Why do you think it's bad for the league as a whole? Just cuz its a bad look to have a team completely blown up in only the fourth season. I've seen a lot of hate towards valiant on reddit recently but I need a reason other than "they r screwing their fans and players"

New look nyxl is gonna feel so weird but I'm excited to see how it goes.

I agree, the only problem I see is that blizzard has extremely high aspirations for the league (home and away games ACROSS THE GLOBE) so it doesn't seem like it can afford to be a niche league. It feels like owl is aiming towards being the number one esport and I don't see that happening. Idk the business side, maybe I am overestimating how many viewers are required to make the league profitable.

Profit's resume gonna be dummy thicc by the end of the night, win or lose. Thiccer if they win of course.

I think the matchup of Lip on Sombra gives Shanghai the matchup edge over any team. The rest of their team dominant enough to at least evenly match with the best in the league, and Lip being the downright best player at a such a centralising and controlling hero as Sombra, I gotta predict Shanghai whenever she is meta

Uh oh. Justice, please don't get complacent because of a lucky meta, format, and signing at the end of the season. Despite the strong finish, this season was a failure. I believe they worked hard last season, but still, I hope this isn't a sign that they don't recognize how lucky they were and think they can run it back.

This is what I needed to bridge the gap to finals. Thx snivy :)

All I'm saying is that there is not enough info in this article to form a strong opinion one way or the other

There aren't really any details in this article concerning what he did, so maybe "sexual molestation of a minor" is slightly misleading. When you read molestation you think of violence. Maybe the age diff was 3yrs and the molestation wasnt thaaaat bad. (Dont wanna sound like a rapist, just saying there are levels of bad)
Also, depends what the goal of the punishment system is. It's expensive to lock someone up for life. 1year in the slammer is quite a while for a ~20yo (idk his age) and 40 hours therapy, the judge determined that that would be enough for him to turn his life around. Personally I believe reform is much more valuable and efficient than just locking ppl up forever. If you're not going to reform from 1 year jail and 40 hours of therapy, why would you reform after 20 years or whatever large sentence you'd expect.

It feels like they shouldn't be there. Especially because of decay. At the start is was just "haha decay eliminated his old team from the playoffs". Then paris. Then Florida. And I think that's when people started to think "wait, this is kinda weirdchamp". It's best described as weirdchamp since had Washington not gone well, we wouldn't have complained. But the meta switched, they used an exception to pick up the hardest carry in the league, and corona virus gave them the chance to enter. No one really cared about those rules until Washington popped off and invalidated the whole regular season. I don't think people are that mad at Washington, it just became "this ain't right, can someone please just put them in their place". Imo.

Why didn't we see much s4 this season?

I usually never have chat on, here are some highlights from the 2 minutes where I looked at chat and was astounded by the takes

​SEOUL IS 80 X Times better NYXL is most washed team in the league

Pine was the souls of nyxl. Just like how decay has come into Washington justice and turned things around, pine was the X factor for nyxl. And after he stopped playing on the team, they went under....

NXYL is kinda washed. sombra plays too cowardly and doesn't want to commit to diving with tanks. sbb idk what he doing

It really speaks badly for OWL that they have to run Blizzard filler ads

Where the fuck did nero come from lol

This is a really weird time to not include godsb, when lots of teams were running double hitscan, let alone one.

Nyxl said that they have been preparing to take on shanghai since that is what you have to do playing in APAC, and they predominantly ran sombra + tracer/ashe, so I think that would've been the meta in apac

I've memed on fuel all season, but I actually feel bad for the players :( especially after crimzos tweet. He is my favourite player on that roster. He played so so well this season but it sucks to have your rookie season tarnished/overlooked because of what went on. I don't neccessary wanna see this org be good- just not disastrous.

I'm gonna be kinda annoyed if Decay can carry this team any further (3 wins or more), they don't really deserve it... it's not like I hate the players at all, but decay played ONE regular season game iirc so it seems kinda disingenuous.
I say 3 wins is my "limit" because I would love for Washington to beat Dallas

What a shit show , they just took turns dominating each other. Maybe shit show is a rude description, but that was weird as.

Wow, (once again) the one map we won we had erster in... but nooooooooo they couldn't put him in for the rest of the game hsuosownjqpkqnahsuwhwuwushdjs kb sb bukk wo kb w

Oh no :(

How does one pronounce "L1rs"?

I really hope it stays that way for the memes, but I doubt it.
Then again, that's what we said last time... ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Eternal is popular because they are the one team from Europe with many good European players. That is the same reason defiant has a following. I'd imagine the few fans the Justice garnered was from being the American capital, having a clearly patriotic logo and popular American personalities of corey and stratus (oh, and sleepy for a bit). So it's not really crazy to think a full Korean transition could be disappointing to some people. That said, this move isn't the indicator they are going full Korean. That decision was made obvious ages ago.

Thanks!

There are so many good candidates that anyone who thinks there is a shoe-in for the award is deluded.

That said, it is highly controversial that xzi is even eligible, let alone winning. Note, there is a difference between "most skilled dps" and mvp. Even if xzi was the best hitscan in the league, missing half the season due to injury/being benched shouldn't be an mvp season imo.

