Same as EU and previous fixtures in playoffs:

Route66, King's Row, Nepal, Lijiang Tower, Hanamura + Dorado and Ilios

tiebreaker map is Oasis

Would definitely expect them to be in the next edition if they perform well in pit playoffs, this month they had only strivewire and pit groups to go from.

As far as I'm aware, that article's mention of sister teams is pure speculation based on a reddit post that was misinterpreting rumours of the Koreans joining. I have not heard any reports or even rumours that a 2nd C9 roster is being formed.

FaZe always win or lose their games. They definitely won this one.

Usually I'd agree that stomping on shitter NA teams does not show a good team.

But NA has been looking good recently - strong teams like LG Evil, Immortals, Selfless have all shown their cohesion and talent... and then been beaten with consistency by Rogue. Even just watching them play, you can see their coordination and individual level is sick. Problems may come when the inevitable patch hits, so I can see them not making playoffs vs the level of Korean teams, but they are definitely a worldclass team imo.

C9 will benefit in the long term by removing the other 3 western players and having the first full Korean team in OWL.

-__- somebody is sabotaging my Overwatch career -___-

Oops, yes it was! Thanks for the clarification, they've both changed their rosters up quite a bit.

Liquid have looked way better since shadder joined, opened up room for azk to shine on Tracer and id's fitting into the flex role well. This has been their best series so far though, you can tell they've prepared for Selfless more than other opponents have.

I think people are drawing, rightly imo, a distinction between shittalking your former employer and having very reasonable disagreements with them about policy with regards to talent.

If he hadn't said anything and instead had just jumped ship to Overwatch and left his colleagues to deal with bad conditions that nobody outside of Riot knows about, that would be the morally dubious part. Bringing information to light about contracts for casters and what people are/aren't allowed to do - and applying pressure to Riot to treat their talent better - is a good thing imo. It isn't more 'professional' to sit there and take it.

your posts need to be upvoted too to get stars

They haven't actually been doing worse since TwoEasy left, people just realised this team is - and always has been - mediocre online.

In the OMM they only lost to Selfless and LG Evil; in the one before that they only lost to Hammers (LG Evil), Rogue, and Immortals.

In the Winter Premiere they lost to a bunch of crap teams with TwoEasy and then did exactly the same with Mike, no better or worse. In fact they did worse in the qualifiers with TwoEasy other than a good run in the first one.

Ya they've looked very meh this tournament but that's what you get with FaZe. Roster changes won't fix this unless they wanna pick up somebody in NA who's sick instead. Or if one of their players is hindering the move to NA, in which case ye cut that guy and move for the love of god.

While I think it's difficult to compare NiCO and SDB etc. to the Koreans since they haven't played the same teams even, never mind each other, I definitely think WhoRU put in a higher impact performance for his team and played better than Haksal did. Not just because his team won, but they really won at times off the back of his Genji performances. He's going in with Miro to be fair but he often is the guy who has to step up to deliver the kills because EscA is hit or miss. Haksal and Stitch I think are overall a more consistent pair, but WhoRU played fantastically this season individually imo.

eUnited are going to Korea after PIT - as are Laser Kittenz I believe... that would be an underwhelming cohort to represent the West if it's related.

What an incredible final. I've seen a few games that made me think "that was the best overwatch series I've seen" but I think this final will take some topping.

Fastest way to kill the APEX hype for Westerners would be to invite non-star teams like LG Evil / Immortals / Fnatic imo.

As to your point about NiP not adapting well to the new patch, they actually wrecked eUnited in the only game they've played vs another top team so far (though eUnited looked off their game that series too). Gotta wait til we see them in the PIT playoffs before saying they're not as good as they once were. NiP could still win.

Best teams to send imo would be Misfits+Rogue

If you have room for two more send eUnited/Selfless and NiP, get to see matchups you've never seen before. Would be WILD.

Will be coming within the next couple of days.

What an incredible final, amazing. I love the OGN production, the casting is excellent, the games were unreal and these two teams match up so perfectly. The storylines, the clutch players, the meta, awesome.

