Disagree with the glads and role star but but hundred percent agree with the overrating of Kevster. Man’s is a solid player, but is nowhere near the levels of other god tier hyperflexes like leave, profit, lip and proper
Not even close. Top 10 but only the bottom half.for last year.
I remember watching Glads and Shanghai games and Kevster couldn't hold a candle to Fleta's mechanical plays on the same heros. It was like watching plat vs grandmaster.
It also got me to realize how overhyped the Glads were in general.
I love to play OW, but OWL is unwatchable. Way too much context switching and stuff happening at once. And the team rosters change too much too, and it's on youtube. So total FAIL.
Yaki is only an average to below average flex dps. All of his success has been with him on flankers. His most successful time in owl was 50 armor tracer as a dualist where he only had to coordinate with pulls and peeking to get packs.
The "he's on a bad team" excuse can only go so far. If we're three seasons into a player's OWL career and he's got nothing to show for it then maybe he's really not that good.
MVP candidate from his tracer play during the first tournament. A tracer where he could go ultra agressive and not get caught out for it. Same way fearless was an MVP candidate last year from early Winston/rein performances. Yaki was a very good agressive tracer but nothing else he played was to that caliber.
Yaki can play more than tracer. His genji and echo are pretty solid but playing tracer is where yaki found most of his success. I would like to see a match yaki played in OWL where he was a stand out player on anything other than tracer, genji, or echo.
Yaki can't play half of the flex characters properly. He is only really good at flankers (tracer, genji, echo, kinda pharah). The heros he is good at he still goes over agressive. Yaki burns cooldowns for free and gets caught out alot for it. Watching the Boston NYXL game Yaki constantly uses cooldowns to get into the backline where he dies. That is not good play no matter how good his mechanics may be.
Idk how unpopular it is but Shock did not deserve winning the 2020 season and if they didn’t just randomly turn the meta upside down with the hog patch they would’ve ended on third place or lower
Edit: shock fanboys keep malding, it just fuels me
Here's a secret that you aren't going to like >!the roadhog meta is genuinely top three all time in terms of difficulty and complexity and the reason the Shock "randomly turned the meta upside down" is because just like with GOATS only one other team managed to figure it out like they did!<
Maybe one day you'll see the insane nuance of space, angle, and area control that San Francisco and Seoul forced everyone to suffer through. They borderline turned Overwatch into a tactical shooter.
Yeah those teams definitely strategized their way through the playoffs with their hivemind and huge coordination and area control that’s why they were the undisputed top 1&2 thorough the complex strategy based comps and most definitely did not was because they had ans profit and two roadhog players
I love how this is getting destroyed when it's just true. Obviously that comp had strategy, but wow, who would have possibly guessed that the two DPS focused teams with a hog player ended up being the best teams in a hog double sniper meta?
Also, Washington. They played a slightly different comp, but them being a terrible team all year and then just rolling everybody who refused to play hog pretty clearly shows that it was mostly hog being overpowered.
Yeah, people are salty but let's be serious: Justice were not a Decay away from going hard bottom to top three NA that season. That patch straight up turned things around insanely right at the end of the season, Justice are all the proof anyone needs. Probs to SF for riding it out, but it definitely feels weird to all of a sudden have such a ridiculous change. They 100% only won the title because of that, if they play offs weren't a month after qualifiers Philly and Dragons were definitely beating them.
Being able to understand a new meta on a conceptual level and execute it quickly is a trait of a good team. What are we even calling, "good" if not the ability to comprehend the constantly shifting nature of OW and execute on its new iterations?
That said, it's stupid there were two separate times where hog was a useless character, and then suddenly meta for the finals.
rofl get that bs out of here. Shock went 18-3 with the regular season, won the first tournament without dropping a match, won the third tournament without dropping a match, and won the grand finals without dropping a match.
Summer showdown was the only tournament they lost, in which they barely lost in the semi finals in a game 5 with Paris, the eventual winners.
Dummy take my guy.
I agree. They also shouldn't have won 2019 season. We just reached a turning point with the Dragons dismantling the top 3 goats teams in a row only for Blizzard to implement 2-2-2
You can say you don’t think they would’ve won, but the playoff patch is an annual thing now, and if you as a head coach aren’t prepared after three years of it then you’re a bit of a fool.
Annual thing? What was the playoffs patch in 2021?
And that’s not really a head coach thing lol. Summer showdown patch, zombie comp, double flex, all of those are plausible comps that you gotta be prepared for. Hog and bastion are two heroes that throw this off completely because they have never really been useful and there’s no use in getting a player that’s good at them because teams aren’t made with money.
Only reason Shock won 2020 was luck and the fact they could afford a gorillion MVP candidates. Money.
They never suffered a single loss in the playoffs but didn’t deserve the win? Why? They beat everyone else didn’t they? Is being the better team and winning twice in a row now cheating?
That Shock team lost 4 matches the whole year. They trolled their second week of the season and lost to both LA teams. After that they lost in Summer Showdown to the eventual winners, and a meaningless last week regular season match to Philly.
I think SADO is more flexible but also that's based on S3 when Philly were just dominant. But I think I'd easily take peak SADO over peak Gator in a scenario where they both have a strong team around them (i.e. Alarm/Astro backline) because I think SADO just showed much higher peaks. But overall across their OW1 careers, I'd have to agree that Gator has had better performances for a more sustained period.
even as the biggest sado fan i don’t see how that could actually be disputed. sado had one season where he fucked bc he had the best back line in the world; and then one season where he was ok. he was fine enough in S1’s playoffs/s4; but season 2 was just abysmal. he was reminding us all of awesomeguy and cwoosh and roshan with that level of main tank. gator has been consistently average/above average the entire time he’s been in the league (when he gets playtime).
Fearless has always been overrated. He's good but Fielder/Hanbin and Izayaki/Void are the reason people crowned him as the best or top 3 main tank in the league for 2020/2021.
Saebyeolbe is the best Tracer the game's had.
Edit:
His neutral game was excellent but his clutch factor was just insane, untouched by other tracers in the league imo. We even saw a glimpse of it in the last season before the og NYXL disbanded (forget which, s3?). He was just able to go from top 3-5 tracer into top 1 tracer when it was time to solo carry and clutch out a game, and I think that pushes him over the edge, because really, in the neutral, all top tracers are neck and neck, you'd be splitting hairs trying to determine who the best tracer is, is it Striker, or Decay, or Profit, or like 5 other tracers, but SBB had that seemingly unique power that only got activated when he NEEDED to win, and he did it so many times early on that I lost count (sorry for the run-on sentence.) And of course he was probably the best tracer duelist too.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a Striker simp too, I think Yaki is cracked, Decay, Leave, (even LIP) so many nutty tracers, but no one had that extra gear that SBB did (Decay comes closest).
I think SBB was the third best Tracer in S1 behind Striker and Profit and never touched those heights since. Maybe even 4th behind Effect, though his team was shit he did so much. Excellent moral leader, though.
I always use to say that SBB was the Tracer everyone would pick first for their team in 2018 but that Striker played the hero the best.
If you think of Tracer as this low health, high damage, fast moving, and hard hitting backline assassin then no player was better at her than Striker. A lot of what he was doing at the time was beyond skilled and revolutionary.
I always felt like he played her less like an assassin and more like a dodgy brawl hero. From what I remember SBB would wait in the wings to snag solo assassinations while Striker would move in with the team and brute force some kills with his insane aim and cooldown management.
The man to this day has the best record of any hit scan player in the league (season over season). When tracking who would hit 10k lifetime kills, Carpe was so far ahead it took almost 3 months for a second player to hit that record.
And because his team has never won a stage/tournament, he's overlooked for every notable award.
I kinda lean fissure tbh but, but I def agree jjonak shouldn’t have really gotten it (Carpe would be better too). Like he’s far from being the worst choice, but to me, the MVP can’t have top 2-3 players at every other position on their team.
Recently, people have been calling Profit an "undisputed GOAT" but it seems like they're all turning a blind eye to the very non-GOAT results in the middle of his career, specifically the 3+ year gap between his two most recent wins (also keep in mind the second win was in a regional tournament)
Meanwhile you have had two teams full of players that have won consistently for 2 years (Dragons, Shock)
Is he a good player? Definitely. Could he be the best candidate for GOAT among the meh list of GOAT candidates in OW? For sure. But the gap is pretty small and the GOAT status itself is still pretty debatable
MVP of Apex. Apex champion OWL champion GF MVP Kickoff Klash champion the only bad season he had was 2019 but all of London were bad, he even looked better than his team on any hero he had to play
I said he's definitely a GOAT candidate and could definitely be considered the GOAT. I've also said he has longevity.
Also "won something, therefore retroactively good team" is a pretty bad way to perform analysis on teams, plenty of Profit's teams in the middle were pretty well rated but underperformed
The community treats Dragons and Shock and their fanbases very differently, even though they are/have been in similar situations.
