It's going to be very disappointing when Shock win. Then Vancouver are the only ones who didn't get a second chance.
But Shock had to play a gauntlet of 5 matches to get here. Titans only had to win 3.
So they got more practice in the new meta, too.
And there's more film of their strategies on display. You can't start nitpicking down to that. The Shock have already had more chances to get knocked out than the Titans.
It's going to be very disappointing when Shock win. Then Vancouver are the only ones who didn't get a second chance.
But Shock had to play a gauntlet of 5 matches to get here. Titans only had to win 3.
So they got more practice in the new meta, too.
And there's more film of their strategies on display. You can't start nitpicking down to that. The Shock have already had more chances to get knocked out than the Titans.
Were there not a chasm of skill level between the top two and the rest, sure. What was SF's map record in the loser bracket, again?
It's going to be very disappointing when Shock win. Then Vancouver are the only ones who didn't get a second chance.
But Shock had to play a gauntlet of 5 matches to get here. Titans only had to win 3.
So they got more practice in the new meta, too.
And there's more film of their strategies on display. You can't start nitpicking down to that. The Shock have already had more chances to get knocked out than the Titans.
Were there not a chasm of skill level between the top two and the rest, sure. What was SF's map record in the loser bracket, again?
If SF really is so much better than every other team, they deserve to win it all. Being in winner's bracket is an undeniable advantage, and if the Titans really are the better team they have no excuse for not winning the finals in a single best of seven. I get where you're coming from, I originally wanted there to be a possible bracket reset in the finals too, but with the current format I think it's fine as is.
Why is Tizi in for Bumper? I can't find anything googling.
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BaidolI will hold him offEscape while you canRegistered Userregular
Real sports have time constraints that esports don't. Double elimination tournaments make for better narratives due to the possibility of comebacks. The International, the main DOTA2 tournament with a prize pool of greater than $34 million, does double elimination.
Bumper isn't in because Bumper can't play the necessary tanks. This has been true since the beginning of the playoff tournament.
Bumper isn't in because Bumper can't play the necessary tanks. This has been true since the beginning of the playoff tournament.
More specifically, Bumper is really good at Rein, and...that's about it. At least in terms of being OWL level. Same thing that happened to Super, basically.
Well, that was a thing that happened. Titans kinda looked like they just didn't prepare for this match.
To be fair, the Shock played a lot of not-quite-meta comps, especially their Bastion comps. Titans have always seemed really good at refining/perfecting an existing meta, but not so great when it comes to anticipating or adapting to off-meta or generally unexpected comps. Shock, meanwhile, seem much more pro-active about developing pocket strats and adapting in-game.
I wonder they shouldn't be patching before finals anymore, watching the same stuff is boring but the meta shakeup is the main reason both grand finals have been lame
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BaidolI will hold him offEscape while you canRegistered Userregular
I don't have a preference, but people will always complain about the meta and the best teams should be able to adapt to any meta.
I don't have a preference, but people will always complain about the meta and the best teams should be able to adapt to any meta.
Yeah, my main complaint is that the Sigma meta is even more calcified generally than Goats was.
How's that? The only variation you ever saw in GOATs was Winston instead of Rein. Double barrier doesn't have any tank changes but there's 5 DPS and 5 supports that get rotated pretty regularly.
I don't have a preference, but people will always complain about the meta and the best teams should be able to adapt to any meta.
Yeah, my main complaint is that the Sigma meta is even more calcified generally than Goats was.
How's that? The only variation you ever saw in GOATs was Winston instead of Rein. Double barrier doesn't have any tank changes but there's 5 DPS and 5 supports that get rotated pretty regularly.
There was Winston 3-3, Rein 3-3. Healers changed based on circumstances. Then we got Sombra Goats with it's variations, and towards the end of the Goats meta we had all those goats variations against a ton of different DPS based comps. There was a lot more variety and it felt like a lot fewer mirror matches. Here, it's Sigma, Orisa, Moira almost 100% of the time (like Sigma was something like 96% pick rate with the remaining bits being desperation switches for stalling), Mercy/Lucio, and then 2 of Reaper, Doomfist, Mei, Pharah, Bastion, and that's it.
I don't have a preference, but people will always complain about the meta and the best teams should be able to adapt to any meta.
Yeah, my main complaint is that the Sigma meta is even more calcified generally than Goats was.
How's that? The only variation you ever saw in GOATs was Winston instead of Rein. Double barrier doesn't have any tank changes but there's 5 DPS and 5 supports that get rotated pretty regularly.
There was Winston 3-3, Rein 3-3. Healers changed based on circumstances. Then we got Sombra Goats with it's variations, and towards the end of the Goats meta we had all those goats variations against a ton of different DPS based comps. There was a lot more variety and it felt like a lot fewer mirror matches. Here, it's Sigma, Orisa, Moira almost 100% of the time (like Sigma was something like 96% pick rate with the remaining bits being desperation switches for stalling), Mercy/Lucio, and then 2 of Reaper, Doomfist, Mei, Pharah, Bastion, and that's it.
You're comparing a meta that lasted for nearly a year to a meta that's been around for a month or so. Of course more heroes were seen over the course of GOATs.
Even so, San Francisco alone played 12 different heroes tonight, by my count.
