Really unfortunate how this played out - my guess is Envy & LG in upper bracket and C9 & TSM in the lower bracket. Excited for another LAN though, hoping production will match the scale of the event!

Love the summary! So hard to follow all the different competitions with qualifiers going on.

Lets not lose focus on the real news here

Man Envy just played so well - really shows how all of their players had great plays throughout the series and more importantly their holds were consistently better than TSM. All that being said - TSM has definitely closed up the game from earlier series against Envy and hopefully they'll pass it soon!

My heart is racing in anticipation and here we are talking about fortune cookies. _0_/

TSM has been playing increasingly well recently, but I don't think they've quite reached the point where they can beat Envy. My guess is within the next few weeks Envy will really be challenged though. Excited to see how this one plays out though!

Yeah it seems like they really have payload figured out- KOTH may be a big challenge for them though. My guess is Envyus will still beat them; however, I think TSM is really closing up the gap.

DeBett and Surefour both going huge on Lijang. It seemed like TSM was just losing too many team fights to be able to compete.

Not sure how much of a choice thing it is :P Harbleu just doing what he wants

TSM Mastering Disconnect strats. In all seriousness- love all the hero switching from TSM. Can't comment on how big of an impact it made, but it definitely seemed like it was working.

Harb Hog Hype!

Not a big surprise but Mcree just running the show- I hope he's toned down a bit to allow focus on other heroes too. Regardless GG to both teams - LG played really well especially pushing on Dorado.

Envy off to a bang! So far doesn't look like the patch hurt them at all!

"This will be a very close match" :') Nic and Tork going so huge Harbleu barely had a chance to do so!

Oh my Ana though. Definitely very early into the new patch, but it's great to see Ana being used - As a spectator, I really enjoy the power her ult provides to the team esp. for breaking through holds. Can't wait to see how teams adapt to using her as the meta evolves and skill in playing her increases.

All the baiting 0.o Updating everyone back to Finland!

I wonder if we'll see any members of the team start streaming sometime soon - might be mistaken but I don't think i've seen any of them stream OW (harbleu plz).

It's been incredible to see this team really rise up from being competitive in the GG tournaments during beta to establishing themselves as #2 in NA. Hope joining TSM provides them with the resources they need to get even better! Congrats!

Slightly old, but they released another comic focusing on S:76, Reaper and Ana: http://comic.playoverwatch.com/en-us/ana-old-soldiers

Definitely one of my favorite ones - interesting to see the interactions between the 3 of them. Also if you've seen the news about that WoW player's email being found, it's from this comic.

I may be completely mistaken, but I thought there was some issue with being able to get Visa's for esports? Hopefully not though! I'm also excited to see matches this week and see how teams play with this new patch.

Are we e-sports now? So excited to see this level of growth in the game - hopefully the production value will match the scale of this tournament and bring focus to competitive overwatch. I'm assuming all top NA teams will play - not sure if non-NA will be able to due to visa issues? Best of luck to all the teams!

Just saw this while browsing reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Overwatch/comments/4tn3vr/sombra_hint_in_new_dev_update

I always enjoyed following along the TF2 ARG's, it would be really neat if Blizzard did something similar. Hopefully we'll have some time to adapt to the recent changes first though!

Edit: also just realized a dev update was out explaining some of the decisioning behind the patch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evghkilg2eQ

C7 playing so well right now- hopefully they are ready to keep this up in the upcoming patch as well!

By no means do I watch all tournaments, but I watch a good number and would be more than happy to help out!

c7 new strategy: Nano Boost Harbleu. Instant 1st place.

Oh very true! Lets see if they can find a better match for a sponsor then! Anyone know if they have qualified for the ESL tournament?

GFE dropped the wrong team lol! Glad to see C7 working their way up!

Seagull was streaming then - instant 30k less viewers available

Highlight of the series was after the games: "Are you happy blizzard?" - Harbleu :')

Idk, if Gale Force can play at the level Harbleu was against Cloud 9, this could be a very close match! The onus is on them to prove that's their consistent level now.

