The Plat Player's Perspective

In the second season of the Overwatch League, we saw a wide array of players from a broad spectrum of teams show off their skills in many different ways. Some of them got the opportunity to do so quite often, being fielded regularly over the course of multiple stages, but there were others who didn't see the same level of playtime as their cohorts, and were instead guarded; held on to by their teams' coaches for very specific purposes; being utilised right when their skill sets were required. One such player was Nathan ' frd '  Goebel, who is an off-tank player for the Atlanta Reign, and he's going to be the featured personality in today's chapter of OverAchievers. Before I begin though, I wrote about the Reign's flex support,  Dogman , last week, so if you missed that post, do give it a read as well. Alright, now let's talk about how frd 's story began. Nathan Goebel began playing video games at the mere age of 3 on his first console: the Ni...

When you think of a professional player, be it in eSports or regular sports, what about them is the first thing that pops into your mind? I'm sure your answer will probably be either one of the titles they hold, a fantastic play they made during a match, or maybe even the team they're on; at least that's generally how I  remember players. For instance, when I think of Sinatraa , I think of his OWL  and  World Cup Championships, when I think of Profit , I remember his Tracer 6k against the Philadelphia Fusion in the OWL Season 1 Final, and when I think of JJonak , I think of the NYXL, who are almost like a single unit while playing on stage rather than a group of 6 players. However, when I think about Dusttin 'Dogman' Bowerman, the first thing that pops into mind is " KRUISE IS A FEEDER! "...that's probably because that was the first time the 21-year-old flex support stood out to me amongst the rest of the players on the stage, but I believe it could a...

It's not been long at all, since the new, barrier-killing patch hit the live servers, but in the past few days, I've begun seeing a few meta-based patterns in my Competitive matches, and I thought it'd be fun to share some of those with all of you this Sunday. For those of you who are new to The Plat Player's Perspective, my name is Proilios, and welcome to the game balance section of my blog, AKA The OverThinker. To give you all an overview, I play in the mid-plat to high diamond Elo, and what I'm about to share is solely based on what I've seen in my own games on the new patch. This is not a tutorial by any means; just a short summary of my observations. 1. I've barely seen any Bastion play. Since barriers were nerfed, it's no surprise that Bastion is seeing less playtime. Even though he's better at getting damage across to his enemies now, he himself has less protection, which is why he's going to have niche uses in the short run ...

A couple days ago, Big Daddy Jeff made a post on the Blizzard forums, saying that the new, Barrier-Killing Patch would be brought onto the live servers some time this coming week (which begins today), and that the Winter Wonderland event of this year would be dropping on the same day as well. These came as glad tidings to the Overwatch community, which is waiting eagerly for Double Barrier to be nerfed, but Jeff's post on the forums also sparked some more discussion about developer transparency. Welcome to The OverThinker, or if you've been here before, welcome back! I, Proilios , am glad you're here, because we've got an important, albeit slightly shorter post than usual today. A few days before Jeff's post announcing the arrival of Winter Wonderland and the new patch, Trill (if I remember correctly), from the Dallas Fuel, shared a screenshot of a Contenders notice on Twitter, which mentioned that the new patch would hit the live servers in mid-January. This ca...

It's been a couple of weeks since Blizzard deployed the aforementioned 'Barrier-Killing Patch' (let's just call it BKP, for short) onto the PTR, and a lot of people have voiced their opinions on how it buffs and nerfs some heroes and whether it will be big enough to change the meta. We've also had some pretty interesting PUGs happening in the EU region, hosted by former Dallas Fuel coach, Peak , which have been focused on a lot by analysts and content creators alike. However, I'm a simple guy. I don't have an idea of what the BKP meta will be like per se, at least at the top tier of play, but what I have formed some opinions on in the past few weeks are the changes in the power levels of all our 31 heroes, which is why I've decided to share how I think each hero will be affected by this patch, and whether they're ultimately winners, or losers, because of it. Do keep in mind that the opinions I'm about to share are solely my own, and are based...