Korea Stage 2 Week 1 fantasy preview
Welcome back to the OWTV Fantasy preview! And what a restless year it has been so far for Overwatch Esports. After a LAN where Koreans took back their crown and a major upset in EMEA Promotion/Relegation, we’re back to hunting points in Fantasy, starting off in Korea.
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
Just like last stage, every team in Korea will play two matches per week, and Stage 2 kicks off immediately with the Korean El Classico—the Champions Clash winners, Crazy Raccoon, face their eternal rivals, Team Falcons. During last year’s Stage 3, we saw CR’s new signing SP1NT make his debut against Falcons right after they won the Esports World Cup, and he exceeded expectations in a dominant 3-0 sweep. History may not always repeat itself, but could it rhyme? This time, SP1NT debuts for Team Falcons against a newly crowned Crazy Raccoon. Regardless of the result, Crazy Raccoon then move on to Poker Face, a team returning from Open Qualifiers that CR shouldn’t have trouble scoring well against.
The storylines don’t stop there for SP1NT. Falcons’ second match is against his former team…. kind of, the newly merged RØDE ZANSIDE GAMING, a fusion of RØDE ONSIDE GAMING and ZAN Esports. The merger cost them some notable names such as A1IEN, KIVIS, and Fantasy favourite Attack, with Overwatch League veteran Void stepping in to fill Attack’s shoes. The nostalgia continues with their coaching staff, which consists entirely of former Overwatch League players: Haksal, Ir1s, Ado, and KariV. On paper, this roster looks slightly stronger than ZAN’s, but slightly weaker than ONSIDE’s, which likely leaves them short of upsetting Falcons. Let’s just hope ZSG doesn’t turn into Korea’s version of DSG: too many coaches, not enough points.
Right from the get-go, ZANSIDE will get hit by a blast from the past, facing the returning O2 Blast. The legendary Contenders team that produced some of today's best players, O2 stormed through the Open Qualifiers with back-to-back 3-0 victories, including one over Poker Face. Despite the hype, we still favour ZANSIDE in this matchup. O2 Blast also play SuperBad, another Open Qualifier team that inherited the slot left behind by the ZANSIDE merger. As the name suggests, we expect SuperBad to be a team to target in fantasy and to have a very rough stage, one identical to New Era’s run from last stage, especially considering they already feature former New Era players in AZENT and Univ2r.
Before facing SuperBad, T1 open their stage against ZETA DIVISION in a matchup that historically favours ZETA. However, after ZETA’s underwhelming final day at the Champions Clash and a potential fracture in poise, there may be room for T1 to make the series much closer than expected. Regardless of the result, never sleep on the T1 boys when it comes to Fantasy. They have proven themselves to be point monsters. ZETA later face Cheeseburger, and ZETA stand to eat them effortlessly.
At the bottom end of the power rankings, Poker Face and Cheeseburger face off in a rematch of one of Stage 1’s better Fantasy series for PF players. This time, however, Poker Face come in with a revamped roster, retaining only their support line, minus TenTen, who, alongside M1nut2 and Gur3um, has joined Cheeseburger. Maybe the tides favour Cheeseburger this time with a clean 3-0, or maybe it will be a case of nothing ever happens.
Fantasy metawatch
New stage, probably the same meta… We expect the Cat/Bastion to be the most-played comp this regular season, unless some teams decide to stick to their comfort picks and play to their strengths. We made an interesting observation in the Cat/Bastion comps: usually, the hitscan and the non-cat player outscore their duo, with some exceptions (ex: Viol2t and Proper). Although the margin is not significant, it can pile up throughout the stage and have a snowball effect on your rank.
Off-tanks have been a far better deal than main tanks, but this is Korea, a region that has never been shy about giving main tanks plenty of playtime, and in Stage 2 all participating teams have two tank players on their rosters, rotation is inevitable. With that said, we wouldn't get too caught up in who plays what hero in this patch. Instead, focus on schedules and proven Fantasy performers.
Crazy Raccoon and ZETA DIVISION are the obvious teams to target. If there's one lesson we learned from Stage 1, it's that betting against Viol2t rarely ends well. T1 is another team that consistently returns well even in losses, making these three the safest route to take.
Team Falcons, on the other hand, historically don't score well in defeats, with their regular season loss to ZETA last stage being one of the few exceptions. Because of that, we're a little cautious on Falcons assets in Week 1 and Week 4. That said, SP1NT could be an interesting pickup. Think of him as this stage's KNIFE; a player capable of putting you ahead of the curve if he hits the ground running early.
