I'm afraid I have to agree. Though I have to wonder, is it more on the players, or is the coaching/strats more to blame? Because their comp choice seemed utterly abysmal to me today.

FDGod and Hanbin are kinda nutty. Paris looking much better than I ever expected.

I believe in the lads.

I imagine that Stratus had the hero pool that best fit that meta. It may not say much about Ado. Again, we'll see how he does.

He looked decent in spite of being on a pretty bad team in S1. in S2 he never got to actually play his role, so as far as I'm concerned he's at least decent, but we'll see how he does.

I don't think the pickup is as bad as you make it sound.

They made some good pickups, imo, but I have to wonder how long integration will take since none of the KR players have been on mixed teams before.

Really looking forward to it.

My body is ready.

Just my gut feeling, can't really say much because I don't know how travel, meta/balance changes and her pools will affect all these teams. Teams are somewhat interchangeable within their tiers.

I'm also ULTRA BIASED when it comes to Toronto and cannot properly evaluate them, because they're my home team, so take that as you will.

S Tier

1. SF Shock
2. NYXL

A Tier

3. Atlanta Reign
4. Philadelphia Fusion
5. Vancouver Titans

B Tier

6. Shanghai Dragons
7. Seoul Dynasty
8. Hangzhou Spark
9. Guangzhou Charge
10. LA Gladiators

C Tier

11. Toronto Defiant
12. Chengdu Hunters
13. London Spitfire
14. Florida Mayhem
15. Houston Outlaws
16. Washington Justice

Pepega

17. Dallas Fuel
18. Paris Eternal
19. LA Valiant
20. Boston Uprising

I think I might be a bit more inclined to try a pick-em league instead. With all the changes in S3 I don't think I'll be remotely keeping up with the league.

The heroes picked for bans/possible adjustments will be based on playtime, so he can one-trick all he wants as long as Hammond isn't popular.

Look at the screenshots in the thread:
[Slur] An explanation and apology

He's likely being released for the comments. Looks like he was a pretty toxic kid up until some time prior to the past year or two People around him seemed to be saying that was a good dude as of late but I don't know how recent the change in attitude/behavior was.

Damn, they really ran it back didn't they.

Not gonna lie, I liked Fearless even though the teams around him wasn't able to give him much support. I think he starts and Stand1 is the backup MT. Looking forward to see him complete his redemption arc.

The only thing that would have been a significant upgrade would have been them stealing Coldest away from the Spark. Still, looking forward to seeing what this team can do this year and if the lack of teams being able to prepare for them will continue into Season 3.

I'm no VISA expert, but afaik you need the correct one to "work" in NA, probably even more so in the US now.

Expected that a bit sooner, but good for him for officially transitioning.

You can't fake passion. Good on him for moving on if the game just isn't fun to cast.

It'll die whenever the investor decide it's no longer viable, so unless the gigabrains here are financial pundits and/or have access to some insider information it's a moot question. I know that this is a relatively hardline (and probably unpopular) opinion but mulling over whether OW is dead/dying or not...in its 3rd year...just isn't remotely productive imo.

If you like it then support it in your own way, heck you could even try sending suggestions Blizz's way (listening not included) and hope it does well..otherwise you don't really have to participate.

The is "insert esport of choice here dying?" question/meme is basically beating on an extinct horse species at this point. Unless the goal is to gather solutions to the problems OWL is facing, for the sake hoping Blizz might someday adopt one or several them before they nuke OWL like they did SC/SC2.

For what it's worth I think this year is make or break in terms of showing that the league is/isn't viable with the model they chose to go with. But since I'm a sarcastic twat I'll actually "answer" your question:

Yes, OWL is dying, because all things must end eventually.

Boink.

As long as the investors think it's worth it. Same as every other sport/league.

Jake and him are joining the OWL team:
https://twitter.com/overwatchleague/status/1205200800860917761?s=19

I don't think I can put any stock, at all, in the ESM showmatches. They have no true competitive value, so I'm not ready to base any of my impressions of off them.

Now, while I'm not entirely sure about Void, I think he likelyis an upgrade over envy/Geguri but Fleta is much more of s question mark since he just hasn't been able to show that he's a dominant, top tier DPS player in the first two seasons.

