The announcement recently came that this year’s OWL MVP ballot would consist of five players decided by a vote across the 20 General Manager’s of the league. Starting on July 25 and going through August 24, fans will be able to use the hashtag #OWLMVP to vote for the player on the ballot that they’d like to see take home the hardware. The votes of the fans, along with the press, coaches, OWL broadcast talent and GM’s will eventually decide who wins the trophy.
Forming a Final Five
In order to simulate what a potential ballot may look like, The Game Haus polled 15 of our Overwatch staff writers and had them pick their top five candidates for MVP. The writers were given between the dates of June 24-28 to fill out their top five and were told to pick based on the player’s season performance thus far, along with who they project will finish the regular season strong. Because there are no details on when the 20 GM’s will have to vote, there may be variables that they are able to use that we were unable to predict for the purpose of this mock ballot.
Despite all of that, here is the official TGH OWL MVP Ballot, along with the number of votes each player received:
Jay “sinatraa” Won – 10
Jin-hyeok “DDing” Yang – 7
Matthew “super” DeLisi – 7
Sang-beom “Bumper” Park – 6
Jooseok “Twilight” Lee – 6
Considering the dominance of the Shock and the Titans thus far this season, it’s no surprise to see players on those teams making the top five. However, it appears that the writers anticipate the Shanghai Dragons DPS player, DDing, will continue his dominance late in the season. It is also worth noting that Twilight is the only support player to make the final ballot, considering this is the same role of last year’s MVP, Sung-hyeon “JJoNak” Bang.
Other Players Receiving Votes
Here are the remaining players who received at least three MVP ballot votes, along with the number of votes they received:
Jun-ho “Fury” Kim – 5
Minki “Viol2t” Park – 5
Xu “guxue” Qiulin – 4
Hyo-bin “ChoiHyoBin” Choi – 3
Dong-gyu “Mano” Kim – 3
Min-seong “diem” Bae – 3
Hyojong “Haksal” Kim – 3
Hyeon-Woo “JJANU” Choi – 3
Players like Fury, Viol2t, ChoiHyoBin, Mano and Haksal all have great potential to make the final MVP ballot that fans will be voting on later in July. With the reported 2-2-2 role lock coming in Stage 4, there is likely to be a large shift in the final five before voting goes live. Because of that potential, keep an eye on all of the players mentioned in this list and even some potential dark horse candidates that may come out of nowhere when the meta makes a big shift.
Potential Snubs
The following players either did not receive any votes in the poll or only received one or two. In any case, these are some top players that may deserve to be in the conversation when voting rolls around:
Sung-hyeon “JJoNak” Bang
Jun-woo “Void” Kang
Tae-hong “MekO” Kim
Young-seo “KariV” Park
Dante “Danteh” Cruz
Joon-yeong “Profit” Park
Min-soo “SeoMinSoo” Seo
Both last year’s overall regular season MVP and the Grand Finals MVP did not receive enough votes to even be considered close in this mock ballot. These two, along with several other players that have helped to carry mid-tier teams in recent weeks, may actually be dark horse candidates for the final five. There’s certainly a lot of competition but there’s also plenty of time until voting begins. With that in mind, keep an eye on players like these down the stretch.
With so many great candidates on the line and only five spots available on the final ballot, league GM’s have a lot on their shoulders to pick a solid top five. Be sure to tune in with an extra sensitive eye for the last games of Stage 3 and the beginning of Stage 4. This period will be critical for players trying to make their final case for why they deserve to raise the trophy at the season’s end.
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