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Skins That Make You Go "Eww"
Overwatch skins, for the most part, are really good and I can appreciate almost all of them. However, there are some that I just look at and go "I'll stick with the default skin." I'm sure everyone has at least 1 skin they refuse to equip or will not consider regardless if it's legendary.
I can name several that I don't like:
Cybergoth (Zarya), Bedouin (Genji), Security Chief (Pharah), Odile and Comtesse (Widow), and even though I put D.Va on a high pedestal the B.Va/Junebug skin isn't all that great. Typically there's that one main element that repels me from sporting it in any game. There are some others that I'm not a fan of but look good enough for me to equip. Are there any skins you would skip for the default instead?
How'd Season 12 Placements Treat You?
So as always I was about 3 millennia late to the party to complete my placements. And they were... Pretty good. But that's every season for me. I won 7-3. I got pretty good matches, all of the ones that I lost were completely fair, as well as 5 of the matches I won. 2 of the matches that I won were my team just dominating the enemy, which makes the satanic part of me feel good, but the rest of me felt worse than a 30 year old that ran over 6.5 kindergarteners.
(Wait, should I leave that in... Screw it)
A lot of my game were full of one person out of team chat, and that person spamming "I need healing" after they die. And for me being a support main that just hurts. Someone in team chat stopped right in the middle of a battle to MESSAGE me on how bad of a support I was followed by insults that if I mentioned here would get my YouTube account banned for bad words. And since he was in team chat, I said "Boy if you gonna say shit actually say it."
Then he just leaves.
And then we win the match with me getting silver elims on Mercy.
This was a diamond doomfist btw.
Rest of the matches went fine. The last one was a bit weird because all of my teammates and opponents were ranked 3100-3400 and I won that match and I got placed 2594.
That sucked.
But anyways I'd be interested to read the other tortures that people have gone through for their placements.
So type those out.
BE A SUPPORT MAIN(tips)
(I just want to get some posts in so why not)
First rule you need to know before becoming a support main is that your life in the Overwatch universe will be filled with two, AND ONLY TWO, responses. 1. "OMG you saved meh life you are best Overwatch player EVAH" or 2. "You are a retarded dipshit!" You cannot avoid the second one no matter how hard you try, but just act like you are always receiving the first one and keep doing good!
But you can't do good by just selecting said support, you need to DO STUFF! Don't tell anyone this but the main goal of a support is to make sure your team health bars don't go to cero.
Never played support? Gotta practice in quick play. Join teamchat to see if anyone is willing to coordinate with you because that is the true way to learn support.
Ahh but you don't know who to practice do you? No? Well before you pick who to practice just know that if you pick a support that is meta in Competitive then you will receive more insults then the list of reasons that you have for losing a 1v1.
(Meta means everyone picks them btw)
So let's start out with my opinion on who is the most important in the team. Why am I including this? Because I like to think I'm top 500 so I am top 500 and that means anyone reading this has the significance of an ant.
Now most of the time a team comp needs two healers. I know, I know, you've never seen one healer I'm your comp, HOW THE HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO HAVE TWO. Well, I don't know. But let's just go in an alternate universe where people did pick supports.
There are so many different roles that individual healers can fill, but I'mma just go into two categories, main healer and off healer.
Main healer = good healing
Off healer = Instant loss if you try to solo heal.
If you are a brave enough player to Solo heal, choose an off healer and you will get skinned. By me. I personally play Moira too much, and often I get stuck solo healing. Moira is an excellent pick because She deals out great healing to everyone at the same time.
Yes, at the same time. She actually can do it in THREE WAYS. Her regular healing(dubbed piss) can do somewhere like 65 healing a second. Amazing. And it is a spray out of her hand that gets stopped my no man. Which means you can deal out healing to everyone. Next is her pissball, that heals everyone in it's radius after you throw it out. It can deal out a Max of 300 something heals across every target. Last is her ultimate, which heals for 150 a second and 50 damage but you need to be sorta precise. She also has a decent amount of survivability because damaging people with here secondary fire heals you. But she had a really high skill gap.
