar with ErsTer and his heropool.

So the whole concept of having esports based Arena is not very common I assume as that site you linked seems to in West Coast with few arenas and Fusion Arena is marketed as "The first ground-up, purpose-built esports arena in the Western Hemisphere." will be East Coast.

Yeah that's a good point with Rams/Gladiators and other teams that are owned by traditional sport team. Could assume they might have some place planned in their own arenas/stadiums.

What kind of e-sports specific arenas there is already existing? I mean size (capacity) and location wise.

And had some other teams already announced their plans for home venues yet? I know Valiant is going to play at Microsoft Theater in LA?

I like the looks of Fusion Arena though.

7 games in 5-6 weeks (I don't see Stage Playoffs being a thing for next year unless time period is extended) doesn't seem too hard. It's not like you can play back-to-back away games unless it's basically vs Valiant and Gladiators.

Defiant is good and probably should is more consistent than Philly, but whole middle pack of the League is just so hard to predict.

NYXL and Vancouver most likely Top-2 even they do look a bit shaky time to time.

Justice at the bottom, but Florida and Valiant has shown some potential to play decent games and maybe even win some games.

For rest of the League I wouldn't even start predicting even though teams like Defiant would probably win most of those middle-table games and teams like Seoul probably lose.

Because only 8 matches left for Stage 1 so they do only 2 days on weekend.

It actually will be interesting to see, if teams such as Gladiators are really Playoff Contender (Overall Season) and are just having rough Stage 1 or are they already in their rightful place? Same goes for couple other teams, which might have easy or hard Stage 1 schedule.

Maybe there's a secret standings for REAL Season Playoffs about who makes the biggest throw of the season?

Try to explain, what's happening for a new viewer, when Tracer is blinking, if it would be 1st person camera. Simple answers for simple questions :)

Will see Paris vs Vancouver might be actually a good one on Week 4.

Trash Goats beats Trasher Goats?

Last line is funny :)

So Linkzr benched for Jake? I assume Jake was on Brigitte duty? Not seen the game, but maybe I take a look.

I would like to believe Paris takes it, but like you said.. this week has been weird... Would assume this is game between two teams in better half of the table so hopefully it's a good one.

Maybe, but like we have seen that some heroes require different kind of playstyle in Goats-meta than in previous metas and to be fair I haven't seen enough from Xepher, Manneten or McGravy to say who fits best for this meta. Assuming they would play Off-Tank role like it is played in OWL (Dva, Sombra and maybe there was some other dps heroes too).

At least Florida did show that they have coaching staff so who knows maybe they are not totally at bottom this season, but don't think they make much higher than lower Play-In spots (10th-12th) for Overall Season Standings. if even that high.