Expected points for every player in the Korea Stage 3 playoffs
Welcome back to the OWTV Fantasy preview! Well… it looks like LIP broke everybody’s ankles and dropped a 94-point bomb. However, heading into the playoffs, perhaps the points are in T1 assets, since they're likely to play three series.
If you haven’t read any of our previews, here’s a quick reminder of our goals. We aim 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
There’s no doubt that ZETA DIVISION and Crazy Raccoon will make the Grand Finals. The question is which team will warm them up for the big event. On ZETA’s side, it’s the winner of ZANSIDE GAMING vs. T1, which is more likely than not to be the latter. That would guarantee T1 three series and, in turn, increase the appeal of owning their players. The same can’t be said about Cheeseburger and Team Falcons. The burgers managed to make fools of us once again, failing to win a single map despite their decent regular-season record. They beat Falcons in Week 2, but we’re not 100% confident they can replicate that result, so we’re giving both teams even odds.
Fantasy metawatch
There were no major meta shifts. The meta was mostly centred on Orisa, D.Mon, and D.Va, with the occasional Winston cameo. Cassidy was the most dominant hitscan, while Bastion and Sojourn were still around. The Tracer fiesta is still going strong, and when Tracer gets banned, players opt for Genji.
Of course, the two broken supports, Jetpack Cat and Doctrine, are conveniently the ones being played. On some maps, though, such as Route 66, teams gave Zenyatta a chance. Make sure to check this awesome video by content creator Ocie, which explains the ins and outs of this comp.
Fantasy-wise, the tanks and supports are eating most of the cake. Flex DPS are trying to get a bite, but hitscans… they’re starving.
Player data
With the budget increase and the Cheeseburger inflation, we don’t see a reason to worry about cost efficiency, so here’s the data on all the players, sorted by expected points.
Tanks
DPS
Supports
OWTV Fantasy staff team
- Tank - Bernar (cost: 24)
- DPS - LIP (cost: 20.5)
- DPS - ZEST (cost: 23)
- Support - CH0R0NG (cost: 23.5)
- Support - skewed (cost: 22)
We climbed to 38th with 235 weekly points, which sounds good on paper, but let’s break it down.
Had we not touched the team and kept LIP, we would have had a weekly total of 270 points. That would have brought us to a stage total of 1,104 and put us 21st overall.
Had we not been brainwashed by the burgers and brought in Bernar alongside Taejong, our weekly tally would have amounted to 282.5 points. That would have slingshotted us to 12th place on 1,116 points… Moral of the story: sometimes it’s better not to touch your roster, and sometimes it’s better to stick to the plan rather than follow a knee-jerk reaction.
With that said, we’re bringing LIP back in! He’s expected to score 36.36 points, but that figure includes three series in which he either didn’t play or played as a DPS and scored 1.5 points. If we exclude those, he’s projected to score 50 points on the dot, which puts him just behind ZEST among DPS players with the highest expected points. Besides, this might be the last time we ever get a consistent, out-of-position Fantasy cheat code like this one.
In Week 4, Crazy Raccoon lost 3-1 to ZETA with vigilante in, but last week, with LIP in, they managed to grab an extra map in their 3-2 loss. In theory, this suggests that LIP is playing again. We have enough remaining budget to squeeze in HeeSang, and we’re praying we won’t regret this decision when the players walk on stage this weekend.
We considered combinations involving Bernar, D0NGHAK, Bliss, skewed, and Shu. Ultimately, though, we followed what the spreadsheet said and picked the players with the highest expected points. Funnily enough, our roster ended up looking like a legitimate team that could compete in OWCS Korea.
The Cat of WDG Arena
We’d like to congratulate Pure Profit LLC on winning the challenge… but the team budget feature might be a bit bugged. If anybody has a more voluptuous treasury, feel free to DM me on Discord (SkanGX), and we’ll get that sorted.
The highest team budgets among rosters not taking part in the challenge belong to forkelsworkel’s zest invest, SpeedInvest, Neverlucky, and Veeti, all sitting at 116. We’d like to imagine a world with no Cheeseburger inflation, where the teams in this challenge top the overall highest-budget charts.
We could run this challenge again in the future. If you have any feedback or suggestions for future challenges, don’t hesitate to leave a comment below.