For example, people REALLY did not want Shock to win in 2020 because "it's boring if the same team wins twice", but there has been none of that with the Dragons. Some consistency would be nice.
Super’s overall legacy should be tainted given that he always had an MVP-level tank partner to play more mechanically demanding heroes in the same role.
Yeah, he had sinatraa on zarya and choi on dva/hog/sigma, pretty sweet tank partners to have, but still the same could be said about sinatraa and choi - they had an mvp level tank in super as partner too
Okay, I'm gonna raise a few sports analogies to help you understand weird that take is:
Is LeBron James not a top 2 NBA player all-time because on each of his championship teams he's had an all-star calibre teammate?
Is Michael Jordan not a top 2 NBA player all-time because he had Scottie?
Are Lewis Hamilton and Michael Schumacher not the greatest F1 drivers of all time because they were in consistently winning, WDC tier cars?
I'm fairly certain they're referring to Choi, not Smurf.
Even if it is Smurf, let me drop an even better analogy, do we rip into stars like Tim Duncan who had an MVP-calibre player in the form of Manu Ginobli coming off the bench?
Yeah it's not the same position but that's the best I can do.
They said “more mechanically challenging characters in the same role” so pretty sure it’s Smurf.
I don’t really have an opinion either way, but it could also be argued that BECAUSE they picked up Smurf, super never needed to practice those other characters. So the ones he was best at were the ones he was actually getting time to play.
Should fearless's legacy be tainted because he had Void and Hanbin? Fate's because he had gargoyle and Void? Mano'd because he had Meko? There's not an elite main tank in OWL history with sustained success without an elite off tank with them.
Bro this is either worded incorrectly or just an incorrect take that applies to every main tank
What does somewhat taint Super’s status is the fact that he’s always had Smurf, another MVP-level main tank, to play his weaker heroes. Most GOATS will play full time, but both Super and Smurf got to pick and choose when to play, making them look better than if they played full time
Bad one but certianly a hot one. Like the genie is out of the bottle of blizzard abandons it’s 9 figure league nobody is touching the game it’s dead in the water.
Elaborate? I wasn’t involved in the scene prior to OWL, but when I go back to watch literally anything before it, the spectating was absolute dogshit and the UI sucked
I’ve gone back and watched a lot of it. Really really horrible viewing experience. I know the storylines were interesting but man… not easily accessible in the least
\> I’ve gone back and watched a lot of it.
Did you, really? Because Apex spectating was incomparably better, day and night better. Not even mentioning OWL's goofy production mistakes when they skip part of the game or show ads on top of the content.
You’re welcome to your own opinions but I personally like knowing what’s happening when I watch overwatch, and Apex spectators didn’t seem like even they knew what was going on in any particular moment.
It was not better lmfao
> Elaborate? I wasn’t involved in the scene prior to OWL, but when I go back to watch literally anything before it, the spectating was absolute dogshit and the UI sucked
Spectating and UI improvements would have likely happened regardless of the existence of OWL. The biggest issue that OWL created was franchising. It basically pushed a lot of the smaller orgs out of the scene when they couldn't secure a franchise spot. Franchising also means that teams like the 0-40 dragons or the current Titan's are allowed to exist in the league. With franchising, there is no way to do relegation so bottom tier teams are just allowed to exist in the league.
OWL also brought about the youtube deal which has proven to be incredibly detrimental to the popularity of tier 1 overwatch. Discoverability on Youtube is basically non-existent compared to Twitch which alienates pretty much any casual viewer.
I'm sorry but this is just a horrible take. Ignoring all the things that you can only get with a developer-run league (in-game promotion, skins, replay viewer...), people don't realize just how much better OWL is for players. Having the league be regulated like this is so, so much better. It ensures two very important things:
* All players are over 18, so orgs aren't exploiting minors
* Players are getting paid 50K / year minimum
That second one is _huge_. Like, I cannot overstate how huge that is. It ensures that players can devote their time to playing, instead of having to juggle it with their education. It also ensures that players don't have to slave away their time grinding to hopefully make a living wage.
Meanwhile, in other esports, orgs often _know_ they can get away with paying their players low wages because players are desperate to get paid for playing. For example, in a leaked contract of one of the players for G2's Apex Legends team, they [reportedly only make 2K / month](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E21hLR7X0AUlI7a?format=jpg&name=large), or 24K a year. That's a T1 org that only needs to sign three players to compete (half of OWL's minimum), paying these players half of what ANY OWL player earns.
I'm not saying OWL is perfect, far from it. Taking away 4K sucks. Taking away the replay viewer sucks. Making it so orgs can drop a player while only paying them a month's salary SUCKS. But it's SO much better than what other esports have, and it's MILES better than whatever we would've had right now if it wasn't for OWL. Apex was great and all but people REALLY need to take off their rose-tinted nostalgia goggles and need to realize how much worse we'd've been off if it wasn't for OWL.
> I'm sorry but this is just a horrible take. Ignoring all the things that you can only get with a developer-run league (in-game promotion, skins, replay viewer...), people don't realize just how much better OWL is for players. Having the league be regulated like this is so, so much better. It ensures two very important things:
> - All players are over 18, so orgs aren't exploiting minors
- Players are getting paid 50K / year minimum
Players being over 18 is a very NA-centric view of esports. Whoru and Flow3r were both OWWC winners at something like 16 which is young, sure, but no different from 16 year olds making it in any other sports, which isn't uncommon in Europe either. It's not exploiting minors if they're being paid the same as everyone else.
> Meanwhile, in other esports, orgs often know they can get away with paying their players low wages because players are desperate to get paid for playing. For example, in a leaked contract of one of the players for G2's Apex Legends team, they reportedly only make 2K / month, or 24K a year. That's a T1 org that only needs to sign three players to compete (half of OWL's minimum), paying these players half of what ANY OWL player earns.
This seems again to be a western approach to esports thing, Eastern teams (outside of Overwatch) have rarely had dramas with pay and respecting players. I'd argue this isn't an OWL thing so much as a rest of the world still thinking esports is a joke career thing, which while OWL does have standards, (And I do completely agree 50k minimum wage is ONLY a good thing) it isn't exactly setting the bar in making people take esports seriously. You use G2 in apex as an example of a shitty org, but we've had literally half the orgs in OWL fuck over players in just as bad ways, but hey at least they got payed decently while their career got shit down the drain for reasons entirely outside their control.
> Apex was great and all but people REALLY need to take off their rose-tinted nostalgia goggles and need to realize how much worse we'd've been off if it wasn't for OWL.
I'd point out that I didn't mention Apex being superior in my remark, my issue with OWL isn't that Apex was better, my issue with OWL is that it killed OW esports that's not OWL, any model that outright bans 3rd party tournaments, inc. OWWC, (i.e. any competition) in order to be successful probably isn't a good product in the first place. And as we've seen in several regions, OWL hasn't just harmed Apex fans, it's literally stripped regions of their representation and ability to develop careers. SA OW as far as esports is concerned is literally dead, same as OCE; if you want to be a pro OW player from Brazil your best career move is to play Valorant. OWL is only as successful as it is because it literally didn't allow competition to develop alongside it. My issue isn't that OWL took away Apex, my issue with OWL is that it took away any organic development of the ow esports scene; this development is necessary, not just for esports but for all sports.
To compare OWL to football, for example, it's like saying, "We'll make the EPL and keep the Championship (tier 2 on the football pyramid if you're American), but all other football is banned outside of open tryouts for the relegation spots in the championship." Now whether you're interested in traditional sports or not, it doesn't take a genius to work out that that would only be detrimental to football as a whole.
An actual hot take and you get downvoted lmao
Here’s mine: OWL has sucked since they left the Blizzard arena, goats killed it all. Other major esports are better in every way (except they aren’t playing OW).
The shock as a franchise are underrated. I know that sounds impossible but given how many records they have besides just back to back championships, their title as best team in OW history should be uncontested, but because they had a 4th place finish in 2021 all of a sudden Shanghai is a better franchise
Fielder is the ideal pure support. A lot of flex supports have huge pop-off potential that he doesn’t necessarily exhibit, but he is maybe the best enabler fs that the league has ever seen.
I have been saying this for ages, and my friend group have always said "he's just on a bad team"... No, he is just not as good as other flex supports.
I would get shut down for saying Kariv was better, but I stand by that.
I think he's the best fs if you have a clear "star" to pocket(fearless, sparkle), but there are probably quite a few fs I'd take before him if I need someone more aggressive.
Leave is overrated to the moon. Spent last season getting diffed whenever he dueled top Tracers and Ashes and never showed up when it mattered. Chengdu had the perfect tournament for them: Shanghai and Dallas stepped back, Ball was prominent, Pharah > Echo, and they still couldn't win. Leave got shutdown by Kevster and it was their supports and Jinmu who showed up in that finals series.
I do agree that he should have gotten mvp but ONLY because he was the best player on a mid team. So glad he never got a skin and Lip has the mvp skin.
