Seita · @Seita_ow
29th Jul 2019 from TwitLonger
Team Finland World Cup 2019 roster selection process:
Couple of the Finnish OWL players weren't able to take part in this years World Cup as they preferred to spend their vacation on other things than playing Overwatch which is completely understandable. We ended up trying out 16 players for the World Cup team: 7 OWL, 6 Contenders and 3 players outside of Contenders. We played one 7map block vs another team and 39 maps of internal scrims in 2-2-2 meta with different combination of players and heroes.
The roster selection was made mostly based on the tryouts and a bit based on my previous experience with most of these players. After the tryouts ended I had an idea on what kind of core the team would have this year and after consulting a bit with the players we were able to finalize the last pieces to the puzzle.
First 4 roster choices were: LhCloudy, Davin, Masaa and Shaz. Since we don't know what the game will look like in November Davin was the clear choice to cover the Tracer/Sombra role in potential dive comps along with his ability to play all of the other hitscan heroes as well and on top of that he played really well together with Cloudy when they were on the same team in the tryouts. Cloudy and Masaa also have built in synergy from Gigantti days and their communication styles fit well together. Shaz is smart, mechanical and flexible which were the main reasons he was picked for the flex support role.
rCk was the most solid/flexible projectile player in the tryouts who can also play Sombra at a high level if we need a Sombra to pair with Davins Tracer/hitscan. rCk is also a creative player who isn't afraid of making plays and he communicated his plans clearly with the team every time he had a play in mind in the tryouts. Picking rCk as the projectile dps also means that zappis will be picked for the offtank role.
The decision between Ricky and Taimou for the last spot was the hardest one.
Taimou has a reputation of being a great Widow player and in the 34 maps that he played his Widow and Mccree were his best heroes. We tried out Taimou, Davin and Ricky as Widow and while Taimou was able to get the upper hand in a few of the maps, he wasn't consistent enough to warrant instantly picking him to the roster just for his Widow. Ricky on the other hand is known in europe as the best Mei player in the scene and him getting great value out of Mei was expected but what surprised most people were his Widow skills.
What is Rickys potential as Widow? Can Davin and Ricky together cover the situations where we would use Taimous Widow? Is Taimous pop off-potential and LAN experience too valuable to pass? Can we utilize Rickys Mei in November? I could come up with a lot of different scenarios where it would be beneficial to go with either of the players but in the end I decided to go with Ricky and give him the opportunity to show what he can do.
I wish Blizzard would have given teams more time to select their final 7man rosters so I could have seen how the Contenders players do in their teams in the 2-2-2 meta and how much work Taimou does for Fuel in their games.