if the shoe fits: an interview with Chris ‘Dream’ Myrick, assistant coach with the Houston Outlaws SHU Follow Dec 3, 2019 · 25 min read

Courtesy of Robert Paul for Blizzard Entertainment

The Houston Outlaws took the scene by storm during the inaugural season of the Overwatch League, toppling multiple behemoths over the course of the season ranging from the Philadelphia Fusion to beating the eventual Season 1 champions London Spitfire in four out of five of their match-ups. Despite missing playoffs and finishing the 2018 season at 7th place, the Outlaws had much to celebrate. Led by stellar performances from DPS players Jake and Linkzr that were bolstered by strong showings from Muma, the roster constantly looked like they were on the cusp of becoming an elite team and with the acquisition of Danteh in the off-season, the future certainly looked bright.

Unfortunately their lackluster performances in late 2018, caused in part by the shifting meta, worsened moving into the 2019 season. Coupled with the seeming collapse of Infinite Esports & Entertainment, their parent organization, the Outlaws found themselves in a position that no other team has faced thus far in the league’s history. With Immortals Gaming Club’s acquisition of Infinite, the team had little breathing room to make additional changes throughout the 2019 season and their struggles continued. Poor performances in a tank-heavy meta coupled with a struggling roster desperately in need of change, the Outlaws finished off their 2019 campaign at 16th place, a stark contrast to the inaugural season.

With Beasley Broadcast Group’s acquisition of the Outlaws organization early in the 2019 offseason, things seem to have taken a promising turn. The Outlaws announced some major changes with the release of coaches TaiRong and HyunWoo followed by the addition of several key staff and players starting with Harsha at head coach. I had a chance to sit down with one of Houston’s newest coaches, Dream — we discussed his unique path to pro, the team’s vision for the future and combating player fatigue.

1. At what age did you start gaming? What was THE game for you — the one that got you hooked?

I think the first game I ever played was Command and Conquer: Red Alert 2. I was really young, I must have been around 6 or 7 years old when I started playing. I was a little kid so I liked running around and getting the Tanya (commando) unit, going to all the neutral buildings and blowing them up. I would spend hours running around in this incredibly complicated RTS game against the easy NPCs and blow up every building I could find on the map. That’s honestly my earliest gaming memory where I’m not just watching someone else play but I’m sitting there and actually playing the game myself. I played that game for years until I was much older and finally able to play the game seriously and beat it.

2. Have you competed in any other titles or was this your first foray into a competitive title?

I have a long history of interest in competitive gaming. I used to compete with an online clan in Battlefront 2 on the Playstation 2 and was frequently playing and competing in clan matches back then. I tried getting into other titles like SOCOM as well, since a lot of my friends from other games were playing it, but I was really bad at it. SOCOM could definitely be classed as a pure shooter whereas Battlefront 2 was pretty imbalanced in that sense — you could just grab a rocket launcher in that game and camp key areas and do well!

I also used to play Halo 2 and have LAN parties with a lot of my friends. One of my good friends had an older brother who was a semi-professional Halo player so he had all the hardware to setup LANs. When Halo 3 came out, I took it a lot more seriously — I was competing often on GameBattles. That was also the case for Modern Warfare and Shadowrun — I frequently found myself competing in GameBattles matches and tournaments. I made a lot of friends in those games and we basically just hopped from title to title ranging from games like Brink, Monday Night Combat to Red Faction: Guerrilla. I’d say the competitive console scene was where my competitive gaming interest really developed.

3. What was your life like before committing to Overwatch and esports as a full time career? Were you in school or working?

I was studying film at the University of Florida for a while. I ended up running out of financial aid and decided I didn’t want to put myself in debt for a film degree so I dropped out of school and started working for a major insurance firm — I can’t name which one but it’s one of the firms that has major TV ad space often. I worked in the auto and home insurance departments for around 3 years. I continued working there while with British Hurricane in early 2018 just because of expenses I had at the time — I was living with my girlfriend and not really making enough from Overwatch so I essentially had two jobs. The first time I really went full-time in Overwatch was when I signed with the Montreal Rebellion and moved to Canada.

