Prediction:

1) Dynasty
2) NYXL
3) Spitfire
4) Fuel
5) Outlaws
6) Valiant
7) Mayhem
8) Gladiators
9) Uprising
10) Fusion
11) Dragons
12) Shock

Dynasty and NYXL are both well-rounded teams that have stars up and down their lineups and the classic Korean team-first mentality that has helped catapult Korea to the top in esports. Dynasty have demonstrated the most poise under pressure, which is why I'm giving them the edge, but NYXL's dps line, even without Flow3r, is unreal.

Spitfire have an incredibly talented roster, but I don't think their team cohesion will be quite as good as the top two. If they can manage to overcome the complications arising from having two distinct teams on their roster, they can win the league.

Fuel are talented, but over the course of a long season I can see them breaking down. Maybe it's just because I'm personally biased against Taimou (he's a great player, but there's no denying he's not a nice guy), but I feel like they won't be able to sustain success against the top teams, especially if they lose a couple matches early on, due to the nature of some of the players. Stamina is an important aspect of s1, and I feel like the Fuel might be lacking that. Of course, they could certainly prove me wrong and do better than I'm predicting, if the team can keep Taimou in check, and it's very unlikely they'll do any worse than 4th. They have the talent, but talent isn't everything.

Outlaws and Valiant both seem to have good chemistry, and while neither of them has a ton of star power, they can both field consistently meta-proof rosters, which should help throughout the long season. I gave the edge to Outlaws because of their tank line, but if Agilities plays well Valiant could be a scary team. Valiant have a lot of potential, but it remains to be seen whether or not they'll meet it. Outlaws need Clockwork to play like TF2 Clockwork, or the meta to shift away from full-time tracers.

Mayhem have a good roster with solid chemistry, but they'll need to make signings halfway through the season if they don't want to burn out.

Gladiators are an enigma to me. On the one hand, picking up Kungarna's tank line might not have been the best idea. On the other, BigGoose really impressed me during contenders, and people really seem to like Surefour.

After watching Mykl's video on Uprising, I feel like they'll at least be alright. Striker will need to play very well for them to win games.

Fusion have talent, but they appear to be an incredibly disorganized team. Hopefully Shadowburn can save them.

Chinese OW appears to be corrupt and filled with incompetent management. I don't expect anything good to come out of China for a while. At least the players probably have had some time to practice together and learn to play as a team.

Shock had better hope Nevix and dhaK can overcome the NRG curse, otherwise, until super turns 18, this team will get stomped on.

This is looking like a major yikes moment for China

BlackBluesPlayer for sure

Kephrii has never won a tournament, and b4nny has never had a sex scandal. They are very different people.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpXdt8Hbm9k

Alright, this series has officially gone off the deep end.

I can't wait to watch my favorite streamer and personality Kephrii to continue to be in the FPS world for another year, go to LAN, be at the top, and play on over 200MG of Adderall.

Sounds like a plan

I'm mid plat and can play any role except hitscan DPS. In past seasons I was consistently diamond as a support player (my peak was 3413 way back in s2). We should see how many people are interested and create multiple teams to accomodate if necessary.

They are. And all the biggest and most important tournaments have been won exclusively by Korean teams since APEX S1 (except for the Nexus Cup 2017, an online event LH didn't even play in), which was almost a year ago at this point.
For the record, the tournaments in which top Korean teams have played top teams from other regions since S1 are as follows: Iem Gyeonggi Invitational, LH defeats Misfits and Rogue to win.
Nexus Cup 2016, KDP defeats China's best teams to win.
APEX S2, LH defeats Misfits, Envy, Fnatic, and C9 NA to win.
APEX S3, LH defeats Envy and Rogue.
OGN Seoul Super Cup, LH defeats MY.
APAC premier 2017, GC Busan defeats MY
Hell, you can even count Ardeont winning the Pacific Championship as a win for Korea.
Look, I'll give Envy and MY credit. They're both very good teams that have been at the top of their respective scenes for a while, but since APEX s1 when the best of Korea has played against the best of rest of the world, Korea has won.

