Last week, I sat down with former professional Overwatch main tank player, now analyst, Jonathan “Reinforce” Larsson for some coffee and a burrito bowl. We talked about the early days of competitive Overwatch, working as an analyst for the Overwatch League and his perspectives on teams’ performances in Stage 2.

Some quotes have been slightly altered for flow and clarity, although their original intent remains the same.

So for those who might be new to competitive Overwatch, could you give us a brief history of your career as an Overwatch player and then how you transitioned into the analyst role?

So I first became relevant as a player when we tried to make a “super team” with Tviq, Mendokusaii and IDDQD as a starting base. But then IDDQD and Mendokusaii didn’t get along with each other, so it ended up just being Tviq and Mendokusaii. I was considered for the main tank position, and then we needed to fill up the rest of the roster. We picked up Winz, Unkoe and aKm to make what essentially became Rogue. But then just a few weeks in, we decided to kick Mendokusaii, because at the time he was hard to work with and it was hard to practice with him. So after Mendokusaii was gone, we went back and picked up IDDQD again. We won TaKeOver 1, which was the first big LAN tournament. I say ‘big’ — the prize pool was $5000. After that, we noticed IDDQD wasn’t performing his best at LAN tournaments and we decided that we needed to make some changes before the even bigger tournaments came around. Now I do want to say that since then, IDDQD has become a lot better as a player — that was just the situation back then. So after that, we picked up Knoxxx instead and moved Winz to the off-tank role for Zarya. So I was part of that first Rogue roster and I think we peaked in the fall of 2016, as a contender for, if not, the best team in the world.

But after some turbulence, we went separate ways. Me and Tviq made Misfits, which didn’t go too well. While I was playing on Misfits, I picked up a few new talents and jobs in between, including an analyst position in the 2016 World Cup. Last summer, we were reorganising the Misfits roster and I was encouraged by my teammates to attend the 2017 World Cup stops in Santa Monica and Katowice as an analyst. I wasn’t sure if I should go or not, because I knew we were going to change up the Misfits roster and I wanted to be part of practising in scrims. But I was encouraged by my teammates to go anyway, because it was a good offer. So I guess at that point, they didn’t want to play with me anymore and they were like “You should just go do these jobs.” And that’s sort of how I ‘accidentally’ transitioned to an analyst full-time, because when I got kicked off the Misfits rosters, I just decided that I would do Contenders as an analyst as well, because I was in the states at the time. But it ended up being a fun event and after that I was in a prime position to move into OWL as a analyst.

Reinforce (left) playing on the original Rogue roster with Tviq (right). Photo: ELEAGUE.

What were some of the challenges of starting as an analyst, and did the skills you learnt as a player translate directly over to being an analyst? Or was there more to it that you had to learn along the way?

Starting off as analyst during the 2016 World Cup, I had already worked in esports, prior to my Overwatch career, but behind the scenes in production. So I kind of knew what I was going into. But still, you have to get the confidence to work on camera. The biggest challenge was to come across as a genuine person and show that sort of confidence on camera. During the 2016 World Cup, my in game knowledge carried a lot of my performance on camera. As I got more screen time after the 2017 World Cup and moved into the Overwatch League, I came across as more of a fun personality. There was more to me than just the analyst, because you want your analyst to be someone you can relate to and someone who comes across as a person you want to listen to.

So that nobody tunes out at halftime…

Exactly, so nobody goes to get coffee. They’re like, “Oh it’s half time! Let’s see what Johnny has to say.”

Is that something that transfers to the other analysts too? Do you kind of plan out the personalities? For example, sometimes Bren and Crumbs are a bit more antagonistic with their choices and whatnot. Is that intentional? Or is that just them as analysts?

It’s a discussion we’ve had, and some people obviously have a role they want to act out. Personally, I love talking about play styles, like aggressive or defensive etc. Hard core analysis is something everyone will understand in a few years time, as they watch and speculate themselves. But at the moment, you have some people who enjoy being a bit more edgy or antagonistic on camera, as you said. It’s just everyone trying to being themselves and have fun in their own way on camera. That translates into some people having different personas and having their way of being that fun personality.

The first season of Overwatch League has experimented with statistics quite a lot. They’ve used them in different ways and different situations, with varying levels of context. What, in your opinion, are the most important statistics to use?

