Week 11 of the Overwatch League has extremely one sided. Out of the 9 matches played, in 5 of them the losing team did not win a single map. This week, the dps McCree and Widowmaker were banned, which left the teams with very limited options if they wanted to run a hitscan based character. The most popular tank, Reinhardt, was also out of rotation this week, along with the support character Brigette. This led to some teams, such as the Los Angeles Valiant, running some team compositions that have been utilized in the Overwatch League. For this blog entry, we will discuss two of the closer games of the week: The Battle for LA between the Los Angeles Gladiators and the Los Angeles Valiant, and last season’s champions the San Francisco Shock against the Dallas Fuel.

Hero Pool for Week 11

First was the LA Gladiators vs the Valiant. The Valiant stuck with running an extremely unorthodox revolved around the DPS character Ashe, who has historically had an extremely low playtime in the Overwatch League. They also used Torbjorn as the second DPS character, Orissa and Dva as the tanks, and Ana and Mercy as the supports. This team composition relied heavily on the Orissa to pull the enemy team together, and then either the Dynamite ability from Ashe or Torbjorns Molten Core to induce large amounts of burn damage. The other major strength was that with a Mercy damage boosting the Ashe, it allows her to secure kills on low health targets with a single headshot, and when a skilled player like KSP is playing the character it led to a great amount of success.

LA Valiant Team Composition

Prior to the match, the Gladiators were viewed as the clear favorites for the match, but due the untraditional play by the Valiant caught them off guard, and led to the score eventually reaching 2-2 and needing to go to a fifth tie-breaker map. The Gladiators narrowly won the map, however after this map their overall strength seems much lower due to the lack of adaptability of the team against different enemy strategies. To make matters worse, most of the Gladiators were playing extremely poorly, with the exception of Space. With his incredible play, he put the team on his back and dragged them over the finish line, despite his teammates continually making mistakes. Hopefully in the future the team will be able to play with more cohesion in their teamwork, which can ease the pressure off of Space to be the MVP for each game.

Space (Indy Halpern), the MVP of the Gladiators for the match

In the Dallas Fuel vs San Francisco Shock, the Fuel narrowly lost 2-3 to the Shock. The Fuel were a lot like the Gladiators this week, in that the team as a whole made many mistakes, except they relied on their teams’ carries to win them fights. For this team, it is their DPS line of Decay and Doha; these two have been having stellar performances, and have to be rated as one of the top DPS lineups in all of the Overwatch League. They would manage to pick off members of the Shock in what seemed to be an unwinnable fight, and somehow turn it back around in their favor. In the end, however, the Shock was able to adapt their play to focus on countering the Fuel’s DPS line, particularly thanks to Choihyobin’s great tank play. He was able to block many engages from Doha and Decay, and absorb the damage from their powerful abilities. The adaptability of the Shock to change their playstyle on the fly, unlike the Gladiators were in their game, is what helps to differentiate them to be at championship caliber. For the Fuel, they were the heavy underdogs going into the match, so it was good to see them perform well against the powerhouse that is the Shock. If they keep up this level of play, they should be on pace to reach the League playoffs.

Doha’s great Pharah play to help them attack against the Shock’s defense

After last week’s confusing matches of each Chinese team beating one and losing to one, this week solidified which teams were truly better than others. Philadelphia Fusion, Shanghai Dragons, and the Los Angeles Gladiators seem to be some of the strongest teams that played last weekend.

First, we will talk about the Shanghai Dragons. They competed against the two Chinese teams that hadn’t played against yet, the Hangzhou Spark and the Chengdu Hunters. They won both their maps in a dominating fashion, only losing a single map to Chengdu and not losing any to Hangzhou. The DPS duo of Fleta and Lip had a lot of highlight plays, but the true carry of the team was their main support, Leejaegon. He was protecting his other support play very well, and constantly disrupting the enemy team when they tried to engage. For example, in this clip, we see Leejaegon knock an enemy support off the map, as well as finish off Chengdu’s main tank, to close out the fight for his own team. Stand1 and Void also played well as tanks, blocking enemy ultimates as well as hitting their own. We will have to see how Shanghai compares against the other top teams to accurately place them within the top 5, but they certainly deserve a spot within it.

Leejaegon’s elimination of enemy support and main tank

Philadelphia Fusion only played one match this week, against the Washington Justice, who was defeated 3-0. The match had both teams playing a fairly unpopular hero, Torbjorn, with it being a match of Corey on the Justice against Carpe of the Fusion. Carpe certainly had the better of Corey in most of the matchups, shutting down the enemy turret as constantly spraying lava on the tanks of the Justice. The most notable thing from the match up was the incredible team synergy of the Fusion. So many of their great plays were from setups of multiple players of the team. For example, at one point Poko launched his ultimate into the enemy team, with Sado earthshattering 3 of the Justice on the payload. The enemy Reinhardt, however, was not shattered and could block the entire combo, however, Heesu (in his debut game nonetheless) managed to land a hack on him at the same time, leading to a team wipe for the Fusion.

Poko’s D.Va bomb leading to a team wipe

Although LA Gladiators doesn’t have an amazing record at 2-2, they’ve only lost to two of the top teams, that being the Vancouver Titans and Seoul Dynasty. This week, they annihilated the Dallas Fuel, and last week they beat last season’s champions, the San Francisco Shock. They aren’t the best team in the league, but from watching their performances so far I would put them in the bottom of the top 5. Their signing of OGE as the main tank was an incredible pickup, as we watched him demolish his old team in a convincing fashion. The support line of Biggose and Shaz has always been a consistently great as well, often landing strong first kills and making sure not to overlay their ultimates in the same fight. With a little bit of work, this team could easily become championship level, but they are just out of it for now.

