Canadian Zenyatta ace,

William "Crimzo" Hernandez, is taking another stab at bringing home an Overwatch Contenders title for Team Envy. After being scouted directly from the ladder on his previous team, EnVision Esports, Crimzo has quickly made a name for himself as one of North America’s top flex support prospects. Crimzo spoke with Esports Heaven about the changes about Overwatch Contenders, the impact of the GOATs metagame, and how the team has been doing throughout the 2019 season.

I wouldn’t say that I'm a big comic fan but if there’s a movie adaptation or series adaptation from a comic series then I could definitely end up watching it. Recently I’ve watched Captain Marvel, Luke Cage and The Punisher and I think all are pretty solid. I especially like The Punisher because the type of story that's portrayed is right up my alley of things I enjoy watching.

Transcendence is a very tricky ultimate to get consistent value with. I remember looking through my scrim VODs daily looking at my usage of trans and if I could do anything differently or if what I did was correct. There are so many uses to trans I think it's just a percentage game at this point. For example, if I counter a [Graviton Surge] with [Transcendence] there is a high probability my team will survive unless they get D.Va bombed. If I [Transcendence] before the enemy team uses [Graviton Surge], there’s a high chance they will wait until my [Transcendence] has ended and then use it, and we will die because I had already used [Transcendence]. Those were two examples but there are a lot of other ways to use [Transcendence] and it can be really punishing for the team if you use it at the wrong time.

Going into the match we expected them to be playing a lot of Sombra, but we weren’t able to practice against it much because most other teams don’t play Sombra. We had to theorize a plan going into the match without actual practice against it so the first couple of fights were pretty rocky but we were able to figure it out in the end. I can definitely say that Skyfoxes are a dangerous team that can't be slept on.

We decided to play Ana because in scrims we noticed that a lot of people would play triple DPS [and] Hammond comps when they are attacking the first point Eichenwalde if they see us on a regular 3/3 comp. We knew that first point Eich is a very open-spaced point and decided to run Ana over Brigitte as a counter to triple DPS [and] Hammond, and against teams that use Sombra instead of D.Va, because if they don’t have D.va they cant matrix our nades.

I think ELLIVOTE brings a lot of knowledge to the team especially because he came from the consistently strong EU team, Angry Titans. He taught us a lot of the intricate details in 3/3 that we previously didn’t know but was commonly done in EU and I think it's brought our level of play up a lot higher. After Gravy went to Florida and we heard that ELLIVOTE was looking for a team we instantly knew to give him a trial and I think he’s a perfect fit for our team.

Since our Contenders season is on the 1.32 patch we haven’t practiced on the 1.34 PTR patch, but I’ve seen and heard about the patch notes and it seems like the future is promising. I think the new hero is very interesting because it’s the first time a burst rifle hero has come into the game, and I think Baptiste has a really high skill ceiling and I can see the potential to do some crazy things with him.

I think that adding the Showdown and the Gauntlet was definitely a step in the right direction but I think more can [and] should be done. I think there should be LANs for the season, if not the regular season then at least the playoffs. Also more exposure for the scene in general, I will never forget the one time Blizzard put the Contenders stream on the BNET App and the stream had 20k viewers which are probably 5x more than the current average viewership on a NA/EU Contenders stream.

I definitely agree with ZP on this one. In the past, it was a lot about personal pop-offs and hardcore mechanics but the 3/3 meta has taught us the importance of team coordination, positioning and cooldown management. Despite [the] 3/3 meta being quite boring to watch as a casual viewer, there are a lot of intricate details within the fights that are like mini-games and can sometimes be fun. I think after 3/3 is gone, there will be a positive effect later on.

Joseph “Volamel” Franco has followed esports since the MLGs of 2006. He started out primarily following Starcraft 2, Halo 3, and Super Smash Bros. Melee. He has transitioned from viewer to journalist and writes freelance primarily about Overwatch and League of Legends. If you would like to know more or follow his thoughts on esports you can follow him at @Volamel .