Courtesy of Robert Paul for Blizzard Entertainment

4. You mentioned you were a caster prior to making the jump to analyst/coaching positions. What prompted that change?

I’d obviously had an interest in esports for a long time and a big window into that is casting and production. Living with my girlfriend, she didn’t necessarily have the same history of following esports and frequently when I’d be watching OWL matches, she’d ask me to explain what was happening and what was going on. I really enjoyed talking about it with her and eventually we made a trip out to LA in April 2018 to watch some of the matches in the Blizzard Arena. I’d been to MLG and other LAN events before but I remember sitting there taking everything in and thinking to myself — ‘Man, this is so cool, I just really want to try my best to be a part of this’.

I didn’t really know how to get involved in coaching or analyst work but I knew that if I wanted to get into casting, Broadcast.gg was really pushing for talent to tryout to cover Path to Pro at all levels across multiple regions. So when we returned from LA, I made the decision to jump into casting. Simultaneously, I was also producing written analysis pieces that I was posting on Reddit that got a lot of attention. As a result, I got invited to a few discord servers and basically started talking to anyone that would listen to me (or anyone I thought would have something interesting to say) about competitive Overwatch and what I thought about the game in its current state. Eventually that landed me an interview with Hurricane since I’d built a reputation of staying on top of the meta and having a strong understanding of the game.

5. Moving from casting to coaching, do you feel like there are any areas that you benefit greatly from having been a caster and conversely, any areas where this doesn’t hold true?

I think the biggest skill that transfers over from covering the game from a talent standpoint is developing good research skills with respect to teams and their play-styles — learning how to dig up obscure VODs and being able to make concise notes on matches is definitely a huge plus. Outside of constantly staying on top of the meta though, I’m not sure there are many other skills that are transferable to coaching or analyst work. I think former players that transition to staff positions definitely have some big advantages but it’s a double edged sword — your player experience helps you better understand player perspectives (how they feel in game, how teams operate emotionally when things go well/poorly and understanding how effective different forms of feedback can be) but in the same vein, you can also easily find yourself locked into certain ways of thinking if you’re too focused on player priorities.

I think the biggest lesson I’ve learned with respect to this is understanding that while certain strategies might look really strong on paper, it might not be very practical or easy to execute and this is something that your players will often communicate to you. As long as you’re willing to identify that and listen to your team, coming at it from a more heady or academic perspective is fine. Often though, coaches that haven’t been players get stuck too deep in the hypotheticals so it’s really important to have a good working relationship with your team so you can have the best of both worlds — maintaining that balance is really important.

6. Would you consider taking on a casting/broadcast position in the future?

I’m really passionate about Overwatch and esports in general and casting is a really great way to be able to share that joy with other people. I’d definitely consider a broadcast position if I felt I was up to that level. I did a casual cast a few weeks ago with LEGDAY covering the EU pro pugs but it was definitely not my best work or where I’d want to be if I was casting professionally! I’d have to put some serious time and effort into improving my craft to get to a place I’m happy with. If I ever reach an impasse where I don’t think I can keep up competitively anymore, that’s a transition I can see myself making in the future.

7. Now that you’re making the full time commitment to Overwatch esports, how have the people in your life taken it?

Honestly, the more ‘boomer’ level takes regarding my transition to esports came from people my age which was really surprising. However, since a lot of my friends are really into competitive gaming, they were generally really happy and congratulatory for me. There’s definitely some people in my family I’ve had to thoroughly explain the concepts to but everyone has been ery supportive and happy for me. My girlfriend and her family were also incredibly supportive — they’ve had very little exposure to esports but they got on board very quickly and have been really excited and involved so far. I think it’s mostly been really positive for me compared to other people since I only took the leap once I secured a full time position — I think that’s helped make it more digestible for the people in my life.

8. Thanks to the hard work of a lot of people across many regions, we’re seeing more and more levels of Path to Pro getting covered and broadcast, potentially opening many avenues for budding casters/analyst/broadcast talent — do you have any advice for those looking to get into this side of Overwatch/esports?

If I’m honest — don’t. I think what entities like Broadcast.gg and EloHell have done to support people that are passionate about the game is great and I love that it exists but Overwatch is in a place right now that makes it extremely difficult for you to make it into the league as a caster or any form of talent. The odds are really low largely due to the limited number of available spots. I think if you’re trying to progress as an amateur caster, the best thing you can do is have multiple games in your repertoire since that gives you an opportunity to get picked up by tournament organizers such as ESL and cover multiple titles for them.

9. Your first foray into coaching/analyst work was with British Hurricane back in 2018 before you moved on to a position with another academy team, the Montreal Rebellion. Having worked with two Academy teams in your career — what is your perspective on the Academy system and Path to Pro as a whole?