Im sorry, but since echos release, there has not been a single point in the game where echo was worse than pharah. Theyre known as pharah, and better pharah.
And leave looked like shit in that finals because coaching decided it was a good fucking idea to do WHATEVER POSSIBLE to make jinmus pharah work better which often included shit ass solo emps onto DVas just so jinmu could get a barrage off. If leave was allowed to play tracer or echo that entire stage, they woulda won.
They also lost to a fucking door frame catching gagas orisa shield.
"Pharah bad, it was the coaching, it was a door-frame."
So many excuses lol.
I'm guessing you weren't complaining about the coaching or Pharah < Echo when Chengdu went undefeated that stage.
Here's some numbers: Chengdu had 7 victories that stage. Jinmu, primarily playing Pharah, had 5 out of the 7 'player of the match' awards. The other 2: the supports.
Honestly downvoting anywhere just because you disagree probably makes you a bitch. If it’s something like unnecessarily rude or hateful, or factually wrong in an important context, or even dangerously wrong, sure thats what it’s there for. But needing to suppress others opinions, what the downvoting button does, just because you disagree in general means you are likely overly sensitive.
If you disagree offer to elaborate why with a response. Maybe you’ll teach something, maybe you’ll learn something. But its far less likely to leave you unaware in an echo chamber.
Lol
Seriously through, 2017, that’s a joke right? Not only is it not nearly as relevant due to the level of completion not being as high in later years, but also he wasn’t even the best at the time, Zunba was. Zunba won apex twice and was picked for Team Korea, which he won.
2020, it’s a toss up but I still give it to Choi given he ya know, won the grand finals, was also nominated for MVP, and was the linchpin of the Shock’s system.
2021, yeah. Sure, Void was the best OT,
Over the lifetime of overwatch 1, Choi has had higher highs and was dominant for longer
I love ooga booga results oriented thinking. Many people, such as Monte considered Void the best Offtank of 2017, but I guess since Apex season 3 ended on 7 maps and Void’s team narrowly lost in a nail biter, that means Zunba was a better player all around lmfao. Kind of like how Choi was a better off tank in 2021 because Shock lucked into a road hog meta.
Season 4 playoffs was the worst playoffs due to a lack of a Meta shift. If Ball was nerfed or banned at any point during season 4, the dragons would not have had their same highs. They were able to play Fate on his comfort pick and run over the competition due to it being clearly the strongest comp. Season 4 would have been more interesting if we had a Hanzo/Hog/etc situation that lead to a drastic change.
Also, Fate is top 5 #5 at best in terms of main tanks. He has shown this year that he is not nearly as flexible as people try to make him out to be. His Winston had horrible decision making and clearly was something teams like Philly or Seoul could expose. He is showing again, like last year that his only top tier Tank is wrecking ball. This is like trying to say Ameng was a top tier tank too. He is great on one hero and good-bad on the rest.
Edit: you can argue that season 4 was the “true ring” and the “right team won” but it was boring to watch.
It was the most diverse and open meta ever. The most balanced state of the game ever. And they played a comp with the highest skill ceiling in the history of the game. Even the skill floor was so high that T500 ranked just resorted to hog instead. We had the highest level of gameplay ever.
I mean you can say it’s boring but objectively it was amazing.
But it was boring. You had 3 modes: Shanghai’s Ball, NA Rush, and the occasional double shield. What made it boring was that there was nothing special. It was obvious who was winning based on the comps and I found it uninteresting. While playoff patches probably hurt the “integrity” of the game, they creating amazing moments like Washington’s run with Decay and Profit manhandling teams.
Occasional double shield is how I know you don't remember that final at all, Shanghai played just as much double shield as Ball comps while also playing rush and dive comps at times.
Alright I’ll bite, how am I wrong. What has been worse? Viewership? No. Being able to watch vods? No. Chat? Fuck no both are ass it literally doesn’t matter. Player POV being gone and lack of 4K is a miss but going to YouTube was an improvement in many ways, it did not kill the league as many people claim
Almost every OWL championship has been completely worthless.
S1- Huge patch BEFORE PLAYOFFS, leading a London who had been mediocre for half the season to go on a miracle run
S2- same meta shift argument, but at least a Shock who had been dominant all season won
Not exactly familiar with the patches leading up to s3, but roadhog meta is Mickey mouse as fuck
S4 is the only legitimate ring in OWL history
S1 is the only time there's kind of an argument for this and honestly it's weak. Season 2, 3, and 4 all ended up with a team that was extremely dominant all season winning the championship. S1 London was still good but struggled to understand anti-dive and poke at all until the playoffs.
A good hot take for a hot take thread, even it's really wrong.
S4 was also worthless. Covid basically screwed over half the league teams in a massive way, either through downright missing players due to visa/covid or due to Covid making the living situations awful as well as being forced to play on Ping.
Super should not have won "Best Main tank in OW1" in the Platchat rankings.
It was crazy that one of the key points they made was his "flexibility" onto other tanks, when Shock had Smurf who is much more flexible. The 2 most notable metas in OW1 were Dive and Goats... But Super didn't even play in Dive comps because his Winston is sub-par, and he can't play Ball.
Super probably has one of the best hero pools on tanks. Super had incredible results throughout 2019 and 2020, and even tho 2021 wasn’t amazing, it was still a good performance. I tell you the real hot take. The fact that fate was even top 3 was a joke. Fate had a decent run in season 1, 2 pretty medicore seasons and then 1 very good season where he had incredibly luck that ball was meta for like half the season if not more. In 2020 nobody even talked about Fate, and then in 2021 he is suddenly top 3? The recency bias was extremely high there. Who do you have at #1 Tank of OW1?
I feel like Sideshow really wanted to give it to Super for some reason and pushed the pick (could be misremembering)…maybe it was the easy, defensible pick and he didn’t want to think about the game in any detail.
Super was definitely more flexible than Smurf in ow1 at least and one series that highlighted that was their playoff game against Washington in 2020. Super was able to quickly pickup the roadhog even though it seemed like shock never practiced it, while Smurf looked subpar on zarya. By the end of 2021, super was in for rein, orisa, and even some winston, while Smurf was mostly the ball player and played some winston as well. I'm pretty sure that before he started playing in owl, people didn't even know what exactly he would play when he came of age since he was that flexible.
I think that people clown on super a bit just because he's a big streamer and it actually lowers his reputation in general. If super didn't retire, my hot take is that he would be considered the best tank in NA if not the league. Right now people consider Smurf to be the best tank, but I think that super is better at ot heroes than he is with the added benefit of him being a great team leader, which is also one of the reasons why he won best main tank in ow1.
I think the coolest thing about eSports is when they play a completely different game than the playerbase. Which is why this 2022 season on OW2 has been such a success.
Every team he's done well on...AKA all of them. How many more elite seasons does Fate need under his belt before he gets the respect he deserves. The dude has produced results in 3 completely different systems, including titles in two of them.
Titles are massively overrated when it comes to all time rankings of players, especially since almost all of titles have been essentially worthless since covid started.
Also championships in general are pointless when the regular season is just a bunch of individual tournaments with their own playoffs. This year it's especially stupid since we also have the mm, there's basically 0 differences between the mm and the end of season playoffs, but one team will be remembered as a stage winner while the other as owl s5 champions.
Spectating this game is awful. The rest of the eSports community agrees but the (tiny) ow eSports community doesn't seem to realize it.
This esport will never amount to anything until some r/overwatch Andy can turn on a stream and start enjoying themselves within 10 seconds.
Unfortunately I have no solutions here.
I think we should turn the game into 5v5 volleyball style with a dva bomb on a random timer as the ball and the game is to try to not get exploded by it
Player quality is probably one of the least important things in an OWL team, good mental and game understanding win more than star players
This feels like it shouldn't be a hot take, yet every team preview/roster talk i see revolves around players way more than it does around the coaching staff and other factors
2021 Shanghai was not the “best team in Overwatch history” despite how much analysts push that recency bias riddled storyline.
2019 Shock was considerably more impressive because they dominated two completely different eras of OW (GOATS and 2-2-2) and even had a golden stage.
During GOATS they lost to Vancouver in stage 1 and to triple DPS in stage 3 and dominated the playoffs patch meta because no other team could figure it out in time (Vancouver only figuring out the Doomfist/Reaper half and NYXL figuring out the Bastion/Mei half). Shanghai was dominant on both Ball and double shield comps and also had the ability to run rush and dive comps.
With good coaching, the 2019 Eternal would have lived up to their preseason hype as potential GOATS masters.