So now, at the start of the Overwatch League, I think they’re just trying to improve the stats we have available and how we use stats overall. Going into it, they were just like, “we need stats!” And so now that we have stats, we’re at a point where we need to be able to compare stats better within any given role. We need to be able to compare, for example, Tracer players to each other better. That’s just a constant thing that everyone wants to improve on, with no specific direction. We just want to do stats better. So I think, with time, we’ll only see stats have more and more influence and accessibility, even for viewers watching at home themselves.

Is there any word on when viewers will get access to the stats, because we were told it would be soon and there’s that section on the site that’s greyed out. Is it coming at any point?

I don’t know much more than you guys do, all I know is that it’s coming soon as well. It’s just something they’re working on. The guys working on it want it out as soon as possible, everyone wants the stats. As far as stats I want to see the most, I’ve been really intrigued by stats like “This guy killed this player x amount of times” and how he got killed, because then you can sort of see who the teams prioritise, and you can come to some conclusions about how the teams are playing.

It helps determining play styles, like you were saying before.

Yep, it feeds into the play styles. I think we should treat stats to either verify what we see in-game based on an eye test or vice versa, we look at stats and then verify with in-game footage itself. It’s not like a be-all-end-all, but they’re pretty neat because they help our analysis get better and that’s what we should strive to do.

Reinforce at the 2016 World Cup. Photo: Blizzard Entertainment.

So let’s talk about the Dallas Fuel. They’ve suffered from indecision, roster issues and confidence problems. Why do you think that suddenly changed against NYXL where, even though they didn’t win, they managed to take them to a fifth map? How do you think they went from struggling against the teams at the bottom of the ladder to being able to take the top of the ladder to a map 5?

Kyky obviously talked about them working on confidence issues, so that helps a tonne, but it’s the easy answer and it’s not everything. I also think that putting Mickie on the main tank role was really helpful. Because what I wrote about in my article was that you need to play decisive. That’s Mickie, right? That’s just how he is as a person and a player. So, nothing against Taimou of course, but just having a Winston that is so decisive is important and feeds energy into the rest of the team. I think that change was huge for them, while not necessarily a long-term plan.

Because everyone was talking about Seagull, but not so much Mickie.

I think that the off-tank role is in a pretty weird spot, because if you look at all the off-tanks in the entire league, they’re just very consistent. The off-tank role relies a lot on your main tank. So I do think that Seagull played really well, but I don’t think he was a difference maker either. I would rather praise Mickie for what he did as main tank and then just carry on with that momentum, because I’d say everyone is feeling good after their performance against New York.

You wrote your article about them lacking confidence. I have a personal theory that it was a mixture of complacency and the Mercy meta, particularly starting OWL with the Mercy meta, that destroyed their confidence. The Mercy meta was completely different to anything else they had ever played and they were going into the OWL very complacent. How much do you think starting on the Mercy meta and not starting on the Stage 2 meta actually affected their confidence levels? Do you think that had a huge effect?

Speculating, I think it was partly the Mercy meta but also the fact that they tried to integrate the new players and so it became too much all at once. I think Dallas Fuel could have been a great team in the Mercy meta, but preferably if the Mercy meta was in Stage 2 and they had already integrated their new players and sort of got into a rhythm. If Dallas Fuel had started on the current Stage 2 meta, I think they would be a completely different team, just because they would have started off on the right foot.

You don’t have to adjust.

Yeah, I think it was just too much at once and then the xQc stuff fed into it and they just sort of imploded because there was so much shit that happened at once.

Houston Outlaws have struggled this stage. It seems that the solution to their Tracer problem is to have Linkzr on Tracer, Jake flexing and then if there’s a map where Widow is viable, they’ll switch and Linkzr will play Widow and Jake will play Tracer. Presuming that the meta stays reasonably the same, which is up for debate, do you think that they’ll see a bit of a comeback now that they’ve fixed those problems, or do you think there were more problems than just the Tracer problem?

I think that the lack of Tracer play was a huge part of why Houston weren’t successful in stage 2. But also, indirectly, I think the lack of a Tracer player made it a lot harder for everyone else on the team to perform. So for example, if you start off the stage with a very aggressive Tracer, then you can build around that even though the Tracer player isn’t necessarily the best in the world. If you start with a passive Tracer, you can sort of build around that too. But I think they were lost in terms of what they wanted to do with their Tracer and, as they talked about in their Q&A themselves, they didn’t have a Tracer player who was necessarily able to do more than one thing.

