British Esports Overwatch game adviser on the 2020 Overwatch League and the game’s shifting meta

Dominic Sacco

3 min read | 11 Feb 2020

One of British Esports’ game advisers for Overwatch, Terry ‘Servitude’ May, shares his thoughts in this guest post after the Overwatch League started up again last weekend

After a turbulent few weeks in the Overwatch scene, with the potential leaks of hero bans and Papa Jeff himself giving the first Developer Update in nearly 6 months, the Overwatch 2020 season arrived. And with it, a larger range of heroes were played across the games than usual.

If you haven’t been keeping up with the Kardashians Kaplan and his Overwatch news, developer Blizzard Entertainment has made a few aggressive patches already this year, with future changes being directed at ‘whatever’s meta’ to keep whatever is meta a little more fluid.

Watching the Overwatch League games last weekend certainly showed a little more variety than normal, with a range of DPS getting played including Mcree, Tracer, Doom, Symmetra, Widow, Sombra and even a brief show of Soldier. For the Gladiator vs Titan match, the Genji/Ana nanoblade combo was causing massive problems too and the Titans showed how dive could possibly be back – at least for some maps. Out of all the DPS heroes, Mei was probably played the most with almost one on either team at all times of each match-up. Even with her recent nerfs to her primary fire and slow duration, I wouldn’t be surprised to see additional changes in the next patch.

On the tank line, Reinhardt was steadfast in most games as the main tank. Some double-shield comps were out with Orisa and one or two sightings of Sigma, but D.Va was probably the most picked off-tank with bomb kills galore throughout the weekend. I’m not surprised to see a little less Wrecking Ball due to how much both Mei and Mcree were being played but possibly at how little Zarya was.

Healer-wise, Lucio & Ana seemed the most popular with Moira and Baptiste less-played but not necessarily less impactful.

There were lots of new faces, with a lot more awaiting eligibility for the teams over the next few months. Whoru for NYXL put up a great fight to narrowly lose against the Titans, while Spitfire’s new players may need a bit of time settling in, as they only won one out of the seven maps they played.

Let’s hope there are more unexpected plays next weekend. Speaking of which, the SMT YunChuang was meant to host the first Chinese homestand Overwatch games (including the matchups between Hunters, Spark, Dragons and Dynasty) have all been postponed due to the coronavirus.

About the author

Having volunteered at a host of gaming events and an advocate for the charity SpecialEffect, Terry integrates work with play whenever possible while having recently career- changed to a 3D digital design studio.

As Main Tank and shot caller for “Brutal Base”, who scrim and compete at Masters/Grand Masters level, Terry also spends time theorycrafting unusual team compositions to challenge the Overwatch meta.

See British Esports Association’s full list of game advisers here