I’m honestly not sure what Blizzard’s objective for tier 2 is right now. I think if you asked me this a few months ago, before they announced the format changes to Contenders and Open Division, I would have had a much clearer answer to give. With these changes coming into effect next year, it’s really hard for me to predict how teams are going to operate. It almost feels like with the constant movement and relegation, the system punishes teams under long term player contracts — it essentially makes it so Academy teams are only going to want to sign established talent and I’m not sure this is the best usage of the Academy system. I think there have been a lot of positive changes and the future certainly looks promising but I could be wrong and we could see life in tier 2 get even more difficult.

10. How beneficial is the concept of the ‘OWL mother-ship’ in actuality? On Shock for example, the biggest benefit during the season was having the ability to scrim a team that was ahead of the meta (Contenders was sometimes a patch ahead) or having a competent non-OWL warm up partner. Likewise, for NRG, a huge benefit was having reps against a good team with strong players competing in the league.

This really comes down to how much the parent organization aims to get out of the relationship. There are some organizations where the communication between the OWL team and Academy roster is non-existent and this applies to communication between the coaching staff as well. On the flip-side, you see some teams making very effective use of their Academy rosters. The best example of this is Atlanta Reign and ATL Academy. Last season, the Reign scrimmed their Academy roster often and made full use of their two-way players. If you’re doing things like that, it can be incredibly beneficial for all parties involved. Atlanta excels at recruiting exceptionally mechanically skilled talent and placing them in professional environments in order to get them acclimated to these settings so they’re better prepared for the league. It requires a certain amount of intentional effort to accomplish and it’s something I hope to see more teams do.

11. Under your coaching, the Rebellion had a fairly strong showing finishing the regular season off at 4th place and seeing both your tanks (sharyk and Gods) move up to the main roster. What were some key lessons learned from your time competing in NA Contenders? How, if at all, has your time working in the Path to Pro impacted your approach to coaching?

Montreal was my first appointment as a head coach and the biggest lesson I learned was being comfortable with delegation. There were often strategy or player related discussions I’d want to deliver personally to my players but I had to be okay with letting some of that go and trusting my assistant coach Zenith with those tasks. Feeling comfortable letting go of a lot of that stuff and having the ability to focus more on the big picture/holistic out-of-game changes is really important and I’m glad that Zenith was the person I could do that with. I really felt like I could trust him and let him handle a wide variety of tasks.

Another key lesson is just making sure that I help my team take the steps to be mentally prepared for a long series and a long season. While we finished 4th in the regular season, we ended up choking the third round of KotH in a map 5 against Fusion University at the end of our season — just helping my team be aware of how to deal with situations like that is something I hope to carry on to future teams.

12. Talk to me a little bit about Outlaws vision moving into the 2020 season — the team had a rough first two seasons and common historical critiques regarding the roster were weaknesses in the support and tank line, both of which have been bolstered by the additions of MekO and Rapel, two incredibly talented players. Additionally, some shrewd moves in the DPS department have ensured strong DPS rotations complimenting Danteh and Linkzr. What were some of the key focuses for the 2020 season?

I joined the team after having many long and serious discussions with Harsha on a variety of topics ranging from how the game should be played, what our approach to the game should be (from a player and coaching perspective) and also the right way to run and operate a team. The entire staff is very much on the same page and in agreement on how we want to approach things. Our biggest goal coming into 2020 is ensuring that we’re a well prepared and structured team. We want all our guys to not just know their in-game assignments but also understand what roles they have to play as emotional leaders and what roles they play overall for the team dynamic. We want everything to be laid out really well — we know we have a very talented group of players and given the right structure and correct amount of guidance, we expect to perform at a very high level.

Obviously we’re not coming into this season and revamping the entire roster but with the changes we’ve made, it feels like enough of a reset for everyone to the point where everyone’s coming into practice and review with a fresh and energized mindset. Everyone’s ready to work hard from the players to the staff. We’ve already been in scrims for a while and that’s definitely been our biggest focus — making sure everyone knows their roles and their assignments and also making sure from a coaching standpoint that we’re constantly checking and updating each other on that.

Courtesy of Robert Paul for Blizzard Entertainment

13. The team has made some key roster changes, adding in MekO, Rapel, blasé and Hydration — what about these players stood out/aligned with the vision outlined earlier?

blasé was the earliest addition we made to the roster. Something that puts him head and shoulders above a lot of other flex DPS talent is his ability to communicate and lead effectively in game. He does a really good job of helping the team focus and gets everyone on the same page. Being able to lead from the DPS role is really vital in a Doomfist meta and having someone that can communicate effectively at the flex DPS role is a huge advantage.

