Overwatch

Looks pretty cool. Its a bit odd that Zenyatta gets two cephalopodian skins, though.

Edited by Zeromaeus on Jun 23rd 2019 at 4:36:18 AM

-sighs- If only Ryujehong was as good as he was back in 2017, he would've gotten his custom Ana skin...

Well, the JJoNak Zenyatta skin is available now for 200 OWL tokens; I gravitate toward Mercy or Moira (or very occasionally Brigitte) when it comes to playing Support, but I had some OWL tokens going spare. And octopodes (not octopi!) are always cool.

The rumblings about 2/2/2 role lock coming to OWL for Stage 4 are getting ever louder; I've seen it opined that some of the current top tier teams only occupy the top tier because of their skill with GOATS, and that they don't really have the DPS players they'll need to compete if the meta is forcibly shifted to 2/2/2. Teams that the writers/narrators of such opinions expect to drop off sharply include the Vancouver Titans and the San Francisco Shock, while the New York Excelsior are expected to be able to ride out the storm. (I expect the Washington Justice will remain the joke of OWL. The Florida Mayhem... well, they did just upset the Houston Outlaws.) We shall see.

The question to which no-one (except, one hopes, the dev team) seems to know the answer is whether 2/2/2 role lock will move beyond OWL and into Overwatch proper. I may need to broaden my Tank and DPS palettes just to be on the safe side...

Enforcing 2-2-2 partway through a Season leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I genuinely think teams should get a much longer runway for that kind of restriction, since it can be a major roster change.

I'm not fond of the idea of forcing 2-2-2 at all. I don't care about OWL, but in regular play (even comp), sometimes 1-2-3 or even (rarely) 1-1-4 is the right play.

I agree. Characters being unique per team is enough, I feel.

That's one of the major criticisms of introducing it for Stage 4 by almost everyone I've seen weigh in on the issue; imagine something like that happening in non-e-sport three-quarters of the way through a season. There'd be absolute uproar. We're very likely to see multiple instances of teams who have thrived in the first three stages, only to fall off a cliff in Stage 4 and go out in the first round of the playoffs for the Grand Final. It doesn't seem right.

Besides, the meta is finally starting to shift away from GOATS even in OWL; it's rarely 2/2/2, but even setting aside swapping Sombra in for one of the tanks in GOATS, she's been chosen much more often in Stage 3, as have Pharah, Doomfist, Widowmaker, McCree, Bastion, Hanzo, Soldier:76, Mei, Junkrat, Genji, Tracer (outside end-of-map stalling)... and not just by teams with a "Throw everything at the wall and see what sticks" approach to team composition. (Although the latter teams still seem to be the only ones to choose Ashe, Reaper, Symmetra, or Torbjorn.)

And as for the rest of the playerbase, if people want restrictions on team composition, well, that's what Custom games are for, surely. (Or the Workshop, for that matter.) No need to enforce it across the board. Again, I suppose we'll see if they introduce it outside OWL, probably when the next patch hits. Fingers crossed they don't, though.

Edited by mlsmithca on Jun 28th 2019 at 12:32:51 PM

What happens when a seagull swoops in to snatch an octpus?

Octupus wins.

Edited by dRoy on Jul 7th 2019 at 11:36:52 PM

An Overwatch League news!

Okay, wow.

So now we're at Stage 3 Playoffs, and......Did...did Shanghai Dragons actually just beat New York Excelsior by 3:1?! Holy shit, SD!

Unfortunately, however, SD now must face Vancouver Titans. Oh well.

With that said, DDING might just have proven himself to be the best Pharah player in the world.

Edited by dRoy on Jul 12th 2019 at 1:41:14 AM

New York Excelsior crumbling in the stage playoffs. By George, you could almost set your watch by it.

Shanghai Dragons have come a very long way since their winless inaugural season; as you rightly say, DDing may possibly be the best Pharah player in the world (though he does need CoMa by his side as Mercy to be truly effective; never underestimate the value of a good Support!), and diem is an insanely good Widowmaker (and, like most of the best Widowmaker players, is pretty damned handy with Tracer as well). Who knows, they may have what it takes to topple Vancouver in the semi-finals; the Titans do seem to rely very heavily on GOATS, after all.

Something tells me the Dragons will be among the teams who have little trouble adjusting to 2/2/2 role lock.

• Highlights: Summer Games is changing and coming sooner, hero 31 is coming a little later, this is the first of a few developer updates to hit this summer.

Edited by MegaJ on Jul 11th 2019 at 10:13:27 AM

It's definitely going to be Mauga. Jeff said 31 is a he.

Ok, maybe i want another shield ok? Tired of playing just Reinhard or Orisa because ironically i suck at Wrecking Ball

Well well, the Shanghai Dragons have done it again. First New York, now Vancouver, and in only five maps (albeit thanks at least partly to some disastrous lapses of judgement by the Titans, especially at the very tail end of Oasis). A case of the Dragons being the slayers!

