Colin ‘Howl’ Kenitz (3.4.2018)

Sorry for missing the first week of stage 2! I was remiss in doing so but it was unavoidable since my apartment lost internet for nearly the whole week/weekend and I spent most of my time in my college’s library or at work (and didn’t get to watch the VODs until Monday/Tuesday night). Now that the johns are out of the way, here’s your OWL Stage 2, week 2 Sunday Summary!

Power Rankings

Rank Weekly Variation* Team Wins Losses Map W-L-T Differential 1 [=] New York Excelsior 12 2 44-14-2 30 2 [=] London Spitfire 10 4 41-20-0 21 3 [=] Seoul Dynasty 11 3 38-19-2 19 4 [=] Houston Outlaws 9 5 39-22-0 17 5 [=] Philadelphia Fusion 9 5 31-30-1 1 6 [=] Los Angeles Valiant 10 4 35-19-4 16 7 [=] Boston Uprising 7 7 31-29-0 2 8 [=] Dallas Fuel 5 9 22-33-3 -11 9 [=] Los Angeles Gladiators 6 8 26-32-0 -6 10 [=] San Francisco Shock 4 10 22-34-2 -12 11 [=] Florida Mayhem 1 13 11-45-1 -34 12 [=] Shanghai Dragons 0 14 7-50-1 -43

*All team’s weekly variation is = since I wanted to reset between stages and there was no week 1 rankings

My Rankings aren’t Perfect, but here’s why.

I’m biasing recency heavily right now due to several reasons, mainly: Player changes, the meta change, and map pool changes. Stage 2 and Stage 1 stats aren’t going to blend together well until near the end of stage 2 (week4ish) when things will begin to normalize. Next split I will lower my recency bias a bit to consider stage 1 and 2 performances closer to the weight of stage 3’s.

I’m making this choice because a lot of teams have had not only major player changes but also coaching changes. The map pool is completely different, and so is the meta from last split. I am including last split’s performance, however, I’d say it’s about only 20% of what I’m weighing in when making these rankings. I didn’t make this choice lightly, so hear me out as to why.

Boston and Dallas are great examples of what I mean. And Valiant from a coaching perspective. Boston were truly a top team last split, but have had trouble finding their ground this split. It’s not that they’re playing badly, it’s more that other teams have found their groove in this meta faster than Boston. It’s not like they’ve fallen completely from grace, though. While 7th place may look unfair to a Boston fan whom might consider that they were ranked 4th in the regular season last stage, barely missing playoffs, that’s just the reality of OWL right now. It’s an extremely competitive league save a few exceptions. Considering the caliber of individual talent on each team it’s difficult to feel good about ranking a team as good as Boston so low, however it’s a reality right now.

From a coaching perspective, several teams have brought in new coaches or swapped head coaches completely. The Valiant are just one example of this. They’ve brought in a new head coach, Moon ‘MBC’ Byung-chul, the former coach of Mighty AOD. The team was an Apex Season 2 Challenger competitor, as well as an Apex Season 3 group stage competitor. Two LA Valiant players, Kariv and Fate, were both players under MBC and participated in Might AOD’s group stage in Apex Season 3 before moving to join Immortals together for Competitors Season 0. MBC’s impact on the team can’t be ignored. He’s moved Kariv back to his original role as a DPS player for crying out loud, a move especially made possible by the meta shift back to favoring Lucio, which has brought Verbo back into the starting lineup to replace Kariv as support. The result has been a primary DPS lineup of Soon and Kariv. Kariv’s strength on Widowmaker and Zarya are known his specialties, but his soldier and Pharah have been no slacks either.

The Valiant still have two other great DPS players in Agilities and Silkthread, however, my biggest problem with them last season was that these two players had too much of a hero pool overlap. They’re both Genji mains, first of all, which isn’t necessarily problematic, but it’s not great either. Throughout stage 1 I consistently thought that Silkthread brought a slightly higher level of play and consistency than Agilities, but Agilities found a lot of play time because he could flex into heroes such as Roadhog. Despite this, my main concern with the Valiant was that they lacked flexibility overall and when they did leave their signature heroes they looked noticeably worse. Despite a strong start in stage one they slowly fell down the rankings, eventually being overcome by Huston and Boston in the latter weeks of the stage. Kariv’s flexibility will fit phenomenally in this current meta and Valiant still maintain two great Genji players for running straight dive. Their head coaching switch thus far has changed the team dynamic a lot. It makes it harder to predict their strategies this stage based off of last stage’s VODs, and it adds depth to their arsenal.

Dallas are another great example of a tough ranking. They’ve looked phenomenal and their win over the LA Gladiators was really impressive, however, they looked nearly helpless against the Valiant. In my opinion this is mostly due to the Valiant being a tough match up for the Fuel in terms of play style and flexibility. The result is that Dallas, while looking massively improved over last season with the additions of Rascal, AKM, and having XQC back, they’re still falling in at 8th place for me… For this week, at least.