Right, it’s pretty similar to metas where we saw Genji played frequently — you need your flex DPS to call for resources effectively as well as setup dives or other executions correctly.

Exactly — that’s something very few of the really mechanically skilled DPS players can do. It’s actually incredibly difficult to focus on your mechanics, enemy cooldowns and your own positioning all while leading the team in comms. With blasé able to be that player for us, it gives us a good handle on metas that revolve around the flex DPS player.

Hydration is a player that comes in with a unique hero pool that allows us to showcase a few different looks that teams might not be prepared for. On some of his heroes, he’s definitely best in class. He gives us a lot of flexibility and really helps round out our DPS rotation. For example, with him on the roster, we can play Pharah at an extremely high level whereas blasé and the rest of the DPS lineup might not be able to give us a similar caliber performance on that hero. He fills out a lot of those gaps for us and additionally has the ability to come in at the tank role which is something we saw him do on the Gladiators.

He’s definitely a bit of a Wrecking Ball savant, a behemoth on the ball if you will.

Yeah exactly — he can come out on a bunch of interesting heroes and use his insane mechanics to be a huge difference maker and it allows us to have some really cool pocket strategies on different maps. As a coach that cares tremendously about strategy and macro plays, having a player like him on the team is a dream come true.

We also made an addition at the off-tank position bringing in MekO. Only so much needs to be said about him and what he brings to a roster. He’s definitely one of the best players in his role in all of Overwatch, a truly all-star player and an absolute juggernaut. He’s the type of player everyone looks to have on their team and we’re so incredibly excited to have him with us for 2020.

Courtesy of Robert Paul for Blizzard Entertainment

Rapel comes in as a player that has a long history competing in Overwatch. Outside of his obvious mechanical skill at the flex support position, what stands out about him is his ability to effortlessly switch play-styles on the same hero. He’s able to take feedback and apply it immediately to his play and transition seamlessly from playing incredibly passive (on Ana, for example) to playing as aggressive as we need, if we call for an adjustment. He’s also a great team guy, he’s already meshing really well with the team and cracking jokes which makes the environment really fun for everyone.

Everyone we signed has a lot of strengths and a lot of value to add to our roster moving forward into the 2020 season. I think our biggest downside is we don’t have a lot of room to make moves mid-season but we’re confident that we’ve covered all our bases and have good players competing at every position. We’re not looking to be cutthroat from the coaching side to the point where players are expected to fight for their starting spots on a weekly basis but we’re hoping to adopt a healthier approach where we emphasize collaboration across the entire roster. No matter how the meta is shaping up or what our starting lineup looks like, we want everyone to be involved, engaged, getting scrim time and being active during reviews.

Courtesy of Robert Paul for Blizzard Entertainment

I think that’s definitely one of the harder things to deal with as a player that’s on the bench — finding ways where you, as a player, can still add value to your team even though you’re not playing. I think being engaged in team activities not only helps the team but also helps the player stay active and ready, ultimately for the betterment of their own career.

Yeah for sure. Coming from my first position with British Hurricane when we picked up numlocked, I can definitely empathize with that. Seb was basically permanently benched for all of Season 1 and seeing him shake that off, working hard and coming into his own on the team just makes me adamant that I never want any of my players to be in a position like that. I will never stand for my players experiencing that level of disconnect with a team they’re part of.

14. With a coaching staff of Harsha, Clockwork, Hooreg and yourself — what does the coaching structure look like moving into next season? We’ve seen teams utilizing the idea of ‘positional’ coaches — is this something you anticipate utilizing? What’s an approach you personally find yields the most success?

We aren’t looking to box ourselves in with respect to coaching styles. Positional coaching certainly has some advantages and if that ends up being the way the resources are best utilized, we’ll definitely consider it. It’s something that has strengths in metas where strong duos exist on the team — for example, in the current meta your Orisa and Sigma players usually need to be on the same page and approaching each fight in similar ways so having one person work with your tank players can be very effective. On the flip-side, supports in this meta don’t necessarily need to be coached by one person since they don’t really have similar play-styles and don’t usually operate as a duo. If this was dive or Season 1 meta where we saw teams find great success by ensuring that their Mercy and Zenyattas were playing as a unit, a positional support coach might make sense.