(Also I just stuck myself in a whole because I'm really tired, have the attention span of my cat, and not even halfway done with this post. I can actually go really in depth with every support and I didn't even start to with Moira. So don't surprised if I click done because I just want the EXP. Don't worry, I'll make a part 2 of this if I do and proceed to go in-depth with every support.)
"Oh, but daddy, I don't even wanna get close to my enemies, let alone my teammates. They smell bad" Well that is okay because Ana is going to Grandma your whole team.
Ana, IMO, has a lower skill gap then Moira in terms of intelligence you need to have. But if you are planning to stick with the 3 brain cells you have, and you have mechanical skill, you can dominate as Ana.
Here's the thing, Ana has the highest healing per second in the game, but to make it consistent requires you to move your joystick (or mouse for you master race peeps) and click. Click on your teammates bodies. It heals 75 per shot and shoots once per second. It also damages 70. She has a grenade that can heal yo everyone she hits and ups the healing that everyone receives from all sources. It also prevents the enemies it hits from healing. She can also be a kind Grandma and put the enemies to sleep. Now her ultimate heals for 300 too and it boost the damage that comes from your target by 50% and halves the damage they take.
She is in second place for my top 3 supports and I think she will become meta in time.
(Alright I'm a lazy bitch and I should not have typed this much. I'm tired and I'll make a part 2 tommorow if this gets noticed and I know a part 2 won't be a waste of time. I can also go super in-depth on each support and make a separate post on them) Bai
How important is rank?
When Overwatch first came out, I exclusively played ranked. I really wanted climb the ladder and shoot for GM (not that I ever got close). As time has passed, I've found myself playing more and more casual games. And you know what? I've been having the most fun I've had in a while. It's really nice getting to play with all my friends whether they be silver or masters.
I still love the competitive spirit of ranked matches, but I feel like it also takes away from the idea of playing a game just because it's fun and you enjoy it. We've all had friends that have become so obsessed with their rank that they put aside their friendships and completely lose track of what made them fall in love with the game to begin with.
Don't get me wrong, I still play plenty of ranked matches and try my absolute hardest to win. But is rank really all that imprtant?
Possibility of Overwatch Battle Pass?
The wake of Belgium forcing Overwatch to remove loot box purchases gave the developers something to worry about. The movement to have loot boxes removed from all games is gaining ground and Belgium is only one of the first few to put their foot down. When the issue first arose organizations demanded games list the chance at receiving items from any type of loot box. This forced many companies, including Overwatch, to reveal meta-data about loot box chances if they wanted to continue selling. We are now seeing the next steps to pretty much removing loot boxes altogether.
The Overwatch team are obviously not happy about decisions made for removing loot boxes. Their views are on the other side of things and they don't believe loot boxes constitute as gambling. To make up for any lost profits they will need to get crafty and that's when I thought about battle passes. Battle passes are the next hotness and lots of games are adopting it. It would be of no surprise to me if Overwatch announced some kind of battle pass that is exclusive to players in regions that can't purchase loot boxes.
Battle passes hasn't received ire as much as loot boxes have, but I'm curious to know what everyone else thinks. Would you be receptive of Overwatch introducing a battle pass? For me, so long as they keep the current loot box system in they can go ahead and add a battle pass too.
Shanghai dragons dropped 8 of their players!
The Dragons definitely had a horrible year for overwatch. Ending the season 0-40 we all knew roster changes were coming but 8 players is a ridiculous number. The players who were dropped are Altering, freefeel, fiveking, roshan, xushu, ado, sky and daemin. I can’t wait to see who they pick up but hopefully it’ll help them get a win next year.
Majoring in Esports as a Career
I read this rather interesting article exploring the new future of esports as a "major," an alternative to receiving a traditional bachelors at a university. No surprise that this is taking place in arguably the the country that made esports a big thing, South Korea. The discussion points talks about the legitimacy of pursuing an esports career under the tutelage of cram school level instructors sanctioned by the government. They place themselves on an elite status claiming they offer more than what cheap online courses can offer, namely the face to face aspect.
To me this is truly next level for the esports scene, and hearing all the material the students have to learn is no different than taking college courses for a year. The tidbit that I liked the most was the fact that they were teaching students gaming manners, ignoring trash talk, and how to keep calm under pressure. Something I personally believe to be highly essential in the professional scene.