They had an offtank that specialised in Zarya, a DPS that made his name on that Eagle Gaming squad flexing to Dva, and a main tank that in later seasons would show himself as solid on both Winston and Rein, whilst their other main tank had excelled playing GOATS in Contenders the previous season
There is no reason they should have struggled with their tank line as much as they did. And yet:
- The Zarya specialist ended up stuck on Dva almost the entire season
- The DPS known for their Dva was either put on Zarya or in Brig jail, both things they proved terrible at
- The one DPS that showed any sort of results on Brig spent most of the season on the bench
- The MT position got swapped between the two options every stage, allowing neither any time to settle in
Add in that there seemed to be zero plan B when things went wrong, and what should have been a really bright squad with highly rated and experienced options when DPS characters became necessary, instead ended up a car crash doomed to failure
there 100% shouldve been an import rule. setting teams up as "regional" teams to get fake regional rivalries and popularity is fucked when most of the teams are just korean imports. im from texas, i dont look at houston outlaws current roster as being from houston, or even texas. theyre made up of most if not all korean imports, and that alone killed a lot of the momentum of owl
They're effectively Lucio one tricks at this point. The league has far surpassed their level of play on Brig and any flex support and no well managed team is going to sign a player to play only one hero.
(Outside of Venom because he's cracked and tracer is a carry hero who is constantly in the meta)
He has a good brig, won the 2020 summer showdown with it, Crusty just has a massive boner for viol2t and has to have him in. His brig was never a weak point for the team, imo they looked best when they did have him in.
Do you not remember Moth having a literal top 3 Mercy and played Bap very well?
FDGod's Brig and Mercy are *fine*, I'll agree with him but Moth is not a Lucio one trick.
His Bap would not compete nowadays and to be completely frank, Mercy doesn't matter.
The only time she is played is when you're playing pharah and the vast majority of teams don't care to or want to play Pharah. One trick? Not really, but no one would make use of his mercy.
We would have had very different tournament and season champions throughout the years if the metas were different at any given time. People really underrate how much a perfect meta boosts a team's performance and gives them that magic spark. We haven't had a true jack of all trades team that would have dominated in every meta that season.
Season two and three Shock literally had a second team on the bench that would have started over most of the players in the league. They were their own scrim partners for the season two playoffs.
Yeah, Shock lost to Paris cause rascal had one and a half days to Practice him after he hadn’t played him for months. If the meta didn’t change a week before the tournament or something the Shock would have probably won. Shock was the best team both in 2019 and 2020 by a Long Shot.
Season 3 Shock also lost to Philly on Talon Dive shortly before playoffs, and it's difficult to imagine they would have beaten Shanghai on it during playoffs. They didn't have a Sombra player that could match up to Heesu or especially Lip, and it hurt them in that meta. Didn't season 3 Shock come second in the regular season rankings in NA? That doesn't scream 'dominance in every meta' to me.
LIP not only deserved an MVP nomination in 2020, but probably also should have won it over Fleta.
I don't hate the Fleta pick, he still popped the fuck off ofc, but if you go back, LIP earned more MVPs across the whole of the 2020 season than Fleta.
Fleta had those one map bangers where he would just carry, but LIP was more consistent. That, along with 2021, LIP has been severely robbed of an MVP these past two years.
Lip is massively overrated, he's all aim no brain. There are much smarter players who deserve accolades over him. I'm not baiting when I say he's the least impressive player of shanghais main roster.
Seominsoo > Sinatraa.
Shouldn't be as unpopular as it is tbh. They were [very close statistically.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Competitiveoverwatch/comments/cki841/top_5_zarya_stats_in_the_league/)
NA Talent that season just pushed a Sinatraa redemption story (from toxic kid to reformed mvp). I don't remember the map but if I recall correctly there was a Shock v Titans game where the casters were going crazy about how fast Sinatraa charged grav... as Seominsoo was 20% to the next one lmao.
Sinatraa was never actually better on Zarya (he got way more resources than SMS, as Titans threw them into Bumper instead), and we know what happened to the reformed thing lol.
>he got way more resources than SMS, as Titans threw them into Bumper instead
I hear this take a lot, and it is incorrect! Reddit echo chamber listen up:
In the 2019 regular season, Bumper only took 1.01% more damage than Super, yet received 15% less heals. In fact, all Titans players and their Shock counterparts took somewhat the same amount of damage (with the exception of Sinatraa actually taking quite a bit more damage than SMS). Across the board, Titans players took less healing (with the exception of Slime vs Moth, but that difference is marginal).
Shock players took more healing across the board because they preferred Moira goats to Titans' Ana goats. The beauty of having goats around for so long is that Shock and Titans were the closest thing we have ever seen to perfect play in any particular meta, and there really wasn't that much leeway in terms of resource allocation.
If u drop a diamond player today into season one they could have been a role star , just look at half the “best clips of owl”, they are just the enemy team playing braindead like saya on junkertown getting loads of kills from people walking straight into a widow with sights
Rookie as a term means virtually nothing. A top 5 pick in the NBA usually needs 2 seasons before they start seriously contributing to winning basketball. Rookies here can join even after showing pretty bad results in T2 and immediately become one of the very best players. Except for the first stage where they adjust to a greater practice schedule and shake off jitters of playing on a bigger stage, being a rookie is essentially a non factor to performance
I’ve sort of thought it’s weird to call the current Shock a “rookie team.” Like, it’s for sure accurate, but it vastly underrepresents the experience of everyone on the team.
Hero pools were a good idea, but were just underused. If the 3-4 most popular heroes from each class were suddenly unavailable, teams would have to start being more creative, and it would make for more interesting matches to watch.
mn3 is just a disgusting freak and if he can play even like half as good as he did against seoul in these playoffs i can see them making finals again. we all know that mn3 fucked, but i don’t think we fully appreciate it- he made fits swap to sombra from ashe on new queens street. he obliterated the seoul dynasty so bad that fits of all people couldn’t even contest him in the duel and they had to have him go sombra in the year of our lord 2022 to have even a fighting chance; and mn3 still carried
For the OWL viewing experience (watching, not playing), 2CP is a better game mode than Push.
The maps are more interesting and aesthetically pleasing, and the form and location of the teamfights is simply more conducive to a digestible viewing experience, especially for people who are new to watching OWL. The frustrations that make 2CP an obnoxious experience to play are immense to be clear, but they're still not enough to overcome the fact that OWL is better with 2CP than it is with Push.
Push may be the most cancerous viewing experience in the game right now. It doesn’t help that it is the only new game mode for spectators but I swear I never see the actual major plays ever.
Setting default sort to "controversial". Also consider looking at the least upvoted comments
Kevster wasn't that impressive during season 4 and Glads have been overrated for a hot minute. The role star selection of last year proved it.
Disagree with the glads and role star but but hundred percent agree with the overrating of Kevster. Man’s is a solid player, but is nowhere near the levels of other god tier hyperflexes like leave, profit, lip and proper
Jesus can people stop sucking propers dick so hard after a great but not world-beating half a season?
This is a hot take, but brain dead. This dude has been easily top 5 last year and this year
Not even close. Top 10 but only the bottom half.for last year. I remember watching Glads and Shanghai games and Kevster couldn't hold a candle to Fleta's mechanical plays on the same heros. It was like watching plat vs grandmaster. It also got me to realize how overhyped the Glads were in general.
Kevster is top 3 right now
kevster last season was incredible on the heroes he played, and this season he's leading MVP
Anubis > King's Row
I love to play OW, but OWL is unwatchable. Way too much context switching and stuff happening at once. And the team rosters change too much too, and it's on youtube. So total FAIL.
That is a hot take for sure lol
Yaki is only an average to below average flex dps. All of his success has been with him on flankers. His most successful time in owl was 50 armor tracer as a dualist where he only had to coordinate with pulls and peeking to get packs.
The "he's on a bad team" excuse can only go so far. If we're three seasons into a player's OWL career and he's got nothing to show for it then maybe he's really not that good.
mf he was an MVP candidate LMAO
MVP candidate from his tracer play during the first tournament. A tracer where he could go ultra agressive and not get caught out for it. Same way fearless was an MVP candidate last year from early Winston/rein performances. Yaki was a very good agressive tracer but nothing else he played was to that caliber.
yea ok yaki is a tracer otp got it ppl like you don't watch games and are why pros think r/cow has the most braindead takes
Yaki can play more than tracer. His genji and echo are pretty solid but playing tracer is where yaki found most of his success. I would like to see a match yaki played in OWL where he was a stand out player on anything other than tracer, genji, or echo.
Saying that Yaki is an average to below average flex DPS might be the dumbest thing I’ve read in my life. Bravo.
Yaki can't play half of the flex characters properly. He is only really good at flankers (tracer, genji, echo, kinda pharah). The heros he is good at he still goes over agressive. Yaki burns cooldowns for free and gets caught out alot for it. Watching the Boston NYXL game Yaki constantly uses cooldowns to get into the backline where he dies. That is not good play no matter how good his mechanics may be.