That being said, I don't even know where I think they'd land next season, and I also don't think top 4 is out of the question, but my current gut feeling is that losing Gamsu isn't quite made up by gaining Stand1, Void and Fleta.

Dare I say it, I think it was a good time for him to do this. And realistically, we've seen A LOT of Jake. That being said, we should still see more of him, just not as a player.

Yeah, sounds like a possibility to me, I he'd be able to get some sort of talent position.

Leaving this here for now, until it gets merged into a proper article...

From the Outlaws:
https://twitter.com/Outlaws/status/1203415943742984194

From Jake:
https://twitter.com/jakeow/status/1203415204870197253?s=21

I mean, according to the team he was pretty much helping with coaching players, and he wasn't going to see play time.

So this moves makes much more sense, imo.

Seemed like a good guy, and he didn't get much of a chance to actually show what he might have been able to do, on that team, but I do think there were just better options across the league and in contenders.

Name checks out.

Huh...interesting...

Smells like Jehong time. As if I needed any more reason to keep rooting for VAN...

OW Beacon twitter post:
https://twitter.com/OWBeacon/status/1194950747462389761

Rise:
https://twitter.com/GZCharge/status/1193949882928619520

Fragi, Hotba, Bischu, and OnlyWish:
https://twitter.com/GZCharge/status/1193959270171045888

Looked like he was an excellent analyst, just not a head coach, so I disagree about this being a miss-step.

Maybe, assuming he'll do well on a mixed roster, first of all. Then the other thing with Birdring is that his hot/cold tendencies go way back to the APEX days, and I don't know that the Glads can change that. I hope they do, but I remain mostly skeptical.

Shrug, can't say I agree.

That's a possibility, but he could also not be. I don't have any expectations yet since this is obviously an entirely new team and it's a team game. I'll see how he does and either bitch and moan abut him being the "problem" or claim that I knew he'd work well all along.

Just keeping it real as a biased Toronto fanboi.

can't hear you over the sound of my own manic fanboying.

Yeah, marketability off the charts (Canada wise at least)

U N I T E D S T A T E S O F A M E R I C A

You can probably apply that to quite a few player, KR or not.

now that the casuals have their own game mode, they will finally balance the PvP aspect of the game for competitive players.

Wut? As if the player base remotely agrees on what being "casual" even means. The game will never be balanced in a way that even makes the "competitive players", w/e that means, happy. That doesn't mean they should stop trying to improve it, because they NEED players to want to play the game in the first place.

Probably one of the worst metas for them as well play style wise. This year just wasn't theirs, gg go next I guess.

Putting that behind a paywall might have been the worst thing to do, imo. This might not be the best thing out there but you can either pay for the PvE content and/or the graphical style change, or not pay for them if you don't care.

I wouldn't exactly call this an upset with the roster they had to field. The last minutes changes really hurt them.

No. One clip isn't enough. Consistency is super important and he hasn't really had a chance to prove that he is because he's been on the bench for significant portions of time.

I have questions about Beast but I'd be very happy if he proves me to me entirely wrong. Just haven't seen him in a very long time and I'm not sure where he stands in comparison to the league's best tanks.

They had me the moment they announced their existence, this is just adding to the fire of my, soon to be illogical, fanaticism.

"but they are not going to have the old fans with the same dedication"

Who knows, new fans could be just as dedicated. My point is, you could also have fans of the actual Seoul team, as a whole, just for representing Seoul/Korea and I think that's being slept on.

But does that apply to their Korean fanbase, in Korea, as a whole? I get what you mean, but you make it sound as if their fan base would be decimated by these moves, and I just don't think that will be the case.

I'm not saying they won't lose fans, I'm sure they even lost some just because of the expectations vs the results they got in the past two seasons, but my impression of this is that they might do better if they can make a winning team out of this than just holding onto those players if things haven't been working out.

Would be interesting to see the magnitude of the backlash in reference to this if they can't manage to do better though.

For what it's worth i'm saying this as a RJH fanboi since APAC 2016, so I'd love to see him and Tobi stay on if they can work things out.

Possibly, but being THE Korean team I assume they'll be just fine fan base wise if they can make a winning team out of it.