Hello again folks! Here to talk to y’all about week 10 of OWL 2020. Let’s get started!
Talent and Production
As the everything online proceedings become a regular thing the OWL production teams seem to have settled into a mostly working setup. There are still occasional audio desyncs and video cutting out but for the most part everything is working as well it can under the circumstances.
It seems like production has learned from their mistakes from last week and keep text chat hidden /most/ of the time. Sometimes they forget and we get to see players being silly. The funniest thing this week was Carpe putting his YouTube channel in the chat.
The Meta
So week 10’s hero bans were:
- Reaper
- Sombra
- D.Va
- Ana
With D.Va gone from the pool this week, teams started running double shield a lot more with the Mei/Torbjorn. Torbjorn’s continued presence is still weird but not as weird as it was last week. We also saw some Ashe being played, she is a lot more useful without D.Va around to mitigate most of her damage potential.
Double shield (Rein/Orisa or Sigma/Orisa) isn’t the most exciting gameplay to watch but strategically the teams that seem to fare well in this meta are the ones that have a very intelligent Mei player. There was also a lot of the halt + rock combo being done for the teams that ran the Sigma/Orisa. We need a cool name for that combo.
The Games
This week was a combination of some very close games and some very unusually one sided matches from teams that I would expect better from. Let’s look at a few of these.
Vancouver Titans vs Guangzhou Charge
I was looking forward to seeing the Vancouver Titans play a game again but what I certainly did not expect or hope for was the terrible performance they had this week. This series against the Charge shows a team in disarray that is failing to execute which seems extremely uncharacteristic of the Titans. On Sunday, they had a similar failure against the Chengdu Hunters where they just completely fell apart on the last map.
Disappointing weekend for the Titans to say the least, I hope this is some temporary thing and not something I will be seeing for the rest of the season because that would be one hell of a fall for a team that made it to the grand finals last year.
Philadelphia Fusion vs Atlanta Reign
Going into this series I was expecting a barn burner and these two high calibre teams certainly did not disappoint. The first half looked close but it looks like Philadelphia was going to run away with a 3-0 victory but Atlanta brought it back in the second half with a reverse sweep leading to one hell of a tiebreaker map which went all the way. Ultimately, Philadelphia was able to win the series but honestly it could have gone either way. Fantastic performance from both teams.
Also Carpe got his 4000th final blow in this series and it was with a Torbjorn turret. That’s 2020 for y’all.
Miscellaneous tidbits
Toronto Defiant had a match against the Houston Outlaws this week and it was a roller coaster of emotions. We just got destroyed in the second half and in that tiebreaker map, unfortunate. You hate to see it.
Dallas Fuel get another win against a Washington Justice team that seems to be in disarray. I hope the Justice pull it together because I don’t like to see teams struggle like this.
The Shanghai Dragons continue to be a team to fear. I want to see them faceoff against the top Western teams.
Concluding thoughts and next week’s hero bans
Lots of 3-0 Overwatch this week but we also had some excellent reverse sweeps and close matches. All is balanced. Molten core has become a ultimate we need to care about and that is weird.
Next week’s hero pools are universal which means they apply to OWL, Contenders, Open Division and the competitive mode in the game. The picks were done by Blizzard instead of any sort of fancy pick system (like Soe’s cats). Due to heroes being banned this week not being eligible for next week’s bans, this led to Brigitte being the only support hero being eligible for next week so she is the support that got banned. Hilarious.
So next week’s hero bans are:
- Brigitte
- Reinhardt
- Widowmaker
- McCree
Hey, can we see some more Pharah based compositions next week? Most of her counters are gone. Let’s make it happen folks. Well at least Jinmu will run Pharah whether it works or not.
Another thing, next week matches start on Thursday instead of the usual Saturday so far; reminds of me of 2019’s schedules. This blog’s weekly post will come out at the same time next Monday. See y’all next week and stay safe!