Harbleu going insane... Hope the team figures out what is missing soon and gets on par with his plays.

GFE to a great start! Lets hope they can maintain form!

Edit: Spoke too soon- still GFE did reasonably well in the first map.

Not all too surprising - I honestly was more shocked that Pookz wasn't cut as well. In most of the other top teams, it seems that the non-mercy support is able to play non-support heroes at a high level essentially adding another top-tier dps player to their roster. LG seems to be missing out on that opportunity. I'm sure Pookz must be playing well within the team and making good plays since he wasn't cut.

Should be interesting to see who they replace Esper with - from TF2 Indust, Pyyyour, Shade and Harbleu come to mind although not sure if Pyyyour or Harbleu will want to leave their current teams to join. Best of luck to LG in their search! Hopefully this is the missing piece to put them over the top.

Ok thanks for adding the "really" this time and not just copy pasting "harbleu sucks at video games". On a different note, should be an interesting match- TL has been looking really strong lately!

Also like I mentioned, only caught those last 2 maps but the production/casting seemed a lot higher caliber than the GG tournaments that have recently been there. Hope to see more of this!

GG, only caught the last to maps but really well played by NGR!

3:12 attack time on hollywood. Absolutely incredible plays coming out from Envyus. Glad to see some shakeups at the top! Talespin is an absolute beast.

I wasn't sure if you were done making the changes you had mentioned earlier Enigma, but really was missing the consolidated list of tournaments coming up. I really like the new match feed, but it was nice to be able to see when a tournament was and get information about it as well. Would wireframes help in development?

Good to know thanks!

Lol. But idk if harbleu was their issue. I'm not too sure about his torbjorn pick, but besides that even if he wasn't getting the credit for kills, he was getting tons of damage and initiating a lot of the wins they got. I felt like Shake wasn't able to compete with other mercy's and besides the good parts against cloud9, Nicholas wasn't playing that great. JKW, Harbleu, and Tork seemed like they were playing pretty well all night.

I def agree that c9 looked weaker, but I was speaking more to the difference in GFE's level of play from earlier in the day and this series although that may just be from a spectator side- the players themselves will obviously have better sense of how they did.

Dang, even map 2 was so close! If GFE was playing like this earlier in the day, I can't help but think they'd have won the rest of their matches. Maybe warming up from the earlier matches helped them? Regardless some really entertaining matches to watch!

GFE losing map 1 by 2 seconds. GG. Goes to show how important maximizing cart time. Wonder why they keep running torbjorn for defense - I don't think i've seen it work for them yet on defense. Hopefully this wasn't a fluke by GFE and we'll see more matches like these!

Great match but man GFE just looking really hit or miss. I'm sure some other factors not noticeable while spectating factored in, but I hope they are able to get to that hit level more often than not.

I wonder if hero picks are factoring into this - it seems like they play a very strong game when running a zarya/roadhog and not so much with a pharah. Also I wonder why harbleu isn't playing pharah for the team - their current combo seems out matched very often so trying that switch may be good? Glad to see TL playing a strong game though, hopefully these teams keep getting better!

Might be nice just as an organized scrim, but I really hope some thing in addition to GG weekly tournaments comes to NA. I've heard the ESL tournaments in EU are getting a lot of signups and are well run so maybe a NA division of those?

Harbleu do you have any plans of streaming again? please

Makes sense- congrats on the win btw, hope to see more follow in the future!

Glad to see Gods bring the widow out in full force, but true test will be when playing against other top level teams who can counter widow and see if she is still played. Anyone know why none of the other top teams played this week? I'm guessing GFE bc they didn't have harbleu.

"enigma making sure the world stays an ilios free place"

No cloud 9 and Envyus playing? Should be interesting to see how the nerfs impact the matches and if LG can finally clutch a win. Splyce was looking pretty good earlier as well.