OWL Primer: Everything you need to know for Stage 2 of the Overwatch League

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Now with Stage 1 having come to a close and players dispersing for some well-deserved vacation time, team management across all 20 franchises has already begun preparations for new challenges that will come during Stage 2.

Starting on Thursday, April 4, the next stage of the 2019 Overwatch League season brings with it a ton of new updates.

The most significant change will be Overwatch’s newest hero, Baptiste, who makes his OWL debut in Stage 2. While technically a Support, Baptiste has some unique offensive and defensive abilities that are believed to be the long-overdue shakeup to the GOATS meta.

Additionally, there is a slew of hero balance changes that are coming to the Overwatch League from Patch 1.34. First of which are nerfs to armor, which will now take incoming damage first before shields. This universally weakens tank heroes, but will hit Zarya, Zenyatta, and Brigitte particularly hard in terms of their survivability. For more information on the recent set of changes to the game, check out the official Patch Notes here.

A new Stage also means a new map rotation. There are once again 12 total maps in the Stage 2 pool with three options for each game mode — four maps from Stage 1 returning again among the new additions.

For Control, we have Lijiang Tower, Oasis and Busan. Assault will feature Hanamura, Temple of Anubis and the latest map to be added to the game, Paris. As for Hybrid, teams will be playing on a mix of Blizzard World, Eichwalde and King’s Row. Lastly, Escort this stage will see the return of Junkertown, Watchpoint Gibraltar and the return of Rialto to the Overwatch League. 

Unlike Stage 1, Blizzard has changed the sequence that the maps will be played with the order changing from Control, Hybrid, Assault, and Escort to Control, Assault, Hybrid, and Escort. Blizzard states that they believe this change reduces the likelihood of matches being determined midway through the third map.

As usual, the tiebreaker map will be one of the two Control maps not already played in the given series. Now on the topic of ties, it was announced that Stage 2 will also introduce new tiebreakers for teams with identical records. 

This news comes following the questionable way in which a recent a pair of seeding tiebreakers for the Stage 1 playoffs was handled, which included a coin flip deciding the seeding of the third place Toronto Defiant and Philadelphia Fusion and an unbroadcasted game between the Shock and Dynasty. League officials have not given any hints as to what methods they will use to break future ties. 

However, after the mishap following the coin flip in which the Overwatch League commissioner dropped the coin, didn’t show the coin on camera and confused which team chose heads and tails, Nate Nanzer took to Reddit to apologize, stating, "Sorry for messing that up I PROMISE that we will never decide anything that way ever again."

Finally, after evaluating the feedback from their first time running the Overwatch League with 20 teams, League officials have found that matches have generally run longer than was expected. Initially, games were anticipated to take 90 minutes, but matches were running a bit longer, into the 105-minute range. To accommodate for the variability in match length, the Overwatch League will be resetting the schedule to account for the actual match length.

The Fusion had a bittersweet finish to the Overwatch League Stage 1 playoffs after looking strong in their victory over the ATL Reign (3-1), but having their run cut short by the SF Shock in the semi-finals falling to them 0-4.

The PHL Fusion face off against the NYXL in the opening match of Stage 2 of the Overwatch League on April 4 at 4 p.m. PST.

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