Ryujehong stands above everyone else who has played this game. Two APEX championships, Two world cups, and the highest pre-OWL prize winnings of any player (https://www.esportsearnings.com/games/426-overwatch). He redefined what a support player could do, and was consistently the best player on the most dominant team Overwatch has ever seen. The debate over the most decorated Overwatch career should start and end with jehong.

What patch is this being played on?

I feel like EU contenders was a lot better than you think it was. In comparison to teams like LA Valiant and Philly, which people are very high on, they match up fairly well, player to player. Tviq is also extremely underrated. He's easily top 3 in the west for projectile DPS, with Shadowburn being the only player I'd say consistently outplays him, and even then, Tviq's hero pool is much larger than Shadowburn's.

Mangachu is the true innovator. RNG was running Orisa in contenders S1 pretty consistently on Hanamura, albeit unsuccessfully (the team might've just been bad, though, rather than the strat). xQc is a very good Orisa, but he wasn't the first to play her in a tournament.

1. London
2. Seoul
3. Dallas
4. NY
5. Philly
6. Florida
7. Houston
8. LA Valiant
9. LA Gladiators
10. Shanghai
11. SF Shock
12. Boston

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.

Now that's what a throw looks like.

Mangachu's Pharah will give Canada the advantage on control, but otherwise they're clearly the weaker team. Sweden 3-1

It's something they're borrowing from American Football. Every NFL team has white away uniforms. It just mskes it so that they can set it up more easily without having to consider color schemes every match.

It's too bad we had to play them round 1. Korea's road to the cup only gets easier from here.

https://clips.twitch.tv/ArborealSpoopyLeopardTwitchRaid

We've got a game!

Get this guy a job at Blizz HQ

Apparently "Miami Mayhem" is already trademarked, so they couldn't use it.

1. The second quote is paraphrasing "but did they go to some random person in front of stadium with colours of other team and start insulting her?". In that quote, you are implying I did the equivalent to someone.
2. I already said that if someone took it personally, I was sorry.

"No one took insult personaly"
"But did they go personally insulting people"
Pick one

I grew up a White Sox fan in a Cubs town, and a Packers fan in a Bears town. Try walking through the halls of a high school with 3000 people the Friday before a Packer-Bear game in an Aaron Rodgers jersey, see what happens.

Maybe not e-sport fans, but fans of traditional sports teams sure as hell do. My assumption, which I guess was mistaken, was to treat Dallas and Houston like traditional teams.

The point was supposed to be silly banter. I thought people might get a laugh out of how ridiculous what I'm saying is. In an earlier thread I picked Dallas to finish higher than Houston s1, and I still think that's likely, but I cheer for Houston, so I make up shit about the Dallas team because that's what fans do. I understand that I didn't necessarily convey that well, and for that I'm sorry. The twitter war between the Fuel and Outlaws has some pretty sick memes, and I figured, if tftv has good memes, Over.gg would have them too. But I guess Over.gg isn't like tftv, so there's not as much of a place for that, especially when I didn't do a good job explaining what I was trying to do.

My apologies. I guess I shouldn't have expected OWL teams and their fan bases to be treated like traditional sports teams. They are very different and I can see why people would take insults personally, especially when people don't always cheer for the team closest to them geographically. I guess Over.gg is different from TFTV, even if they are made by the same person. Y'all care about actual news and analysis here, rather than banter, is that right?

You do realize this is trash talk, right? None of it is meant to be taken seriously. This is supposed to be similar to how traditional sports teams' fan bases banter. Also, teams that are geographically close to one another traditionally make the best rivals, and Envy and Optic have been rivals for years.
There's a difference between banter and actually trying to start shit. I love Seagull as a player, but I'm an Outlaws fan, so I'll make up shit on him.

In the last few days there's been some pretty sick banter between the Dallas and Houston teams' fanbases, but not enough here on Over.gg.

