The UTD Overwatch teams had to adjust to the new meta this time around, which affected how they played in the tournament. Photo by Minh Nguyen | Mercury Staff
On Sept. 21-22, the UTD Overwatch esports team won second
place at the Battle4TX event hosted by the University of Texas at Arlington.
Battle4TX is a tournament between 16 Texan colleges for the
title of Champion of Texas in Overwatch, the first ever hosted by UTA. In their
playoffs run, UTD beat Texas State University 2-0 in the quarterfinals, and
then longtime rivals University of North Texas 2-0 in the semi-finals before
losing to UT Austin 3-0. Caster and Dallas Fuel assistant coach Justin “Jayne”
Conroy was also at the event and was present with the team.
“It was a really good competition,” UTD Esports coach Greg
Adler said. “I think the event was just really well run, so it was just a
really good experience overall, and I think that made it pretty special.”
A big factor in the tournament was the new meta that
developed since the creation of a 2-2-2 lock, meaning teams are forced to pick
2 characters for each role. This removed the GOATS team composition from the
game, which allowed teams of only tanks and healers to slowly wear down the
enemy, and was virtually undefeatable. With teams being forced to vary team
compositions and have two DPS, or damage-dealing, characters, the meta has
shifted to enabling DPS heroes to do the damage. Heroes Sigma and Orisa have
risen up to create the Bunker Composition, utilizing the double barriers
available to complement other DPS characters. The amount of barriers in the
game can make it difficult to play, especially due to Orisa and Sigma’s current
power level, senior support and team captain Alan “Toxic” Arce said.
“It’s pretty boring … double shield is not a fun thing to
play with or against, with four shields on in any fight at one time. It’s not
really meant for a first-person shooter game.” Arce said. “The characters that
have the shields are inherently too strong … they have good utility and they’re
just busted overall. So you can’t really play anything else.”
Simply put, the new meta has forced more characters into the
mix, bringing all sorts of different characters into play, making competitive
games more entertaining to watch. During the Battle4TX stream, DPS player and
sophomore Kyler “Blank” Marcantel’s Pharah multikills stand out as highlights
in the event. The Comets’ coordinated support play of Moira, Lucio, and Mercy,
and the Bunker necessities Sigma-Orisa combo, in tandem with Pharah, Reaper,
Doomfist and other heroes played were also key in the defeat of Texas State and
UNT.
“It makes the competitive scene more exciting because you
get to watch DPS heroes instead of just tanks and healers the whole time,”
Adler said.
The team is still adjusting to the new meta, and with the
large pool of DPS heroes made available and potentially viable, they can still
be surprised by different heroes and compositions, such as the Ash played by UT
Austin that helped in their defeat.
“They were running an Ash who was very oppressive, just, you
know, very high skill player and we didn’t really know how to play around it.
So we got a little bit a flustered I guess,” Arce said.
Overall, Adler said the team enjoyed the event and playing
against skilled teams.
“The whole event was just a lot of fun,” he said. “It was
cool to see 16 unique colleges in one place for Overwatch, and to just to get
to meet so many people.”