Runaway being so flexible is probably one of the worst match-ups for MY as well. Is there anything Haksal can't play?

Dallas Fuel looking extremely flexible and arguably meta proof. Good on them for thinking ahead.

They're the current favorites to win APAC and should be able to dispatch AF with relative ease before moving on to the finals against either MY or Runaway. They'd have to lose to AF or get absolutely destroyed in the finals to really make them seem like they'd be on a downwards spiral.

If they do combine with team London I don't think we can make any comparison anymore since they'll essentially be a whole new team.

I think GCB win 4-2. It could be over faster but IDK and Lucid might just be able to handle Profit and Hooreg for a few maps while ArHaN does his best to take advantage of the space he's given.

It remains to be seen if the boys in blue can really bring it together to be a legitimate challenge to the current kings of KR Overwatch but I sure as heck hope we get a solid show.

FW had a couple of good maps where they were able to somewhat challenge GCB but overall this was a relative stomp. Hopefully the retooled AF can provide more of a challenge.

This game was brutal. I don't know why 1246 chose AF but they got absolutely rolled.

Agreed. If they refuse to reduce the duration then please, for the love of God at least turn off the regen while she's being shot.

I have to go to Dafran levels of tracking to take down an ulting Mercy if I don't have Visor. While she's just plainly flying out in the open.

That's ignoring the possibility that MY might be weaker than the top Korean teams. LH was also not as dominant against C9KD, who had a ringer in, as GC Busan had been shortly before.

As for EnvyUs, I can agree that they've massively improved, but given the lack of material to compare you have to refer to past results. So until they supposedly merge with C9KD I think GCB are on top.

You cannot almost guarantee it, that would be misinformation, since you have nothing to indicated that they would. I think you also forget that they crushed LH twice and demolished C9KD. If anything I think I'd bump Runaway to 2nd for their performance against these guys. But they fully deserve the spot they're in.

Also note that GC Busan has allegedly been acquired by The London OWL team so the crumbling part is rendered mostly moot since the squad would never again be the same.

They need overlap though. Yes Chips is a god, but if they need to swap him out for any reason they now have a viable alternative. This is no longer about just having 6 players, so this pick up is good, imo.

Victo beat him by 6 minutes on the official announcement, I'd say that's pretty close.

Removing rez would require a bigger rework that I assume they either don't want to commit to, or don't want to do at all. It's not a viable option in the short term, and Mercy needs to be tweaked asap.

Current Mercy is a real issue though, one that has an impact on Pro play, not just ranked. In my opinion she makes watching matches less fun and much harder to follow.

Consider this slave work w/o having to be an actual slave. DOO EEEIIIITTTT!

Keep it, yours is centralized.

He posted on the battle.net forums:
https://us.battle.net/forums/en/overwatch/topic/20759395949#post-1

The age of ridiculous rezzes might be finally coming to an end soon.

Listen, this is by far the best name, logo and color scheme of all OWL teams yet. KR PRODUCTION STRIKES AGAIN!

Edit: On second thought, after remiska reminded me of the Shanghai Dragons, THIS IS THE 2ND BEST NAME, LOGO AND COLOR SCHEME OF ALL OWL TEAMS YET! Heck The top two are so good that I don't even have a third favourite.

p.s. Props for the pun, I am thoroughly amused.

I think your title may have needed to be Custa to Dallas Fuel, Space to LA Valiant. I was confused for a second while reading it.

Best name, best logo, by a freaking mile.

Will be interesting to see how NotE and Snow perform in this roster, they didn't seem as impactful as they could have been in Contenders S1 with Onigod, Jaru and Luddee to name a few.

As with most people I'm very skeptical but would gladly be proven wrong here, It's just an interesting set of choices considering the pool of available talent that won't be in OWL S1.

I don't know if my heart can take another 7 maps...I'll say 4-2 Runaway just to be safe. Hopefully this is an insane game either way.

#14 - Yeah, because 3 koreans obviously spoke English when playing in Korea.

Not sure I understand your point, Mistakes obviously had to speak English in 123, and I already addressed the Koreans possibly needing to learn English. And surprisingly enough some Koreans actually do know English! Who knew right?

But feel free to elaborate on your comment.

I'm assuming Team CC is just to dip their feet into the Chinese scene, since they grabbed some of the more popular squads even though they were usually in the bottom of the standings.

I'm assuming the roster will field some MY players along with the best of some of the other teams. Specially if some are rumored to break up after this, but I will say that an 8 man roster is 1-2 fewer than I thought they'd have.

Runaway started strong and then proceeded to almost give me a heart attack. Needing all 7 maps to get the win...but on a good note they look really strong when their ult use is on point since the team play is pretty damn good.

Hopefully they can keep it together for the next match because it's going to be a big one!