The analysts seemed to agree with the wisdom that has been emerging regarding the Titans' prospects going forward: they've been very slow to adapt to the gradual slide away from GOATS and struggle massively to respond to teams that rely heavily on characters like Pharah, Widowmaker, or Wrecking Ball. And since DDing, diem, and Gamsu are aces with those three characters in that order, to say nothing of CoMa's skill with Mercy or Luffy's flair with Ana, they're almost certainly going to be one of the teams to watch going forward. The Titans may be a team to watch, but not necessarily for the reasons they'd like... but perhaps they'll adjust after all between now and the beginning of Stage 4? We'll see.

You think with 2-2-2, we'll start getting more divergent characters again? All the characters in each category sorta play the same somehow, so I imagine there won't be a lot of diversity in the character picks for OWL.

Well tanks have anchor-shield tanks (Reinhardt, Orisa), Dive tanks (Winston, Dva and Hamston) and Bruisers (Roadhog and Zarya because i can't really place them anywhere else)

Maybe tank could get a more unique tank playstyle that isn't shielding or eating damage.

Yup, I did NOT expect SD to beat Vancouver Titans as well, although the latter are kinda falling apart little by little.

Now, if SD wins the playoffs? I think we can officially call SD not just one of the stronger, but one of the strongest teams of this season.

Also, I agree that DDING is really good. As a matter of fact, if SD make it into Top 4, I think DDING might even deserve MVP of this season.

Edited by dRoy on Jul 14th 2019 at 8:10:06 PM

And the Dragons have done it. Yes, the Shock came within a map of a reverse sweep, but once again, DDing was insane as Pharah (58 Barrage kills out of 107 final blows across seven maps?? Every time I play against or alongside a Pharah, she gets shot out of the sky before she can get halfway through yelling "JUSTICE RAINS FROM ABOVE!"), diem was insane as Widowmaker (and had some damned good moments as Sombra), Youngjin and his skill with Doomfist (among others) may finally get people to stop mentioning his disastrous "Cloud 9" moment on Dorado against Dallas in Stage 1... this run is the stuff of legends. I've said it before, I'll say it again, this Dragons team should be very interesting to watch going forward.

(And it comes on the heels of an eventful day in non-e-sports, with a win for Lewis Hamilton in the British Grand Prix and plenty of chaos in the race for the other podium spots, an epic fifth-set tiebreaker thriller between Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer in the Men's Singles final at Wimbledon, and a tie in the final of the Cricket World Cup between New Zealand and England that required a "Super Over" decider that went down to the wire.)

Edited by mlsmithca on Jul 14th 2019 at 8:42:48 AM

Holy fucking shit! Just...HOLY FUCKING SHIT!! Shanghai Dragons...Just...WOW!

You know what this also might mean? This could finally signal the death of the Goats meta!

Well, 2/2/2 role lock was poised to kill it anyway, but we can always hope that Blizzard either scrap the idea or only apply it temporarily if it turns out GOATS was going away anyway.

Either way, it was hard not to notice that both Vancouver and San Francisco were still quite slavishly sticking to GOATS for most of their maps (well, occasionally they'd swap Brigitte for Baptiste, or Reinhardt for Winston, or Zenyatta for Ana or Moira, or even, gasp, one of the tanks for Sombra), and while perhaps San Francisco pushing the Dragons to Map 7 showed their mastery of GOATS even compared to Vancouver, I think both they and the Titans were simply clinging to a meta that is finally becoming outdated, and I had the impression the OWL commentary team saw it that way as well. If so, good riddance, GOATS, frankly you were confusing and/or boring to watch. (Something else will fill the void, obviously. With 2/2/2 role lock impending, I'm guessing it will be something emphasising the snipers and possibly Pharah/Mercy.)

My suspicion in light of Jeff Kaplan's dev update video from a few days ago is that the next big patch will hit the game on Tuesday and bring with it the start of Summer Games; I'm guessing that's when we'll see how far-reaching 2/2/2 role lock really is.

Summer Games outta nowhere!

This time we are having challenge weeks similar to the DVA, Ana and Baptiste events. Enjoy.

Well, not entirely out of nowhere (again, cf. Jeff Kaplan's video concerning the early start of Summer Games and the late release of Hero 31), but near enough since they didn't announce the precise date ahead of time, and it's an interesting change for them to start an event without giving us a preview of at least some of the new skins, emotes, victory poses, highlight intros, etc.

I only bought the game during last year's Black Friday sale, so this is the first opportunity I've had to play Lucioball (I missed it all three days it was available during the Anniversary event). Of course, since I'm hopeless as Lucio, whether or not I'm on the winning team is basically a coin toss. Should be a nice quick way to earn the limited edition cosmetics each week, though. (I presume the idea of Hammond being inside the ball is a new addition for this year?)

We might finally have a Genji skin that permanently beats out my love of Nomad...

So Lucioball is exactly the same. Not even a new map for it.

Well i guess the ball is now Hammond (In the sense that it just squeaks when you hit it. That's it)

Let's get down to business because today we have a lot to unpack

Role queue is finally here. This feature has been worked for a year and it's now ready to use in the PTR. To accomodate this huge changes, some heroes have received noticeable balance changes (Pretty excited for the Reinhardt ones)

And lastly, We got a leak from an oopsie from OW Mexico (Sigma? Who is this dude◊)

My first thought was Sigma.