đ OWCS Fantasy Korea Week 3
Welcome back to the OWTV Fantasy preview! Week 2 has gone by, and with it the Viol2t/Shu flying Ana shenanigans.
If you havenât read one of our earlier previews, hereâs a quick reminder of our goals: We try to offer thought-provoking options for your team, and help keep you up to date with any major developments that might affect OWCS Fantasy. We will do this by looking at the fixtures for the week, players we think offer notably good value, and any other clever ideas we cook up! We also play along with our own team, Fantasy Watchpoint, and share the rationale behind the team we put together each week.
A (slightly less) new statistic
Weâre going to leave this in for another week as we continue to familiarise everyone with PCM!
PCM stands for âPoints/Cost/Matchesâ; this lets us quantify how much value a player provides relative to their cost. It comes up quite often in our suggestions, so we wanted to make it easier to reference.
Fixture review
If youâre looking to review the fixtures yourself, weâve included a full Fixture Difficulty Rating (FDR) to help you visualise them and make your own decisions. Weâve 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
Crazy Raccoon and T1 are two of the standout teams to target this week, as they face each other in what should be a close, high-scoring series. Both teams also follow that up with a second match against an underdog, giving them a strong mix of upside and consistency.
ZAN Esports and RĂDE ONSIDE GAMING are also appealing options. They both play an underdog fixture (New Era and Cheeseburger, respectively), but then have much tougher opponents afterwards.
On the other hand, Team Falcons and ZETA DIVISION have easy schedules this week. They remain safe picks, but donât expect more than six maps of playtime, which would cap their fantasy ceiling. Hopefully, ZETA avoid unusual hero choices this time around.
Finally, Cheeseburger, New Era, and Poker Face are hard avoids this week. After last weekendâs results, where very few budget options managed to return positive scores, itâs difficult to justify investing in teams with this level of fixture difficulty.
Fantasy metawatch
The Korea meta is shifting closer to what weâve seen in NA and EMEA, with less reliance on Symmetra compositions.
Tank is still heavily centred around Zarya and D.Va, and Attack (1.53 PCM) continues to prove why he is the most prevalent tank in fantasy right now, sitting at 40.1% ownership at the time of writing. He remains the safest tank pick in the game right now. If youâre looking to punt against him for upside, Jasm1ne (1.36 PCM) is a strong alternative at just a single cost difference.
The biggest shift this week is that weâre seeing less Symmetra and noticeably more Emre being played. Despite that, DPS scoring has been inconsistent, with only two DPS players making the top 10 scorers this week. Proud (1.35 PCM) finished second overall, just 0.5 points off first place, despite only playing Emre in 2 out of 7 maps, while MER1T (1.08 PCM) narrowly made the top 10 after playing Emre in 5 out of 7 maps. Outside of Proper (1.15 PCM), most DPS options struggled to produce standout returns.
Knife (1.13 PCM) also had a relatively underwhelming performance, but if you picked him up at 20 cost, heâs still worth holding for another week unless youâre chasing upside. On the other hand, A1IEN (0.64 PCM) owners got punished heavily after he was benched for Probe and didnât play a single map. LIP (0.20 PCM) rotating alongside Stalk3r (0.98 PCM) and Heesang (0.95 PCM), and teams like Cheeseburger experimenting with double flex DPS comps playing Jamelgong (0.02 PCM), the DPS role feels especially volatile right now.
Support remains the most reliable and valuable role in Korea. Kiriko and Lucio are the most played backline, with only a few exceptions such as New Era experimenting with double flex support looks, and ZETA DIVISION playing with their meal running a Flying Ana against Poker Face, which resulted in a lower scoring week for Shu (0.97 PCM), but made the highlights reel anyway.
Most budget options also struggled this week, and many returned negative scores, with only a few exceptions that weâll highlight in the next section.
Overall, the takeaway is that the strongest approach right now is building a well-rounded roster with players priced around the 20-cost range from top teams. Investing in a premium tank and a strong backline remains essential, while DPS looks like the role where itâs often better to pick a higher ownership option to protect your rank.
It's worth noting that due to incidents involving Probe and Jamelgong they will not feature for the rest of OWCS Korea Stage 1, so it's probably a good idea to swap them out of your teams if you still have them.
Cost-effective players
This weekâs value options are slightly more expensive than usual, as many of the true budget picks struggled and returned negative scores. In fact, the only sub-17 players to avoid going negative last week were WoochaN (0.54 PCM), Faith (0.36 PCM), and MCD (0.01 PCM), alongside DPS players Perr (-0.02 PCM) and Jamelgong.
Tank: Attack, RĂDE ONSIDE GAMING (cost: 21) (1.53 PCM)
Attack remains the best value tank in Korea, ranking second-highest in PCM over the past 2 weeks. If you didnât start the season with him, the second-best time to buy is now, especially if you want to protect your rank.
DPS: Kilo, RĂDE ONSIDE GAMING (cost: 19) (1.03 PCM)
Kilo is the only sub-20 player weâre highlighting this week. He finished 10th in PCM last week at 1.24, and was one of the few DPS players to return well outside of the top premium options.
Support: Skewed, T1 (cost: 22) (1.57 PCM)
Even after his price increase to 22, Skewed still holds strong value (Highest PCM over both weeks amongst all players) and is expected to be one of the most transferred-in players going into next week. Heâs a great pick if youâre looking to rank-proof your roster, and only worth punting against if youâre brave enough
Honourable mention: Irony, RĂDE ONSIDE GAMING (cost: 20) (1.39 PCM)
If you need a reliable option to round out your roster around the 20-cost mark, Irony is a strong alternative. He sits top 5 in PCM over the last two weeks at 1.39, and despite an upcoming awkward matchup against ZETA DIVISION, ONSIDE GAMING still offers a decent schedule in the region.
OWTV Fantasy staff team
- Attack - Tank (cost:21) (1.53 PCM)
- Proud - DPS (cost:23) (1.35 PCM)
- knife - DPS (cost: 22) (1.13 PCM)
- Irony - Support (cost: 20) (1.39 PCM)
- KIVIS - Support (cost: 20) (1.26 PCM)
Attack and KIVIS are here to stay. Weâre not planning on letting go of KIVIS out after just one week. Patience is key in OWCS Fantasy, especially when youâre investing in premium support options.
Last week, Shu (0.97 PCM) continued to disappoint, and M1nut2 (0.31 PCM) joined him in the disappointment fest, so weâve moved both of them out for Proud and Irony. Proud will be our main differential this week, with 11.7% ownership, giving us a chance to climb the leaderboard. Irony rounds out the roster nicely, and we managed to bring both of them in before the price rise, increasing our team value going into the playoffs.
Finally, weâre sticking with KNIFE for Week 3. We could have swapped him out for Kilo and upgraded into Skewed instead of Irony, but with 43.9% ownership, weâre not quite ready to go against the crowd just yet.
In Week 2, we finished 1569th for the week and sit 792nd overall. Not quite the same form weâre showing in NA/EMEA, but weâll do our best to salvage the situation heading into Week 3.