OGE landing a great Earthshatter for his team to capitalize on

The other top teams who did not play this weekend are the Vancouver Titans, New York Excelsior, and Seoul Dynasty. Out of these, we will only see Vancouver play next week, but in the future, any of the matchups with any of the teams mentioned in the blog should be a great fight.

Week 8 was Overwatch League’s first time being hosted fully online. There were a few technical issues, such as the audio sometimes only coming from one ear, or the casters’ cats walking over their keyboards. Overall though, it was a success, with even higher viewership numbers than the average, potentially due to the number of people who are quarantined. For this blog, we will talk about the results for a few of the games!

The first notable thing that happened was that the dominant champions of season 2, who were currently undefeated this season, lost both of their matches this weekend. First, they were against the Los Angeles Gladiators and got absolutely destroyed by LA’s dive composition. With a core of OGE on Wrecking Ball, Mirror on Doomfist, and Birdring on Tracer constantly diving the supports of Shock and causing the enemies’ team collapse. The Shock was trying to force Rascal to play Mei, however, this hero pick was countered heavily by the Gladiators and did not work out.

In the Shock’s second game, they were against the LA Valiant. The teams played closer to a mirror composition, running and McCree, Reinhardt, and Zarya. San Francisco played a bit better in this game than yesterday, however, Valiant’s Zarya and McCree, McGravy and KSF, were outclassing their counterparts on the Shock. When this happened, the Shock tried to run a similar composition to what the Gladiators ran to beat them the day before, however it seemed like they had not practiced in much and lacked teamwork and focus with it. This led the Shock to their second loss this season.

Last week, we discussed the teams that would be playing for the first time this weekend, including the 4 Chinese teams: Shanghai Dragons, Hangzhou Spark, Guangzhou Charge, and Chengdu Hunters. I originally planned to talk about which of the four I thought was the strongest, however, they all seem to be at relatively the same level. Chengdu beat Shanghai, who beat Guangzhou, who beat Hangzhou, who beat Chengdu, in a weird cycle. If I had to pick which team would be the strongest, I would pick Chengdu, as they had the most convincing win, and had the closest loss. Their DPS lineup of Jinmu and Baconjack was EXTREMELY dominant, however, the team as a whole was fairly inconsistent. After playing a good map, they would sometimes look like a completely different worse team directly after. If they can consistently play well, which they have the potential to do, they could go very far in the league.

Example of Chengdu’s inconsistency: Jinmu kills 4 of the enemy team, but then runs into the environmental traffic and dies to a car

The last team I want to talk about is the Seoul Dynasty. This was the team I predicted to be very strong last week, and they certainly performed up to the hype, with 3-0 full wins against the Valiant and Gladiators (who both beat the last season’s champions!) Now that Profit finally had a good team, he played as well as the world-class DPS player he has been praised as. He put up an incredible stat line of 15 final blows per 10 minutes while dying less than twice in the same amount of time! It was extremely hard to find any weaknesses in the play of Seoul; they were like a well-oiled machine dismantling the enemy teams with ease. So far, they could easily be a pick to make it and potentially win the championships.

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.

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!

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

Last Saturday, I attended the Overwatch League match in Philadelphia, to watch Philadelphia Fusion vs Washington Justice. The energy in the room was incredible, with the crowd cheering extremely loud and jumping up at every good play made by the Fusion, with constant booing whenever the Justice did well. There was a single person near me wearing a Justice jersey, and almost everybody in the crowd would yell and point at him whenever they lost a fight in the game.

The Singular Washington Fan

The game opened on the Control map Nepal. On the first point, the Fusion lost the point at 99% to capture, and the Justice got the come back to win the round. On the next point, the Fusion decisively won to the enjoyment of the crowd, putting the map score at 1-1; the next round would decide who gets the first overall match point. The entire round was extremely back and forth; every time Fusion won a fight, Justice would win the next. Eventually, each team had 99% on the capture point, and Justice was currently up in the fight to the dismay of the fans. Going into overtime, Carpe on the Fusion switched to Widowmaker, a sniper character who is not a common pick at this point in the game, but and he managed to kill nearly the entire team, clutching the first map win for the team.

The next map was the escort map, Havana, and overall Washington outplayed the Fusion, with Corey from the Justice consistently flanking behind the Fusion and killing their support backline. There wasn’t many standout plays from either team.

The match was now tied, with the next map being the hybrid map King’s Row. Justice was attacking first, and the Fusion held for almost the entire 4 minutes due to the heroic plays by their main tank Sado, however, Justice was able to capture the point and pushed the payload almost to the end of the map. The Fusion was able to stop their push, but this now meant that to win the map they had to capture the first point and completely push the payload to the final position. On their turn to attack, the Fusion quickly captured the first point, and with a small amount of resistance by the Justice, were able to fully push the payload and win the map, bringing the score to 2-1 in their favor.

At this point, if the Fusion won the next map, Temple of Anubis, they would secure the match win against the Justice in front of all their fans in Philadelphia. The Fusion attacked first, quickly capturing both points on the map. Next was the Justice; they struggled to capture the first point and appeared to be unable to capture the second point. However, on the last fight, the Fusion pushed up far past the point, and Ark from the Justice snuck past and captured the final point alone. Now, to win the game the Fusion had to defend against the Justice’s next attack, and then successfully capture the next point. The Fusion did just that, and the crowd went wild, cheering for their home team.

Overall, it was a great experience to go to one of the games live. Seeing how energetic the atmosphere was, and cheering in a group together for my favorite team was extremely fun.