OWCS Fantasy: LIP opens the door to triple-support rosters
Welcome back to the OWTV Fantasy preview! The new supports have teamed up with the Cat. Crazy Raccoon’s new “up-and-coming flex support player” LIP took the scene by storm, and everybody’s favourite Cheeseburger chain delivered once again!
If you haven’t read any of our previews, here’s a quick reminder of our goal: to offer thought-provoking options for your team while keeping you up to date on 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
As has been since the start of Stage 3, Crazy Raccoon and ZETA DIVISION won't face much difficulty this week, especially as Team Falcons remain on a downward trend.
T1 and Cheeseburger will clash this week. Halfway through the season, both teams are set to score a lot of points going forward, as long as they keep their tougher matchups competitive (e.g., CB against ZETA and T1 against FLC). But according to our new scenarios feature (check out the scenarios tab on the tournament page), the burgers’ odds of making the seeding tournaments are pretty high.
Despite ZANSIDE GAMING’s disappointing loss to SEIJI ESPORTS, they managed to snatch their first win of the regular season against O2 Blast. It could be their "tides shifting" moment… at least for fantasy scoring. Poker Face, however, seem to be the least troubling team in Korea, and their remaining fixtures are the most challenging.
Fantasy metawatch
D.Mon/Cat remains by far the most popular pick. Ana has been replaced by Sombra with the idea of giving the flex support role more survivability, though Sombra players have been topping the deaths leaderboard. Perhaps it’s a matter of getting used to the reworked DPS. We saw LIP (PCM: 0.93) and Taejong (PCM: 0.42) role swap to support Sombra.
On Sunday, after NA/EMEA played their first set of games, Korea seemed to get inspired and started playing Doctrine alongside Jetpack Cat. They still put the Cat in an untouchable status, which is great for fantasy. The Cat has been a consistent farmer, and some flex supports like IRONY (PCM: 1.24) and Gamjung (PCM: 0.97) found their footing fantasy-wise on Doctrine. Alongside skewed (PCM: 0.93), they are the only supports to outscore their main support so far.
Cat-Noon has been officially “Cat-Noon’d”, which makes you think Cassidy might have left the meta, but that hasn’t happened. Hitscan players are still alternating between Cassidy, Shion, and Bastion, while their flex DPS are having a blast on Tracer. Over two game weeks, K4ne (PCM: 0.75) and Stalk3r (PCM: 0.84) are the only hitscans to outscore their Flex DPS.
Cost-effective players
Tank: Belosrea, Cheeseburger (cost: 20.5) (PCM: 1.32)
Cheeseburger’s form makes it impossible not to double up, or at least have a player from them. Belosrea is their best asset, and he recorded the second-highest PCM over two weeks, only behind CH0R0NG (PCM: 1.54). Get him now. Otherwise, you might not be able to afford him come the seeding tournament.
DPS: LIP, Crazy Raccoon (cost: 20.5) (PCM: 0.93)
Probably the only chance ever to be able to afford CR’s flex support at such a sweet price. Not only that, but owning LIP allows you to play with three supports. Currently, three of the top five scoring players are supports. Need we say more?
Support: IRONY, ZANSIDE GAMING (cost: 19.5) (PCM: 1.24)
We said in our Week 1 preview that IRONY usually takes time to get going. Well, it looks like the engines have finally warmed up. His fixtures for this week are not that reassuring, but we noticed that Doctrine players manage to come out with decent scores even when losing. If IRONY goes big again, he might be your ticket to beating the Cheeseburger doublers.
Honourable mention: TenTen, Cheeseburger (cost: 19.5) (PCM: 1.25)
TenTen and K4ne (PCM: 0.75) have been an amazing Cat/Cass duo. Unfortunately, only one of them can join Belosrea on the double-up. Support is the more reasonable pick.
And if you’re wondering about Trest (PCM: 0.61), then look up “Reinhardt-Hathaway LLC” on the leaderboard. They would probably advise you to keep a healthy distance away from him.
OWTV Fantasy staff team
- Tank - Belosrea (cost: 20.5) (PCM: 1.32)
- DPS - LIP (cost: 20.5) (PCM: 0.93)
- DPS - ZEST (cost: 22) (PCM: 1.03)
- Support - CH0R0NG (cost: 22) (PCM: 1.54)
- Support - TenTen (cost: 19.5) (PCM: 1.25)
We took a -15 hit that brought us down from 89th to 116th. This is probably the template team for next week, but perhaps LIP’s DPS duo will be the area with differential potential.
If triple supports weren’t possible, we would have kept one of WuTian (PCM: 0.78) or Gamjung (PCM: 0.97).
WuTian outscored K4ne (PCM: 0.75) over these two weeks. One is part of an underperforming team, and the other just upset Falcons.
As for the support slot, we could have either kept Gamjung, who could go big on Doctrine next week or taken the risk with IRONY (PCM: 1.24). For now, we will keep backing the Cat players and make sure our team is ready for the seeding tournament.
Besides, we have gained great value on our transfers so far. We brought in Belosrea, LIP, and TenTen for SOMEONE, WuTian, and Gamjung. We made those transfers before the midweek price changes, when Belosrea got +1 to his cost, LIP +1, and TenTen +0.5. We also had CH0R0NG on our team, who received a +0.5, bringing our total team value to 105.5.
The Cat of WDG Arena
Speaking of gaining value, here is the current leaderboard of The Cat of WDG Arena challenge. Shout-out to the five competitors leading with a value of 102.5!