Each week we take a look back at the previous week of Contenders Korea action to highlight the teams and players to watch this week. Here are the Week 1 and Week 2 editions.
So how has the meta been developing?
The meta in Korean Contenders has pretty much found it’s groove with the Winston & Zarya led Double Bubble composition(or Dubbel as i’m calling it) maintaing a near 65% play rate across all games. Teams have experimented the most on Control maps, where some Reinhardt based compositions have appeared. These compositions have struggled with a low win rate against the Dubbel composition.
One part of the Dubbel composition that has been in flux has been the different damage heroes that get run with it. Certain teams usually have their own unique approach to it. We’ve talked before about Team CC’s Tracer/Echo lineup which allows them to put Seok-hyun “Innovation” Oh and Dong-woo “Spectra” Go on their favoured heroes. Outside of this though, the duo of Ashe and Tracer has become a favourite amongst many teams. The Tracer is pretty much a constant due to her high mobilty which allows her to join the Winston on their dives in. The Ashe’s appearance seems to be centered around certain facets. For one the knock back from Ashe’s Coach Gun has been a constant source of frustration for any Winston who attempts to dive onto them. Aside from that the additional damage that the Ashe can do with their rifle and Dynamite really helps make up for some of the damage that this composition can sometimes lack. Ashe’s ultimate has some useful utility also as a counter dive measure. Calling BOB into the area where you are being dove means that the Tracer and Winston are constantly dealing with the threat of being burst down with the consistent damage that BOB can put out.
Okay so Ashe/Tracer is now the mainstay. What about the games from last week?
Well, Team CC had another strong showing against Starlight Gaming, beating them 3–0. Team CC flexed their compositional muscles by showcasing a very nice Reinhardt/Mei composition on Busan to catch out Starlight. Team CC had some excellent performances from everyone but I want to highlight flex support Jong-seo “HALF” Park. Half’s Ana was responsible for quite a few important plays over the course of the game. Take this perfect Biotic Grenade onto Starlight’s Brigitte to stop one push:
Half then lands another key Biotic Grenade onto two members of Starlight which acts as the go signal for the rest of Team CC to go in and clean up.
For Starlight there was some improvements with their commitment to the Dubbel composition proving fruitful and Kyung-hwan “Another” Kim & Sung-in “D3CAL” Park’s burgeoning chemistry as a Winston/Tracer duo being something that they can build on.
T1 have very little to build on as they swept aside Gen.G on the way to yet another 3–0 victory. T1 look very polished with the damage dealer partnership Kim ”ZEST” Hyun-woo & Yoon ”MN3" Jae-hee staking a very good case for being the best damage duo in the region. While those two are both emerging stars it’s the cohesion and calm with which T1 always seems to play with that stands out most. This team is filled full of veteran talent both on the coaching and playing staff and this experience shows. They seem to never lose their cool or over commit resources on engagements. What’s scarier is while their Dubbel is already great they’ve started to try other compositions such as the Reinhardt/Mei compositions which they are equally great at. One player in particular I want to highlight from last weeks game is former London Spitfire Off-Tank Gun-hee “Clestyn” Cho. Clestyn is probably best known for his absolutely smothering D.VA play(just ask Corey) and that excellent play was on full display last week. Take these two excellent reads to deny two separate Mei Ultimates by Gen.G.
The other side of this coin is that Gen.G once again had a very frustrating day. While they welcomed back Hak-yong “Stalk3r” Jeong to their lineup Gen.G as a whole had more moments where they let golden opportunites to win teamfights and maps slip through their fingers. Similar to 0–99 fiasco against Talon Esports from a few weeks ago Gen.G lost this heartbreaker on Busan where they went from being up 5–4 in a teamfight to having ZEST somehow clutch it out for T1 and eliminate 4 members of Gen.G to flip the point and win the stage.
Whilst Gen.G continue to soul search, Talon Esports followed up their impressive debut with a comfortable 3–0 victory over Team Diamond. The game served as a showcase for Hee-sang “HeeSang” Chae strong committment to making Team Diamond’s supports regret everything. Heesang was constantly in the backline pressuring out Ui-seong “Quasid” Son in particular. In this clip Heesang eliminates both damage dealers from Team Diamond before joining Min-jae “Kellan” Kim in clearing out the rest of Team Diamond and securing the map win for Talon.
Finally we had maybe the weirdest team in Korean Contenders, WGS Phoenix hold off Team BM to secure a 3–0 victory. WGS Phoenix have been in the midst of a roster retooling recently and the opening weeks of the season has seen quite a few different players cycle through the roster. This week however took an interesting turn as they brought in their talented damage dealer Seon-hyeok “Vulture” Im in to play support. This is slightly peculiar as WGS Phoenix isn’t really lacking in supports. For whatever reason Vulture was the starter and while he had a rough start he was able to help WGS secure the victory. Damage players on support isn’t something new(just ask Xzi about his time as a Zenyatta for Element Mystic) but it’ll be interesting to see if this is just a stop gap measure or something more permanent. Outside of the role swaps WGS also seem to have found a consistent damage dealer pairing with Seok-hyun “ATTITUDE” Hwang & Jeon ”HIDDEN” Sang-young having a strong showing. Attitude had a very strong showing with multiple instances of him landing the final blows onto both of Team BM’s supports including this beautiful Pulse Bomb stick.
Team Of The Week:
Damage: Attitude(WGS Phoenix), ZEST(T1)
Tanks: Clestyn(T1), Kellan(Talon Esports)
Supports: Half(Team CC), Dong-hyun “Unique” Yoo(T1)
What should I be looking forward to this week?
This week is quite important for the final standings with two games in particular have the potential to decide who get’s into the playoffs and who doesn’t. In Group A Team Diamond vs Gen.G will look to get their first win on the board and move into a top 8 position in the overall rankings. Considering Team Diamond play Runaway next, losing to Gen.G would almost certainly mean that they would miss the playoffs. The highlight of the week though will probably come from the Runaway vs Talon Esports matchup. For Talon this is the first real test of just how good they are while for Runaway this is their chance to get back on track after a disappointing performance against T1.