The last week of the Overwatch Open Qualifiers has to be the most exciting one yet. With the top teams out of the way and guaranteed qualification (and top seeding) for the next round of playoffs, it becomes a more leveled playing field with close matches with clutches happening left and right. After months of tournaments post-launch, we can already see which teams are the top 4 best of each region, but as of late, the competition from the dark horses or what we would see as mostly a mid-tier team, has grown, and we can see it clearly on this week’s results.
Over on the EU side, we saw a new team emerged. Immortals are trying out a team this week by merging 4 of WEUNITED’s roster- TwoEasy, ShadowBurn, Zombs and Forsak3n with 2 players from US-based oh no- FCTFCTN (pronounced ‘fact fiction’) and Rawkus. With this new gig, ohno is now out from the leaderboards with Immortals taking place of WEUNITED’s collected points tally of just 16. They need to secure a good finish in order to have enough points to qualify for the playoffs.
And boy, did they managed to do so magnificently.
WEUNITED saw glimpses of strong plays in some games but just not consistent enough to be a major contender. (We never get to see a REUNITED-WEUNITED clash as WEUNITED always lost one game before the two would have met in any tournament’s brackets) With this change of roster, it looks like the team under the Immortals name is a force to be reckon with, knocking out ANOX, the surging team that made it to week 1’s finals, in the quarter-finals. Immortals then took down Creation, one of the most stable top 4 teams in EU, to make it to the finals, and with that, earned enough points already to get into the playoffs. A huge achievement!
On the other side of the bracket, The new, European Luminosity Gaming is getting stronger and stronger by the day, having became the runners-up for last week. They took down Bringos to reach the semis. Last week’s semi-finalist Ninjas in Pajamas did not make it to the semis in favour of Melty, the French team that once a powerhouse early in the scene, but not as consistent as of late. Luminosity took them down swiftly despite Melty trying to experiment with a Mei pick. It was to no avail.
The Final match of Immortals versus Luminosity is a battle among underdogs- one suddenly swept to the finals, the other a slower snowball the is beginning to up its tempo. Plus, the map selection of all three King Of The Hill maps (Ilios, Nepal and Lijiang Tower), Temple Of Anubis and only one single payload map- Dorado- being picked is the most unconventional pick yet. And it went through all 5.
Luminosity was dominant for the first two games and the next two games Immortals were the ones handing out the beating, even sending a little cheeky “XD” in the game chat when Immortals took control of the next two games. But the cheeky acts by Immortals may be their downfall as the game goes to Temple Of Anubis. Immortals’ DPS player TwoEasy brought a Bastion out to defend the last point as Luminosity struggles to capture, but bringing out the Bastion was not a good idea as Luminosity managed to exploit its weaknesses and eventually capture the point. When the teams switched sides, Immortals could just not breach the last point, handing a well played win over to Luminosity.
Over to the NA side, Team Liquid had a surprise of their own. While the struggling dark horse has now making strides with some roster changes, they brought in Rapha, the fantastic Quake player that just won a tournament in Quakecon last week, as their sixth member. (Side note: Team Liquid’s DaHanG used to be a pro Quake player as well) However, his sole presence was a bit overrated yet the team as a whole did magnificently to reach the finals, bringing down H2K, Selfless and then NRG to reach the finals. NRG, the roster that used to be the third strongest team in NA, is looking rough nowadays. They had some problems earlier on taking down Colorado Clutch. Despite the brilliance of Seagull’s Genji plays, Gods’s superb aim and Enigma’s zippy Tracer, NRG can sometimes fall apart terribly, which was what we saw with the game against Liquid and that squandered them a chance to reach the finals.
On the other side of the bracket, CompLexity Gaming (previously TSM) had a good run towards the finals, taking down Method along the way. (Side note: Method’s round-of-16 match against Northen Gaming is worth a watch, there was a crazy D.Va bomb that managed to kill 4 people and left the players astounded in the game chat, as well as the casters). Sodipop managed to reach the semis after defeating Splyce, but was ousted easily by CompLexity to reach the finals the second time around.
The finals between CompLexity and Team Liquid was on the edge, which also went through the whole five maps. The winning push by CompLexity was a clutch win that went a hair better than Team Liquid that given their best to defend the payload. Certainly a close and entertaining final match!
With that, we have now the four top seeded teams for each region. CompLexity will join EnVyUs, Cloud 9 and Fnatic as the top seed for NA, with 12 more teams at top of the points leaderboards joining them. Same goes with the EU side as Luminosity will join Misfits, Rogue and REUNITED as top seeds.
Below is the current leaderboards of the 12 teams that will also make it to the playoffs, taken from the Overwatch Open official website:
The Overwatch Open playoffs will commence on August 24.