Thanks, I know it's difficult keeping articles concise.

But even though this is nicer and makes for easier comparisions between the SoS for top and bottom teams it still just confirms what we already knew.
I think if you've got the time you can get a few good predictions out of this. E.g. use ELO/rating, or stage 2 results (meta didn't change but overall results would contain too much outdated data) to approximate a SoS for stage 3. The obvious targets are the top and bottom 3. Seoul could reach for the upper playoff spots, Boston and VALLA might solidify above 0.500 with an easier schedule. On the other hand Philly didn't seem to take the increased difficulty in stage 2 well and London's rise might've been boosted a bit by an easy stage. They could both very well crumble back into mediocrity. Last but not least NYXL dropped off even when they got an easier schedule than in stage 1. That seems like a make-or-break storyline waiting to happen.

To make the SoS useful across the board you can remove the teams' own record.
For example if we take NYXL's stage 1 SoS and remove their own 7-0 it's 21-21. A perfect 0.500, yet the original SoS would've told us that they had an easy stage 1. If we let those teams play one match each against the Washington Justice it's a reasonable assumption that it would've been 28-21. In other words against the same teams New York would've had an easy SoS and Washington would've had a hard SoS. That's obviously not the point of SoS. You want it to tell you if team A had a better record because they're better than team B or because they had an easier schedule, not the fact that A had a better record.

Of course this also removes the standard arguments of "A only got #1 because they had an easy schedule" and "My team doesn't actually suck, they just got fucked by the schedule" but we're not here to coddle anyone, we're here for accurate statistics.

In theory we'd also have to remove double matches against the same team because they skew the results a little bit as well. Effectively the increase the weight of one team. A team getting 4-0'd by the Titans twice isn't any weaker than a team that plays the Titans only once and gets an easy win against a bottom team, yet in the SoS they will be rated as such. Even if you don't want to go into the whole mess of "opponents' opponents' record" because that's to close to rating the teams instead of the schedule, always resutling in "hard" schedules for bad teams and vice versa, double matches with the same result should be counted only once.
This would push the teams where you'd expect it even close to 0.500, but I don't have the time for that and just addressing the elephant in the room, the 14% of the SoS that each team generates themselves, already paints a far more accurate picture.

1: Seoul Dynasty (.607), Stage 1: 22-20, Stage 2: 29-13
T2: Boston Uprising (.595), Stage 1: 24-18, Stage 2: 26-16
T2: Los Angeles Valiant (.595), Stage 1: 26-16, Stage 2: 24-18
T4: San Francisco Shock (.548), Stage 1: 25-17, Stage 2: 21-21
T4: Chengdu Hunters (.548), Stage 1: 23-19, Stage 2: 23-19
T4: Guangzhou Charge (.548), Stage 1: 21-21, Stage 2: 25-17
7: Toronto Defiant (.536), Stage 1: 22-20, Stage 2: 23-19
T8: Shanghai Dragons (.512), Stage 1: 24-18, Stage 2: 19-23
T8: Houston Outlaws (.512), Stage 1: 20-22, Stage 2: 23-19
10: Hangzhou Spark (.500), Stage 1: 17-25, Stage 2: 25-17
T11: Atlanta Reign (.488), Stage 1: 20-22, Stage 2: 21-21
T11: Florida Mayhem (.488), Stage 1: 17-25, Stage 2: 24-18
T13: Vancouver Titans (.476), Stage 1: 19-23, Stage 2: 21-21
T13: Paris Eternal (.476), Stage 1: 23-19, Stage 2: 17-25
T15: Dallas Fuel (.452), Stage 1: 23-19, Stage 2: 15-27
T15: Washington Justice (.452), Stage 1: 21-21, Stage 2: 17-25
17: Los Angeles Gladiators (.440), Stage 1: 20-22, Stage 2: 17-25
18: New York Excelsior (.429), Stage 1: 21-21, Stage 2: 15-27
19: Philadelphia Fusion (.417), Stage 1: 14-28, Stage 2: 21-21
20: London Spitfire (.369), Stage 1: 18-24, Stage 2: 13-29

