Hello everyone, welcome to the OverSeer; and if it's not your first time on this blog, welcome back! In this post, we're going to take a look at the Toronto Defiant's roster for Season 3 of the Overwatch League. In my previous post, I reviewed the Dallas Fuel's roster , so if you haven't read that post yet, please do so. Also, if you disagree with certain points I make here, which, let's face it, you probably will, feel free to express those in the comments section; I just urge you to be polite and respectful when doing so.





Alright, the Toronto Defiant...they took 19th place in my end-of-season power rankings for 2019, so I'm very keen on seeing how this revamped roster performs in 2020. On paper, I think they've got potential to beat a lot of other teams in Season 3, and to explain why I think so, let me break down what the players on each role bring to the table.





TANK

The Defiant currently have just two tank players: Beast (formerly known as 'Beasthalo') on main tank, and Nevix on off-tank. Objectively speaking, I think this is a pretty good tank line.

I don't watch a lot of Contenders so I haven't seen Beast play a lot, but he has a fairly solid track record based on his time with Fusion University. He has played through many metas at the Contenders level, and has secured first place with his team multiple times over the nearly-two years he spent playing in the Tier-2 scene. This leads me to believe that he can play a fairly good Reinhardt, Winston and Wrecking Ball, which have been the go-to main tanks during Beast's glorious runs with Fusion University. I can't say the same for his Orisa, since his team didn't do too well after she became meta, but hey, it's not so hard to get value out of her anyway, is it? I think we can assume Beast is a reliable main tank because of these factors, but the question remains: can he compete against the other more experienced main tanks in the Overwatch League? Only time will tell.

On off-tank, the Defiant have added Nevix, who spent most of his time on the bench with the San Francisco Shock last year. Touted as a jack of all trades and a master of some, Nevix is a highly experienced player who certainly brings a ton of knowledge to the table; however, I just haven't seen him play a lot recently, and that makes me wonder how he matches up against the rest of the off-tanks in the League. Hence, unless I see him play firsthand, I can't label him as either a really good or a really bad player, but if we go by the things his former teammates on the Shock, as well as PlatChat co-host Reinforce have said about him, he is still a pretty versatile and talented player, so I wouldn't put it past him to surprise us with some mind-blowing off-tank play in Season 3.

All in all, Beast-Nevix seems like a good tank line to start the season off with. My only concern would be that the Defiant don't have any backup options in case either of these players falls ill, can't adjust to the required playstyle, has a conflict with the team, etc., so if anything goes wrong on the tank front, Toronto is likely to fall apart.





DPS

Whenever I think about the new Toronto Defiant, my mind always gravitates to their DPS line, which I frankly think is one of the best in the League. They've got Logix, Mangachu, Agilities and Surefour, so let's quickly review these damage dealers before we move on to the supports.

Logix is your typical hitscan player, and we all saw him pop off on heroes like Widow and McCree while he played for the org in 2019. He's not awfully consistent or a constant playmaker, but he's still good to have on your roster when your back's against the wall. Along with him, Toronto had also signed Mangachu, who, as you probably know, is a projectile specialist famously known for his fantastic Torb play. Although Torb probably won't be meta any time soon, Mangachu is a very flexible player and will enable the Defiant to throw their opponents off-guard every now and then.

Agilities is one of Toronto's new acquisitions, and although he didn't have a great season in 2019, his amazing projectile aim as well as proficiency on flankers like Genji and Doomfist will certainly be useful in expanding the Defiant's flexibility in the 2020 season. The second new DPS signing by the Defiant took the form of the Canadian Superstar, Surefour, who can play a great many subroles in the DPS category; hitscan, sniper, flanker, you name it, and Surefour can probably play it. Although he didn't get to pop off a ton until Stage 4 in 2019, we saw some great Reaper play come out of him after Role Lock was implemented, which will no doubt be a great help to the Defiant going into Season 3.

As you can see, Toronto's DPS line looks formidable, and I think the 4 players constituting it will be what this team is built around, as they can cover a wide variety of heroes and playstyles, essentially minimising the amount of counterplay their opponents can have against them.





SUPPORT

As good as the Defiant's DPS line is, I think the supports they've got don't quite hit the mark. With the trio of RoKy (two-way), KariV and Kellex, I don't imagine we can have very high expectations from this team's backline.

RoKy is on a two-way contract between the Toronto Defiant and their Contenders team, the Montreal Rebellion, so I don't really know how much playtime he's going to have on the Overwatch League stage this year. In Season 2, he was a good main support during the Goats meta, constantly setting up plays for his Reinhardt via Lucio boops, but once 2-2-2 was implemented, he was out of the picture, as he was replaced by the now-Paris Eternal assistant coach, Aid. The second main support on the team, who we have to assume will be fielded most of the time, is Kellex, formerly of the Boston Uprising. Even though he's a veteran of the Overwatch scene, he seemingly had a conflict with one or more of his teammates last year, which caused a less-than-ideal support line switch-up for the Uprising, and even though we can't label their sub-par run as his fault, we can't ignore the possibility of any friction he may have with his new teammates either. That's not to say he's a bad main support, because he isn't, but you've got to consider as many variables as you've got to work with when you're doing analyses of this nature.

The sole flex support the Defiant have got is KariV, who wowed us all with his fantastic Ana play last season. He is also a very capable Zenyatta player, and possesses a great deal of mechanical skill. Another advantage he's got is that despite him being a Korean player, he's got a ton of mixed roster experience to carry over with him to his new team, and communicating in English won't be a problem for him. Combine that with his clutch potential and ability to make plays, and you have a very capable flex support on your side.

So to sum up the support line, I think the flex support position is well sorted-out, with the main support slot being the primary cause of concern for this team. There are some very competitive backlines in other teams throughout the League, which is why this one doesn't seem very appealing to me.





THE RAW LOOK VS. REALITY

On paper, the Defiant look strong enough to make it to the end-of-season Playoffs, bypassing the Play-In tournament, but this is just me considering their best-case scenario. I don't really think they're a championship-calibre team, but they've still got a ton of talent on their roster, which is why I believe they can make it a good distance into the season if they play up to their potentials.

Talking about this squad realistically though, well, I could see them struggle to make the Playoffs if they run into unfavourable metas, since they don't look meta-proof. I don't know how good they will be if Double Barrier continues to be a thing, since Orisa-Sigma isn't something I can see Beast and Nevix excelling at playing, and since we haven't seen much Baptiste play from this team's support line either, it's hard to tell if they can topple the competition without a more drastic meta shift.

So to sum it up, I think the Defiant can make it to the Playoffs at best (so that's Top 8), and maybe fall a little short of Top 12 if things don't go their way. The raw talent on this team is fairly good, and even though I don't think they'll make a top-tier team, they shouldn't be at the bottom end of the spectrum either.



