Fantasy preview: Double up on O2 Blast for Korea's last week

SkanGX••6 min read

Welcome back to the OWTV Fantasy preview! We’ve reached the final week of the OWCS Korea Regular Season. With the top four almost locked in (barring major upsets), this week is all about deciding the LCQ seeding. 

If you haven’t read any of our previews, here’s a quick reminder of our goal with these weekly previews: to offer thought-provoking options for your team, while keeping you up to date with any major developments that might impact OWCS Fantasy. We do this by breaking down the fixtures, highlighting players we think offer strong value, and sharing any other strategies we come up with. We’ll also play along each week with our own team, Fantasy Watchpoint, and explain the reasoning behind the roster we lock in.

Fixture review

If you’re looking to review the fixtures yourself, we’ve included a full Fixture Difficulty Rating (FDR) to help you visualise them and make your own decisions. We’ve pre-colored them according to our own opinions:

  • Green indicates what we think should be a favoured match
  • Yellow indicates a matchup that could go either way
  • Red indicates little upset potential

We’ve also included previous results in the graphic to save you a few clicks.

Straight off the bat, we have O2 Blast taking on Cheeseburger in the battle for fifth place. Cheeseburger, O2 Blast, and ZANSIDE GAMING all sit at a 2-4 record. O2 beat ZANSIDE, ZANSIDE beat Cheeseburger, and now Cheeseburger have the chance to complete the circle, similarly to last week's EMEA five-map banger between Geekay Esports and 1234 that created a circle between them and Al Qadsiah.

O2 have already played all four of the region's top teams and even took a map off Crazy Raccoon thanks to some incredible heroics from WuTian and a motivational speech from coach O2Boss. Here’s hoping for another inspiring speech this week that is a bit more fantasy-oriented. Following the Cheeseburger fixture, they go up against a Poker Face side that lost a five-map banger to SuperBad, the very team they swept in the Open Qualifiers earlier.

Cheeseburger and ZANSIDE, meanwhile, have much tougher schedules, facing Team Falcons and SuperBad, respectively. ZANSIDE open with a match against SuperBad before taking on T1, which could be exactly what they need to build confidence after their win against Cheeseburger and going the distance against ZETA DIVISION.

At the top of the standings, ZETA DIVISION will face both Crazy Raccoon and Team Falcons. These matches is mostly for bragging rights, as the seeding tournament will determine the playoff bracket regardless. Crazy Raccoon and T1, meanwhile, have the task of making sure SuperBad and Poker Face remain rooted to their spots at the bottom of the table. If results go as expected, Poker Face will become the first team to be relegated this stage.

Fixture difficulty ratings for OWCS Korea Stage 2 Week 4

Fantasy metawatch

The biggest talking point this week is the new hero Shion. Teams are still figuring out which DPS should play the hero, with some handing her to their hitscan player while others prefer the flex DPS. From what we've seen so far, Shion demands both mechanical skill and strong decision-making, making her a perfect fit for hyper flex players like Proper (1.20 PCM) and Stalk3r (0.68 PCM). It would be every Fantasy manager’s dream to see knife (0.95 PCM) play Shion for ZETA. The hero has looked like an excellent scorer in wins, but a terrible one in losses.

Here’s a list of everyone who played Shion so far:

  • Crazy Raccoon: Stalk3r (0.68 PCM), LIP(0.68 PCM)
  • ZETA DIVISION: Proper (1.20 PCM)
  • Team Falcons: SP1NT (0.59 PCM)
  • T1: Proud (0.95 PCM)
  • O2 Blast: Perr (0.47 PCM), WuTian (0.32 PCM)*
  • ZANSIDE GAMING: Probe (0.21 PCM)
  • Cheeseburger: Argon (0.54 PCM), M1nut2 (0.50 PCM)
  • SuperBad: SORI (0.06 PCM)
  • Poker Face: D0D0 (-0.23 PCM), K4ne (0.42 PCM)

Outside of Shion, teams appear comfortable with Sigma/Mizuki or Mauga, paired with a Kiriko/Lucio backline. Cat/Bastion hasn't disappeared entirely, but we've seen it less frequently. Team Falcons have been experimenting with Juno alongside either Mizuki or Kiriko to exploit her Speed Ring.

We noticed that Falcons either field Hanbin with SP1NT (0.59 PCM) or Someone (0.55 PCM) with Checkmate (0.31 PCM), so if you're looking to fully cover Falcons points outside of their supports, Someone and SP1NT currently look like the better pairing.

Over on ZANSIDE, Probe (0.21 PCM) finally took Kilo's (0.35 PCM) spot for a series, while Heiser (0.55 PCM) played all but one map. Interestingly, those changes immediately produced results, with ZANSIDE pushing ZETA DIVISION to five maps and looking much closer to their pre-merger state.