GOATs always devolved to a mirror. Usually after two team fights. One team goes counter comp for whatever the other team starts with (Winston or Rein), the other team switches to counter-GOATs, first team switches to mirror. It was like clockwork. Yeah the healers changed but not on a map-to-map basis. They changed over the course of months. Moira was the initial main support pick, then Zen took over and it was Zen for a very long time. Ana started subbing in only when Sombra knocked D.va out of the lineup, which was like 11 months and 1 week into GOATs.
It didn't help that everyone called everything GOATs for no reason.
Also you only started seeing DPS heavy comps near the end of goats because everyone knew role lock was coming, so some teams decided it was in their best interest to try and get a head start on figuring out the next meta (or just finally figured out how to beat certain goats teams on certain maps, a la Dragons and Hunters).
Give this meta a whole dang year and I promise it would look very different than it does now (but please god don't let any meta last more than a couple months, update faster Blizzard goddammit!)
I think Crusty has shown what having a great coach can do for a team. He was with Boston when they had their undefeated stage last season and now coached the undeniably best team in the league this season.
BaidolI will hold him offEscape while you canRegistered Userregular
I'm watching a stream of some of the Overwatch talent and just watched Reinforce flank the opposing spawn as Ana, solo kill the opposing 2 DPS as his own tanks got murdered, and then won the subsequent fight with his surviving dps.
As somebody that doesn’t really follow OWL, or esports outside of the big FGC stuff: do people think these cuts are kind of a “we didn’t win, so we’re cutting all these guys that didn’t help us win” type cut... or a “we’d better cut people because we ain’t got money” cut? Or something else?
mightyjongyoSour CrrmEast Bay, CaliforniaRegistered Userregular
edited October 2019
This one in particular was due to underperformance over the year. I think this copied tweet thread probably sums it up the best:
edit: There are a few things that are going on with the league in general -- the season just ended, a lot of players are looking around as free agents since their contracts expired, and on top of that all teams are moving to their respective home locations, so many players are (probably) looking to transfer to teams that have a preferred location. The off season in general is the time to rebuild, so we were already going to see a lot of announcements like this as people are cut for performance reasons or to make space for up and coming players, but with all the other things going on it's a bit of a free for all. It's very rarely, if ever, due to the org not having enough money.
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But Shock had to play a gauntlet of 5 matches to get here. Titans only had to win 3.
So they got more practice in the new meta, too.
And there's more film of their strategies on display. You can't start nitpicking down to that. The Shock have already had more chances to get knocked out than the Titans.
Were there not a chasm of skill level between the top two and the rest, sure. What was SF's map record in the loser bracket, again?
If SF really is so much better than every other team, they deserve to win it all. Being in winner's bracket is an undeniable advantage, and if the Titans really are the better team they have no excuse for not winning the finals in a single best of seven. I get where you're coming from, I originally wanted there to be a possible bracket reset in the finals too, but with the current format I think it's fine as is.
Why is Tizi in for Bumper? I can't find anything googling.
Bumper isn't in because Bumper can't play the necessary tanks. This has been true since the beginning of the playoff tournament.
Tizi has been playing all playoffs dude.
More specifically, Bumper is really good at Rein, and...that's about it. At least in terms of being OWL level. Same thing that happened to Super, basically.
So, if you don't want to know, don't play yet.
Yeah, my main complaint is that the Sigma meta is even more calcified generally than Goats was.
How's that? The only variation you ever saw in GOATs was Winston instead of Rein. Double barrier doesn't have any tank changes but there's 5 DPS and 5 supports that get rotated pretty regularly.
There was Winston 3-3, Rein 3-3. Healers changed based on circumstances. Then we got Sombra Goats with it's variations, and towards the end of the Goats meta we had all those goats variations against a ton of different DPS based comps. There was a lot more variety and it felt like a lot fewer mirror matches. Here, it's Sigma, Orisa, Moira almost 100% of the time (like Sigma was something like 96% pick rate with the remaining bits being desperation switches for stalling), Mercy/Lucio, and then 2 of Reaper, Doomfist, Mei, Pharah, Bastion, and that's it.
You're comparing a meta that lasted for nearly a year to a meta that's been around for a month or so. Of course more heroes were seen over the course of GOATs.
Even so, San Francisco alone played 12 different heroes tonight, by my count.
Steam: MightyPotatoKing
It didn't help that everyone called everything GOATs for no reason.
Give this meta a whole dang year and I promise it would look very different than it does now (but please god don't let any meta last more than a couple months, update faster Blizzard goddammit!)
i'm damn happy shock won and it is 100000% for rascal's sake
i'm so happy i could cry ;-;
get rekt
Steam: MightyPotatoKing
oof
edit: There are a few things that are going on with the league in general -- the season just ended, a lot of players are looking around as free agents since their contracts expired, and on top of that all teams are moving to their respective home locations, so many players are (probably) looking to transfer to teams that have a preferred location. The off season in general is the time to rebuild, so we were already going to see a lot of announcements like this as people are cut for performance reasons or to make space for up and coming players, but with all the other things going on it's a bit of a free for all. It's very rarely, if ever, due to the org not having enough money.
Steam: MightyPotatoKing