Thought dump is a regular series where I post my unedited thoughts and musings about Overwatch that don’t merit a real article.

Might have to think about updating that introductory paragraph because I haven’t written here in four months… My time has been occupied by joining EnVision Esports as an analyst. But Sunday is my day off so I’ve got time to throw this together.

Getting to the point, in roughly four hours from when I plan to put this out the first match of OW Contenders Korea is going to take place between BlossoM (I hate the capitalization too) and X6-Gaming.

This tournament is important for a many reasons. One, a large percentage of the world’s best rising talent is in this league (I’d place it at at least 60%). Meaning that much of the names we will see joining OWL in the next couple years will likely be in this tournament.

Two, it is going to be the tournament with the highest level of play that will be on the Sombra patch. I’m interested in that because it will eventually trickle over to OWL. But more to the point it gives me data to present to my own team.

The third reason why I am so interested in this tournament does not actually make it important. The third reason is quite simply I just enjoy Korean esports in a way that western teams don’t quite do it for me. Can’t really explain what it is, but I just like it.

Anyways, to the actual point of me writing this is I’m going to lay out who I expect to be the best in groups and give some basic predictions.

Group A predictions

We’ll start with group A, shocker I know. This group is so heavily stacked, and between 2nd–5th place the margins are crazy close. On that note the only things I promise are KongDoo Panthera to top the group, and BlossoM to end up last. KDP will likely 5–0 this group, and BlossoM will definitely 0–5.

Second and third were originally swapped, with X6 taking second. But now that they have lost Architect, GodsB is forced to be their Genji player. And their new DPS player BQB looked just barely above average in the OTS earlier this month. Still I have faith in the remaining core, and I think they can take a confident third.

Meta Bellum is a team on the rise, however. They took second place in the OTS, fairing better against KDP than X6 did as they took Volskaya industries. Just slightly better though, because both teams played a close series vs KDP. Where I see Meta.B gaining the edge though is that many of their weak maps over the last couple of months are gone. Lijiang is gone, so is Route 66. This tilts the map pool much more significantly in their favor. So over the group stage I anticipate them to do better.

Element Mystic comes in at 4th as another team who was on the rise. They managed to top the final season of APEX Challengers last year over some very serious talent. But what holds them back from being higher up in my rankings is I haven’t seen them play this year. But I give a lot of credit to some of the upcoming talent on the roster, especially Sparkle, and to the core this team has formed over the last seven months.

Meta Athena falls to 5th, which means they will not make playoffs, because they have been struggling as of late. They scraped into Contenders, only being one series win above BSG in the KR Contenders Trials. I may have had faith in their former core, but they lost ALL of their good players to OWL. Sayaplayer and Awesomeguy to the Mayhem, Arhan rumored in OWL, and even players to NA Contenders teams. They’re starting from scratch essentially with no-name players. The only thing that puts them into 5th over BlossoM is the fact that I’m confident they can learn from their sister team and from a more experienced support staff.

Group B predictions

Group B isn’t nearly as close as group A, with the only potentially interesting mix-up being for first place.

Between Seven and MVP Space, one team will go 5–0 and the other will go 4–1 depending on who beats the other when they play their head-to-head matchup in week four.

I give the edge to Seven for a few reasons, one did managed to take their last head-to-head battle during the Contenders Trials LAN at the end of February. But the map pool is also in their favor heading into this season. So many maps are amazing Widowmaker maps; Junkertown, Dorado, Hollywood, Illios Ruins, and Horizon first on both offense and defense. That’s a huge amount of the map pool, and Seven has Bazzi up their sleve.

Bazzi for my money is the single best Widow player in the world outside of the OWL. The next closest is probably GodsB, but he isn’t in this group. In the Widow 1v1 Bazzi will roll over OneFact, and that huge pressure imbalance will have massive effects on the match.

Beyond that match, Seven and MVP Space should walk over any other team in this group. The next closest team is RunAway. This probably comes across as weird to any casual fans reading this who only remember RunAway in their glory days. But the heart and soul of this team is gone.

Runner is off to serve his military duty, taking the heart of the team with him. Kox has left, meaning one of their biggest star players is gone. Bumper, a former flex-tank and most recently a main support has stepped in to be a main-tank after Tizi left. This team has so many huge issues that I doubt they will be able to outperform the top two teams.

But, they still have Haksal. They have Stitch. Twilight and Amy are the new support duo, both of whom I’ve long held as underrated players. There is still a huge amount of talent and experience on this team. They may not have a stable core at the moment, but I see enough raw power to carry this team afloat. And who knows, maybe they can still find some of that RunAway magic with Flowervin there to manage them.

Taking up the last playoffs spot is the Foxes, who like so many teams, are coming in with a revamped roster. They have brought in new players recently, some of whom are very experienced like Oparoachi, and some who are unknown names to me, like Adora and Need. But those players were announced a couple of months ago, so I think they will have had some time to meld together. And they still have a solid DPS duo of E1kino and Sasin. They will pull ahead of the bottom two teams.

The bottom two teams in this group are pretty garbage to be honest. O2 Ardeont took a good roster in Ardeont and proceeded to lose every player to other rosters, then merge with the team O2 but keep the Ardeont name in an attempt to fool us into thinking they’re good. The only reason I have them placed above WGS Laurels Nine is because they have a robust support staff, which is a tool to potentially pull map wins as the season progresses.

Although because these two teams play each other in week one, WGS could very will win the shit show of a match that’s coming up. Whoever ends up in 5th and 6th here is irrelevant honestly. I have little faith in either roster turning out to be something amazing. Even if one of them do, the level of the top four teams here is already at a solid level and I doubt they can improve enough to take away a playoffs spot.

In the end, this season will be a fantastic one. There are so many matches that promise to be close, and not of shit quality. There will be a lot to learn about the Sombra patch from these teams, and I can’t wait to see how they’ve approached it. And honestly, I’m excited to hear Achillios cast something that isn’t League of Legends again.