I know there are a few universities around the world that have classes on esports. However, they only explore the topic of esports and offer little opportunities to pursue professional gaming as a career. With esports growing year after year it's becoming harder for businesses to ignore its potential. The stigma surrounding esports is slowly disappearing, but it's still there. All these things combined really makes me wish esports had exploded 5 years earlier than it did.
The question I have now is, if you had the choice or a university had the option to pursue a pro-gaming career, would you do it? I can tell you now, if there was the chance for me to become pro, I would take it. Realistically speaking though, there are some mental and physically limitations that would hinder my performance, and be the cause of an early retirement. I would look beyond that though, and the path I see would be to go pro, retire as a player, and then become an instructor or devote myself to the esport industry.
The ground work has been paved for the next generation and am looking forward to seeing how all of this evolves.
Blizzard's Response to the Recent Belgian Ruling on Overwatch Loot Boxes
Before I go on to my thoughts on Blizzard's response to the recent ruling, here's my previous post on the ruling itself.
In the wake of the ruling, Blizzard put out a statement that was pretty passive aggressive in how they are going to accept the ruling but don't agree with it. on a side note, while I don't think that the game Overwatch isn't the best example of a game with problematic loot boxes, it's still good that Blizzard can't charge gamers for obtaining loot boxes. In going back to Blizzard's statement, they could've handled their messaging better and not come off so passive agressive.
It's this part of their statement that comes off as passive aggressive and whiny:
"[...] While we at Blizzard were surprised by this conclusion and do not share the same opinion, we have decided to comply with their interpretation of Belgian law. As a result, we have no choice but to implement measures that will prevent Overwatch and Heroes of the Storm players located in Belgium from purchasing in-game loot boxes and loot chests with real money and gems."
Is it me or does Blizzard come off as being sore losers? I honestly think that they could've phrased this better and still be against the ruling. I would've have started the statement off by saying that there's a new Belgian law restricting the sales in our two games, and that we will be upholding that ruling. I wouldn't have started my statement in a whiny tone. I accept the ruling and will implement it. then I would proceed to say that while we accept the ruling that we don't agree with it because our loot boxes are predatory like loot boxes in other offending games.
I would write those things in a neutral tone to not come off as being whiny. To finish off my statement I would say that we, Blizzard, would try and sit down with Belgian's gambling authority to clarify the situation, and to see if we can come to an agreement that benefits everyone. See how tonely different my approach is? You can disagree with someone and not come off as being whiny.
That's just me though...
Here's the official statement by Blizzard:
Nano Cola Challenge Event
The new Nano Cola D.Va skin is here and we can get it absolutely free. The only thing you need to do is win 9 games total in either competitive, quick play, or arcade. I love events like these and wish Blizzard made more every so often. What I really want aside from the D.Va skin are those chibi sprays. Normally I don't care much about sprays, but these are on a different level. To get the sprays you have to watch a total of 8 hours from select twitch streamers. You can get all the details on the challenge here:
I want it!!!
Who's gonna win the Finals?
The first season of Overwatch League is finally coming to a close: Philadelphia Fusion will face off against London Spitfire to determine who will become the first ever Overwatch League Champion.
Quite honestly, I'm shocked that these are our two finalists but such is the crazy world of esports. Even though I'm disappointed that NYXL didn't make it I'll still be tuning in because it's sure to be a great match. I don't really like that they spread it out over 2 days (27th and 28th) but hopefully they'll make some changes to the format in the future.
So, what are your thoughts on Overwatch League now that the first season is almost over?
Which team will be victorious and become the inaugural king?
Wrecking Ball is Now Available in Overwatch
The adorable hamster in a spherical mech is finally available on Overwatch’s public servers after a few weeks on the test realm. Wrecking Ball, perhaps better known as Hammond, has some unique new abilities to bring to the battlefield. Perhaps the most noteworthy is the combination of his Roll ability and his Grappling Claw, which enables Wrecking Ball to swing through the air in a tremendously fun acrobatic maneuver.
