This week let’s try something a bit different. I’m going to talk about some OWL related news that happened during the week along with the games that happened. I feel like this will round out the posts a little bit more and give me more to talk about.
So let’s get started!
News and Blues
Lots of OWL related news happened this week, both good and bad, new signings, players retiring, teams falling apart.
Sinatraa retires for Valorant
Sinatraa, now formerly of the San Francisco Shock and the 2019 Overwatch League MVP retires from Overwatch and was signed to the Sentinel’s Valorant team. This is a high profile signing but I don’t think this is detrimental to the Shock or to the OWL as a whole.
JJANU and paJion part ways with the Vancouver Titans
Y’all.. This one is just sad to see. There have been rumours for a while that there has been problems within the Titans, disagreements between players and management but to see it come to a head like this is not great. The Titans are left without a off-tank player right now as JJANU was their only off-tank player.
With him gone that’s one fewer members of the original Runaways roster that was signed in 2019, Bumper and Hooreg were already gone. To see a team that made the grand finals last year fall apart this seems to me that the management really fucked something good up. You truly hate to see it.
More retirements and signings
Kellex retires from Overwatch and leaves the Toronto Defiant.
Wishing Kellex the best! With that, a warm welcome to Kruise who was signed to the Defiant as a replacement!
Kruise was a backup support on the Paris Eternal who have now signed Fielder from the Korean Contenders team GC Busan Wave.
You best believe I’m going to talk more about Fielder later since his debut performance this week was certainly something worth talking about.
The Meta
It was Echo’s time to shine in the Overwatch League! She was banned last week so this week we got to see teams start using her in all sorts of different ways. I don’t think teams have her kit figured out completely so we saw a lot of experimentation. I’m sure we will see the Echo usage settle into a pattern soon enough. Echo’s ultimate also made these games extremely chaotic, at one point there were four primal rage using Winston (2 real ones, 2 duplicates) and that was extremely both for the casters and also for the viewers but oh so hilarious to watch.
This week’s hero bans were:
- McCree
- Widowmaker
- Wrecking Ball
- Mercy
With two major hitscan heroes gone this week we saw a rise in Ashe and Tracer usage alongside the usual Mei/Reaper. Mei/Reaper seems to be a staple for teams now when they are not comfortable with whatever the new hotness is. With Mercy banned we didn’t see any Pharah. I’m curious what a Pharah/Echo DPS lineup with Mercy would look like. I would think that’s quite the deadly combination.
The Games
This week we had some really fantastic series to talk about, yes that means we have reverse sweeps! Not a complete 3-0 snoozefest like last week.
New York Excelsior vs Shanghai Dragons
This one really was a fantastic series to watch as a Saebyeolbe fan, we get to see more SBB Tracer gameplay hell yeah! The Dragons continue to be a formidable force and they have now proven that they are one of the top teams in the league at the moment. The way they adapted to the Excelsior after the first half and brought it back with a 3-2 reverse sweep victory was just incredible to watch.
Los Angeles Valiant vs Atlanta Reign
Another fantastic reverse sweep. This time featuring the excellent Valiant DPS duo of Shax and KSP. More specifically Shax’s Tracer and KSP’s Ashe. Truly a series where you can tell that once the Valiant got their wings out, they were unstoppable. I was on the edge of my seat by the fifth map of this series and for the moment I had become a Valiant fan.
Its not like the Reign put up a fight but they simply got outplayed and outmatched in the DPS matchup and that makes the series even more fun to watch. Shax actually outplayed Edison’s Tracer which I didn’t think would happen. I’m looking forward to what this particular Valiant DPS duo can achieve in the future.
Philadelphia Fusion vs Paris Eternal
A rematch and in Fusion tradition it had to be another map 5 slugfest. I want to talk about one player in particular and that is the brand new signing for the Eternal, Fielder. Playing from South Korea with a 200ms ping to the server, Fielder the flex support god who was having a field day with his sleep darts and anti-heal grenades. I really cannot wait to see what this guy can do when he is no longer at a ping disadvantage.
Also would like to shoutout to Fury who was eternally hungry for Soon’s pulse bombs. Just some fantastic D.Va plays.
Miscellaneous tidbits
The Seoul Dynasty continue to trend downwards this week with two more losses, one to the Guangzhou Charge and one to the Hangzhou Spark. Neither of these matches were even close and at this point I’m extremely concerned for the Dynasty squad. Everything alright over there? What’s going on?
Rough times continue for the Boston Uprising with their rematch against the Florida Mayhem this week. Another 3-0 loss. We did see some signs of life from the Uprising squad but not enough to make the series competitive.
The Toronto Defiant take a loss to the Los Angeles Gladiators. We were simply outplayed most of the time. It was good to see RoKy back in the lineup playing support.
Concluding thoughts and next week’s hero bans
Overall, I would say it was a good week for games, Echo being available for use made things interesting to watch at least even for the 3-0 matches. From a news perspective, it was a mix of both good and bad.
Next week’s hero bans are:
- Ashe
- Reaper
- Reinhardt
- Brigitte
The Reaper ban makes things interesting, with one half of the staple Mei/Reaper duo gone, I do wonder what the fallback composition will be for next week’s games.
Before I close out this week’s post, I would like to share one more Overwatch related tweet that happened during the week:
You love to see it 🙏🏾🙏🏾. Hope y’all have a good week and I’ll see y’all next Monday!