Think Jehong on Ana/Zen support, Tobi on Lucio support, Miro on Winston, and WhoRU on Genji all showed "best in world" performances throughout this season on Lunatic-Hai and they shut down Kaiser hard throughout those games. Give me more!

Asian teams play with so much Sombra, it's pretty sick to see how they use her. Confident she's pretty underused in top level Western/Korean play compared to her potential; Meta Athena used her a bit but there are a load of cool things you can do.

While I agree with harsha's recent video on it being a weird time to begin importing Koreans unless it's as whole teams, I would love to see the guys who struggled with PR issues move over. Guys like Dean, LEETAEJUN, Xepher, and even LW Blue would be welcomed in the West and could find careers over here I'm sure.

Silkthread was good when I saw him play with this team, interested to see if he's back with them.

No, they played all of those heroes in the OMM except the Widow. This wasn't just them trolling around trying random comps against a bad team, they were pressured by the pharah/mercy and had to respond. Nico on D.Va is how they've been playing 2-2-2, they wanted the Pharah to tie up Mike.

Really nice preview cx, captures the magic of this RunAway storyline and the excitement about what we'll see.

I believe Doa and Monte said on cast that they would (or might) be casting them and they are listed on liquipedia as the casters, but Doa posted on reddit recently saying they weren't confirmed. Not sure on that front, I would personally love for them to be streamed but I am not OGN, just a simple fanboy.

There's a lot of talent in Europe. Teams like Hammers, Movistar Riders, Dignitas, NiP, and eUnited are legitimately contenders with Misfits at that kind of level. Korea is not that far ahead, though they have a really deep pool of talented teams. NA also has Selfless, LG Evil, C9, and Immortals, along with the 'imported' teams of Rogue and EnVyUs that are around that level. Korea is strong, don't get me wrong, but the West has some teams that can compete on the same level.

That was the longest game of nepal I've ever experienced

Will be a really useful tool for semi-pro teams looking to analyse their results or structure their practice in more detail. Template works well, plug and play!

Dignitas are looking far better than they have done in past tournaments, and Misfits threw away Hollywood defensively in regular time. I disagree with you though, I think Misfits are starting to come into their own as a top tier team now. It's taken them quite a while but they're starting to look like a really solid team that still has room to improve.

Fusion Girls (Blank) won't be playing in this, nor in the ESL LAN, after accepting the invite to the Overwatch Pacific Championship.

why is per capita rating useful in any sense? What difference does the population make when related to SR?

EDIT: Oh, there are hardly any people in Iceland so it's far less likely to have 100 players capable of making it into 4500+ like China does. I see.

ya to be fair I also destroy packets of chocolates, biscuits, and baked goods on the regular - but those are just readily available and easily consumed, they aren't my favourites

Stack me up with avocados and bell peppers and I will show you a happy man.

Because it looked dope af?

these notes are copied from a list I made right back in beta, so they're all over the place in terms of team names or stuff I've written. Ofc he's confirmed yes :D

mesr + Vani + astt + tonmas + carnifex + dennia YA GOOD & idk how I forgot fl0w3r, yeah.

Did J3sus play at a high level in HL? Willing to give that a pass if it was actually in a prem team for quite a while, I think it's relevant for Kresnik for example.

Planning to do a video on this soon, but since there are so many players who made the change I have likely forgotten some notable names from my jotted list. Since the best method of finding answers online is to make false assertions and then be corrected, I'd like to plonk down this mess of names as the definitive list of top TF2 players (note the distinction, they must be in some sense top TF2 players) who made the shift to Overwatch, successfully or not. Please do feel free to add names which I've inevitably forgotten.