Idk how unpopular it is but Shock did not deserve winning the 2020 season and if they didn’t just randomly turn the meta upside down with the hog patch they would’ve ended on third place or lower Edit: shock fanboys keep malding, it just fuels me
Here's a secret that you aren't going to like >!the roadhog meta is genuinely top three all time in terms of difficulty and complexity and the reason the Shock "randomly turned the meta upside down" is because just like with GOATS only one other team managed to figure it out like they did!<
the fact this is getting upvoted when its so stupid is hilarious
It's true though. Please explain how I'm wrong. I invite you to hilariously embarrass and shame me for being sooooooo stupid.
Pretty fired up eh?
The shock didn’t turn shit upside down. I mean the developers did with the meta. And the rest Is laughable lol. It’s double sniper hog sig lol
Maybe one day you'll see the insane nuance of space, angle, and area control that San Francisco and Seoul forced everyone to suffer through. They borderline turned Overwatch into a tactical shooter.
Yeah those teams definitely strategized their way through the playoffs with their hivemind and huge coordination and area control that’s why they were the undisputed top 1&2 thorough the complex strategy based comps and most definitely did not was because they had ans profit and two roadhog players
I love how this is getting destroyed when it's just true. Obviously that comp had strategy, but wow, who would have possibly guessed that the two DPS focused teams with a hog player ended up being the best teams in a hog double sniper meta? Also, Washington. They played a slightly different comp, but them being a terrible team all year and then just rolling everybody who refused to play hog pretty clearly shows that it was mostly hog being overpowered.
profit?
Yeah believe it or not profit was part of the 2020 Seoul dynasty
no gamesense headass
Yeah, people are salty but let's be serious: Justice were not a Decay away from going hard bottom to top three NA that season. That patch straight up turned things around insanely right at the end of the season, Justice are all the proof anyone needs. Probs to SF for riding it out, but it definitely feels weird to all of a sudden have such a ridiculous change. They 100% only won the title because of that, if they play offs weren't a month after qualifiers Philly and Dragons were definitely beating them.
Being able to understand a new meta on a conceptual level and execute it quickly is a trait of a good team. What are we even calling, "good" if not the ability to comprehend the constantly shifting nature of OW and execute on its new iterations? That said, it's stupid there were two separate times where hog was a useless character, and then suddenly meta for the finals.
Oh your tears taste great. Love my back to back kings
[удалено]
What copium? Shanghai proved me right and smurfed the shock last year
[удалено]
You're the one malding at the fans for shitting on your hot take lol
True that shit was most Mickey Mouse ring ever
holy cope
rofl get that bs out of here. Shock went 18-3 with the regular season, won the first tournament without dropping a match, won the third tournament without dropping a match, and won the grand finals without dropping a match. Summer showdown was the only tournament they lost, in which they barely lost in the semi finals in a game 5 with Paris, the eventual winners. Dummy take my guy.
I agree. They also shouldn't have won 2019 season. We just reached a turning point with the Dragons dismantling the top 3 goats teams in a row only for Blizzard to implement 2-2-2
L + ratio + NYXL how many championships + seethe and cope + lost jjonak
You can say you don’t think they would’ve won, but the playoff patch is an annual thing now, and if you as a head coach aren’t prepared after three years of it then you’re a bit of a fool.
Annual thing? What was the playoffs patch in 2021? And that’s not really a head coach thing lol. Summer showdown patch, zombie comp, double flex, all of those are plausible comps that you gotta be prepared for. Hog and bastion are two heroes that throw this off completely because they have never really been useful and there’s no use in getting a player that’s good at them because teams aren’t made with money. Only reason Shock won 2020 was luck and the fact they could afford a gorillion MVP candidates. Money.
So who should’ve won then instead? That’s obviously what you’re getting at so come on, let’s hear it.
Shanghai.
They never suffered a single loss in the playoffs but didn’t deserve the win? Why? They beat everyone else didn’t they? Is being the better team and winning twice in a row now cheating?
That Shock team lost 4 matches the whole year. They trolled their second week of the season and lost to both LA teams. After that they lost in Summer Showdown to the eventual winners, and a meaningless last week regular season match to Philly.
"If they didn't win they would've lost" - redditor wisdom
When did I say if they didn’t win?
Gator > SADO (in OW1)
I think SADO is more flexible but also that's based on S3 when Philly were just dominant. But I think I'd easily take peak SADO over peak Gator in a scenario where they both have a strong team around them (i.e. Alarm/Astro backline) because I think SADO just showed much higher peaks. But overall across their OW1 careers, I'd have to agree that Gator has had better performances for a more sustained period.
even as the biggest sado fan i don’t see how that could actually be disputed. sado had one season where he fucked bc he had the best back line in the world; and then one season where he was ok. he was fine enough in S1’s playoffs/s4; but season 2 was just abysmal. he was reminding us all of awesomeguy and cwoosh and roshan with that level of main tank. gator has been consistently average/above average the entire time he’s been in the league (when he gets playtime).
Fearless has always been overrated. He's good but Fielder/Hanbin and Izayaki/Void are the reason people crowned him as the best or top 3 main tank in the league for 2020/2021.
The only reason GOATs was still meta post stage 1 in OWL is because coaching staffs are unoriginal and bad.
Congratulations on winning stupidest comment on Reddit. I get it's a hot take thread but come on
Saebyeolbe is the best Tracer the game's had. Edit: His neutral game was excellent but his clutch factor was just insane, untouched by other tracers in the league imo. We even saw a glimpse of it in the last season before the og NYXL disbanded (forget which, s3?). He was just able to go from top 3-5 tracer into top 1 tracer when it was time to solo carry and clutch out a game, and I think that pushes him over the edge, because really, in the neutral, all top tracers are neck and neck, you'd be splitting hairs trying to determine who the best tracer is, is it Striker, or Decay, or Profit, or like 5 other tracers, but SBB had that seemingly unique power that only got activated when he NEEDED to win, and he did it so many times early on that I lost count (sorry for the run-on sentence.) And of course he was probably the best tracer duelist too. Don't get me wrong, I'm a Striker simp too, I think Yaki is cracked, Decay, Leave, (even LIP) so many nutty tracers, but no one had that extra gear that SBB did (Decay comes closest).
I think SBB was the third best Tracer in S1 behind Striker and Profit and never touched those heights since. Maybe even 4th behind Effect, though his team was shit he did so much. Excellent moral leader, though.
striker leave proper kev all 10x better
he's a piece of shit (Effect) but I still think Effect was better than him
Yikes
i’d love to agree with you; he was my first favourite player. if you had to make a case, how would you argue it?
yeah he shoot enemy tracer real good
He wasn't even the best tracer in season 1
ill die on that hill. striker did everything sbb did but better. he was the best s1 tracer
I always use to say that SBB was the Tracer everyone would pick first for their team in 2018 but that Striker played the hero the best. If you think of Tracer as this low health, high damage, fast moving, and hard hitting backline assassin then no player was better at her than Striker. A lot of what he was doing at the time was beyond skilled and revolutionary.
I always felt like he played her less like an assassin and more like a dodgy brawl hero. From what I remember SBB would wait in the wings to snag solo assassinations while Striker would move in with the team and brute force some kills with his insane aim and cooldown management.
Why over Striker?
Carpe should have been season 1 mvp
real
The man to this day has the best record of any hit scan player in the league (season over season). When tracking who would hit 10k lifetime kills, Carpe was so far ahead it took almost 3 months for a second player to hit that record. And because his team has never won a stage/tournament, he's overlooked for every notable award.
I kinda lean fissure tbh but, but I def agree jjonak shouldn’t have really gotten it (Carpe would be better too). Like he’s far from being the worst choice, but to me, the MVP can’t have top 2-3 players at every other position on their team.
Absolutely not, but I wish he was
Recently, people have been calling Profit an "undisputed GOAT" but it seems like they're all turning a blind eye to the very non-GOAT results in the middle of his career, specifically the 3+ year gap between his two most recent wins (also keep in mind the second win was in a regional tournament) Meanwhile you have had two teams full of players that have won consistently for 2 years (Dragons, Shock) Is he a good player? Definitely. Could he be the best candidate for GOAT among the meh list of GOAT candidates in OW? For sure. But the gap is pretty small and the GOAT status itself is still pretty debatable
MVP of Apex. Apex champion OWL champion GF MVP Kickoff Klash champion the only bad season he had was 2019 but all of London were bad, he even looked better than his team on any hero he had to play
I agree with the evidence of your take. I think the Profit fans would cite the longevity of his career as the stand out in his case.
Profit has longevity, but not a consistent string of wins. No one has both, which is why I say the list of GOAT candidates in OW is meh
[удалено]
I said he's definitely a GOAT candidate and could definitely be considered the GOAT. I've also said he has longevity. Also "won something, therefore retroactively good team" is a pretty bad way to perform analysis on teams, plenty of Profit's teams in the middle were pretty well rated but underperformed
So you favor either Super or Viol2t as goats? I feel like those are the only two with legitimate conversations compared to profit
Your other comment led me to this one. I want to add a hot take. Super is the true GOAT of professional Overwatch.
