The OverSeer: Overwatch League S3 Week 15 Predictions

Are we ready for some Week 15 predictions, folks? I know I am, so let's go!

DAY 1

1. Seoul Dynasty vs. Chengdu Hunters- Dynasty wins 3-0. The Dynasty made a truly powerful statement last week by beating the Dragons, which is arguably the best team in the League right now. If they could beat Shanghai, they can certainly beat the Hunters, who are way sloppier than them, and just less-scary overall. With Orisa, Mei (YES), Tracer and Moira out of the Hero Pool this week, I think Seoul will be encouraged to play Sombra-Echo Dive (with Winston-D.Va-Zen-Brig), pretty much the same as two weeks ago. Profit has got a great opportunity to show off his Echo skills against a weaker opponent this time round, and backed up by a team that is amazing at Dive, it should be an easy win for them. I think Chengdu will also opt into Dive, but maybe a Pharmercy variant of it. Winston-D.Va-Sombra-Pharah-Mercy-Zen seems like something the Hunters would love running. They've run low-sustain Dive comps even when better options were available, so I'm certain they'll want to maintain that playstyle. Also, we could certainly see JinMu go onto Echo on maps with lower skyboxes; the Pharah pick won't work in those scenarios. People are very right when they say that Seoul tends to disappoint every time their fans think they're gaining momentum. This time round, owing to some weird compositional choices (in my opinion), the Dynasty lost to the surprisingly-scary Hunters. This was a total upset, with Chengdu winning 3-0.

2. London Spitfire vs. Shanghai Dragons- Dragons win 3-0. The Spitfire showed a fair bit of potential last week, but they surely can't elevate their play to Shanghai's level so soon. I'm not sure what they will run, since we haven't seen them in any meta similar to this one, but it's possible that we see them playing something like Rein-D.Va-McCree-Reaper-Ana-Lucio, a comp that the Valiant and the Shock ran a fair bit of a couple weeks ago. Glister's McCree has been great, SanGuiNar has been a delight on Lucio, and JMAC and BERNAR have shown promise as Rein-D.Va, so there's no reason to really switch to Dive if you're doing well at an Anti-Dive Deathball. The Dragons, on the other hand, will probably do well on a Sombra-Reaper Deathball; they've played it before to great success. Rein-D.Va-Sombra-Reaper-Bap/Ana-Lucio would be a solid high-sustain comp in this meta. Whether it be on Double Barrier or Dive, the Dragons didn't slow down. They kept playing their game and claimed a victory that basically had their name written on it, granting me a perfect prediction along the way.

3. New York Excelsior vs. Hangzhou Spark- Excelsior wins 3-0. I could totally see the NYXL rocking the comp I mentioned above for London. Libero on McCree and Saebyeolbe on Reaper would be an amazing DPS duo, and against a fairly simple opponent like the Spark, they would do well without even trying. The Spark would probably go the Shanghai route and run the Sombra-Reaper (with Bazzi-GodsB/Adora), and I think they'll use either Rein-D.Va or Rein-Sigma as their tank line. The Spark had more fight in them than I expected, thanks to GodsB's noteworthy hitscan play. He stood out a fair bit among his team, but ultimately, the NYXL beat them 3-1.

4. Vancouver Titans vs. Houston Outlaws- Outlaws win 3-2. Probably one of the closest matches of Day 1, Titans vs. Outlaws is the series that will tell us if Vancouver is likely to step up at all this season. They had some growing pains in their debut week, but they showed potential, and if they can beat an inconsistent but still decent team like Houston, we'll know they're on the rise. The Titans, I think, would do well on the McCree-Reaper Deathball. Dalton is an incredible hitscan player, and with Tsuna backing him up on Reaper, just deterring Dives from coming through, I think they can put on a great showing. We all know that Houston cares more about playing their comfort picks than counterpicking, so it's entirely possible that we see Danteh-blase on Hackfist, along with either Winston-D.Va-Zen-Brig, or Rein-D.Va-Ana-Lucio; either would work. They're not the most formidable team in the League, so there will certainly be cracks in their armour that the Titans will exploit. However, I'm sure both teams can hold their own, even though I think Houston has the edge. Thanks to some 'ninja moves', the Outlaws outclassed the Titans 3-0. Vancouver looked quite lost, probably since they weren't used to the kind of proactive play we saw from Danteh and LiNkzr, and as cracked as Dalton is, he was no match for Danteh's Echo.

