The Overwatch League regular season has come to an end. There were 12 teams and each played forty games each. Nearly every player or teams has gone through highs and lows (except New York Excelsior which was all highs). As this is a franchised league where there is no regulation and no other tournaments, I thought it right to grade each organization’s overall performance.

The criteria I used was based on their initial recruitment, transfer windows, and overall results. How well did the team set themselves up for success before it started. How did those picks pan out, what did they do in the transfer window to fix any problems. Most importantly, how well did they do in the first season of Overwatch League across all four stages. This ranking completely disregards media or branding success as I’d be a poor judge of how well each team individually did beyond looking at social media numbers. Instead it is a personal judgement based on what they started with, where they ended up, and what moves each organization could have done to improve their lot given the information they had on hand at each juncture. The general grading scale is from A+ to F- except for two particular teams who broke the scale on both ends. Part 1 looks at the four teams I graded the worst in the league in terms of overall management.

Seoul Dynasty: C-

The Dynasty that never was. This team’s failures are both self created and bad luck. They started off well with a great pre-season draft as they got Lunatic-Hai with good DPS players. They then got all of the DPS players that they always needed like Jun-heyok “Bunny” Chae, Seok-woo “Wekeed” Choi, Sang-beom “Munchkin” Byun, and Byun-sun “Fleta” Kim. Good pickups at the time, but in the end the only one that panned out for them was Fleta.

Those moves were things I counted for Seoul Dynasty as they were smart moves at the time, even if a majority of them didn’t pan out. What really cost Dynasty in the Overwatch League and got them this grade were their subsequent roster moves, the shifting lineup, and lack of a strong vertical structure.

By the time Stage 1 ended, I felt like both the support and tank line were starting to suffer. They tried to cover up the support line by picking up Jin-woo “Gambler” Heo, but it didn’t particularly help. Arguably it could have made things worse.

Seoul Dynasty then did the classic Lunatic-Hai in holding on to old talent too long as they degraded and no longer fit the team. They held on too long to declining talent that was slowly being phased out from the top tier. The unlucky part for Seoul Dynasty was that it happened to their entire tank and support line. It was possible to at least consider Jin-hyuk “Miro” Gong’s downfall, but for all four to fall at once was terrible luck.

The final reason they have scored so low is because they don’t have a single voice, a single captain of the ship. Instead they have four different coaches and this has created a lack of team identity and increased instability for their entire squad. The org failed to identify this for the entire season. For those reasons they get a C-.

Future Outlook: Everyone except Fleta should beware of In-N-Out food chains.

Dallas Fuel: D+

In terms of the lineup they started with, this was one of the better teams going into the league. On that point alone, they were saved from a worse grade. However good their talent was, in the end it didn’t matter. The org was completely unable to control the team or players as there was always some new drama coming in each week with the various egos of the team battling each other on social media.

I didn’t grade them too harshly on the entire Felix “xQc” Lengyel problem as it was their better natures and belief that they could rehabilitate him so he could play in Overwatch League that wrecked them early on. However xQc was just a harbinger of many of the other problems that haunted this team for the entire stage. They had far too many roster combinations starting which never allowed for synergy. Players regularly went to social media to take shots at each other and justify their own actions. This “team” essentially went to civil war with each other for the first three stages. They didn’t realize that they needed to give Kyle “KyKy” Souder more authority and were too late when they did.

As for the trades, they were mostly positive. The only negative one was when they traded Scott “Custa” Kennedy for Benjamin “uNKOE” Chevasson as they needed his leadership at the time. However the move did work out though the meta shifted dramatically and a few other coincidences or coaching moves needed to happen before it did. The other moves they made included getting Min-seok “OGE” Son as a tank which was good. Their best move seems to be their new coach in Aaron “Aero” Atkins as the Dallas have completely reversed fortunes in the last stage of the league. Having said that, the meta did change so it’s hard to know how much of of it was him, but with so many different positives happening at the same time, I have to give Aero the nod here.

Even with all of that, we have to remember that the first three stages had already eliminated this team. The final stage success was what salvaged them from getting an even worse grade from me.

Future Outlook: Despite putting them below Seoul Dynasty, I think they have a better base to start with. They have a coach and good players. There are good pieces here, but I could also see why they’d potentially want to change things as well.

Florida Mayhem: D-

I don’t know where to begin with this team. The fact that they started a grueling league with only six players? That they started with only one coach? That they almost never improved the entire time? That the most memorable thing about them in the first half of the league was their stage entrances?

There are only two scenarios we can think of here. Either there was real talent in this squad and they were completely unable to harness it the entire time. Or the players just weren’t cut out for this level of competition and the team held on to them for too long. Either way it reflects poorly on the org. They started to make additional changes as the team moved through the stage, but they never got anything going. The only reason they don’t get an F is because they recruited Jeong-woo “Sayaplayer” Ha.

As Josh “Sideshow” Wilkinson tweeted:

Well, that settles it. Florida Mayhem are the most disappointing / diminished / deteriorated team in Overwatch League. Four stages of failure with a team and players that were previously capable of strong peaks and explosive performance. Hard to watch, there's talent in there. — Josh Wilkinson (@SideshowGaming) June 9, 2018

Future Outlook: Sideshow has given up on you guys and he once lived in a tree house.

Shanghai Dragons – 0-40.

The greatest failure in Overwatch League and in any esports I’ve ever seen. What else is there to say? Their coaching staff is ineffectual. Their scouting was horrendous. They failed the transfer window. When it was clear their old lineup was dead, in my view they had two choices to salvage the situation. Either find and recruit all of the best Chinese players and start again or to recruit an all Korean team. Instead they half stepped in between.

If you look at esports history, there have been cases of mixed Chinese and Korean teams that have had success. However all of those come from League of Legends and the ones that had the success had great Korean players. These were all unknown untested players who had some potential.

In essence they took a halfway step between my two solutions and got the worse combination of both. The communications issue destroyed them first. Then they had no good support players and I suspect the continuous losses has made the entire team freeze up and choke under pressure. They consistently show they are unable to close the deal even though they improved after the roster change. None of their coaching seemed to have any effect and they got the Conbox coach to come over far too late.

I could have given the team an F, but that wasn’t a strong enough rating. They’ve essentially become the symbol of failure across all of esports. In the end I gave them the 0-40 as the raw number alone should express how bad everything was.

Future Outlook: At least things can literally not get worse right?

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