Passion Blog 7

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After a pause of Overwatch League games amid the Covid-19 outbreaks, games will resume starting this weekend and will be entirely online. To make up for the games that were already canceled in the Eastern Division, 8 games will be played a day now between all the teams. Now, we can finally see teams that have not yet played due to their home games being canceled due to outbreaks: Chengdu Hunters, Hangzhou Spark, Guangzhou Charge, Shanghai Dragons, and Seoul Dynasty. In this blog, we will talk about the strengths of each of these teams.

 

First, Chengdu Hunters is a team that doesn’t tend to follow what other teams perceive as the best hero composition; they thrive on the flexibility of their players to run their own, faster-paced, style of gameplay. This method of play relies heavily on the skill of their main tank, Ameng, who in the past has delivered on his performance, being able to successfully make space on Wrecking Ball, as well as out-Reinhardt Bumper of the Vancouver Titans last season. Chengdu’s second greatest strength is in one of their DPS players, Jinmu; his hero pool flexibility and high skill cap on each hero greatly helped the team win games last season. He can play Pharah, Doomfist, Genji, Hanzo, and more at an extremely high level, allowing him to fill into whatever his team needs at the time.

Hangzhou Spark was a team with a very high potential last season, and with a little change to the roster could be incredible. Their main strength lies in their main tank, Guxue. His skill at controlling Winston was unrivaled in the Overwatch League, and he was still able to play a strong Reinhardt and Orissa when he needed to switch.  Their new flex support pickup, Coldest, is extremely promising as well. He just recently turned 18 to become eligible to play in the Overwatch League, but he has been widely regarded as one of the best flex support players to come out of China. With a fairly strong DPS lineup as well, this new addition could help push the team into playoff and championship contention.

The Guangzhou Charge wasn’t a bad team last season, but they didn’t stick out from the crowd very much. Their greatest strength lies in their DPS line up of Happy and Eileen. Happy was in contention for one of the best snipers in the League, constantly hitting extremely precise shots and dominating the enemy team’s sniper. Eileen would be the projectile player and has already shown his skill on China’s Overwatch World Cup team. The other bright spot on the team is their support lineup, of Shu and Neptuno. Last season, Shu played a very strong flex support, with his Zenyatta being able to dish out lots of damage and sustain enemy dives. Neptuno is a new addition to the team from Philadelphia Fusion, and in the past, his Mercy and Lucio had been an integral part of the team’s success.

The Shanghai Dragons have an extremely talented DPS lineup that carried them to win the Stage 3 finals in a meta where DPS were not commonly played. DDing is a player very similar to Jinmu from Chengdu Hunters, where he can play many different heroes at a high level for his team. His greatest strength is Pharah, where Luffy on Mercy is able to keep him healthy while rockets barrage the enemy team. In the offseason, the team picked up Fleta, previously from Seoul Dynasty, who is an extremely strong hitscan player. He is a fairly streaky player, meaning that if he is playing well he will be almost unbeatable, but if not his effect in the game is negligible, so if he can work to be more consistent then Shanghai will be an extremely deadly team to go against.

Finally, the Seoul Dynasty appears to have one of the best teams on paper going into the season. It’s hard to pick just a few strengths for the team since they appear to have no weaknesses. The team picked up London’s flex support Bdosin, main tank Gesture, and Profit, who has commonly been known as one of the best overall Overwatch players of all time. All three of these players were on London’s championship team in season 1, showing they have the potential and history of greatness. Combining this with Seoul’s existing players, the team appears undefeatable. They have the main support Tobi, who has a long history of winning tournaments before Overwatch League with years of experience, and Michelle, who was extremely strong on D.Va last season in the league. As long as the coaching staff is able to maintain the team well, they should do extremely well in the League.

Civic Issue Blog 4: Issue Brief

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The issue I will address is how easy it is for viruses to spread with the current regulations on international travel, as shown with the Covid-19 outbreak. It will aim to discuss precautions on travel that could be made to lessen the spread of future pandemics. It is an intervention on current policy discussion as it does not directly focus on coronavirus, as lots of policy in a similar area is specifically targetted towards it. Rather, this issue brief is trying to target how to stop the spread of outbreaks in the future, so that we do not have a situation like we currently have again, by examining what allowed the coronavirus to spread so rapidly and understand how we can stop that. There may be some overlap, as improving travel regulations could also help with diminishing the current spread of Covid-19, however, it intends to primarily focus on stopping future outbreaks.