For the full story, check here:
And to read the rest of The Daily Moot, click here:
POPULAR Does anyone else think this new hero is switching Overwatch's direction too much?
So, I think Hammond has a really cool skill set, lots of creative ways to utilize his kit. But the character design doesn't seem to fit in the Overwatch universe at all. Now before you say, "well, Winston's an animal", yes he is. But the whole smart monkey trope has been done a lot, ala planet of the apes. A hamster just seems like too much.
I mean look at him.
Is 'Hero 28' on the Way?!
Let the rumors flow! Yesterday ‘Overwatch’ revealed a very short trailer of a ball shaped figure rolling through what looks like to be a dim alleyway. Fans are already alluding this to be the first glimpse of ‘Hero 28’ or potentially a new map. The background of the video features a plethora of different artwork varying from monkey and a dog in space, to the words “NO BOTS” written across the wall. The monkey in the background appears to be one of Winston’s long-lost friends, Hammond. Could Hammond be the next hero in the series? Let us know in the comment section below!
My opinion on throwing matches
I Am tired of playing solo in competitive and all it takes is one person to throw I Hope one day Overwatch comes up with a voting system so teammates can vote on a person that is not performing good with a certain character that it gets crossed off their list for the match For instance,a person uses Widow gets no picks keeps on dying uses her the whole game well to stop that a voting system can cross her off for that game then can hopefully choose a person that is helpful ... Posted it on tweeter need more people to Share make it go viral .. It is time to put a stop to Toxic players 💯💯💯
Hanzo Update!
Hanzo’s new update finally hit the live version of the game and I was wondering what you guys thought. As a Hanzo main I am very happy with this new update and I think that Hanzo has a chance of making it into the meta. Hanzo is arguably the best mid range DPS character in the game now, with Soldier 76 being his only competition. Storm arrows is an incredibly powerful ability that makes Hanzo harder to use, this means that bad Hanzos will play him less. I think that his new dash ability is the best addition to his kit, he is now able to retreat from dive characters like Winston or Genji. So far I haven’t really found anything that I don’t like except that I’m having trouble getting used to the new projectile speed and I keep misfiring storm arrows as I keep activating it while holding down the primary fire button. What are your guys thoughts on the new Hanzo? Is he too strong or do you think he’s finally balanced?
Are the Shanghai Dragons the worst team in all of sports?
It's no secret: The Shanghai Dragons are bad. Really bad.
Every sport has dream-teams and meme-teams; for every New England Patriots there's a Cleveland Browns, and Overwatch League is no exception. As many of us watch the spectacular play of teams like NYXL or enjoy the roller-coaster rides of teams like Boston Uprising and London Spitfire, it's hard not to notice the other side of the spectrum.
As we near the end of Stage 3, each OWL team is starting to establish their story line and cement their fan bases. For many teams, each stage has presented fresh challenges, promoting the growth of both the players and the organizations as a whole. Despite these ups and downs however, one thing has remained consistent: Shanghai Dragons.
Although the Shanghai Dragons are the only winless team in OWL, they aren't the only team that's struggled. The bottom-of-the-pack each stage has consisted of Dallas Fuel, Florida Mayhem, and Shanghai Dragons. That's it. Are Dallas and Florida bad? Of course they are, but nobody is quite as good at being bad as Shanghai. For reference, let's examine some Stage 2 performances to show just how spectacularly bad Shanghai really is. Dallas (which finished in 2nd to last place with a 2-8 record) had a map score of -15. Shanghai had a map score of -35. Negative 35!! Shanghai was more than twice as bad as the next-worst team. In fact, Shanghai only won 2 maps out of 40. Wow.
Now that we've established just how bad the Shanghai Dragons are, let's put it into some context. The aforementioned Cleveland Browns are a good place to start: they made NFL history last year by achieving the worst season ever (0-16, tied with the 2008 Detroit Lions). So what makes the Shanghai Dragons any worse than the Cleveland Browns? The Cleveland Browns scored points. They forced 2 games into overtime and lost 4 games by 3 points or less. The Cleveland Browns could still compete. Shanghai can't.
