OWCS Fantasy: Building for Week 1 with Week 2 already in mind
Welcome to the OWTV Fantasy preview! The Korea Stage 3 open qualifiers featured Profit’s return, Poker Face getting disqualified and subsequently acquiring a qualifying team anyway, and now we’re all set for yet another exciting OWCS Stage.
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
This week, ZETA DIVISION and T1 look like prime candidate teams to target. They face each other and then play another, much less intense, game.
Crazy Raccoon will face the 5th-6th place teams from last stage in ZANSIDE GAMING and O2 Blast, which shouldn't be a challenge for the OWWC champions (sorry LIP and Vigilante). ZANSIDE will also face a comfortable opposition in Cheeseburger, and O2 Blast will also play SEIJI ESPORTS.
Team Falcons’ resurrection journey starts with an uphill battle against the EWC champions ZETA, then a more manageable series against Poker Face.
Poker Face, made up of SuperBad’s core roster from Stage 2, and Cheeseburger face off in a tier-defining game.
Long term, CR and ZETA should cruise through the regular season. The reliables at T1 and ZANSIDE have a somewhat predictable setup (minus ZANSIDE’s Week 3) and should provide plenty of safe picks throughout the stage.
Fantasy metawatch
Teams have had more than enough time to adjust since the patch that dropped right before the OWWC Playoffs, though that leaves us viewers in completely unknown territory. Could D.Mon still be strong after the hotfix? Will it be Mauga Shion Cass again? Will Viol2t terrorise lobbies on Jetpack Cat? Probably.
Not only are we clueless, but Week 2 of the regular season will be played on a new patch that includes a new support hero and reworks for both Roadhog and Sombra, switching the latter to the support role.
Last stage, LIP was in for most of the regular season. We could see that happen again with what is expected to be his last stage before military service, and with the Sombra rework, CR might even send him out on support.
For the more reserved players, if you want a tank with guaranteed game time, Belosrea is the one to go for. Cheeseburger are the only team running a solo tank.
The next closest team to a solo tank team would be SEIJI ESPORTS. They have SENTIER, who was a points machine in fantasy when he played for SuperBad last stage. His tank partner is DOX, who’s still unknown to us. The same case could be made for O2 Blast’s Fate, unless O2Boss works his magic on Homerunball who had an underwhelming Stage 2 fantasy-wise.
ZANSIDE GAMING has got double the trouble. HEESUNG and HEISER will fight it out for the tank spot, and Becky and Taejong will do the same for the flex DPS spot. Neither of them nor their hitscan Kilo have been a reliable fantasy asset this year. But it’s worth keeping an eye on IRONY, who usually takes a bit of time before he starts pumping points.
You may have noticed how cheap Falcons' assets are compared to their peers at the top of Korea’s pecking order. They have underperformed all year. Their players don’t score well in losses, except for supports sometimes, but for the few believers, we want to remind you of their Stage 2 pattern: they either pair SOMEONE/Checkmate or Hanbin/SP1NT.
As for the other top Korean sides, there are a few uncertain picks: MAX vs. JunBin, Jasm1ne vs. DONGHAK, and Bernar vs. Mealgaru. We’ll see how they split their playtimes after the first week’s conclusion.
Cost-effective players
Tank: Belosrea, Cheeseburger (cost: 19)
The only true solo tank this stage, a perfect first-week pick. The only catch is that you have to transfer him out for Week 2 before he faces Crazy Raccoon and Team Falcons.
DPS: WuTian, O2 Blast (cost: 18.5)
Time to go WuTian mode. Even though O2 have three DPS players, he is the only flex DPS, which should guarantee his game time, unless O2 plan on playing a double hitscan Shion/Cass comp.
Support: Gamjung, O2 Blast (cost: 19)
Gamjung consistently scored high every time he played. Might be the first must-have player this stage.
Honourable mentions:
Profit, Cheeseburger (cost: 17.5)
The first-ever Overwatch League Playoffs winner and MVP. That alone should be enough to sell the idea. The only concern is AZENT, another flex DPS player at Cheeseburger. Regardless, we had to pay homage to Profit.
D4RT, SEIJI ESPORTS (cost: 17.5)
We went into Week 1 of stage 1 with M1nut2 instead of D4RT, and that decision haunted us for the rest of the stage. D4RT and M1nut2 find themselves on the same roster again, so it’s best we don’t repeat the same mistake.
OWTV Fantasy staff team
- Tank - Bernar (cost: 24)
- DPS - WuTian (cost: 18.5)
- DPS - ZEST (cost: 21)
- Support - TenTen (cost: 17.5)
- Support - Gamjung (cost: 19)
We’re taking a safe approach, with two players from O2 to capitalise on their favourable long-term schedule. Bernar, who’s been on our team since Stage 2 Week 3, will extend his contract for another week.
Naturally, we also wanted to include a T1 player on our roster. If we had gone for Proud, that would have created a hole in our roster, so we settled on ZEST. Proud also tends to take more time to adapt to a new patch and reach his high-fantasy ceiling. If you want a safe double-up on T1, then skewed and ZEST is the way to go.
Main support TenTen rounds up the team, though we’ll need to find a way to navigate Week 2. It’s a safe wait-and-see move until we get more information.