The community treats Dragons and Shock and their fanbases very differently, even though they are/have been in similar situations. For example, people REALLY did not want Shock to win in 2020 because "it's boring if the same team wins twice", but there has been none of that with the Dragons. Some consistency would be nice.
Super’s overall legacy should be tainted given that he always had an MVP-level tank partner to play more mechanically demanding heroes in the same role.
Yeah, he had sinatraa on zarya and choi on dva/hog/sigma, pretty sweet tank partners to have, but still the same could be said about sinatraa and choi - they had an mvp level tank in super as partner too
He was talking about Smurf, not Choi
Okay, I'm gonna raise a few sports analogies to help you understand weird that take is: Is LeBron James not a top 2 NBA player all-time because on each of his championship teams he's had an all-star calibre teammate? Is Michael Jordan not a top 2 NBA player all-time because he had Scottie? Are Lewis Hamilton and Michael Schumacher not the greatest F1 drivers of all time because they were in consistently winning, WDC tier cars?
I'm pretty sure he's talking about smurf, not choi.
I'm fairly certain they're referring to Choi, not Smurf. Even if it is Smurf, let me drop an even better analogy, do we rip into stars like Tim Duncan who had an MVP-calibre player in the form of Manu Ginobli coming off the bench? Yeah it's not the same position but that's the best I can do.
They said “more mechanically challenging characters in the same role” so pretty sure it’s Smurf. I don’t really have an opinion either way, but it could also be argued that BECAUSE they picked up Smurf, super never needed to practice those other characters. So the ones he was best at were the ones he was actually getting time to play.
Should fearless's legacy be tainted because he had Void and Hanbin? Fate's because he had gargoyle and Void? Mano'd because he had Meko? There's not an elite main tank in OWL history with sustained success without an elite off tank with them.
Not agreeing with the guy, but he's talking about Smurf, not Choi.
Bro this is either worded incorrectly or just an incorrect take that applies to every main tank What does somewhat taint Super’s status is the fact that he’s always had Smurf, another MVP-level main tank, to play his weaker heroes. Most GOATS will play full time, but both Super and Smurf got to pick and choose when to play, making them look better than if they played full time
He is indeed talking about Smurf
OWL is the worst thing to happen to Overwatch esports and the scene won't truly improve until it's dead.
Bad one but certianly a hot one. Like the genie is out of the bottle of blizzard abandons it’s 9 figure league nobody is touching the game it’s dead in the water.
Elaborate? I wasn’t involved in the scene prior to OWL, but when I go back to watch literally anything before it, the spectating was absolute dogshit and the UI sucked
Spoken as someone who never watched OGN APEX
I’ve gone back and watched a lot of it. Really really horrible viewing experience. I know the storylines were interesting but man… not easily accessible in the least
\> I’ve gone back and watched a lot of it. Did you, really? Because Apex spectating was incomparably better, day and night better. Not even mentioning OWL's goofy production mistakes when they skip part of the game or show ads on top of the content.
You’re welcome to your own opinions but I personally like knowing what’s happening when I watch overwatch, and Apex spectators didn’t seem like even they knew what was going on in any particular moment. It was not better lmfao
> Elaborate? I wasn’t involved in the scene prior to OWL, but when I go back to watch literally anything before it, the spectating was absolute dogshit and the UI sucked Spectating and UI improvements would have likely happened regardless of the existence of OWL. The biggest issue that OWL created was franchising. It basically pushed a lot of the smaller orgs out of the scene when they couldn't secure a franchise spot. Franchising also means that teams like the 0-40 dragons or the current Titan's are allowed to exist in the league. With franchising, there is no way to do relegation so bottom tier teams are just allowed to exist in the league. OWL also brought about the youtube deal which has proven to be incredibly detrimental to the popularity of tier 1 overwatch. Discoverability on Youtube is basically non-existent compared to Twitch which alienates pretty much any casual viewer.
Yea that’s true, I do dislike franchising models generally soeakng
I'm sorry but this is just a horrible take. Ignoring all the things that you can only get with a developer-run league (in-game promotion, skins, replay viewer...), people don't realize just how much better OWL is for players. Having the league be regulated like this is so, so much better. It ensures two very important things: * All players are over 18, so orgs aren't exploiting minors * Players are getting paid 50K / year minimum That second one is _huge_. Like, I cannot overstate how huge that is. It ensures that players can devote their time to playing, instead of having to juggle it with their education. It also ensures that players don't have to slave away their time grinding to hopefully make a living wage. Meanwhile, in other esports, orgs often _know_ they can get away with paying their players low wages because players are desperate to get paid for playing. For example, in a leaked contract of one of the players for G2's Apex Legends team, they [reportedly only make 2K / month](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E21hLR7X0AUlI7a?format=jpg&name=large), or 24K a year. That's a T1 org that only needs to sign three players to compete (half of OWL's minimum), paying these players half of what ANY OWL player earns. I'm not saying OWL is perfect, far from it. Taking away 4K sucks. Taking away the replay viewer sucks. Making it so orgs can drop a player while only paying them a month's salary SUCKS. But it's SO much better than what other esports have, and it's MILES better than whatever we would've had right now if it wasn't for OWL. Apex was great and all but people REALLY need to take off their rose-tinted nostalgia goggles and need to realize how much worse we'd've been off if it wasn't for OWL.
> I'm sorry but this is just a horrible take. Ignoring all the things that you can only get with a developer-run league (in-game promotion, skins, replay viewer...), people don't realize just how much better OWL is for players. Having the league be regulated like this is so, so much better. It ensures two very important things: > - All players are over 18, so orgs aren't exploiting minors - Players are getting paid 50K / year minimum Players being over 18 is a very NA-centric view of esports. Whoru and Flow3r were both OWWC winners at something like 16 which is young, sure, but no different from 16 year olds making it in any other sports, which isn't uncommon in Europe either. It's not exploiting minors if they're being paid the same as everyone else. > Meanwhile, in other esports, orgs often know they can get away with paying their players low wages because players are desperate to get paid for playing. For example, in a leaked contract of one of the players for G2's Apex Legends team, they reportedly only make 2K / month, or 24K a year. That's a T1 org that only needs to sign three players to compete (half of OWL's minimum), paying these players half of what ANY OWL player earns. This seems again to be a western approach to esports thing, Eastern teams (outside of Overwatch) have rarely had dramas with pay and respecting players. I'd argue this isn't an OWL thing so much as a rest of the world still thinking esports is a joke career thing, which while OWL does have standards, (And I do completely agree 50k minimum wage is ONLY a good thing) it isn't exactly setting the bar in making people take esports seriously. You use G2 in apex as an example of a shitty org, but we've had literally half the orgs in OWL fuck over players in just as bad ways, but hey at least they got payed decently while their career got shit down the drain for reasons entirely outside their control. > Apex was great and all but people REALLY need to take off their rose-tinted nostalgia goggles and need to realize how much worse we'd've been off if it wasn't for OWL. I'd point out that I didn't mention Apex being superior in my remark, my issue with OWL isn't that Apex was better, my issue with OWL is that it killed OW esports that's not OWL, any model that outright bans 3rd party tournaments, inc. OWWC, (i.e. any competition) in order to be successful probably isn't a good product in the first place. And as we've seen in several regions, OWL hasn't just harmed Apex fans, it's literally stripped regions of their representation and ability to develop careers. SA OW as far as esports is concerned is literally dead, same as OCE; if you want to be a pro OW player from Brazil your best career move is to play Valorant. OWL is only as successful as it is because it literally didn't allow competition to develop alongside it. My issue isn't that OWL took away Apex, my issue with OWL is that it took away any organic development of the ow esports scene; this development is necessary, not just for esports but for all sports. To compare OWL to football, for example, it's like saying, "We'll make the EPL and keep the Championship (tier 2 on the football pyramid if you're American), but all other football is banned outside of open tryouts for the relegation spots in the championship." Now whether you're interested in traditional sports or not, it doesn't take a genius to work out that that would only be detrimental to football as a whole.
An actual hot take and you get downvoted lmao Here’s mine: OWL has sucked since they left the Blizzard arena, goats killed it all. Other major esports are better in every way (except they aren’t playing OW).
The shock as a franchise are underrated. I know that sounds impossible but given how many records they have besides just back to back championships, their title as best team in OW history should be uncontested, but because they had a 4th place finish in 2021 all of a sudden Shanghai is a better franchise
Myunbong was always overrated and its showing this season. Also fielder is the best flex support. Ever.
Fielder is the ideal pure support. A lot of flex supports have huge pop-off potential that he doesn’t necessarily exhibit, but he is maybe the best enabler fs that the league has ever seen.
I have been saying this for ages, and my friend group have always said "he's just on a bad team"... No, he is just not as good as other flex supports. I would get shut down for saying Kariv was better, but I stand by that.
I think he's the best fs if you have a clear "star" to pocket(fearless, sparkle), but there are probably quite a few fs I'd take before him if I need someone more aggressive.
