Photo by Joe Scarnici/Getty Images
The annual curtain raiser (or closer depending on how you view it) to the new wave of Overwatch begins in earnest today at Blizzcon in Anaheim, CA. The preliminary rounds are over and only the best of the best remain to play in the group stage. We will take a look at the groups and who could make out and stand at the top of the hill as the best country at Overwatch.
Group A: South Korea, France, USA, United Kingdom, Sweden
Its kind of hard to say a tournament with only two groups as having a “Group of Death” but Group A is a strong contender. Every nation in group A is a top 10 team in the world with Korea, France and the US coming in at 1, 4 and 5 respectively.
While the Koreans will more than likely be favored to win it all, the UK made a strong run in 2018 taking down the US in the quarterfinals. They’ll be returning the vast majority of their roster for the 2019 effort. The USA will look to improve on a very disappointing 2018 populating the team with three players from the Overwatch League Champion San Francisco Shock including OWL MVP, Sinatraa. Also making the US roster is Corey from the Washington Justice. He closed out the 2019 OWL season as one of the top performing DPS players in the league.
From front to back Group A looks really strong. France and Sweden will have to work really hard to rise above the fold. Korea will perform well as they always do, but the UK and the US could be in danger of an upset if they don’t come out with all cylinders firing.
Players to Watch: ChoiHyoBin(Tank/South Korea), SooN (DPS/France), Sinatraa (DPS/USA), Super (Tank/USA), Fusions (Tank/UK)
Group B: Canada, China, Denmark, Russia, Netherlands
In stark contrast to Group A, Group B is totally up in the air. Canada and China are chock full of talent and will certainly get out of the group. But the next slots could be anyone’s game.
Netherlands, a team with no current OWL players was able to take down a strong Finland in the preliminary stages. And Denmark, on the back of a strong DPS performance from Shax got through the prelims with relative ease. Russia perhaps had the easiest run of all only coming up against Germany who they took out in a 3-0 sweep.
Canada will look to take advantage of their monstrous roster and come out of the group in the top spot. But China is going to be a force with one of the most dynamic Phara players in the World, Jinmu, at their disposal. In a meta that seems to be shifiting towards Phara this could be the factor that puts China over the top. But watch out for the Danes who have looked really dominant already and could come out of the group at a higher seed than anticipated.
Players to Watch: Surefour (DPS/Canada), xQc (Tank/Canada), Jinmu (DPS/China), Guxue (Tank/China), Shax (DPS/Denmark).
You can follow all of the action over at the Overwatch League site as well as all the usual streaming options.
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