This makes me so excited for shock shanghai

Holyyy. I wanted this one to be close but we got rolled hard

Also the schedule change meant I didn't wake up in time to see most of the match... probably for the better

Don't forget to vote- click here

Xzi is currently beating out Carpe in MVP voting, 24204 to 23541 at time of posting. I don't necessarily think Carpe should win- but, come on, Xzi? Really Paris bandwagoners. I'm not trying to clown on Xzi, he's a phenomenal player. But is he really our MVP.

Who are you guys voting for and why?
edit: just realised that fan votes are only 25% worth. phew

I think the person sharing also said some suspect stuff, so they only share stuff that makes them look good. Even something like "respect women you retard" they might try to occlude since it sorta incriminating. Bad example but that is my theory.

That actually aged well.

Remember that first break he took, the team said it was for mental health reasons (iirc)? Well, now I wonder "who started it". As in, is decay mad about being benched, or he got benched because he was mad about something else 🤔 probably the latter I reckon

Wow, this is embarrassing for Fuel. I'm glad decay is (almost certainly) going to get a chance on another team, but doing it this way means Fuel don't get any money for him, I think? I wonder if star players will continue to go to the fuel next season.

Team info* (title cut off) Such as scores or starting lineups? Pretty sure the answer is no but I was just checking since certain regions are slow to be updated. Which is completely understandable of course, the coverage here is awesome, no question there. I just didn't see an answer to this in faq so I thought I could ask.

yeah I'm excited for this one
edit: wtf I have stars pog

when I saw this matchup on the schedule I got really excited for a second, but then I remembered that this isn't the old rivalry anymore :( At least shock still made it memorable.

Someone called me?

I thought the exact same as you, don't worry

I don't really respect the position of "So many more worthy players have been grinding in t2 and below- it is unfair for krystal to get in the league". How much time you put into something has never been directly correlated to your entitlement for that position- in overwatch or in any field. I personally do believe that GZ is making a mistake, but that is their mistake to make.

yeah, it's so confusing. wtf is going on over there. There have been multiple interesting decisions but the most perplexing to me is erster because he always seemed such a superstar. How is it that fire, kodak, and frd have got playtime- no disrespect to them, but that just shows that the reign seem open to experimentation- but erster hasn't (edit: he has had some but obv not much compared to what you would expect). Have they just evaluated that he isn't as good. that seems so hard to believe

As the season has gone on, the toilet bowl teams have looked less toilet-bowl-y and the hunters have looked worse and worse

Is it a platchat take to think that genjis should cast blade out of los then dash in? Ik you're wasting a dash but sparkle got rocked so much he spent most of his blade time afk anyway. Idk, stuns have always been the bane of genjis existence, and it seems like no buffs can counteract that at the highest level with vs amazing players like fury or alarm

Ill still wager shock is the best team overall, they got caught off guard by a genji meta right after trading architect, and then try to play ashe tracer. They came really close to winning, especially considering they were playing with a compositional disadvantage vs Eternal in their dream meta. Although, even on the non-genji (and therefore non sparkle) maps (cough control cough) was arguably where they looked the most dominant, so hopefully that proves they aren't genji one tricks.

There are enough streaky teams in NA to the tournaments interesting, this time is was washington and Toronto making unexpected runs. APAC had a stretch where every game was an absolute banger, but the summer showdown was mostly stomps except for the final which was also great, just overshadowed by the NA one.

Idk if this has been confirmed yet, but we NEED to see the top team from either division clash. These tournaments are so juicy throw a lil Guangzhou and Shanghai in the mix, oooh yeah that's the stuff

I have watched every game of this summer showdown bar the knockouts of NA side. Brain = fried but worth. I got exhausted watching all that, I can't imagine the toll back to back nailbiters with high stakes have on the players. I was cheering for paris since they upset shock (I like an underdog) but now i feel for philly especially carpe eqo and sado. Cmon boys you'll get em next time.
Philly taught the league how to shut down blades. If we see this meta persist, I predict the value of dragonblades will go down a little and fast charging suicidal playstyles like sparkle's will have to adapt.
Now I have to choose between sleeping and fucking up my sleep schedule or waiting till it's night.

Wowowowowow it's easy to say sparkle is a beast (because he is) but everyone popped so hard. where there's a xzi there's a way. consecutive first picks onto twilight secured rialto when they were at a big disadvantage . it feels like this was the final but now they have to play the fusion lol

Of all meta's surely he shoulda played in this tournament

sad cmonbruh

I didn't even realise there was owl on this morning... I wake up and check the scores and wtf. Some pretty crazy upsets, and pretty much every upset that could happen, did happen... and I missed it all 😭

Why was this downvoted lol. This is sweet. Mint, even.

seemed like a bit of a dominant performance to me

What a bitch move by the Florida Mayhem. They were shit for 2 seasons and apparently they are playing well now?! Yikes. Biggest sucker punch in professional esports history.

Absolutely historical match. Personally sad that Seoul couldn't pull through, but amazing game nevertheless. So many highlights. God damn I wish that coulda been played in front of a crowd, my heart was racing

my dream came true holy shit this aged like fucking milk

I came here to say "that aged well" but no-one posted preds :( but anyway,

Profit + tracer + final = win

So you acknowledge the impact of covid, then continue on to criticize them for coming out with drops late. How does that make sense?

He could mean it like "wtf how is that fair shock got even more op"
Probably not but possibly yes