More than even in North America the APAC region seemed to heavily lean into the Genji. Teams that didn’t have as strong of Genjis struggled in the Summer Showdown. Jun ‘AlphaYi’ Kim who many predicted was going to strong faltered, with 70,000 less hero damage than Hakyong ‘Stalk3r’ Jeong during the Summer Showdown Qualifiers.
Stalk3r and Seungjun ‘Whoru’ Lee stood out in the crowd being the most lethal. Both the young Genjis’ were integral in the team to shifting fights that sometimes seem unwinnable. Whoru on Dorable before point B utterly changed the narrative that should have been Seoul holding. With Whoru as well as Stalk3r in, there was a shift in team compositions. Two MVPs were shifted to make room for the Genji players. Junyoung ‘Profit’ Park was seen on Brig for the whole tournament, where he thrived using the support hero almost as a DPS. Byungsun ‘Fleta’ Kim was benched for most of the tournament. This showed how flexible and how much talent both the Dragons and the Dynasty have on their rosters.
The Summer Showdown was not just the Shanghai Dragon show. In this meta, the Dragons had a massive buff. They looked and were unstoppable. That didn’t mean that the Seoul Dynasty didn’t try and stop them. Before the Summer Showdown, the Seoul Dynasty had a lead in the overall points toward playoffs. The Dragons have now managed to close the gap. The next closest team is the Hangzhou Spark who is at 12 league points with a map differential of +5. That is a far cry from the Dragons and Dynasty’s 20 league points with over 25 map differentials for each.
One tournament doesn’t define which teams will make it to the end, but both teams have stacked the odds in their favor. With the Junker Queen being nerfed this might be the last time the community sees JOATs be this dominant, but if it stays relevant both top APAC teams can compete.
The community really got to see which maps teams preferred as in this format the loser got to pick the map they wanted to play on next. The map format was control, hybrid, escort, push, and control for the first to three meaning most map types got more exposure than others. In the playoff matches that were played for the Summer Showdown, some maps reappeared more than others that illustrated which maps the Overwatch League teams prefer. The most picked map was Circuit Royal appearing a total of 5 times. Meanwhile, Junkertown and Watchpoint Gibraltar never showed up when it came to the escort maps.
All the control maps were played except for Ilios, with Oasis being the favorite with 4 appearances. All the Hybrid maps were played with Midtown being seen twice while Hollywood appeared three times. Half the playoff matches ended 3-0 so only three push maps were played, where Colosseo edged out New Queen Street by being picked twice.
The Summer Showdown gave the community a lot of good Overwatch. Not only did it highlight the dominance of teams and heroes but also gave an insight into map preference. With only one more mini tournament before the season playoffs, APAC will need to step up if they want to show up the North America region this season.
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