It was a rough week for T1 believers. Their players struggled to score well against Crazy Raccoon and continued the trend of scoring low in one-sided victories. Since T1 don't face another top team this week, their Fantasy output will largely depend on how competitive ZANSIDE can make that series.

Cost-effective players

You can skip this section and just double up on O2 Blast. Despite facing both ZETA DIVISION and Crazy Raccoon last week, every single O2 player finished with a positive score. This week, they have two much friendlier fixtures, including one against Poker Face, making their entire roster eligible for this list.

If you’re somehow not convinced by O2, Here are some other options for you:

Tank: HEISER, ZANSIDE GAMING (cost: 19.5) (0.55 PCM)

Heiser finished as the fifth-highest scorer overall last week and the second-highest scoring tank. He emerged as a valid option a little late but has already displayed shades of Stage 1 Attack. Heiser could be an excellent one-week punt that frees up budget for upgrades elsewhere, and if ZANSIDE continue their recent improvement and qualify for the playoffs, he could become a quiet earner.

DPS: Probe, ZANSIDE GAMING (cost: 19) (0.21 PCM)

Despite his teammate Becky (0.51 PCM) being last week's most cost-effective player, we're going to set him aside for just a week and give the nod to Probe. ZANSIDE immediately looked more competitive once he entered the lineup, and we expect him to see more playing time this week. If he continues playing Shion, he could farm points against SuperBad, and if ZANSIDE can make their series against T1 competitive, that would be the icing on the cake.

Support: CH0R0NG, Crazy Racoon (cost: 22) (1.10 PCM)

CH0R0NG offers outstanding value. He ranks as the fourth-highest scoring player this stage so far, only behind teammate vigilante (1.22 PCM) in the supports department. CH0R0NG yields similar results to the most expensive supports at a decent discount.

Honourable mention: IRONY, ZANSIDE GAMING (cost: 19.5)  (0.86 PCM)

IRONY was the fourth-highest scorer overall last week and posted the highest PCM of the week. We decided to leave him as an honourable mention simply to avoid filling this entire section with ZANSIDE players, as they are all good options under the condition that they make the series close against T1 and start their strongest roster that got them to map five against ZETA,

OWTV Fantasy staff team

  • Bernar - Tank (cost: 22) (0.91 PCM)
  • Perr - DPS (cost: 18) (0.47 PCM)
  • ZEST - DPS (cost: 21.5) (0.86 PCM)
  • CH0R0NG - Support (cost: 22)  (1.10 PCM)
  • Misin- Support (cost: 18) (0.63 PCM)

Murphy's Law struck hard. When we finally sold all our ZANSIDE assets in IRONY and Void, IRONY started delivering. Bernar began sharing more maps with Mealgaru (0.41 PCM) than expected, and Becky decided to have a great week.

It didn't stop there. We expected Poker Face to pay dividends against SuperBad, but instead, they told SuperBad to hold their beer and showed them what “even worse” looks like. They became the first team to fail the operation (so far!). Meanwhile, Sentier (0.54 PCM), who was supposed to be nothing more than a hole strategy pick, ended the week as the fifth-highest scoring tank, outperforming every T1 player. K4ne (0.42 PCM), on the other hand, delivered much more humble returns.

Despite all that, it wasn't a bad round for us. We finished inside the Top 90 in the overall leaderboard and remained 1st on the VIP leaderboard.

This week we're making four transfers!!

Bernar stays in the roster for ZETA's matches against Crazy Raccoon and Team Falcons. We're hoping those series resemble the Asia Finals, where Mealgaru lost all of his maps while Bernar won all of his and dominated the scoreboard.

We're doubling up on O2 Blast, hoping they can replicate the impressive performances they showed in Week 1.

CH0R0NG comes in for skewed as we want some Crazy Raccoon coverage heading into the seeding tournament, and Proud makes way for ZEST (0.86 PCM). Lately, ZEST has been the more reliable fantasy scorer in one-sided victories, and easy games are exactly what T1 have this week.

Our aim was to keep one player from each of the top teams (bar Falcons). There were plenty of other viable alternative approaches, though. We considered bringing in shu (1.01 PCM) instead of CH0R0NG or knife instead of ZEST to capitalize on ZETA's fixtures. Another route would have been to downgrade skewed (0.99 PCM) to Bliss (0.96 PCM) and keep Proud, as Bliss had similar value to skewed at a much friendlier price, while Proud still offers high ceilings.

Final week, one last push…but not really. We’ll be back next week to cover the LCQ and the playoff seeding.

* WuTian played a single map as Shion in their most recent match