They spoke about Clockwork and how he was great at peeling off enemy Tracers and 1v1s but you need to be able to do more than that in the Overwatch League. So overall, not being able to build around a solid Tracer player made it so that everyone suffered, including Muma. Muma had to change how he played, he wasn’t really sure how to play, which meant that Coolmatt also had to change up how he played… Even the support line was kind of like, “Are we going to play Mercy, are we going to play Lucio? What kind of tempo are we going to set?” Houston was a team trying to find a new identity, not necessarily because the individual skill on the Tracer role wasn’t there, but because they had to come up with a new plan of what they wanted to do as a team with their Tracer.

When it comes to Linkzr, I think it might just be a waste putting him on the Tracer role. While he’s good at it now, I’d rather just see them pick up someone who’s been a Tracer player for months and is just very comfortable on the role. Because Linkzr himself has said that he’s sort of new to the role and it will take a lot of practice. And while he is still versatile, I’d just love to see Linkzr practice Pharah and become that all around flex-DPS player. Then pick up someone like Davin, who is a very good example, to complement Linkzr on that role. But then you sort of lose that Team USA synergy of it all, because Jake is so instrumental with the shot calling. So it’s a big decision, I don’t really know.

Reinforce on the Overwatch League analyst desk with Chris Puckett (left) and Josh ‘Sideshow’ Wilkinson (right). Photo: Blizzard Entertainment.

Do you think Mendo has a place on the team? Because some were saying he should fill the Tracer role but then that didn’t really happen. Now, he’s still up in the air and everyone’s going #FreeMendo but can you envision him in the team at all?

I’ve always loved Mendo, because he was sort of the guy who picked me up in the professional scene in the first place, so I have a weak spot for the guy. But just looking at history, there was a reason we kicked him from Rogue, in that he was hard to work with. That’s sort of been his reputation within the community. I think he has fantastic energy and skill and I love the guy, he’s a fun guy to have around. But as it stands, we’re so far into the Overwatch League and there’s been no sign of him playing. Until he shows up on stage, I would assume that he’s never going to get that chance, because all I’ve heard is excuses for why he’s not playing and that just tells me, speculating of course, that he’s having a hard time integrating into the team. I’m just worried because there’s excuse after excuse as to why he isn’t playing. I don’t really know what to make of it, but I don’t think we’ll ever see him play on stage unless Houston becomes like the second worst team in the league.

We’ve seen London and Seoul split up their team, so we’ve seen the B-team usually play against a weaker team and the A-team play against the stronger team of the week in their schedule. Do you think that’s a good strategy for them to be going with, or does it only work because some teams are really underperforming?

I think there’s two very noticeable differences in Seoul and London. London has the GC Busan core available and that’s makes it a lot easier to pull that off. I think we’ve seen the Busan core perform on a very good level for a B-team. When it comes to Seoul, they don’t really necessarily have that core or the teamwork already built up going into the Overwatch League. But overall, it would seem to me that splitting a team up like that is the way forward, because there’s always going to be teams underperforming. There’s always going to be bottom teams, so I think if you’re a top team, it’s definitely the way to go moving forward. Not all teams can pull it off, but we’ll get teams like Philadelphia, where they’ll play Snillo and rest Carpe. It’s pretty obvious that they’re preparing or resting Carpe for another bigger game. Because Snillo is such a good player and has huge talent, they can rely on that sort of substitution. Seoul doesn’t necessarily have that core synergy or even individual skill.

And last of all, what’s your biggest hot take on any Overwatch League team so far?

[Pauses to think as he eats his burrito bowl] I think that the Gladiators with iRemiix would have been at least a mid-table team in Stage 2, but because iRemiix failed to adapt to the Mercy meta, he looked a lot worse on the main tank role than he would have been in your typical Stage 2 dive meta. Fissure was pretty much on the bench for the entirety of Stage 1 and didn’t show any potential flaws whatsoever because he didn’t play, so we just assume that he was always, even in the Mercy meta, this godly Winston. While he’s had a huge impact and made a big improvements for the team, I don’t think it’s like Fissure just came in and turned Gladiators from a bottom team to top team all by himself. I think there’s more to it than just Fissure being added to the team, which is what a lot of people have made it out to be. They make out as if he’s the saviour of the Gladiators, but I think there’s more to it and I think that they kind of shoved iRemiix away on a bad note because of the meta change. But of course, if you’re a world class main tank you should be able to adapt to a meta change.

That’s my hot take. I feel like a lot of people just hype up Gladiators, like, “Oh they turned it around!” Yeah well, there was a huge meta change.

Overwatch League returns for Stage 3 on April 5. Cover photo by Robert Paul and released for publication by Blizzard Entertainment.