Don't get me wrong, I didn't make this post to trash-talk Shanghai - I want them to succeed. I just found it interesting as a fan of both Esports and conventional sports to look at just how bad they've been thus far. I know that despite their lack of success, they still have their fans *cough @STDragon1* and with their name and region could easily be a major team in the future.
What do you guys think of the Shanghai Dragons performance so far?
Do you think they will be able to turn around their misfortune and become a serious contender in the future?
Curious to see who else has been enjoying this wild ride.
POPULAR Hanzo is great!
One consistent opinion that I’ve seen throughout the Overwatch community is that Hanzo is terrible. I happen to disagree. Hanzo’s buff just hit the PTR and I figured that there won’t ever be a better time to explain to you all why Hanzo Shimada is amazing.
Gameplay
Whether using scatter arrow or storm bow, Hanzo deals massive damage. One shot from scatter arrow does upwards of 400 damage if all arrows hit. Hanzo’s sonic arrow is also arguably one of the best utility abilities in the game, it practically replicates Widowmaker’s ultimate ability. Wall climb is an extremely useful ability that can get Hanzo out of danger, or help him reach a place to set up. Hanzo’s ultimate, Dragonstrike, is amazing. Dragonstrike has a beautiful animation and deals massive damage through walls, which means a good Hanzo can fire it without risking his own life.
Lore
In my opinion, Hanzo’s lore is some of the most interesting out of all the characters in Overwatch.
Hanzo grew up as one of the two scions of the Shimada Clan. The Shimada Clan was led by Sojiro Shimada, Hanzo’s father. The clan made their money by selling weapons and illegal substances. From a young age, Hanzo and his brother Genji were trained to take over when their father died. Their training included martial arts and war tactics, both of which Hanzo excelled in. When Sojiro died, the leader’s responsibilities fell to Hanzo, who took his job very seriously. Genji was very different. Genji would rather live a playboy-like lifestyle and rarely contributed anything to the clan’s well being. The Clan Elders confronted Hanzo about this and asked him to try and straighten Genji out. When Hanzo spoke with Genji, Genji refused to assist the clan. Hanzo reported this to the Elders and they gave him a new order. Kill his brother. Hanzo took up his sword and fought with Genji. Hanzo won the duel and killed Genji, cleaving him from his right shoulder to his left ribs. The act broke Hanzo’s heart. He abandoned the Shimada Clan and swore never to fight with a sword again, leaving his behind in the Shimada Temple. The Shimada Clan sent many assassins after Hanzo as they considered him a traitor, Hanzo slew them all with ease. The archer took up work as a mercenary, taking money to kill people. All while searching for someone who could defeat him in combat and end his suffering. None could. Hanzo returns to the Shimada Temple yearly, on the anniversary of Genjis death. While there, he leaves incense and offering as a way to honor his brother. One of these times, Hanzo was confronted by a green and gray cyborg.
The cyborg confronted Hanzo and they dueled. The fight climaxed when the cyborg sarcastically asked Hanzo if he thought he “honored his brother Genji with incense and offerings?” Hanzo responds with “you do not have the honor to say his name!”, before firing a Dragonstrike at his opponent. The cyborg responds by pulling the sword off of his back and summoning a dragon of his own. The cyborg guides Hanzo’s dragons back at him, where they pass through him (this would’ve certainly killed him in game). Hanzo falls to his knees, defeated. The cyborg dashed toward Hanzo and presses a knife to his throat. Hanzo, thinking he has finally found his match, asks the cyborg to kill him. The cyborg responds with with “No, I will not grant you the death you wish for, brother”. The cyborg reveals himself to be Genji, brought back to life by Overwatch. Genji backs away from Hanzo and removes his mask, revealing his identity to Hanzo.
Hanzo is shocked, Genji tells Hanzo that “the world is changing, [and] it is time to pick a side”. Hanzo responds with “the world is not like the stories our father told us, and you are a fool for believing it so!”. Hanzo knocks an arrow and aims at Genji. Genji calmly says “perhaps I am a fool, for believing that there is still hope left for you, but I do”. As the last words leave his mouth, Genji disappears in a puff of smoke, leaving behind only a feather, a reference to his childhood nickname, Sparrow.