North america:
EnVyUs - HarryHook, Taimou (cocco played way back but not at the top level)
Fnatic - (custa I think played in aus way back but not at the top) Hafficool
LG Evil - train - man is incredible at rick rolling, like honestly god tier, rob420, Jake aka sneakypolarbear, Voll, super, Avast
LG Loyal - Hidan ex: Tseini (Finland, Method?)
Cloud9 - ryb (assuming he gets the spot)
FaZe - ShaDowBurn, Forsak3n, MikeyA
NRG - dummy, numlocked, Seagull, Harbleu, oPlaiD - ex: milo, enigma, clockwork, indust
Splyce - PYYYOUR, ex: ninjanick, shrugger, papasmurf, cozen
Denial - squid (now called jolson)
Renegades - Mangachu, manOFsnow used to stream tf2 but never played at a high level
H2K which folded had highlander players, notably m4risa, gf of Harbleu & Kresnik who now plays for Selfless

Europe:
Misfits - Zebbosai, TviQ (ryb and zebbo played together on Impulse 11 w/ vonethil and iddqd)
Rogue - KnOxXx, NiCO
NiP - zappis, hymzi (before my time: mafu, kyynel) ex: hocz
Dignitas - evokje
Russians - Anak, Kensi, Rubikon, Nesh, (Arty played at a low level I believe), Dikker,
Frenchies - DeGuN (ex-melty), baud (ex-bonjour), Tek (ex-G2, Aera, PENTA), (k3 coach), Flippy (ex-PENTA)
?: kr4tos (Danger Dogs, Creation eSports with ryb/zebbo, Graviton Surge (former misfits lineup before getting cut for Zaprey), LDLC (before they cut him for Clown), NWA (to replace evokje and veineless before team folded), Team Germany, trialled for C9)
?: Byte, who tried to move over but found maincalling very difficult when balanced with doing his job.

Australia:
Tempo Storm AU - yuki, termo
Tainted Minds - snowblind

Asia: (was never a top region in TF2 so know very little)
NGA - RLE, Fury, Hysteria (all used to play in Cute Beast, a top Chinese team)
LW Red - Pine (used to play at the top of the Asian scene and hit mad shots), creep coach ex: starky
LW Blue - janus
AF.Blue - coach TaiRong

Brazil:
dudu, Krepsker, Neil, krk, Alemão and Liko. They are all former TF2 players.
Also, the other team in the finals (WS) has 2 former TF2 players (pearly and pizzalover), the team that came out third in this championship is all TF2 (tyger, prod, wings, ole, fast and snow, powah), mostly players from MONSTER, and the fourth team has 4 TF2 players I guess (kodo, nosf, honorato and Leo).

Actually I'm hearing different things now, will have to check. I'm not an admin, just what we were working from - could be wrong!

Orisa is allowed, yes.

At what point? Wanna catch the play without watching the whole vod.

Pretty sure everyone's perceptions will switch to player nationalities when most tournaments, or major ones at least, are LANs or not region locked based on where the team lives.

Better ping in this situation is 150 rather than 200+, there's so much variance in it; having equal 200 ping is not the same in any way as having equal 5-50 ping. Of all the matches in this tournament, this means almost literally nothing, and it should be ringing warning bells for drawing conclusions when the only team BGH beats is the other team on super high ping.

I don't believe that's true. The casters said they switched between central and west iirc. I highly doubt they played on Korean servers at any point, that would be mad.

I don't think Selfless will be beating themselves up too badly about that game. They were still playing very well, it's the kind of performance that makes you motivated to beat them in the GFs.

this is an excellent game already and we've only seen one map

clutch players in clutch compositions playing aggressively O BOY

I think that's part of what makes the pharah comp a good counter, you dive dafran immediately and take him out. Otherwise you are constantly having to dodge hooks and bat away the tracer, you can't find the health or position to contest dafran. He's also excellent at noticing danger and repositioning.

Emongg has a very large impact on Roadhog compared to pretty much any other NA hog, especially in such a fast-tempo team. He's adding lots of damage and pick potential to this team as well as being hard to isolate and pick due to his positioning. Honestly, he's doing really well on a hero known for its inconsistency.

thin name? This is cute af, that logo is adorable

What is the ping? 200ish?

Jake was called sneakypolarbear in TF2

If I was gonna make a change to Fnatic, he wouldn't be the first guy I'd cut. Or even the second. Not playing carry dps for sure but there are some deeper issues with this team.

i cant believe haffi called rogue a mid tier na team

lets go unkoe! show this kid who's NA!

My lowly opinions aren't enough to change the policies of sites like this and Gosu. They should be, but they aren't.