As you can see a few things stay the same.
E.g. Seoul did have a very difficult schedule (in fact the most difficult), London had a ridiculously easy schedule, New York had the easiest (although not outrageously so) and San Francisco had the hardest schedule out of the top 3 teams, Washington and Shanghai achieved their first win and first playoff appearance respectively in their easier stage.
But the margins changed and some things even reversed themselves. SF actually got a fairly hard schedule instead of 0.500 and their perfect stage was decidedly not against a particularly weak SoS. However Vancouver Titans' was also fairly even instead of the easy road that the SoS suggested without the adjustment.
So the good teams didn't have it as easy as it seemed. On the other hand, boy do the bad teams drop. The Houston Outlaws and Florida Mayhem did not have difficult schedules. They were very close to 0.500, they just sucked. Even worse the Washington Justice drop from 0.510 to 0.452, quite an easy schedule. Their only win happened during the 4th easiest stage 2 schedule, only beaten by the NYXL (making their decline in stage 2 even worse), Dallas and the perpetually lucky London.

Yeah LWB is only 99% confirmed, but it makes no sense to pull out of APEX otherwise.
Of course C9 could try to buy e.g. GC Busan now, but realistically it's too late. They can't get rid of KD anymore and would have to keep paying them and there's a limit to how late you can apply for visa and get everything done to move a team to LA for OWL.
GCB and NC RX basically can't be bought (unless C9 really got more money than sense), that basically leaves RunAway and Gigantti. I don't see them building a new roster from scratch within 2 weeks or so.

Fun fact: All 3 Korean teams confirmed for OWL (LWB, LH, C9 KD) have not won a single map in their last APEX match.
LWB got destroyed 0:3 by LH after losing 1:3 to KDP in Season 3 and before dropping out of Season 4 without playing a match, GC Busan 3:0'd LH twice in a row and nice package of 4:0verwatch just got delivered to C9 KD by a Train from Busan.
The only way this can get even more hilarious is if C9 KD forfeit the 3rd Place Match or get 4:0'd again.
That would mean those 3 teams combined over their last two matches each in APEX would have a 1-16 map record.

Inb4 Hafficool is technically right.

EDIT: Hafficool was right.

https://www.over.gg/post/29273/imt-vs-fnrgfe-contenders-season-one-north-america-reg-season-week-4

Imagine how it feels to be an IMT fan then...

Since they can't make playoffs anymore the only thing to be afraid of is a loss to Renegades.
On the other hand that that's even a scenario to seriously consider is terrifying already.

I'm not saying I called it, but IMT really aren't looking good these days. They've got to figure out something until OWL starts or there will be roster changes or even a full on acquisition coming.

4-0 in a Bo5? How? Or is LH just that good?

Since they can't make playoffs anymore the only thing to be afraid of is a loss to Renegades.
On the other hand that that's even a scenario to seriously consider is terrifying already.

100% winrate in Contenders Season Zero with Verbo shotcalling and hyped, 0% winrate in Season One with someone else shotcalling and envy. I can see that they felt like they were basically at their peak and still couldn't beat Rogue in the BEAT Invitational, but they've had two months. Rogue have looked weak and IMT were still unable to beat them.
If they can't beat FNRGFE either then they are officially worse than before and the gambled hasn't paid off.
Interestingly enough hyped gets to play now that they need to win all remaining matches to have a shot at making playoffs.
The gamble hasn't paid off yet and now they're out of time.

Seems like an interesting decision, considering Mano has played Lucio before, but iirc janus hasn't.