I think that Hanzo’s story is incredibly heart wrenching and touching. Hanzo was forced by the Clan Elders to murder the only family he has left (the lore makes no mention of his mother) and he is driven to near suicide by the act. Even after Hanzo learns that Genji is still alive, he still feels awful. The relationship between the two brothers may be the best relationship between two Overwatch characters. Their relationship remains very tense as Hanzo refuses to accept what his brother has become. From a story standpoint, Hanzo is incredibly interesting.
I hope I managed to change your point of view on Overwatch’s resident archer. I’m sorry if this was a little long, I got kind of carried away. Please leave in the comments whether or not I changed your opinion, and thanks for reading!
+2 
Behind the Team: Los Angeles Valiant
Okay folks here’s part 3 of my series, “Behind the Teams”! Today I’ll be discussing the other Los Angeles team, the Valiant, and how they’ve performed so far in the Overwatch League.
The core of this team used to consist of players from Immortals (as they were a part of the franchise when they bought-in), but Valiant has since recruited several talents from other teams along with a handful of free agents. Their biggest pickups being uNKOE and SoOn who were brought in from the accomplished French team “Rogue”, while Silkthread and numlocked were recruited as free agents.
However, since stage 3 started, Silkthread was given to the Los Angeles Gladiators, uNKOE was traded for Dallas Fuel Custa, KSF was picked up from contenders team Simplicity and Bunny was recruited from the Seoul Dynasty. Alongside these trades and pickups, Korean offtank player “Envy” was also dropped. In an attempt to clean up the “toxic” environment that had been previously living within the team.
Brand 6/10
I'm not a huge fan of the color scheme or logo, but I can appreciate the minimalist approach they took and the decisions that went into creating the Valiant brand (as it is a subsidiary of Immortals). When this brand first launched I was incredibly disappointed with the approach they were taking. Their Twitter feed during its inception was awful, perhaps they were overly excited to share their enthusiasm with the rest of us, but they posted a lot of meme lord garbage that came off as adolescent. I was caught off-guard because that wasn't something I was expecting from Noah Winston (the owner of Valiant and Immortals), especially during the earliest and most crucial stages of developing the brand identity. Since then, they've steered to a more professional appearance and are quite involved with their fans, but they still have more work to do before they can erase my first impression of them.
Players 8/10
As I mentioned earlier, the starting roster is heavily modified compared to the days of Immortals. The current lineup consists of Agilities, Fate, KariV, Space (I forgot to mention him earlier, he’s been on the team since stage 1 but wasn’t old enough to play yet), and Custa. These six players put on an incredible performance during the first week of stage 3, defeating both Seoul Dynasty and Shanghai Dragons 4-0. These are all qualified and capable players, and from what I saw in stage 1 and stage 2, I never thought the mechanics of any individuals were holding them back from winning. I believe, and Valiant have disclosed, that their biggest factor regarding a lot of their recent roster changes was to deal with the toxic environment within the team. They also recruited Custa, a stable in-game leader who always keeps his teammates cool-headed and can deal with bad situations in-game by calming down his teammates.
Storyline 3.5/5
So in stage 1 and stage 2, the Valiant had looked like a strong team at times, and at others, looked completely awful. There’s now an infamous video circulating the web where Noah Winston, the CEO of Immortals and Valiant is sitting in his car with player “Agilities” while explaining to him that he only has one more chance to prove himself capable of being on the main roster. At this time the team had a “sister team” that was filled by all of the “rejects” within the team. This environment came to be because of the Korean players and French players believing that they were better than the rest of the team, and swayed Noah Winston’s opinion about the other players. However, Noah made some tough decisions over the past few weeks and dropped all of the toxic players, namely uNKOE and Envy. They also did some internal reorganizing and disbanded the “sister team” in an effort to make all players feel as if they were part of the one Overwatch league team, and that they felt they had a chance to prove themselves and play on stage if they worked hard enough. So far it seems to be working, the Valiant team is a story about redemption, not so much as redemption due to loses, but redemption to earn its reputation back as a credible organization. There’s definitely a lot of cool and intricate pieces moving within this team currently.
