Lunatic Hai Coach's thoughts Watching Takeover 2

https://www.twitch.tv/alwaysoov

Someone PMed me and asked me to summarize what LH coach was saying as he watched Takeover 2 live on his twitch stream, and I just finished doing it ;)

Alwaysoov, Coach of Lunatic Hai, watched Takeover 2 with his fans only for only a little bit (2 matches which was Misfits vs MovieStar Riders, and NIP vs e-United) and there were a few interesting analysis and points he provided on the spot. He doesn't usually talk about foreign teams but this time he talked a bit about the foreign scene which was very interesting to hear. He discussed various things - not just Takeover 2, but the overwatch scene outside Korea in general. So some points are related to Takeover 2, some points are not. The translation is below:

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• Coach said he's the bald guy who always comes in the booth when there is a tactical pause and when the match ends at APEX, just in case people wanted to know his appearance ;)

• (Unrelated to Takeover, but anyways,) the world cup roster for team Korea has been completely decided and submitted to Blizzard Korea. Only the 3 committee members know who they are and there will be an official announcement mid-June.

• Coach watches and keeps data of most of the foreign matches including China, EU and NA. He personally thinks that in terms of the Chinese Pacific Championship tourney going on right now, the teams there currently match the strength APEX Challengers teams (I believe the caster in charge of overwatch Pacific Championship said the exact same thing in a recent interview). Apparently, Chinese teams there scrim a lot with APEX Challenger teams, and the coach is basing his claims on those scrim results.

• Comment on MovieStar Riders using Sombra: Coach said Sombra has been used in NA/EU long before Korea, like Complexity. Some teams there are already pretty good at abusing her now since she is essential to the meta.

• Coach mentioned something interesting when watching Moviestar Riders play:

"I'm pretty sure Moviestar Riders have watched APEX Season 2 and APEX Season 3 group stages and studied them very carefully, because I'm certain that their current comp and play style is extremely similar to a certain top-tier Korean team I personally know very well. I obviously can't tell you what team it is, but their execution pattern on the enemy and the way they engage on Misfits is exactly the same"

He also added that Dante is certainly the ace of Moviestar Riders: His Zenyatta is amazing to watch.

• He thinks Rogue will win the whole thing at Takeover 2. Coach watched some important games from Day 1 and Day 2 (it's just that he hasn't streamed them) and he believes that there is no team that looks better than Rogue atm among the 8 teams. To add a quote from him:

"Right now teams at Takover 2 seem to be only taking out mirror comps or rely on their own signature comp they're comfortable with in order to try to confront Rogue directly. But that's not going to work against them because they're just too good when it comes to head-to-head fights. In addition Rogue seems to be flexing better since coming back from Korea, I'm seeing Knoxx on the Reinhart for the first time. Teams facing Rogue in the playoffs definitely need to comp up with a different strategy of beating them."

• Coach said he likes the Takeover 2 venue. Although it decreases the competitive atmosphere overall compared to APEX it's certainly not bad to have free-style LANs like this once in a while. He added that PC Bangs in China are very similar to the venue in Takeover 2 where it is a combination of Cafe style and computers from his experience in APAC. He was really fond of the way the casters were doing their job on the sofa comfortably with the players.

• Coach feels really bad for NIP. He was personally very fond of NIP last year because their coordination with Hymzi's Roadhog was very original, but he thinks Hymzi is currently having a hard time finding his best role in the dive-oriented meta. He thinks that if NIP had come to APEX Season 1, there was a very good chance they could have won the whole thing; that's how impressed the Coach was of their teamwork back then. He thinks Zappis is the best player who willingly switches roles when needed, but the team overall is definitely is struggling to find their identity in the current meta.