#30
I don't think draws are counted at all, only the tiebreaker result matters.
So basically any MVP Space victory obviously guarantees them #1, but it also means since RunAway could at best go 2-3 in that match (5-6 total) LH also advances (worst case 0-3 vs MA, 5-6 total, won head-to-head against RA).
Now for the more interesting stuff:
RA 3-0 or 3-1 vs MVP.S mean RA advances (with 3-1 it would be 6-4 vs 7-5 for MVP, so head-to-head decides).
What happens to LH in those cases? If they lose vs MA it's over because they'd have only 1 win. If they win then they're at worst at 8-5 and with RA at best at 6-3 it's LH #1, RA #2 due to h2h. A 3-1 RA win obviously doesn't change that.
So only a 3-2 RA win left. They're out in that case and MVP.S would be at 8-5. LH can only equal, but not beat that and lost the h2h. So MVP.S #1, LH #2 (unless they lose against MA).

tl;dr
MVP.S wins -> MVP #1, LH #2
MVP loses 2-3 -> MVP #1, LH #2 (unless they lose vs MA, then RA #2)
RA wins 3-1 or 3-0 -> LH #1, RA #2 if LH wins, RA #1 MVP #2 if LH loses.

The flag meta has been saved!

Do you mean bo1 with "elimination rounds"?

Keeping the draw works. Bo1 control deciders also take time. Games can in theory and have gone to 6-7 or even 8-9. 3-3 or 4-4 + another map might be shorter than that.

Counting a draw as a win doesn't add time. It leads to weird things in the 4 map matches Blizzard loves, but otherwise it works fine for anything except for a bo1 and in that case you'd have to play a second map as decider anyway.

Exactly, now you get it. KDP didn't run that strategy, but someone might try. Depending on the tournament it might be possible to force a pick of one of two hybrid/payload maps that you're either really good at or able to draw on.

Honestly any tiebreaker that uses a different map just invalidates the map pick. Sudden death like you propose it would essentially be just another round. The other options would be simply keeping the draw as is (after all the teams have played on the same level for quite a while, awarding the win based on the performance during a much shorter time seems unfair) and either adding another map to the match or counting it as a win for both teams to keep the match time roughly the same (draws are rarely double full holds, mostly rather long matches).

And yes, either change the health pack respawn time (x4 is ridiculous, even x2 would still be quite strong) or adjust the ult charge/heal ratio like for all other healers or both.

I can't remember who said it but the quote was roughly "they managed to turn EMP into a cooldown".
Interestingly enough the reason LH picked KDU in APEX season 1 was that they had a strategy built around Sombra to counter triple tank, which was the only thing KDU ran (and were quite good at it). Then Sombra got banned two days before the match and LH got 3-0'd. They really like using Sombra.

I'm not saying they did it on purpose, they definitely practiced payload/hybrid, it's just one of the weirder parts of the APEX system that you could in theory win a match by only winning a single type of map.

I could imagine the memes had KDP won this by "only winning control".

I mean they have won payload/hybrid against LH before, it just seems that in the final LH consistently outplayed them (pls nerf sombra) and the only reason that it's a 4-3 (deserved imho, considering how close all maps were) instead of 4-1 were 2cp draws on top of KDP being that much better on control.

So what I meant was it would've been really weird had KDP won by being 97% as good as LH on escort, but never winning those maps, 98% as good on hybrid, but only drawing one of them and 99% as good on assault, always drawing on those, with the actual wins being a result of some really good control play afterwards.
I'm glad it worked out the way it did, fair scoreline, but it really started looking absurd. "Oh another draw, free win for KDP I guess". Because I'm willing to take any bet had they not made that positioning mistake on Numbani and held then the decider would've gone their way.

I feel like they also could have won both assault maps but in each of the final rounds they got picked off early and were never able to recover.

Yeah, imagine what woud've happened had KDP barely gotten a draw on Numbani as well. I mean being slightly worse on 2cp and somehow getting a draw both times and then barely getting a draw on 1 out of 4 payload maps, but winning the whole thing through tiebreakers does not mean you're the better team. It just means you're a slightly worse team that's really good on control. I really couddn't have taken this seriously had they won they finals simply by going 4-0 in control maps, 5-0 in rounds on control.

Yes, KDP are definitely the team closest to LH, but you shouldn't be able to abuse the tournament system so hard that you can win the finals by being really good on 2 maps (Nepal & Lijiang Tower), drawing on 2cp and being almost as good as the other team on 1 map.