Outside of that, we’ve had a lot of discussion among the coaching staff with regards to what our approach is. We definitely value collaborative discussions for every decision we make but Harsha, as the head coach, has the final say on everything. It’s not, however, a situation where Harsha makes decisions by himself and then just informs the rest of the team. We all have a lot of input over the changes we want to make and the direction we’re moving towards. We’re also constantly adjusting how we do things by checking up on what types of feedback seem to work the best for our players and orienting our approach accordingly. We try to be as fluid and flexible as possible.

15. We’ve seen the latest PTR patch make some more aggressive changes with respect to game balancing than in the past. What are your thoughts on what the developer team can do to combat meta fatigue for players and the community?

From an Overwatch League perspective, having big patches that shake up the meta only makes sense in the off-season. The timing of the current patch makes a lot of sense for example and I hope we won’t see as much of a shakeup once the season is in full swing. Large, sweeping changes during the regular season impact teams negatively since with travel schedules, it’s really hard for teams to acclimate to new metas week by week. It also looks really bad from a viewership perspective since the quality of matches drops significantly. Having rapid map pool changes where the competitive map pool has enough changes without being overwhelming for teams could also aid with combating player and viewership fatigue.

I think something Riot has done well in that regard, and they’ve actually come forward and talked about this, is if a particular meta leading up to Worlds is shaping up to be incredibly oppressive for players and viewership, they’ll preemptively balance the game so it doesn’t ruin their esports product. I would definitely appreciate something like that from Blizzard where if in the second half of the regular season, we’re in a place where nobody is enjoying themselves, we see some tweaks and balances for playoffs.

16. Is there a right answer with respect to balancing around OWL vs the lower ranked/casual community? Is there a happy in-between?

I don’t think it’s ideal for Blizzard to commit too hard to one or the other, ideally we should be shooting for a happy medium. Obviously, if something is just awful for pubs to deal with, even if it doesn’t matter or affect the top level of play, you definitely need to address it. Conversely, if there’s something incredibly oppressive at a professional level that doesn’t necessarily translate that way to pubs or lower level play, it certainly needs to be addressed as well since the esports product is vital to Blizzard’s success. I think the biggest lesson to be learned from the previous metas is not letting things that are clearly oppressive and unbalanced sit on ladder for long periods of time — it’s incredibly demoralizing and frustrating for professional players as well as the general community.

17. Something I’ve heard a lot of Korean coaches use in the past is defining teams by a ‘color’ or a style of play — for example, a fast, aggressive play-style could be Vancouver’s color as a team. With this new roster and infrastructure in place, what is Houston’s color?

The biggest thing we want to have as our ‘color’ is not necessarily play-style specific. The color that we’re looking to achieve is being a team that always has a clear objective in game where everyone is focused, prepared and incredibly coordinated no matter the circumstances. Our goal is always to be well prepared and very intentional with the things that we do. We have some very mechanically skilled players like Linkzr, for example, and my goal is certainly not to limit or vastly change his play-style but we want people to realize that if we’re in the server, we’re not going to let people get away with making mistakes or playing loosely against us.

Courtesy of Robert Paul for Blizzard Entertainment

18. With the localization format coming into effect next season, there are going to be a plethora of logistical challenges for teams and organizations to overcome. One of the things that I foresee causing some difficulty is the extensive travel schedules some teams are undertaking — do you guys have any plans in place to help combat player fatigue and burnout due to these schedules?

One of the first things I talked to Harsha about when were in talks about whether or not I would become an Outlaw was formulating a plan for dealing with burnout. I think that teams that aren’t making this their number one priority are making a huge mistake. Thankfully, we have an easier travel schedule compared to the rest of the league — we leave the country once to go to Paris and we never cross the Pacific. We also spend 5 homestands in DC and we go to Florida once as well. We definitely don’t have it as bad as some of the North American Pacific teams that will be making trips to Korea or China — while I’d love to visit those countries, I’d prefer it not be in this context!

We’re certainly on the lookout for burnout and something that has a large role to play in managing that for us is just being incredibly efficient with our time. It’s not going to be a season where if we have issues, we just throw time at it and hope it fixes itself. We want to have everything planned and structured ahead of time so we can be efficient in practice and in review sessions. Additionally, being in constant communication with our players and each other to understand how everyone’s feeling is also really important. All of us are incredibly competitive and willing to push past our own limits but we have to try and be honest with ourselves on where we need to draw the line and also understand that we may need to take things back a notch. The goal is to be good at the end of the season and the only way for us to achieve that is by having a sustainable mindset. While I want to win every map and every set — what I REALLY want to win is the championship and the only way we do that is by having a balanced approach.

