[Overwatch] lol Boston

[cybersix]

btw mystery deathmatch is fun as hell

[Delthazar]

my wifi + wifi extender is maybe not ideal either, even if fluctuating ping is always a good excuse for low skill, can't solve that potential issue without laying 100ft+ of ethernet via some kinda weatherized conduit

I feel like I'm either leading targets too far or not far enough and maybe also subconsciously targeting center mass instead of heads because most of my core competency comes from UT or Q3A which I don't think applied headshot damage to anything other than sniper rifles and rails

I can't remember if I've popped the seal on mystery deathmatch but I can at least revist pleasant old memories

https://youtu.be/_WEe14ApLwg

watching my own highlight tape like a washed-up middle aged footballer studying their old high school games

(mostly I just wanna use "Hogjammin'" as much as possible)

[Delthazar]

Ashe is a lot of fun, as is the current No Limits in Arcade where just about everyone is rolling full teams of Ashe clones. so jump in there if you wanna practice/hear her default voiceline on loop for whole matches

I don't play hitscan heroes very often, but it's pretty fun having one with a fire-as-fast-as-you-can-click lever-action rifle. I'm using the ironsights on M2 way less than I thought I would 'cause shooting from the hip feels surprisingly effective, maybe even more than McCree's pistol. So fighting that way is a little like Ana's rifle, but much faster and obvs more lethal if you can manage a headshot in yer click spam.

Main drawback to that is her reload is fairly slow and she's got no fast-reload a la McCree's action roll.

So far everyone seems to casually toss her dynamite around a little like Junkrat's mines, rather than taking advantage of the shot combo, but that said, the combo is a lot harder to pull off than it was with the shock rifle in UT, so that makes sense. I've seen a couple people nail it but most folks straight miss, myself included. The fire DOT is really nice though.

Her shotgun knockback thingy is also better than I expected. I've managed a couple kills with that without really trying. So in an offensive context it's probably a better coup de grace than a melee bash if you need a quick finisher on a wounded target, otherwise a lotta people will probably reserve it for emergency escapes, or basic mobility, if folks manage to get the angles right.

B.O.B. rocks. Good damage and an even better distraction. He can even pick up boop kills occasionally if you summon him just right. Good times.

Ashe good.

[Delthazar]

Hangzhou's kickin' the door down hard with their colour scheme choices, rest of y'all can take yer reds/blacks and go home



I also love how their logo is basically finger guns, the implication being that anytime you say their name, you gotta also say ayyy

[John Layfield]

I'm not budging from Shanghai, but they might be my second now.

[Delthazar]

Fuckin' A, if the team skins for the new squads were in the game this early I'd go drop my leftover tokens on a bunch of Spark stuff.

https://twitter.com/Hangzhou_Spark/stat ... 2748270592

[Delthazar]

https://twitter.com/Hangzhou_Spark/stat ... 0377689091

[Delthazar]

oh man one of the original concepts is wild

The illustrator says that she is not a professional designer, and she was glad that at least some part of the initial design was kept.
She also gave some second-thought self-criticism, saying that her design is too complicated to be shrunk into thumbnail and she didn't actually like the idea of having a human figure in the design (especially when it show specific gender) and would prefer a NYXL-like final design.

When some asked her about potential copyright issues, she answered that the female figure in the design is actually 33 (without the part in the hair) instead of Misaka Mikoto, and this particular pose is commonly seen in many Anime, so it definitely has a Misaka Mikoto reference, but not so much as to constitute copyright infringement.

Lastly, she said "the final design will always be decided by Blizzard so it doesn't really matter what she draws for the first draft" ("不过嘛...最终设计稿都是暴雪自己敲定的所以其实一开始画什么样都是无所谓的") in the comments of the original post.

[Delthazar]

Free week coming up, November 20 to 26, all platforms. (psst play on PC.)

[John Layfield]

Overwatch is terrifying, I'm never playing it again. There's no single-play campaign.

[Delthazar]

Human.



Play Overwatch. Human.

[John Layfield]

I will Ensign Picard my entire life gladly to avoid meanies in Overwatch again.

[cybersix]

Play Overwatch with me, if anyone comes at you I'll spin them over my head like I'm tossing a pizza.

I totally read that team name as the Hangzhou Spank AYYYYY

Guangzhou Charge both sounds like a Mountain Dew flavor and is colored like a Mountain Dew flavor. PROMOTION COMING SOON? (hire me pepsico)

Where's the Vancouver announcement? I have to decide if they're going to be my second favorite team or not.

[Delthazar]

Sticking to Arcade modes will eliminate most of the meanies, whom I assume usually stick to comp and QP. Arcade is also generally chill enough that no one really uses their mic, so you can turn voice chat right off (and jump into a Discord channel instead.) I think I disabled the default in-game voice chat system on like Day 2 in 2016 and never looked back.