RUNAWAY FIGHTING!

Can't do that myself atm, but I asked to see if it could be done. Guess we'll have to wait and see!

Looking forward to the pre-season matches, because unless they have some special sauce I don't know about I think they'll get crushed by the better OWL teams, though I'd love nothing more than to be proven utterly wrong.

Looks like someone beat you to the punch.

Yeah, because Mistakes was obviously speaking Russian when playing with 123.

Will have to see about the Koreans and how much support they can get to attain a functional level of English.

Welp, I'd love to see a show match between Boston and Seoul. I could be wrong but it feels like they're going to get absolutely shit stomped this season.

Here's some insight fro ma Chinese player about this, he wrote a letter to Blizzard and asked for it to be translated and posted on the English Reddit. It's very unfortunate that they won't be able to compete with the original team, but hopefully they'll still be able to have competitive matches.

Reddit Thread:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Competitiveoverwatch/comments/78w6cx/china_world_cup_visa_issue_letter_from_player_to/

A Runaway play, APEX S4 Finals:
Let's break it down! RunAway presses the first pick

Their inexperience seems to give them more foresight than you've demonstrated in a number of your comments though.

Sounds like you think you know more than the people actually involved, interesting.

Considering what some of the English speaking Chinese peeps are saying either here or on Reddit i'm not sure you'd call them "better players". Unless you think you know more than they do.

CHALLENGE ACCEPTED. I'm plat, I'm officially recognized by Twitch Chat. SHOTS FIRED!

Yup, Hulk and Cocco are pretty much the only ones my age.

The question itself has been asked more times than we can count, and continuously asking it after every new piece of new is unlikely to change people's opinions or even yield useful information, imo.

Will it fail? We don't know, no one knows, maybe it will, maybe it won't. The game itself is unlikely to die off even if OWL does fail considering the large casual audience it carries but if your goal is to point out issues with the game you can feel free to discuss those directly.

How does one evaluate success or failure? Does your view of success equal what the investors see as a success? Is Richard Lewis' opinion more important than the ones of the people who decided to invest the ridiculously high franchising fee? What are viewership targets? Is the 10-100k views the game's been getting what Blizz and co. are expecting to get?

I don't know, I don't have the professional or technical knowledge to know. Feel free to be the greatest armchair expert you can, personally I can do nothing more than express why I think it could either succeed or fail, without making statements I don't have the data to back up.

tl;dr: Who the fuck knows, it's all opinions anyways so it doesn't really matter what we think.

Edit: Oh, and don't get butt hurt over some other internet person disagreeing with you.

It's relative and not a new concept. Playing the game since before it's release is enough to label you a veteran given the amount of time it's been out.

By the power of friendship.

With 25 heroes they could give you a lootbox with on guaranteed skin for one of the teams in play each match. With 12 teams that's 300 skins, so at least 300 matches before you get them all.

On top of any new teams/skins that come in later on or specials skins etc. Even if the viewers weren't loyal that's still a lot. And who knows, some of them might just stick around to to play the game if the viewing experience was worth it.

I'm not saying it's a guaranteed success but it could be a thing.

You need to really commit to it and go full on no-life.

I don't want to hear that word from someone who's probably 8-10 years younger than I am.

Just a third left before I find myself in the marvelous presence of Legends like Admirable and Sideshow...

Also, I have 2077 freaking posts on this website. Holy shit.

Curious was in an interesting position, kind of being stuck behind the Birdring/Rascal duo. hope he finds more success in PUBG.

As for C9 Busan I think it's possible, but I think C9KD need a flex support more than anything else first and foremost. I also think GC Busan players are mostly talented enough to deserve more than just back up positions but I guess we'll see. Just a week left before the roster locks.

EM have been playing on the new Mercy patch all throughout out Challengers, the LH guys didn't, half the team. On top of Mercy having such a huge impact on games and, to me at least, being absolutely shit to watch.

Who would have thought practice on a hero would yield an advantage eh?

Edit: Apparently I can't read!

Nop, from New-Brunswick, not Quebec.

welp, FeelsNoBaguetteMan

Edit 1: This is the YT vid of the interview - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWxe_mhil2Q&feature=youtu.be&t=4m41s (in French)

Edit 2: His comment is at 4:44, he basically says that some players won't be in OWL, including himself. He had some tryouts and offers but none that worked out. He's hoping to get in for Season 2.

Reference: French is my mother tongue.

Seb just tweeted:
https://twitter.com/numlocked/status/922537517311606784

Wonder what that's based off of...would be unfortunate if true. SO MANY BLOODY RUMORS!

With some of the teams collapsing they can hopefully get themselves a strong Flex Support player and really bring it in the next APEX Season.

With WhoRU's larger hero pool they should be able to run a large number of comps pretty effectively.