What We Learned: OWL W1 D1

Observations from an observer new to professional Overwatch

With the first night of Overwatch League in the books there are already some noteworthy narratives revealed and questions answered. With viewing numbers on Twitch for North America hovering around 300k throughout the entire broadcast, the numbers surpassed expectations. It is the first week and the honeymoon stage is in full effect as the hype and optimism for OWL flows through the scene, but it is still a good sign. More will be said if they hold those numbers a couple of weeks into the season. Esports journalist, The Esports Writer, hosted a poll on his twitter that nearly half of the replies predicted viewing numbers between 0 and 100k with over 3,700 replies. That prediction was proved wrong before the broadcast even started.

San Francisco Shock vs. Los Angeles Valiant

The Shock IS Babybay. Babybay is a high caliber player and seemingly the only impactful player currently on the Shock roster and because of that he was easily focused down and his impacted limited. Nomy wasn’t an effective tank and seemed lost at times on Winston and will likely remain mediocre unless Reinhart returns to the meta. Sleepy was effective at times but his frequent overextending was capitalized on repeatedly by the Valiant. Danteh wasn’t effective enough to take focus off of Babybay. On top of all that, Dhak cannot play Mercy to the level of his peers. Slighted by the meta and waiting on two star players in Sinatraa and Super, the Shock may be in for a very low placing.

The Valiant Duo. Player of the game winner Soon and Los Angeles Valiant tank Fate carried them through their sweep of the Shock. Soon played a phenomenal Tracer and solid Widowmaker throughout all four matches while Fate completely outplayed Nomy and used his Winston to completely control the game. Agilities and Silkthread provided a good enough threat to not allow them to just be able to focus down Soon as the Valiant could afford to do with Babybay. The Valiant appeared to be a mid table, likely playoff contending team based off their first performance.

Shanghai Dragons vs. Los Angeles Gladiators

Shanghai have a problem. The Shanghai Dragons were not able to get anything going in this series. Not only did they get swept, but they looked completely unorganized and weak as they misread situations repeatedly and made almost no impact in the game outside of capitalizing on the Gladiators styling on them. Diya, who showed some sparkle in the Preseason, was a complete non factor and the rest of his team, namely Undead and Roshan played poorly into matchups. Undead choosing to stay on McCree against Surefour’s Widowmaker on Dorado was a glaring mistake. The Dragons look to be bottom of the barrel from their first match, though hopefully they can solve their teamwork issues and make some improvements in the coming weeks.

Lucky Number 7. The Gladiators are a team fielding seven players while most other teams are fielding more with the exception of the Florida Mayhem who are fielding just 6, the league requirement. All seven players played in this match up and all of them performed well. Sporting some unorthodox picks like Doomfist and an aggressive support in Shaz, the Gladiators were really fun to watch. The Gladiators worked in all combinations of their three DPS players and they all performed very good on a variety of champions showing a lot of flexibility in that role. Couple that with the impressive duo of supports in BigGoose and Shaz and the Gladiators have a really good core to build around. Bischu also played a solid Dva. The Gladiators looked like a team that could surprise a bit and place mid-table and make the playoffs as their only sign of weaknesses in this matchup is when they were purposefully styling on the Dragons and got punished for overextending.

Dallas Fuel vs. Seoul Dynasty

#BurnBlue The Dallas Fuel showed up to play in the much hyped match of the season between former APEX championship teams with a history. Some really obvious highs were displayed during this match as well as some lows. Effect and Mickie showed themselves to be very consistent and Chipshajen played well despite being lost with the rest of the team on Ilios. The game on Junkertown was close, but Dallas was clearly the better team as Seagull was farming on Junkrat, Harryhook was fully in control on Bastion, and Taimu was making great hooks on Roadhog picking the Dynasty apart. The Fuel rode that peak into the double overtime match on Anubis and then chose not to sub back in Seagull and Custa for some reason and looked lost on the third map and could have likely benefited greatly from Seagull’s Pharah. They fought hard and showed glimmers of brilliance and in a hyped match between top teams that ended 2–1–1, there was never a time when the Fuel were out of it. The Fuel are a top team and anything less than a top 3 finish would be a disappointment.

Fleta MVP. The Dynasty looked very strong as they never really faltered during the matchup and found ways to win. Fleta is an absurd player. He has to be the favorite for MVP of the league as he completely controlled the game at times with his play. He played Widow and Pharah at incredible levels and even threw in Doomfist at the end. The whole team played well and the other two players that caught my amateur eye were Ryujehong and Tobi. Dynasty will likely place in the top two and be the favorite to win the league.