 

I will discuss the exigence by using the recent kairotic example of Covid-19. By describing how the virus itself has symptoms plaguing our society, such as the quarantines and shortages of goods, it shows the nature of the problem itself. From there, I will discuss how these issues could have been preventable had the virus not been allowed to spread as rapidly as it did, which is why we need to work on improving the international travel regulations directly. The issue brief should be able to show its exigence through the recent example of all the ongoing problems that were caused due to our inability to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

 

The cause category I intend to focus on is inadvertent. As a result of the poor hygiene in airports, and lack of screening for easily spreadable infections, the coronavirus was able to rapidly reach many countries and infect many people. This falls into the inadvertent category because a lot of the hygiene-related issues are caused by a lack of awareness of individuals, not cleaning up after themselves or practicing unhygienic behavior allowing for germs to spread. Furthermore, the lack of screening still fits in the category since it is something airports and other forms of international travel have the ability to do, yet don’t due to the costs it would require to add or some other external reason. Generally, the spread of viruses results from unintentional behavior, as it isn’t logical for most people to intentionally want to get themselves and those around them sick, but it also isn’t entirely accidental as it is often preventable, thus not solely determined by luck and fate.

 

Mandates are the policy instrument I would intend to use. I think this would be best since imposing punishments for breaking rules would be the best way to discourage the behavior. For example, mandates would discourage people from intentionally traveling with spreadable sickness, and could force more people to clean up. Inducements could potentially be useful, but many people already practice healthy behavior and the spread of viruses is more dependent upon extremely bad practices by a few people, targetting the few people with punishments would be more effective. System changes would be the other policymaking type I would focus on. The main thing I think this would be useful for is to force airports around the globe to have greater cleanliness, by having regularly used objects (machines used to check-in, everything customers touch on the plane, all doorknobs, etc) be regularly disinfected, and enforcement of face masks and other precautionary measures for employees for staff on the plane, to prevent them from getting any illness and passing it onto other passengers.

Passion Blog 6: Philadelphia Fusion vs Paris Eternal

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On the first weekend where hero pools were introduced to Overwatch League, the undefeated Philadelphia Fusion was up against the Paris Eternal, who looked extremely poor after a loss to the 19th place team. McCree and Reinhardt, two characters who both teams relied heavily upon in the past, were banned, so fans were intrigued to see how the match would play out.

On the first map, Illios, Philadelphia tried running Eqo, normally a DPS player, on Support. To put it bluntly, this was not a good look for the Fusion; they quickly lost the map in just a few minutes, as substituting out the main support, one of the core members on the team, easily disrupts the established teamwork in-game. Paris ran right through the Fusion, and even after Philadelphia swapped back to their standard main support player, FunnyAstro, the Paris continued their hot streak to win the second map in the series, Junkertown. There wasn’t much interesting to say about this map, it was just Paris continuously demolishing the Fusion over and over, it seemed like the two teams were on completely different levels; almost every player on the Fusion was getting outclasses by their counterpart on Paris. Soon and Xzi, the DPS from Paris, were especially playing extremely well, hitting almost every shot against their enemies.

Going into the third map, with Paris up 2-0, things were not looking good for Philadelphia fans. Although the Fusion was known for making ridiculous comebacks in the past, it felt almost impossible, yet somehow it wasn’t. I’m not quite sure what the Fusion’s coaches could have told the players during halftime, but they looked like a completely new team at this point, revitalized and full of new energy. The map played almost the same way as the previous two, with the only difference being that the Fusion was now the team obliterating Paris. With an incredible defense on Blizzard World, Paris was unable to get a single point on their attack, giving the Fusion their first map of the series. The next map was a bit closer, but Fusion managed to have the edge as Carpe was playing extremely well at this point. Now the score was tied up at 2-2, leaving it to the final map, Oasis, to determine the winner.

Oasis played out as a microcosm of the match as a whole. Paris demolished to win the first point of the map, and the Fusion did the same thing to win the second point. The team that captured the next point would win the match. The fighting when back and forth, each team trading blows and winning fights. The capture progress was not at 99% for each team, entering overtime; the last team to remain on the point would be the victors. First, both teams managed to kill three players on the enemy team, with Philly currently in control of the point. It was almost entirely even, nobody could have predicted what would happen next. 