5. Florida Mayhem vs. Washington Justice- Mayhem wins 3-0. The Justice are falling apart piece by piece; they lost their star DPS duo of Corey and Stratus, and we don't know who will be joining TTuba on damage this weekend. I think Washington should play safe and run the Reaper-McCree Deathball, but beating Florida will be no easy task regardless. A mirror matchup should be more than easy for the Mayhem, who have been putting up consistent performances in the past few weeks, and I don't see them slowing down against the Justice. With Stitch being brought in as Corey's replacement, and JJANU being added as a second off-tank, the Justice were hoping to end their bad karma and get a win over an evidently-stronger team. Although they certainly put up a fight, Florida was fairly effortless and unfazed; they knew exactly what to do and how to do it, and that kind of surety in their play prevented the Justice from making big plays for most of the series. I also think it was a bad idea to field JJANU instead of ELLIVOTE during the series. Sure, he might be a better off-tank overall, but it's not worth fielding him at 250 ping when you've got a stable and consistent off-tank that can play at a much lower latency. I think they wanted to field an all-Korean roster since JJANU and Stitch have never been on a mixed roster before, but if they put just Stitch in and continued playing ELLIVOTE, the former would be the only player who isn't used to calling in English, and for the hitscan role, that isn't very critical in this meta. Definitely a poor decision in my opinion, but hey, they won a map, so maybe Washington's coaches were onto something. The final score was 3-1 in favour of Florida.

6. Los Angeles Gladiators vs. Boston Uprising- Gladiators win 3-0. Against the weakest team in the League, maybe the Gladiators go Rein-D.Va-Doom-Reaper-Ana-Lucio? It's not like Boston's going to successfully counter whatever they're running, so might as well run a bombastic high-burst-damage comp and go for a new 'Quickest League Match Ever' record. Also, please Boston just run Reaper-McCree and give yourself a shot at winning a few points. I woke up this morning, saw that Boston had won the match, skimmed through the VOD in utter disbelief, and edited my power rankings soon after. The final score was 3-2.

Match of the Day: A clash between two teams on the brink of greatness

7. San Francisco Shock vs. Atlanta Reign- Shock wins 3-2. This is going to be a battle for the ages. Shock as well as Reign are at an arm's length away from being a Top 3 team, and I think this match will put one of them in that position. I expect both these teams to run successful McCree-Reaper Deathballs, and even though I think the Shock will take the series, Reign could surprise us with a win. Neither team will probably run a ton of different comps; maybe the Shock run Sigma instead of D.Va at most (Choi is incredible at both those off-tanks), but that's about it. Well that was surprisingly dominant. GGs Shock.

DAY 2

1. Guangzhou Charge vs. Chengdu Hunters- Charge wins 3-2. I wouldn't have predicted such a close series between these teams if it weren't for Chengdu's dominant victory against Seoul yesterday. On one hand, you've got the Charge, who can look like a top-tier team on their best day, but are slightly inconsistent. On the other, you've got a slightly-more-consistent team, but one that doesn't look as clean as their opponents even when they're in the zone. This should be a fantastic game. A perfect prediction! This match went pretty much as expected, with the Charge making a few compositional mistakes and the Hunters messing up their execution in places. This made the series go quite back-and-forth, but ultimately, the Charge's DPS line popped off and seized them the victory.

2. Hangzhou Spark vs. London Spitfire- Spark wins 3-2. This is another neck-to-neck matchup, with both teams proportionally matching the Charge and the Hunters in a way. The Spark look scarier at their best, but the Spitfire mess up less often. It's anybody's game, really. The Spark dominated the Spitfire 3-0. I'm not quite sure what went wrong for London, but they looked really out-of-sorts. Maybe it was the constant substitutions breaking their consistency, as they used both their main tanks and off-tanks on-and-off in the series. That's not usually a reason for teams to fumble, but I'm just speculating here.

Match of the Day: A showdown between two teams that have given Philly a really tough time!

3. Dallas Fuel vs. Paris Eternal- Fuel wins 3-2. Today's matches seem to have a recurring theme going about them. Again, Paris has a notably high peak, but Dallas has found their footing and have been playing more consistently than them in recent weeks. Ouch. That must really have hurt the Fuel fans. In this difficult-but-winnable matchup, Dallas' tank and support lines got outclassed by those of the Eternal. Although Decay and Doha tried bringing team fights back multiple times, NiCOgdh kept shutting them down on Echo, getting picks both before and during fights. Paris won 3-0.

4. Philadelphia Fusion vs. Vancouver Titans- Fusion wins 3-0. Seriously, it'd be a monumental upset if the Titans won this series. Let's hope we don't see a repeat of the Uprising-Gladiators match. Another perfect prediction, although this was one of the easier matches to call this weekend. Also, we got to see ChipSa finally play a map, which was a treat in and of itself. I was just waiting for that one 'onlocky' moment which would trigger a new wave of memes, and we even got that as he fell off the map once while trying to disengage on Oasis Gardens.

5. Toronto Defiant vs. Los Angeles Valiant- Valiant wins 3-2. This is also likely to be an incredibly-close series, as both these teams have a similar skill level, and are almost-equally-inconsistent. And that's another perfect 3-2 prediction! Not bad at all! I still have to watch this series closely; I just skimmed through it this morning, but well, I was right!

So this week, I got 9/12 (75%) winners and 4/12 (33.33%) scores correct! That's an improvement on the winners front, and I've maintained the same score percentage from last week, so that's pretty good overall. Next week, we'll have the May Melee Tournament, and I'll be doing predictions for that as well, so do subscribe to my blog if you want to be notified whenever I post, and share this post around with other OWL and prediction enthusiasts! Cheers!