Dallas Fans are all 10 year old Seagull fanboys who didn't even know who he was until the World Cup last year, and think the Fuel are better than London or Seoul, when we all know there's no chance in hell they're beating those teams. Their management clearly cares more about signing stream personalities than good players, and Taimou is overrated. Linkzr is better than any of these fools.

Also, your team name is stupid. Like, seriously. The only thing fuel makes me think of is gas stations, and how awful they smell. We own Texas, boy.

Go Outlaws!

OWL - Outlaws
WC - Australia
Normal - Kings Gaming Club. I can't not cheer for Termo and Yuki.

Except for maybe the Seoul Dynasty, they definitely have the best branding of any team. Here's hoping I somehow get good at McCree so I can play with that awesome looking skin. #rememberthecorndogs

1. London
2. Seoul
3. Dallas
4. NY
5. Miami
6. Houston
7. Shanghai
8. San Francisco
9. LA Valiant
10. Boston

At least the Mercy meta slightly favors USA, since ryujehong and tobi are so unbelievably good at Ana and Lucio, respectively, that forcing them to not necessarily play those heroes helps.

Then again, Korea could probably run a full-time Symmetra and still not lose a single map.

Zebbosai always finishes second to MGE Mike

Go Tim Dummy Olson!

He does. I'm just saying Knoxxx would have done it too.

They've got ryujehong listed as "sub support". You know your team is good when you've got the captain of the Korean national team and the single most accomplished player in all of OW on the bench.

I still can't get over how much of a shame it is that Knoxxx isn't in OWL. He would've been perfect for the Fuel, and would've preserved flag meta!

It'll be interesting to see how they use all their DPS players. I hope my boy Clockwork gets some real playing time.

AF is a very good team, or at least, they've played like one very recently. The way they've handled their opponents so far in APAC indicates they're still the team that 4-0'd Ardeont in July and finished 3rd in APEX s3.

not Houston Corndogs, RIP

Best name so far. Logo is solid, skin is pretty good. Hoping for a great roster to go along with what they've got.

"Ok, chaps, we've bought the London spot, and we've got c9 teams from NA and EU. Surely we can build a team to contend with the combined power of two Overwatch teams... Wait, New York signed a team of Koreans? That's alright with their fans? They're going to destroy us? Well then, I guess we'd better sign a third Overwatch team. I hear these KDP blokes are the consensus best team in the world that hasn't already been signed in OWL... Wait, our Koreans lost? These GC Busan upstarts beat them 4-0? You're telling me our three Overwatch teams aren't going to be enough if someone else picks these guys up? Well, I guess there's only one thing to do. Lads, it seems like three wasn't enough, so we here at Cloud 9 are buying four Overwatch teams. Surely, with this many players, one of them will remember not to get off the objective during overtime!"

But in all seriousness this team will absolutely pound.

It's so strange to me to hear people talk about the "new generation" and how "old OW pros are retiring". The game has been out for less than 2 years. Nobody on Earth is a veteran of the game.

The name isn't awful (although immortals would've been better), the colors are great, but the skin is really strange. Mercy's staff looks messed up.

What's your favorite type of music? - Jazz
What's your favorite color?- Pine-needle Green
What was your first video game?- Backyard Basketball. Shoutout to Pablo.
Where are you from? - Chicago
What do you consider your biggest accomplishment? - I ran the 800m in 2:00 once.
What's your most PogChamp overwatch moment? - Fadeaway airshot over the top of the building on Gibraltar last as Pharah.
If you could hug one pro player, who would it be? - Runner
Make your dream over.gg team- Sideshow, Sideshow, Sideshow, Sideshow, Sideshow, and Admirable

Overrated teams: Ardeont and all the other teams competing in the Pacific Championship.
Underrated teams: Faze Clan, 123

Underrated players: knoxxx, Mickie
Overrated players: Sinatraa, xQc, Babybay.

Envision haven't had a big win since week 1 of contenders. Flash Wolves haven't had a big win since, well, ever. So I guess 2-1 eV?

Harsha was right. This team won't win a single match.