Courtesy of Robert Paul for Blizzard Entertainment

19. 2020 will be your debut season in the Overwatch League — What are you looking forward to the most about the league and the homestand format next season?

The meme answer would be I want to meet Puckett!

Right, the legend of MLG!

Yeah, he’s definitely on the Mt. Rushmore of esports for me — it’s not on the bucket list the same way shaking Sundance’s hand is (I’d pay a million dollars to shake that man’s hand) but it’s definitely comparable. As far as career goals, I want our team to be the best that we can be — I think we have some talented players that have had some unfortunate circumstances that they’ve had to deal with and because of that, they haven’t been able to showcase their true potential. I really want to help these guys get to the level where they’re seen as the talented, hard working and star players they really are — I want to help remove some of the cloud that’s been hanging over the Outlaws from the first two seasons.

I think that’s one of the things that plagues the community right now. If a good player gets signed to a bad team or a bad team environment, it’s very easy for that player to look sub-par from an outside perspective — I think one of the things that the community does really poorly is sticking narratives on these players to the point where it follows them around for their entire career, sometimes unfairly so.

Yeah I agree. I think the community does a bad job at reevaluating players over time — both ones that have improved and ones that have gotten worse. There are players that are riding performances from literal years ago and then there are some players that are cursed from things that happened that might not have even been in their control. It’s just an unfortunate situation and I’m not really sure what we can do to address it since we can’t reveal everything that goes on behind the scenes - all I can do is help showcase an end product that really displays the talent of our team.

20. APEX had a profound impact on the Overwatch scene as a whole. Prior to S2, I created a quick visualization breaking down the makeup of the league and found that 48.9% of the player-base had participated in at least one season of APEX and of the 93 new players that were signed prior to S2, 37% of them had competed in at least one season of APEX. With the format finding so much success in Korea, what can Blizzard do to recreate some of that success in other regions?

Events like the Gauntlet have obviously been incredibly beneficial but the biggest thing that APEX did was give a vast amount of players LAN experience. I’m not sure that’s something we’ll ever get back in tier 2 Overwatch — maybe this is possible further down the road when more OWL teams have Academy rosters or if we see more third party tournaments. I think the biggest thing that’s given the Korean region such a huge boost over other regions besides their history in esports and the infrastructure they have is the extensive amount of LAN experience through APEX and even the first few seasons of Contenders. Think about Alarm — he’s essentially a veteran with tons of LAN experience but he’s coming into the league as a ‘rookie’. Conversely, we have a player like Nero who came into the league last year as a rookie as one of the better Western breakout players we’ve seen in all of OWL but he didn’t have the same amount of LAN experience as some of the other talent. If we saw more LANs help develop some of the non-Korean regions, we’d definitely see some of these regions have more representation within the league.

21. Something we’ve seen be wildly successful is the pro player pugs in EU — do competitive pugs have a place in Overwatch? What can we do to popularize pug culture in the scene?

I definitely agree that having pugs and private matchmaking, especially at higher tiers of play is insanely valuable. I think other FPS titles that have adopted the Counter-Strike pug culture have benefited immensely and I think this holds true for Overwatch as well. I would love to see FaceIt or ESEA operate formally within the game — I don’t know if that’s ever going to happen since I don’t know where Blizzard’s priorities lie/what their reasoning is for not allowing it currently but the evidence of it being beneficial is very evident and anyone that wants to look will clearly see that. It would allow for serious play outside of scrims for a lot of these really high rated players and it really helps alleviate some of the current issues with matchmaking. If you’re a DPS player for example, you might have to sit in queue for 20 minutes in ranked and then get into a game with or against a cheater — that’s incredibly frustrating to deal with so I think pugs are a great way to deal with some of the more problematic issues matchmaking inherently has. Additionally, teams will be much more likely to look at players that are high rated, even if they don’t have a wealth of team experience, on a pug ladder since the level of competition is much higher overall. It really helps a lot of younger and less experienced players get taken more seriously.

22. Final question, how excited is blasé to finally be playing DVa on the big stage?

He’s played DVa on stage before so it’s a return to form, we’ll see if MekO can take the spot from him!

You can find Chris on Twitter here!