It’s a brand new Stage in the Overwatch League, and with that comes with yet another slight shakeup in the game meta. In just the first week of Stage 3, we started to see teams adopt a new approach to their attacking strategies with Sombra. Ever since the patch changes kicked in, Sombra’s gotten a lot more effective as an offensive hero, and we’re going to be seeing a lot more of her as the weeks go on. Here are the highlights from the past week in the Overwatch League.
Sombra-Tracer Compositions
As mentioned earlier, the Sombra changes have made her much more viable in pro play. We’re seeing teams start to incorporate her into their lineup, and one of the more common comps we’ve seen so far is a dive roster with Sombra and Tracer.
With this composition, Tracer continues to harass the back lines, while Sombra attempts to hack enemies amidst all of the chaos. She no longer charges the EMP with hacked health packs, but they still provide a good health boost for her teammates. Hacking speed has increased, and when you couple that with a better bullet spread from her SMG, Sombra is able to secure kills much more easily and frequently. If she can get a good EMP off, it’s a guaranteed kill on the enemy Zenyatta, allowing her team to steamroll.
This is the first time we’re seeing Sombra truly make an impact in the meta, and we’re excited to see the pro teams develop new strategies with her. So far, it looks like Danteh from San Francisco Shock has the lead in terms of Sombra effectiveness, but we’re sure the rest of the Overwatch League teams will catch up soon enough.
Blizzard World Is In
This is a bit of a weird one. With Stage 3, Blizzard World has now been added into the Overwatch League map rotation. The problem? This is the original Blizzard World, without the redone point B capture, which means that lots of teams are still struggling to cap that second point, let alone complete the entire map.
It’s clear that the spectators are still getting used to working the cameras around this map as well, especially in the Pylon Terrace area where there are so many tight corridors to navigate. So far, spectating in Blizzard World has been a bit of a nightmare during the point B capture, but hopefully these little issues will get ironed out in time.
What’s Up With London?
After getting knocked out during the Stage 2 playoffs, the London Spitfire started their first week of the Stage with two back-to-back losses against Houston and New York. They managed to play Houston pretty closely, and the match even went to a game five. But because the tiebreaker map for Stage 3 is Oasis – a map that London is notoriously bad on – they lost.
We thought they’d be able to mount a comeback in their second match of the week against the New York Excelsior, but that simply wasn’t the case. The past three times these two teams faced off against each other, the matches went to a game five. This time, New York completely swept them in a 4-0 victory. London is looking very weak at the moment, but here’s hoping they’ll bounce back this week.
More Team Changes
Lots of new player transfers went down during the break between Stage 2 and 3 of the Overwatch League. uNKOE is now reunited with aKm on the Dallas Fuel, Silkthread is with the Gladiators, Sayaplayer has joined the Mayhem roster, and the Shanghai Dragons have been retooled. These are just a few of the major team shakeups that occurred, and it’s exciting to see how teams are performing with their new players.
The Mayhem might have lost both their matches last week, but Sayaplayer is already proving to be quite the addition, who can complement both Logix and TviQ. On the other hand, the Dragons are still struggling, but it’s worth noting that they don’t have their main DPS player Diya back with them just yet. They suffered two tough losses against the Fuel and Valiant, and hopefully, they’ll start clinching victories once they’ve got the coordination down.
Our Favorite Play of the Week
As always, there are so many great plays and performances in every week’s matches in the Overwatch League, but we have to give it to Fissure. During the Gladiators’ match-up with the Shock, Fissure engaged with Winston’s Primal Rage while attacking point B on Volskaya. After knocking out both Moth and Sleepy, he stayed in the health pack room near the Shock’s spawn, and many fans were probably wondering why he was wasting his Primal Rage instead of getting on the point.
Who is the most handsome, best main tank, greatest in the world?
@Fissure with the glorious prediction on Sombra.
📺 : https://t.co/tZPvTpJUek pic.twitter.com/S57xPpYBp7
— Los Angeles Gladiators (@LAGladiators) April 5, 2018
Well, it turns out he was just waiting for Danteh to reappear in the health pack room with Sombra’s Translocator, and he proceeded to beat him to death. Well played, Fissure.
There were other awesome highlights throughout the week as well, and another one that stood out was Danteh’s Tracer back cap on Junkertown. It didn’t win them the map, unfortunately, and the Shock still got 4-0-ed by the Dynasty. Still, it was a cheeky little play that you don’t see very often in the Overwatch League.
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