After two months of competition, the NGE North American Overwatch Winter Premiere is finally coming to its epic conclusion as the four final teams take to the live stage at PAX South this weekend in San Antonio, Texas. The winners and losers on Friday determined who would be competing for first place, and who had to settle for competing for third place Saturday.
Luminosity and Immortals were ready to settle the final score between them after facing each other several times in the round-robin qualifiers, but Immortals would have none of it as they crushed Luminosity handily with a two-pronged attack. A few days ago a new patch hit the live servers, which in turn affects all competitive matches, and could change the meta dramatically. So far, teams are discovering a more DPS hero-oriented meta, which led to more appearances by Brady "Agilities" Girardi's Genji.
Agilities had previously used Roadhog to trample the landscape ahead of him, only switching to Genji in situations where the team was at risk of losing. Their last-resort Genji has now become their blitzkrieg tactic, as Immortals destroyed LG on all three maps of Dorado, Temple of Anubis, and Nepal for a very fast 3-0 victory.
Christopher "GrimReality" Schaefer continues to be the most consistent and biggest threat for IMT as he crushed members of Luminosity at the last point of Temple of Anubis on McCree. Some accurate headshots within mere seconds of each other prove that his skill remains in high demand through changing metas.
Next was another a 3-0 stomp from Ghost Gaming, formerly known as Kungarna, against compLexity. Kungarna had up until now been sponsor-less, so given their excellent performance in the second round robin it was no surprise that they were picked up by an organization to sponsor them. They wasted no time in proving to their sponsors that they were the right team to be chosen, as Connor "ConnorJ" Johnson continued to play Roadhog in methodical fashion, hooking enemies who were exposed for just one or two brief seconds without missing, or using The Whole Hog to push enemies back or dividing the team, allowing his team to clean up. Last but not least, Andrej "babybay" Francisty stayed true to his preference of playing Soldier 76, even going as far as to flanking compLexity on Route66 with or without his Tactical Visor or having a Nano Boost.
It's a shame for compLexity because they've been known for such colorful and creative play, especially after Sombra came out, but despite some successful EMPs to push forward, the round robin format and the recent patch change seemed to work against them. So compLexity and Luminosity both lost 0-3 and will compete Saturday for the third-place medal, while Immortals and the newly-branded Ghost Gaming will finally usher in the curtains on this long gauntlet of a tournament, deciding once and for all who will place first.