The best thing about power rankings, is that they change week to week! Admittedly, Seoul has had a fairly easy schedule compared to a team such as Boston, for example. Next week both teams play the Shanghai Dragons – while not completely translatable, comparing both performances will be very insightful. While Boston’s schedule doesn’t get easier considering they also play London next week, Seoul also faces the Fusion. Say, perhaps that the Fusion upset Seoul and Boston upset – or even play a close match against – London, rankings next week could shake up quite a bit, so stay tuned!

Fun Facts, the 100% Club, and More

1. LA Gladiators are undefeated on Control maps so far. They’re 1 – 0 on Lijiang and 3 – 0 on Nepal. The Gladiators have looked stronger with the addition of Fissure, however their team synergy between their tanks and supports has been lacking a bit thus far. They’ll need to make substantial improvements in this area, as well as more consistent DPS performances in order to climb the rankings.

2. New York have a 100% win rate on Hybrid map types. They were lucky enough to only have to play King’s Row, saving them from prepping for Hollywood thus far. That being said, their wins have come against some of the best teams in the league in London, Houston and Boston. In stage 1 they had an 80% win rate on Hybrid maps, losing only two.

However, over all of stage one NYXL shined most brightly on Control maps, losing only one all regular season to the Dallas fuel in week 4. Their one map loss to Florida Mayhem was on Lijiang tower. If they want to maintain the same level of dominance on control as last season they can’t drop any more control maps.

3. London Spitfire and Seoul Dynasty are both undefeated on escort maps. On top of that, both teams are 2 – 0 on both Route 66 and Watchpoint: Gibraltar, so they’ve shown up on both maps.

Despite winning the stage 1 playoffs, London has returned to their stage one state, in that they can beat the best teams but they can also lose to teams below them. They were upset in an extremely close series against the Huston Outlaws in week 1 of this stage, however, they also cleanly 4 – 0 swept the Fusion, who beat Huston. This might be confusing to some, but I think it’s been a fantastic example of how complex ranking OWL teams can be, and that different teams have very different styles, so a win over one team can’t be completely translated to a clear win over a lower ranked opponent.

Taking a closer look at this, London’s easy sweep over Philadelphia can be attributed to the team’s ability to play different styles. Philadelphia pretty much only specializes in dive compositions or high pressure, aggressive DPS compositions relying on picks, such as comps that involve Widowmaker and Pharah. On the opposite side, London excel at playing a counter dive style. This means that when the tanks and DPS of the Fusion commit their movement abilities to diving in the Spitfire’s tanks and DPS counter dive. This means that both team’s back lines are pretty much left to their own devices, and may seem even all things considered. The difference is that London’s supports Bdosin and Nus were playing superior peel to Philly’s supports, as well their DPS players made more efficient movements than Philly’s. Going back to watch the VODs one can seen how much more Bdosin’s Zenyatta stuffs Carpe than does Boomboxes on Birdring or Profit’s Tracer.

The caveat to Seoul this stage is that their schedule thus far, reminiscent of stage 1, has been relatively easy early on. Their biggest problems have been Miro and an unreliable second DPS. So far we’ve seen much improved performance from Bunny and Munchkin, and even a bit from Wekeed, albeit less than the other two in my opinion. Miro’s problems of dying disjointed from his team remain, so I’ll be looking to see more Kuki in coming weeks. Seoul’s biggest obstacle will be week 4 of this split, when they face both London Spitfire and NYXL.

4. Boston has a 25% win rate on every map type! They’ve had a rough start to the season, facing Fusion, Exelsior, Outlaws, and Mayhem. They’ve been 4 – 0’d by all of them save the later. Boston’s performance hasn’t been as bad as it looks so far, but they’re a team that hasn’t made any changes from the last stage. Their individual performances have been on point, but they’re slipping a bit in this meta without mercy. I think that they’re still a very strong opponent versus certain high ranking teams, such as Seoul, who seem to struggle a bit right now against teams with strong dive/counter dive and highly proficient support players, such as Neko.

Players of the Week:

Choi ‘Bdosin’ Seong-tae – The way Bdosin handled Carpe in London’s match against the Fusion was a lesson in tempering aggression. Carpe has been one of the best Tracer’s in the league, however time after again he was stuffed by Bdosin in the dive/counter dive war that was this match up. In addition to this, Bdosin found himself fragging out on the front lines, and even diving with Gesture at times (Hanamura defense). He showed in the stage 1 playoffs as an outstanding player for his team and has continued to deliver so far in stage 2.

Park ‘Kariv’ Young-seo – This week I couldn’t just pick one, since I missed last week. I always want to recognize more than one player per week anyways, so I’m indulging in that this week. Kariv was a DPS player in the past on his previous team Mighty AOD, and we’d seen a few glimpses of what he had in store on Widowmaker in stage 1. However, now he’s not only a DPS, but an off tank flex whom we know is also a top level support. This guy can do it all. Even still, transitioning positions isn’t an easy task, and doing so in less than two weeks might’ve thrown most other players off quite a bit. His performance this week for the Valiant was impressive and a bright spot for a Valiant team that struggled with flexibility last stage. He stood out to me both last week and this week as a player rising up to the challenge before him.

If you’ve made it this far thanks for reading! It was a long one after missing last week. I’ll be back next week as usual with week 3’s Sunday Summary.