Last Point of Oasis

Both teams eliminated another player, but by now each team had reinforcements of their players who died earlier spawning back in. Carpe managed to get a few more kills, but Xzi managed to take out FunnyAstro from the Fusion, and then ran and shot a well-placed rocket to kill Philly’s tank player that was attacking his own team’s support, skewing the fight back in Paris’ favor. Carpe managed to get a kill on Paris’ support line, however, at this point Xzi was in full control of the fight, killing his counterpart on the Fusion, Ivy, as soon as he made it back to the capture point. At this point, both teams had started to build up ultimates and were using them to counter each other, leading to both Paris and Fusion losing their main tank; almost back to an even fight; except Paris had one more ultimate they charged in time, which gave everyone on their team extra health for a short time. Paris capitalized on this to use the extra health to wipe out the Fusion, and although Carpe managed to get a few kills in this time, it wasn’t enough to spin the fight back in his team’s favor. In the end, it was Paris that won one of the closest, most intense overtime fights in Overwatch League history.

Watch the very last fight here!

Civic Issue Blog 3: Deliberations

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The deliberation I helped moderate was, “Sentenced to Rehabilitation: Rehumanizing the Prison System,” and the ones I attended were, “The Art of Swiping Right: A Discussion of Dating in the Digital Era,” and, “Let’s Not Beat Around the Bush” How Can We Fight Stereotypes in Porn?”

 

One thing that was strong about every deliberation I saw was the weighing of pros, cons, and trade-offs among different solutions. Every approach was given ample time to discuss its main idea, strong aspects of it, and drawbacks/unintended consequences that could result from it. It never felt like the moderation of the discussion was skewed towards one approach or another, even if the audience clearly supported one over another, which helped the deliberation stick to its true goal of understanding everyone’s thoughts.

 

An aspect I really liked about our deliberation was how we brainstormed a wide variety of ways to address the problem. Within certain approaches, we would think of potential problems with our solution and think of different ways of solving it. For example, with our approach of increasing education in prison, we ran into the issue of lack of teachers and brainstormed a list of different ways to increase the supply of educators or incentivize current teachers to work in prisons. I noticed a similar trend in the porn deliberation, as the topic of implementing better sex education in schools was discussed under many different perspectives and many different possible curriculums for different age groups. In the Dating one, I felt like the discussion mostly focused on individual views on each approach, rather than a multitude of different ways to address the issue, which brought the conversation to be more in terms of individual ideals and core values, which isn’t a bad thing.

 

Another thing that stuck out to me in the porn deliberation was the discussions of personal and emotional experiences, as well as known facts. During the approach about sexual education, participants recollected upon their experience with it during their academic careers. This discussion brought about the shared ideas that our current sex education program is ineffective, tends to avoid discussing actual issues, and is often treated as a joke. After, statistics were brought up that confirmed these ideas, which made the entire discussion seem extremely relevant and informative. From my memory, most of our deliberation was about hypothetical ideas and values and logical steps that spring from them, rather than relying heavily on many personal experiences themselves, which resulted in a different type of discussion.

 

Another strong aspect of the deliberations was ensuring mutual comprehension among participants. Within both the porn and our deliberation, I noticed that either moderators or other attendees would ask clarifying questions about what was just said, which helped to further the overall understanding of the group. For example, in our discussion, I remember there was confusion about how funds could be redirected to the prison system without increasing taxpayer money, and someone talked about how budget reform could take away money from large pieces of spending, such as the military and bureaucracy, and this could be shifted to prison reform. I did not notice this very heavily in the dating deliberation, and it seemed like when there was potential confusion about what someone said the moderators would sometimes move on to a separate topic without resolving the issue, or another participant would say something on their mind that was unrelated to the previous response.

 

Adequate speaking distribution was something that I felt could have been worked on for all three of the deliberations I saw. In our one, there was a little corner that was kind of isolated from the discussion, and there was not much conversation that resulted from there. Within the porn and dating discussion, there was an extremely large amount of people, which also led to the problem of not everyone talking in the discussion. Within our deliberation, we did try to avoid the issue by directing questions towards a specific side of the room, but there was no such effort within either of the other groups. I think this could have been better solved by having more questions that everyone answers, similar to how everyone went around and stated their personal stake in the issue. This would ensure everyone gets a minimum amount of discussion times, at the cost of increasing the amount of time on a question though.

 

Finally, all the participants in the deliberations listened carefully to what others said, even during a disagreement. Everyone was respectful to each other and took the questions and content very seriously and discussed their views in a mature manner. I remember in our discussion, with the topic of voting rights, participants had clearly conflicting views but were still able to talk through their values and reach a point of common understanding among each other. I was especially surprised how during the porn deliberation and dating one (which discussed Tinder a lot), nobody made immature jokes despite the topics opening themselves up to it; everyone stayed on topic and was willing to discuss the issues.

