Seoul Dynasty: A Longer Wait than Expected

When the schedules came out in the offseason Tiger Nation was disappointed to see that the Seoul Dynasty was not playing in the opening weekend of Season 3 of the Overwatch League. This was quickly cured when it was seen that the Seoul Dynasty was playing at the Shanghai homestead in Week 2. Little did Tiger Nation know that the Coronavirus had other plans. 

Logistics?

With the announcement from the Overwatch League, the community knows that the missed homestands will be played in Week 6 and 7; potentially adding a couple of the matches during Seoul’s homestand in Week 5. While it is exciting that the Seoul Dynasty are going to be playing their first-ever match of Season 3 in front of their home crowd, it also means the Pacific East division has to wait many weeks to just step on an Overwatch League stage. 

In Week 2 the Dynasty would have played the Hangzhou Spark and the Shanghai Dragons at the Dragon’s homestand. Week 3 they had a match against the LA Valiant in Guangzhou. Week four they were going to be in Hangzhou playing the Dallas Fuel and the Vancouver Titans. That is five matches in total that they will have missed. They will be making these matches up in already stressful weeks. 

Week 5 starts their own personal homestand where they will face the LA Gladiators and the San Francisco Shock. They will now not have an off week to recover in Week 6. The Dynasty will have to play a couple of their missed matches that week. Going into Week 7 the Dynasty have already scheduled matches against the Chengdu Hunters as well as the Guangzhou Charge. To add more matches on top of that is overwhelming for any team. 

Hero Pools?

The second question that appears is that in Week 5, hero pools will come into play. These first weeks were supposed to allow players to adjust to the season before going into the new format. Will the matches that were supposed to be played with no hero bans (Week 2, 3, and 4) be allowed to play without hero ban as the new rules will be enacted in Week 5? If not will that give certain teams more of an advantage than others with or without the hero bans? 

As of writing this article the number one hero that has been played is Lucio, which would probably be on the banned list as it is randomly selected off of the data of the previous two weeks. Jinmo ‘tobi’ Yang is a very famous Lucio player. If Lucio wasn’t banned in Weeks 2, 3, and 4 there is a good chance that Tobi would play Lucio at least once during these matches. Now that hero pools are introduced and if Lucio is banned, would that impact Seoul when they expected to play these certain matches during the non-hero pool era, but now are forced to comply with the new rule? Will these matches be grandfathered in from the old system or will it be enforced no matter what in Week 5. 

Seoul Dynasty Depression

Tiger Nation has fallen into a state of withdrawal from the lack of Seoul Dynasty games. This drought will not be broken until Week 5. The hype continues to grow as the community waits to see how the Pacific East division teams will perform. The Dynasty specifically will not only have the first match jitters but also the pressure to pull out a win against teams who have already played matches in Season 3.