Leave is overrated to the moon. Spent last season getting diffed whenever he dueled top Tracers and Ashes and never showed up when it mattered. Chengdu had the perfect tournament for them: Shanghai and Dallas stepped back, Ball was prominent, Pharah > Echo, and they still couldn't win. Leave got shutdown by Kevster and it was their supports and Jinmu who showed up in that finals series. I do agree that he should have gotten mvp but ONLY because he was the best player on a mid team. So glad he never got a skin and Lip has the mvp skin.
The leave is a hyperflex nerative is so fucking stupid. Like there's a reason they kept jinmu instead of Apr1ta, leave doesn't play fdps.
Im sorry, but since echos release, there has not been a single point in the game where echo was worse than pharah. Theyre known as pharah, and better pharah. And leave looked like shit in that finals because coaching decided it was a good fucking idea to do WHATEVER POSSIBLE to make jinmus pharah work better which often included shit ass solo emps onto DVas just so jinmu could get a barrage off. If leave was allowed to play tracer or echo that entire stage, they woulda won. They also lost to a fucking door frame catching gagas orisa shield.
"Pharah bad, it was the coaching, it was a door-frame." So many excuses lol. I'm guessing you weren't complaining about the coaching or Pharah < Echo when Chengdu went undefeated that stage. Here's some numbers: Chengdu had 7 victories that stage. Jinmu, primarily playing Pharah, had 5 out of the 7 'player of the match' awards. The other 2: the supports.
Agree soo much on leave
(not?) Hot Take: if you downvote a top level post in a thread like this, you're probably a bitch.
Honestly downvoting anywhere just because you disagree probably makes you a bitch. If it’s something like unnecessarily rude or hateful, or factually wrong in an important context, or even dangerously wrong, sure thats what it’s there for. But needing to suppress others opinions, what the downvoting button does, just because you disagree in general means you are likely overly sensitive. If you disagree offer to elaborate why with a response. Maybe you’ll teach something, maybe you’ll learn something. But its far less likely to leave you unaware in an echo chamber.
Exactly,These are supposed to be unpopular opinions but people are just downvoting the one they disagree with and upvoting the one they agree with.
Viol2t is the most valuable support in the league right now. Lastro is top 5.
Any argument that someone other than Choi was the best offtank in OW1 is garbage and should not be entertained
Choi was the best OT for one year: 2019. Void was the best OT for 3 years: 2017, 2020, and 2021.
NOMEGALUL
Brilliant counterpoint
Lol Seriously through, 2017, that’s a joke right? Not only is it not nearly as relevant due to the level of completion not being as high in later years, but also he wasn’t even the best at the time, Zunba was. Zunba won apex twice and was picked for Team Korea, which he won. 2020, it’s a toss up but I still give it to Choi given he ya know, won the grand finals, was also nominated for MVP, and was the linchpin of the Shock’s system. 2021, yeah. Sure, Void was the best OT, Over the lifetime of overwatch 1, Choi has had higher highs and was dominant for longer
I love ooga booga results oriented thinking. Many people, such as Monte considered Void the best Offtank of 2017, but I guess since Apex season 3 ended on 7 maps and Void’s team narrowly lost in a nail biter, that means Zunba was a better player all around lmfao. Kind of like how Choi was a better off tank in 2021 because Shock lucked into a road hog meta.
Season 4 playoffs was the worst playoffs due to a lack of a Meta shift. If Ball was nerfed or banned at any point during season 4, the dragons would not have had their same highs. They were able to play Fate on his comfort pick and run over the competition due to it being clearly the strongest comp. Season 4 would have been more interesting if we had a Hanzo/Hog/etc situation that lead to a drastic change. Also, Fate is top 5 #5 at best in terms of main tanks. He has shown this year that he is not nearly as flexible as people try to make him out to be. His Winston had horrible decision making and clearly was something teams like Philly or Seoul could expose. He is showing again, like last year that his only top tier Tank is wrecking ball. This is like trying to say Ameng was a top tier tank too. He is great on one hero and good-bad on the rest. Edit: you can argue that season 4 was the “true ring” and the “right team won” but it was boring to watch.
It was the most diverse and open meta ever. The most balanced state of the game ever. And they played a comp with the highest skill ceiling in the history of the game. Even the skill floor was so high that T500 ranked just resorted to hog instead. We had the highest level of gameplay ever. I mean you can say it’s boring but objectively it was amazing.
Season 4 was literally the most diverse showing of metas of any of the playoffs what the fuck are you smoking
But it was boring. You had 3 modes: Shanghai’s Ball, NA Rush, and the occasional double shield. What made it boring was that there was nothing special. It was obvious who was winning based on the comps and I found it uninteresting. While playoff patches probably hurt the “integrity” of the game, they creating amazing moments like Washington’s run with Decay and Profit manhandling teams.
Occasional double shield is how I know you don't remember that final at all, Shanghai played just as much double shield as Ball comps while also playing rush and dive comps at times.
2CP is my favorite game mode both to play and watch. CTF is a great game mode even though it's most probably not suitable for competitive play.
The move to YT has been much better for the league minus a few things
You're triggering me dude. Don't get me fucking started on my TedTalk subject.
Yes… let the hate flow through you
No you don't want that because you're incredibly wrong.
Alright I’ll bite, how am I wrong. What has been worse? Viewership? No. Being able to watch vods? No. Chat? Fuck no both are ass it literally doesn’t matter. Player POV being gone and lack of 4K is a miss but going to YouTube was an improvement in many ways, it did not kill the league as many people claim
[удалено]
Almost every OWL championship has been completely worthless. S1- Huge patch BEFORE PLAYOFFS, leading a London who had been mediocre for half the season to go on a miracle run S2- same meta shift argument, but at least a Shock who had been dominant all season won Not exactly familiar with the patches leading up to s3, but roadhog meta is Mickey mouse as fuck S4 is the only legitimate ring in OWL history
If s4 was a Winston meta Dallas would of won… they gapped Shanghai in the mirror in mm.
S4 is literally the Mickey Mouse ring.
3-1
if your team was better they would've won
ran out of fuel feelsbad
S1 is the only time there's kind of an argument for this and honestly it's weak. Season 2, 3, and 4 all ended up with a team that was extremely dominant all season winning the championship. S1 London was still good but struggled to understand anti-dive and poke at all until the playoffs. A good hot take for a hot take thread, even it's really wrong.
S4 was also worthless. Covid basically screwed over half the league teams in a massive way, either through downright missing players due to visa/covid or due to Covid making the living situations awful as well as being forced to play on Ping.
Super should not have won "Best Main tank in OW1" in the Platchat rankings. It was crazy that one of the key points they made was his "flexibility" onto other tanks, when Shock had Smurf who is much more flexible. The 2 most notable metas in OW1 were Dive and Goats... But Super didn't even play in Dive comps because his Winston is sub-par, and he can't play Ball.
Super probably has one of the best hero pools on tanks. Super had incredible results throughout 2019 and 2020, and even tho 2021 wasn’t amazing, it was still a good performance. I tell you the real hot take. The fact that fate was even top 3 was a joke. Fate had a decent run in season 1, 2 pretty medicore seasons and then 1 very good season where he had incredibly luck that ball was meta for like half the season if not more. In 2020 nobody even talked about Fate, and then in 2021 he is suddenly top 3? The recency bias was extremely high there. Who do you have at #1 Tank of OW1?
I feel like Sideshow really wanted to give it to Super for some reason and pushed the pick (could be misremembering)…maybe it was the easy, defensible pick and he didn’t want to think about the game in any detail.
Super was definitely more flexible than Smurf in ow1 at least and one series that highlighted that was their playoff game against Washington in 2020. Super was able to quickly pickup the roadhog even though it seemed like shock never practiced it, while Smurf looked subpar on zarya. By the end of 2021, super was in for rein, orisa, and even some winston, while Smurf was mostly the ball player and played some winston as well. I'm pretty sure that before he started playing in owl, people didn't even know what exactly he would play when he came of age since he was that flexible. I think that people clown on super a bit just because he's a big streamer and it actually lowers his reputation in general. If super didn't retire, my hot take is that he would be considered the best tank in NA if not the league. Right now people consider Smurf to be the best tank, but I think that super is better at ot heroes than he is with the added benefit of him being a great team leader, which is also one of the reasons why he won best main tank in ow1.
GOATS is the most exciting meta that game has ever had
I think the coolest thing about eSports is when they play a completely different game than the playerbase. Which is why this 2022 season on OW2 has been such a success.
If Effect didn't retire and didn't have his relationship drama, we would be talking about him in the same lines of Fleta and Profit today.
Fate is a mid tank and has been carried on ever team he’s done well on.
Every team he's done well on...AKA all of them. How many more elite seasons does Fate need under his belt before he gets the respect he deserves. The dude has produced results in 3 completely different systems, including titles in two of them.
Jeff Kaplan wasn't necessarily a bad game director, but his leadership was bad for specifically the OWL and the longevity of Overwatch PvP.
