After Overwatch League week four trade speculation begins

There weren’t many boats rocked this past week in Overwatch League. Most of the matches went the way we expected. The Shanghai Dragons and Florida Mayhem continued to trickle their way to disappointing finishes, while the three Korean teams maintained their place at the top of the heap. The Boston Uprising and Houston Outlaws continued their improving trajectories as well, with Dreamkazper on Boston being a standout player of the weekend for most.

While it isn’t an upset per se, the London Spitfire taking a dominant 4-0 victory over the Seoul Dynasty took many fans by surprise. The Spitfire has been performing fairly well, but the Dynasty seemed bulletproof until their first loss last week. The Dynasty also took a very close win last week over the Outlaws, who had several of their star players missing due to illness. The Outlaws always seem to have a tough time on control maps too, which is the map type used for tiebreakers.

Watch Full Match | London Spitfire vs. Seoul Dynasty from OverwatchLeague on www.twitch.tv
Moving on to next week, the three Korean rosters — The Dynasty, New York Excelsior, and the Spitfire — are still top three in the standings going into the stage finals. Now that the Dynasty are 6-2, however, the three teams with 5-3 records — the Outlaws, Uprising, and Los Angeles Valiant — are looking pretty closely at their matches for next week. The Valiant may have the easiest route toward 7-3, facing off against the woebegone Shanghai Dragons, but they’d also have to best the Dynasty themselves to make that play out. After they face off at 10 p.m. CST on Wednesday, things will either be more clear or a lot more interesting.

The stage one finals begin immediately after the matches on Saturday at 7 p.m. CST, and when the finals door closes, the trading window opens. While we’ve seen a few notable players from past tournaments picked up to play in Contenders already, like buds, there are a few names out there. Surely the 1-7 Florida Mayhem can make a pickup here with an eye on better performance next stage, with room on their roster for a specialist like Team Canada’s Mangachu or Team USA’s stellar tank FCTFCTN.

Speaking of neglected talent, it seems like Geguri has been picked up by “a foreign team.” My knowledge of Korean begins and ends with “annyeong” so you’ll have to trust PCGamesN for the translation. Geguri is famous for being so good at Zarya she was accused of cheating. She’s also a lightning rod in the community for being one of the very few players talented enough to potentially make it in Overwatch League while preferring the pronoun “she” — out of nearly 120 active players, currently there are no women playing in the League. Speculation on where Geguri ends up is focused heavily on NYXL and Overwatch League, but both NYXL and the Spitfire have Academy teams to fill ahead of the start of Contenders season two later this month. Fire up those rosterpocalypse predictions!