'course, the chillest of the chill is the custom servers, where a lot of people kinda just sit around emoting and shooting the shit.

Blizzard is also really good at dealing with text chat abuse, especially with all their new report systems. A lot of the people I've reported over the last year or so have had actions taken against 'em, which is always a fun message to see on a log-in.

[Delthazar]

And yeah, I think Vancouver is the only team who still hasn't announced anything? With that Aquilini ownership, I'm fully expecting their reveal video to be like, three skinny dudes wearing green-white-blue uniforms riding into an arena on a bunch of orcas.

(If they use Canucks colours though it should really be the black-orange scheme from the '94 cup run.)

[Delthazar]

https://twitter.com/Soembie/status/1063581094094630912

So I guess Soe just gave us an idea what the Spark uniforms and merch will look like

[cybersix]

Soe gives me some leaks if you know what I'm saying.

$10 says that the Vancouver team uses green and blue as their colors and is named the Vancouver [fierce sounding wildlife name]

[Delthazar]

guess I owe you ten bucks

https://twitter.com/VancouverOW/status/ ... 2669021184

assuming the full colours follow the teaser colours with no changes - their shades definitely look a little more Gatorade than I expected

the claw animation maybe implies they're trying to summon the ghost of the Vancouver Grizzlies. that sounds like a big cat growl, though. lol if we get "Vancouver Cougars" but what other kind of big cat lives anywhere around here

we're blue/green Gatorade cougars now

[cybersix]

holy shit did i just predict the future?

why couldn't i use these talents on lottery numbers

[Delthazar]

all Vancouver's goods will be on full display in about half an hour ifyouknowwhatimean. chat is already full of people predicting a full Korean roster - the old Runaway team specifically - but I'm not really versed at all in Overwatch's pre-OWL esports period so hell if I know what that means

e: heh, supposedly they're timing this to happen between the 2nd and 3rd periods of the Canucks game, which makes me wonder if they're playing up that connection and/or if part of the reveal will be on the actual Canucks broadcast - jeez that's weird as hell to think about

[Delthazar]

the kinda goofy reveal video

https://twitter.com/TitansOW_/status/10 ... 3313674241

skins

https://twitter.com/overwatchleague/sta ... 1715261440

they actually introduced the team on the ice between periods which was pretty cool/awkward. they all had Canucks jerseys with "Titans" on the backs. that's, uh, a lot more crossover than I expected.

I guess we got some kinda samsquanch instead of a gatorade cougar but that's okay. colours (and the merch the team wore deeper into the intro package) are exactly in-line with current Canucks branding, too. boy I hope that doesn't curse them. the team itself is indeed all-Korean, mostly former Runaways, whatever that means, which is good 'cause it probably means they'll be competitive and also weren't dumb enough to give xQc a job to fulfill some cancon requirement

e: that on-ice part is embedded over here, it's weird, and of course they used "Power" as the intro song, because sports

https://overwatchleague.com/en-us/news/ ... ver-titans

[Delthazar]

Titans merch? Look no further than one of the same webstores the Canucks use, of course.

https://vanbase.ca/collections/vancouver-titans

I wonder if this is the only esports team with a relationship like this with a traditional sports franchise. I have a feeling that if I went to Rogers Arena for a Canucks game I'd probably be able to find Titans shirts and stuff down there, too.

Supposedly the Titans will be playing at Rogers Arena when the city stuff happens, too. That's a big-ass venue for this - by contrast, I think the Blizzard Arena they currently use for OWL in LA is like, a 500-seater, a former TV studio, probably. And when DOTA's The International was in Vancouver they probably used Rogers. So all that space for an OWL team is wild.

[Delthazar]

hahaha, figures



and Vancouver is also debuting against the Dragons a couple days later. They're making all my children kill each other.

[Delthazar]

IMPORTANT WINTER EVENT THINGS

https://twitter.com/TristanACooper/stat ... 4445612032



oh and uh OWL skins now come in Home/Away versions, 2-for-1, and retroactively, so suddenly I have a bunch of much better looking Dragons away skins.

[Delthazar]

rollin' with C6 the other night and a +1 whose Graviton I supercharged for this POTG, just straight-up slaughter, we ran a train on those guys, bear traps, glock glock

https://youtu.be/DbrwxW8S8b8

a couple more for fun why not?

https://youtu.be/EyIZzJRlaB8

getting random unexpected headshots with Hanzo hanjo is still one of my favourite things

https://youtu.be/OHHYhmL736k



e: oh yeah, here's a cool OWL-related thing: Blizzard now has a public discipline tracker for pro players who get suspended or otherwise fuck up somehow. It's already tracking behaviour even in the offseason, which is pretty fun.

https://kotaku.com/blizzard-is-publicly ... 1831262574
https://overwatchleague.com/en-us/news/ ... ne-tracker

I figure most leagues in traditional sports probably have something like this by now but in esports it's probably the first.