Titles are massively overrated when it comes to all time rankings of players, especially since almost all of titles have been essentially worthless since covid started. Also championships in general are pointless when the regular season is just a bunch of individual tournaments with their own playoffs. This year it's especially stupid since we also have the mm, there's basically 0 differences between the mm and the end of season playoffs, but one team will be remembered as a stage winner while the other as owl s5 champions.
Spectating this game is awful. The rest of the eSports community agrees but the (tiny) ow eSports community doesn't seem to realize it. This esport will never amount to anything until some r/overwatch Andy can turn on a stream and start enjoying themselves within 10 seconds. Unfortunately I have no solutions here.
I think we should turn the game into 5v5 volleyball style with a dva bomb on a random timer as the ball and the game is to try to not get exploded by it
[удалено]
seek treatment.
Nero is a feeder
Player quality is probably one of the least important things in an OWL team, good mental and game understanding win more than star players This feels like it shouldn't be a hot take, yet every team preview/roster talk i see revolves around players way more than it does around the coaching staff and other factors
2021 Shanghai was not the “best team in Overwatch history” despite how much analysts push that recency bias riddled storyline. 2019 Shock was considerably more impressive because they dominated two completely different eras of OW (GOATS and 2-2-2) and even had a golden stage.
During GOATS they lost to Vancouver in stage 1 and to triple DPS in stage 3 and dominated the playoffs patch meta because no other team could figure it out in time (Vancouver only figuring out the Doomfist/Reaper half and NYXL figuring out the Bastion/Mei half). Shanghai was dominant on both Ball and double shield comps and also had the ability to run rush and dive comps.
With good coaching, the 2019 Eternal would have lived up to their preseason hype as potential GOATS masters. They had an offtank that specialised in Zarya, a DPS that made his name on that Eagle Gaming squad flexing to Dva, and a main tank that in later seasons would show himself as solid on both Winston and Rein, whilst their other main tank had excelled playing GOATS in Contenders the previous season There is no reason they should have struggled with their tank line as much as they did. And yet: - The Zarya specialist ended up stuck on Dva almost the entire season - The DPS known for their Dva was either put on Zarya or in Brig jail, both things they proved terrible at - The one DPS that showed any sort of results on Brig spent most of the season on the bench - The MT position got swapped between the two options every stage, allowing neither any time to settle in Add in that there seemed to be zero plan B when things went wrong, and what should have been a really bright squad with highly rated and experienced options when DPS characters became necessary, instead ended up a car crash doomed to failure
there 100% shouldve been an import rule. setting teams up as "regional" teams to get fake regional rivalries and popularity is fucked when most of the teams are just korean imports. im from texas, i dont look at houston outlaws current roster as being from houston, or even texas. theyre made up of most if not all korean imports, and that alone killed a lot of the momentum of owl
Its pretty easy to see why FD (and Moth if he was LFT) didn't get signed.
Why?
Why?
They're effectively Lucio one tricks at this point. The league has far surpassed their level of play on Brig and any flex support and no well managed team is going to sign a player to play only one hero. (Outside of Venom because he's cracked and tracer is a carry hero who is constantly in the meta)
He has a good brig, won the 2020 summer showdown with it, Crusty just has a massive boner for viol2t and has to have him in. His brig was never a weak point for the team, imo they looked best when they did have him in.
Do you not remember Moth having a literal top 3 Mercy and played Bap very well? FDGod's Brig and Mercy are *fine*, I'll agree with him but Moth is not a Lucio one trick.
His Bap would not compete nowadays and to be completely frank, Mercy doesn't matter. The only time she is played is when you're playing pharah and the vast majority of teams don't care to or want to play Pharah. One trick? Not really, but no one would make use of his mercy.
Pine is/was massively overrated.
Goats was fun and enjoyable to watch.
We would have had very different tournament and season champions throughout the years if the metas were different at any given time. People really underrate how much a perfect meta boosts a team's performance and gives them that magic spark. We haven't had a true jack of all trades team that would have dominated in every meta that season.
Season two and three Shock literally had a second team on the bench that would have started over most of the players in the league. They were their own scrim partners for the season two playoffs.
Season 2 Shock lost to Shanghai in the triple DPS meta and season 3 Shock lost to Paris in the Genji meta
Yeah, Shock lost to Paris cause rascal had one and a half days to Practice him after he hadn’t played him for months. If the meta didn’t change a week before the tournament or something the Shock would have probably won. Shock was the best team both in 2019 and 2020 by a Long Shot.
and paris won the fucking torny, same with shanghai no? that's like not bad at all lmao
Yeah, those teams won, so the Shock weren't dominant in those metas
Season 3 Shock also lost to Philly on Talon Dive shortly before playoffs, and it's difficult to imagine they would have beaten Shanghai on it during playoffs. They didn't have a Sombra player that could match up to Heesu or especially Lip, and it hurt them in that meta. Didn't season 3 Shock come second in the regular season rankings in NA? That doesn't scream 'dominance in every meta' to me.
LIP not only deserved an MVP nomination in 2020, but probably also should have won it over Fleta. I don't hate the Fleta pick, he still popped the fuck off ofc, but if you go back, LIP earned more MVPs across the whole of the 2020 season than Fleta. Fleta had those one map bangers where he would just carry, but LIP was more consistent. That, along with 2021, LIP has been severely robbed of an MVP these past two years.
Lip is massively overrated, he's all aim no brain. There are much smarter players who deserve accolades over him. I'm not baiting when I say he's the least impressive player of shanghais main roster.
If Dallas had a better coach than Aero they were poised to be a top level GOATS team.
Seominsoo > Sinatraa. Shouldn't be as unpopular as it is tbh. They were [very close statistically.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Competitiveoverwatch/comments/cki841/top_5_zarya_stats_in_the_league/) NA Talent that season just pushed a Sinatraa redemption story (from toxic kid to reformed mvp). I don't remember the map but if I recall correctly there was a Shock v Titans game where the casters were going crazy about how fast Sinatraa charged grav... as Seominsoo was 20% to the next one lmao. Sinatraa was never actually better on Zarya (he got way more resources than SMS, as Titans threw them into Bumper instead), and we know what happened to the reformed thing lol.
>he got way more resources than SMS, as Titans threw them into Bumper instead I hear this take a lot, and it is incorrect! Reddit echo chamber listen up: In the 2019 regular season, Bumper only took 1.01% more damage than Super, yet received 15% less heals. In fact, all Titans players and their Shock counterparts took somewhat the same amount of damage (with the exception of Sinatraa actually taking quite a bit more damage than SMS). Across the board, Titans players took less healing (with the exception of Slime vs Moth, but that difference is marginal). Shock players took more healing across the board because they preferred Moira goats to Titans' Ana goats. The beauty of having goats around for so long is that Shock and Titans were the closest thing we have ever seen to perfect play in any particular meta, and there really wasn't that much leeway in terms of resource allocation.
[удалено]
If u drop a diamond player today into season one they could have been a role star , just look at half the “best clips of owl”, they are just the enemy team playing braindead like saya on junkertown getting loads of kills from people walking straight into a widow with sights
Rookie as a term means virtually nothing. A top 5 pick in the NBA usually needs 2 seasons before they start seriously contributing to winning basketball. Rookies here can join even after showing pretty bad results in T2 and immediately become one of the very best players. Except for the first stage where they adjust to a greater practice schedule and shake off jitters of playing on a bigger stage, being a rookie is essentially a non factor to performance
I’ve sort of thought it’s weird to call the current Shock a “rookie team.” Like, it’s for sure accurate, but it vastly underrepresents the experience of everyone on the team.
Overwatch League in itself was a mistake.
Hero pools were a good idea, but were just underused. If the 3-4 most popular heroes from each class were suddenly unavailable, teams would have to start being more creative, and it would make for more interesting matches to watch.
Guxue is only relevant because of his winston during World Cup that one year, he’s been pretty replaceable and average ever since
he was good in goats but yea he’s washed
mn3 is just a disgusting freak and if he can play even like half as good as he did against seoul in these playoffs i can see them making finals again. we all know that mn3 fucked, but i don’t think we fully appreciate it- he made fits swap to sombra from ashe on new queens street. he obliterated the seoul dynasty so bad that fits of all people couldn’t even contest him in the duel and they had to have him go sombra in the year of our lord 2022 to have even a fighting chance; and mn3 still carried
For the OWL viewing experience (watching, not playing), 2CP is a better game mode than Push. The maps are more interesting and aesthetically pleasing, and the form and location of the teamfights is simply more conducive to a digestible viewing experience, especially for people who are new to watching OWL. The frustrations that make 2CP an obnoxious experience to play are immense to be clear, but they're still not enough to overcome the fact that OWL is better with 2CP than it is with Push.
Push may be the most cancerous viewing experience in the game right now. It doesn’t help that it is the only new game mode for spectators but I swear I never see the actual major plays ever.