ZANSIDE GAMING finds itself in a similar position to ONSIDE last stage. They have a difficult match followed by a much more manageable one every week throughout the regular season (we will refer to this schedule as the “Onside Calendar” from now on), meaning their players could post excellent scores if they keep their tougher series competitive.
O2 Blast and Poker Face are also intriguing options. O2 plays two teams that made it through the Open Qualifiers on week 4 which makes their schedule compliment the one of Falcons, PF’s schedule is an “Onside Calendar” if you ignore week 2, though the upside for a team of PF’s tier (one below the middle of the pack) in the “Onside Calendar” isn’t great but could be a route worth exploring if you’re tight on budget.
Cheeseburger have an “Onside Calendar” for the first two weeks. Some of you might still want to keep the faith... in Faith, but he’s off to O2, so you might wanna look at a different player if you’re taking the Cheeseburger path.
The important thing with cheap assets is having an exit plan. Make sure you already know how you'll transition onto proven assets later. Trust us, you don't want to repeat our Stage 1 experience of holding M1nut2 for one week too long while Shu was busy doing everything except earning points.
As for SuperBad... we’ll hold our chips for a couple of weeks and see how they develop as the stage picks up steam.
Cost-effective players
Tank: Gur3um, Cheeseburger (cost: 17.5)
The tank situation in Korea is dire, to say the least. Almost every team now has two tanks, and outside of a few cases like Hanbin and D0NGHAK, predicting playtime is difficult. That's what makes Gur3um an appealing option. He looks like a solid wait-and-see pickup for the opening two weeks, meaning there's no immediate pressure to transfer him out. More importantly, he plays the off-tank role, and as we've discussed before , off-tanks are favoured over main tanks this patch.
DPS: Becky, ZANSIDE GAMING (cost: 18.5)
The cheapest ZSG player alongside Void, Becky stands out as one of the most interesting value options this week. Unlike Probe and Kilo, who are expected to compete for the hitscan spot, Becky is the team's only Flex DPS, making his playtime secure. Combined with ZSG's favourable schedule, he feels like a bargain at this price.
Support: Faith, O2 Blast (cost: 17.5)
Budget management is important, and Fantasy isn't a Souls game, so having a little Faith in your build goes a long way. Faith helps unlock budget elsewhere. Just make sure you have an exit plan, as O2 Blast face all four of the region's top contenders across Weeks 2 and 3.
Honourable mention: IRONY, ZANSIDE GAMING (cost: 20)
IRONY sits in the middle ground between the budget and premium support options. At 20 cost, he has the potential to approach the scores of the premium supports while offering a much safer floor than the cheaper alternatives. His value comes down to how competitive ZANSIDE GAMING can be against the region's top teams.
OWTV Fantasy staff team
- Void - Tank (cost: 18)
- Perr - DPS (cost: 17)
- Proud - DPS (cost: 22.5)
- skewed - Support (cost: 22.5)
- IRONY- Support (cost: 20)
We're taking a gambit on grandpa Void. Every team is running two tanks, we don't feel the need to splash the cash on the role this early. If you do want to spend up, D0NGHAK and Hanbin are the obvious candidates, as we expect them to take the majority of their teams' playtime. Another interesting option is Mealgaru, who, despite rotating with Bernar, recorded the highest points per map during his time as the Closer last stage.
THE RELIABLES: Proud and skewed make the team. They carried us through Stage 1, so they get the nod again.
The idea behind Perr is to rotate among O2 Blast, Cheeseburger, and Poker Face assets throughout the stage, targeting whoever is playing SuperBad. Cheeseburger and Poker Face both swept SuperBad 3-0 during open qualifiers, and O2 Blast swept Poker Face. Operation Target SuperBad is in full effect.
Another way to target SuperBad is through support players. We prefer doing it through a DPS and IRONY rather than investing in a DPS from the 18.5-21 price range and pairing them with a cheaper support. One could argue supports are less likely to return negative scores than DPS players, so investing in a higher floor DPS and a cheap support feels better. Both strategies are valid; it comes down to personal preference.
Similar to Stage 1, you will be able to track the Fantasy Watchpoint team from the VIP section on the leaderboard. Good luck, and may your tanks play at least six maps.