This weekend was the first of two weekends in which the NeXT tournament 2021 was running. The Seoul Dynasty faced the Guangzhou Charge and the Shanghai Dragons. These matches were the first to three would win. It was with the maps being in the order of King of the Hill, 2CP, Hybrid, Payload and then it would go back to King of the Hill. There was the ability to have switch-ins between maps, and the Dynasty did take advantage of that. Here are the top 3 takeaways that the Tiger Nation should get from the two matches that the Dynasty played in for the NeXT tournament.
#1. Marve1 back on main tank
The starting line up revealed that it was Minseo ‘Marve1’ Hwang who was put in over Jaehui ‘Gesture’ Hong who was sitting at the bench for the beginning. He was paired up with Hyeonwoo ‘Toyou’ Lim to make up the tank duo. On Lijiang against the Charge, Seoul pulled out the double main tank strat with Toyou on Orisa and Marve1 on Rein. It was refreshing to see Marve1 back on his original position. This is probably attributed to the fact that Sigma is out of the meta right now. Gesture was swapped in during the map sets later on. Both showed that they could pull out Hammond as well as Winston when needed.
Last season, Marve1 had been stuck in the off-tank role because of his skills on Sigma. Though now, with that hero is being played less, he is able to refocus on his role as a main tank. The synergy between Toyou and Marve1 looked good with coordinated dives most of the time. Maybe Marve1’s time on off-tank has given him more insight on the role that can help him as a main tank.
#2. Toyou and Anamo – Protection Duty
Overwatch is a team game. Yes, there can be carry moments, but there needs to be synergy among the players for the best teams. Toyou and Taesung ‘Anamo’ Jung, though two of the newer members of the Dynasty have integrated into protecting the very important person of Youngwan ‘Creative’ Kim. Anamo who was almost exclusively on Brig was always spy checking and swinging his mace around in open areas to make it harder for the opponent’s Sombra to sneak to the backline. This was also seen with Toyou who would spray D.Va’s mech’s fusion cannon’s in off moments to try and catch out the Sombra as well.
Not only was there sufficient spy checking, but Toyou was always close by to physically body block or defense matrix for Creative. This allowed him to take less damage and survive longer so that he could build his transcendences. This was seen a lot on Volskaya in the small room with the large health pack in which Creative occupied as it gave a good angle to pump out the damage on the enemy team.
#3. Creative!
Last season, the protection that Creative received was mostly from Jinmo ‘Tobi’ Yang who would stay close to him in cases of emergency healing. This year the play style has been changed up. As seen above, it has been Anamo, but also Toyou that has been protecting the squishy flex support. Because of the protection Creative has been able to get some essential kills. When facing up against Shanghai there wasn’t always someone to counter Byungsun ‘Fleta’ Kim who was on Echo. On Volskaya especially, he was able to pick off Fleta at critical moments with his orbs.
His positioning also needs to be praised. With a Sombra heavy meta, it is easy for a Zen player to die because of a hack or EMP. Creative was not baited into transcending by Jaewon ‘Lip’ Lee who is considered to be one of the best Sombras in the world. The positioning right out of the line of sight saved many fights, so that he could ult and save his hacked teammates.
It wasn’t just his Zen that was on point. In the Dynasty’s match against the Guangzhou, Charge Creative hopped onto Ana, which he made his name on during the Season 3 playoffs. He was able to get massive 3k bio nades and sleep his opponents so that his teammates could follow up. He has shown so much growth from his Gen.G Contenders days and if he continues at this rate will become one of the legends himself.
The NeXT Tournament
First and foremost, there needs to be a thank you to those who did companion streams for the tournament. A big shout out to AVRL, Dogman and Achilios for the English companion streams, while Tobi, YBT and Gido supplied Korean streams to watch.
It was refreshing to see all the players get able to play in the matches. There are still two more days of matches on January 30th and 31st at 2:00 A.M. PST.
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