• Lunatic Hai scrimmed with e-United multiple times when they were in Korea. Originally he wasn't planning to because of other schedule-related reasons, but the manager of e-United managed to persuade the Coach by saying that "Our current best comp is the 3 DPS, we'll use that to scrim against you so you guys will have really good practice with us before going against Rogue!" so the Coach happily scrimmed with them many times before going against Rogue. A very funny behind-story if you ask me lol

• Coach said the number of scrims is proportional to the strength of one's team. He heard about Misfits's situation of not having a Coach and believes that rather than the problem of not having a coach, the fundamental issue lies in the fact that the current condition in Europe just doesn't allow EU teams to scrim multiple times with diverse opponents in a single day, which is absolutely necessary for a team to become better quickly. He heard from some people he know that Misfits is having trouble organizing scrims with different teams, and as a result has trouble gaining experience from them. For instance he heard that before Misfits came to APEX Season 2, they could not practice for a whole month in EU - they had only NIP to practice against. There are simply not a lot of EU teams that can scrim against each other in that region, and Coach said that's the reason some foreign teams come to bootcamp in Korea; there are so many diverse teams which have different styles that play at a high level in a single country that a team can scrim against that it is hard not to learn a lot in a single day of practice. He mentioned sometime later that Overwatch Contenders may possibly solve this issue and create a lot of teams that have their own color, thus making more opportunities for a lot of scrims.

• Coach additionally mentioned that Misfits does not have a player who specializes in healer and tank positions. Almost all of the roster are former DPS users who don't have professional experience on tank and healer positions, and he thinks this is affecting Misfits in a very negative way. He kept commenting that Zebbosai looks really uncomfortable on Ana on different team fights, and Tviq/Nevix doesn't seem like they know what a D.Va is supposed to do on some occasions. He added that he knows they don't have a choice because "somebody" among those DPS players need to fill the role (this comment makes me wonder if Misfits pre-swap could have been stronger, since they had healer specialists at the time). He said the same thing for Neptuno on Moviestar Riders: Originally he wasn't a Lucio player, but it just seems like he's forced into that role because no one else in his team can, and this can't be really good for the team.

• Coach said that in terms of 'aim' only, Dafran and AKM have the best aim in Overwatch. He said he's been observing Dafran since last year as an individual player even before Selfless through various streams and videos, and said that he has amazing game sense. He added that it would help if Dafran had a less toxic personality to help the atmosphere of the team (I think he was criticizing the way Dafran threw the match at the last AMM). In terms of judging Selfless, coach mentioned that Selfless needs to play on a LAN in order to prove they can play on the same level of consistency - coach doesn't believe in online tourney results at all because the atmosphere and the conditions are completely different. If Selfless does well at LAN, he's ready to call them one of the best teams in NA.

• He thinks Kruise has really improved a lot in terms of his Genji play since boot camping in Korea, especially how he gets his ults so fast, and the timing he chooses to use his dragonblade. He also believes however, that NIP currently has no idea how to counter Genji right now - they showed that in their match against Rogue and e-United. To quote directly from the coach, when Kruise is getting multiple kills:

"Whenever Kruise takes out his dragon blade, he kills at least 3~4 people every single time. That's not supposed to be happening. although Kruise is really good at Genji as an individual, NIP just doesn't look like they have experience practicing what actions to take whenever an enemy Genji ults. I mean, the moment you hear the Genji ulting e-United doesn't need to use other ults because the Genji will basically kill everyone in NIP."

• He thinks that the match of NIP vs e-United showed that both teams relied on a particular comp throughout the whole match although they did make some minor changes on some points: Tracer/soldier/zenyatta/Lucio/Reinhart/D.Va for NIP and 3 DPS for e-United. He hoped they would show other compositions in the future besides their signature comp listed above.

• If Lunatic Hai is ever invited to a foreign tourney (if there ever will be one), they are definitely willing to attend. He heard from somebody that there will be a major international LAN event on September somewhere in Asia, but he isn't sure whether it's true or not.

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Currently Alwaysoov is the only coach out of all APEX teams who communicates this regularly with fans; he promised to do so when LH won APEX Season 2. He won't be streaming for a while, because his team needs to prepare for APEX quarterfinals.