 

Overall, all the deliberations were very informative and helped to educate me to form stronger decisions on each issue. Although they did not change any of my core values, the insight gleaned from the discussions was able to reinforce my own views and understand the viewpoints of others.

Passion Blog 5: Introduction of Hero Pools to the Overwatch League

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Going into week 5 of the Overwatch League, hero pools are being introduced. Essentially, every week 1 tank, 1 support, and 2 attack heroes will be banned, and no teams can pick either of those characters. The bans take any hero with a pick rate of 10% or higher and are randomly banned for each role. In this blog, we will talk about how the current hero pools will affect the current metagame in the Overwatch League, and predictions for potential team compositions teams may run. For week 5, the tank Reinhardt, support Moira, and attackers McCree and Widowmaker are banned.

Hero Pool Bans for Week 5

 

First, Reinhardt, who had the highest playtime out of any hero in the League so far, has been banned. He was run before for his ability to shield his teammates and push into another team, so teams will either seek to use a different tank to mirror the same playstyle or to run a different composition. The only two characters who could be run in a similar way to Reinhardt are Orissa and Sigma, however, both of these have much less power to prevent damage for their team. Orissa’s shields are stagnant for about 8 seconds and have much less health than Reinhardt’s, and Sigma’s shield is more of a reaction tool, and also has less health, so it is unlikely for them to be run individually. This means dive or double shield compositions are more likely.

Reinhardt with Shield

 

In a dive composition, characters with high mobility and high burst damage are run in order to pick a specific target on the enemy team, and “dive” them to eliminate them. The tanks that fit this playstyle are a D.Va, for her defense matrix and rapid boosters that allow her to move quickly, and either a Winston or Wrecking Ball, as they have high vertical mobility and can output lots of damage. For teams less comfortable with dive, they may run double shield, as it can cover up for the lack of team shielding caused by a lack of Reinhardt. In this composition, an Orissa and a Sigma are both played, with alternating shield placements to cut off damage from the enemy team. The teams will likely run either of these compositions based on their main tank; if he is good at Winston or Wrecking Ball then dive will be played, and if not Double Shield is more likely.

DV.a holding her Defense Matrix, which can stop enemy fire

 

For attack heroes, we have an interesting situation where McCree and Widowmaker were banned. Both of these characters fulfill the role of a ranged “hitscan” hero, which means that when the character fires their gun there is no delay for the bullet to travel to the target. The other character type is “projectile,” and these characters have a delay from when they shoot for the objects they fire to travel to their target. With the two most impactful hitscan heroes being banned, it opens up teams to run Pharah, an aerial character who shoots projectile rockets, but is easily countered by strong hitscan heroes. The only other character who fills a similar hitscan role is Ashe, however she is in an extremely weak state and easy to counter, but may still be run by teams trying to counter an enemy Pharah. Because she is more of a dive hero, we may see Pharah alongside other dive heroes, like Doomfist, Genji, and Tracer, depending on the map.

 

Example of Pharah Flying Above the Ground in game

 

Another character we will see lots of playtime from is Mei, the attacker who has the current most playtime in the League because she has already proved herself to be extremely powerful in her ability to isolate enemies and slow them down. She was typically paired with McCree, but since he is banned Reaper is likely to be the character pick with a Mei, for his large close range damage with his shotguns. For longer ranged maps, the Reaper would likely be swapped for a Hanzo, as he is a character with a lot of range and potential damage. Especially for teams running double shield compositions, these two would be a very strong attack line.

Mei’s Ice Wall Ability

 

Finally, in the support slot, there is a much less interesting change. Moira, a support character with just over 10% playtime, was banned. Most of the successful teams have been running a support line of Ana, for her high single-target healing output and ability to stun a single enemy for a large amount of time, and Lucio, for his large area healing and his ability to increase the speed of his teammates. Moira is a character that teams tend to swap to for an overtime push or to stall on an objective in the game but tends to be less impactful than the other supports so she is played much less. The only change we will see is a boost in Mercy playtime, as she is typically paired with a Pharah to boost her damage and heal from the air.

Mercy Damage Boosting a Pharah

 

Overall, the hero bans should provide more variety in the team compositions that are being run, as they ban some of the overplayed and powerful characters. This will reward the teams with more flexible players who are able to play many different heroes and hurt those who are unable to play heroes other than what is considered powerful. The matches this weekend will again be streamed on YouTube on the Overwatch League, so tune in to see how they play out!

Schedule of Matches for Week 5