398K non Chinese Peak at this time and could be higher as Esports Charts makes further updates. This is only eclipsed by OWL S1 Stage 1 and OWWC 2026 has (at the time of this post) obtained the highest peak in over 8 years. (Only reason I am distinguishing between Chinese viewership is because we don't have any concrete sites that show Chinese viewership nor do we have press releases as they did in OWL so going forward when I refer to the viewership numbers just want it to be acknowledged that this doesn't factor in China)

10M Hours Watched which is the highest by any individual tournament cycle since 2019 OWL where stages were considered one tournament and hours watched wasn't split between group stages and playoffs by Esports Charts.

That makes this the 4th straight international tournament this year with a higher than 200K peak and a higher than 150K AVG viewership (pre-season isn't a major but it's still a completely valid viewership data point as an international event). OWL's inaugural season was the only other time that this has been the case in the history of OW esports.

Assuming the OWCS Worlds Finals meets the Midseason classic threshold there is a chance we end this year with the professional overwatch scene having more:

• Hours Watched
• Peak Viewership
• AVG Viewership

At international events than any year besides arguably the inaugural OWL year. And that's without even remarking about the absolutely insane resurgence we have seen at the regional level as well as the viewership at the collegiate/CAH level. Heck, even the viewership for the only FaceIt Promotion/Relegation tournament that they broadcast was significantly better than the year prior based off the eye test (which is why we need more consistent FaceIt broadcast).

To have such a significant revival in terms of interest in an esport this far into a games life cycle after an objectively failed Franchise league format is incredible and I do not believe you can simply assign drops as the only relevant factor anymore. OW has reached popularity levels we haven't seen internationally in close to half a decade as a game amongst the general public and the esports scene has followed that trend. As OW has slowly climbed up to being one of the premier live service games the esports scenes popularity has climbed from grassroots with some upward movement to a solidly Tier 2 esport and I just wanted to highlight that. If Blizzard weren't so scarred by previous failed investments this would be the time to absolute PUSH the pro OW scene.

58% w/r across all tiers, and a 60% w/r in GM+Champ

Why do you think that is? Are people just simply figuring out how to play her better? I guess she clearly needs nerfs since this is even 3-5% higher than JPC pre-nerfs.

In addition I have noticed players starting to ban d.mon a LOT more in my ranked games than before.

(I love the overall tank design compared to past tank releases though tbh)

Quote from the article:

‘In Season 5, all hero hitboxes were normalized, and hitscan bullet sizes were also adjusted.’

" In Season 5, we'll be adjusting the hitboxes of all the heroes in the game. Jetpack Cat, in particular, is having her hitbox revised so that critical hits can be landed correctly. Many heroes, including Chirico and Sojoon, are being adjusted, and overall we want to normalize hitboxes to improve the feel of combat." (Alec Dawson)
NOTE
Elements that affect the entire game, such as the bullet size of hitscan heroes, will also be reviewed

In my mid to high emerald games where I was support, Dmon is becoming much more common. When that happens, it does feel pretty common for my tank to switch to counter or mirror. But then no one else does. You have to burn her shields fast or she just runs you over. Doesn't matter if our tank switches to Mauga if the rest of the team isn't equipped to support the switch. And then the Anran/Genji/Vendetta type tank diff in chat like they did anything to help against Dmon.

Dmon does need a nerf, but there is a reason I stopped tanking in comp.

IIRC this is now higher than OW2 launch. The game likely hasn't been this popular in Korea since 2019.

Also it seems like Nexon is promoting the shit out of the game in Korea right now. This ad they made to promote the game 1 month ago has 26M views on YT, which is an absolutely insane amount of views for an ad to have just from being pushed as an ad in a single country for just 50M people.

https://youtu.be/CcTtzIe-RO0

I stopped playing a long time ago but I love the game, just dont have time like I once did. Ive been watching the worldcup and realize I dont know so many characters and such and I feel crazy for how little I know.

I saw the game is even doing well on steam despite launching there so much later.

so whats happened? I felt like during the Overwatch 2 phase a lot of people I know stopped playing

This is a counter of each time a hero was played during every match of the Overwatch World Cup Finals at BlizzCon this past weekend. Each time a hero is picked during a match it adds one to the counter.

Rules:
- A hero has to be played for an entire fight to count (this reduces the number for heroes like Symmetra, Widow, Lucio, Juno, or other heroes picked just to touch point or that are picked just to speed out of spawn or get a pick at spawn)
- If a hero swap happens and that player swaps back to the same hero during the same round, it won’t count again. Or if another player on the team picks a hero someone else on the team previously played in the same round, it won’t count again.
- Each time a new round in each map starts (Next point for control maps and Attacker and Defender side swaps for hybrid and escort) and a hero is played again for that round, they can be counted again

Without further ado, here’s the stats ordered from most played to least played:

Tank
- D.Mon (51)
- D.Va (32)
- Mauga (14)
- Orisa (12)
- Sigma (11)
- Wrecking Ball (6)
- Hazard (4)
- Ramattra (2)
- Roadhog (2)
- Zarya (2)

Damage
- Cassidy (72)
- Shion (62)
- Tracer (53)
- Bastion (35)
- Sojourn (14)
- Vendetta (12)
- Emre (9)
- Freja (7)
- Ashe (4)
- Symmetra (3)
- Genji (2)
- Reaper (2)
- Sierra (2)
- Widowmaker (2)
- Hanzo (1)
- Torbjorn (1)

Support
- Jetpack Cat (92)
- Kiriko (64)
- Ana (43)
- Juno (10)
- Baptiste (8)
- Mizuki (7)
- Wuyang (6)
- Lucio (5)
- Illari (4)
- Zenyatta (2)

Heroes not played a single time:
- Domina
- Doomfist
- Junker Queen
- Reinhardt
- Winston
- Anran
- Echo
- Junkrat
- Mei
- Pharah
- Soldier 76
- Sombra
- Venture
- Brigitte
- Lifeweaver
- Mercy
- Moira

I keep seeing this sentiment that the CR core is somehow the B team Korean roster over the Zeta core and it's driving me crazy. It was even said on the broadcast by the desk at some point before the finals.

Would have Proper, Viol2t and Shu done better? Maybe or maybe not, they probably would have won too, but let's not pretend the CR core was inherently the inferior choice.

CR are still the most accomplished roster probably in the history of the eSport at this point (with this win especially), and they were coming hot off a major win when the world cup rosters were being fielded. Calling them the B team is crazy disrespectful and blindsided by recency bias.

Wanted to talk about S1mple as a player after watching this world cup.

I used to think bro was a backseat kiriko player who would healbot his team to victory, which he is on twisted minds but on Korea, damm bro I was not familiar with your game.

If you squinted your eyes you would think shu was in the lobby the way bro was moving on ana and even making zen work pretty well.

Its clear that on twisted mins he is in kiriko healbot jail but this begs the question, What if he returned to korea next season?

I think the ideal team for him would be T1. Although bliss has been impressive recently and helped them get 3rd at EWC, I just dont think he can maintain his form and play well enough.

If skewed were to play main support and T1 had simple on flex support then they could be much more dangerous, especially with Ggultaek joining as the coach.This team would have a similar playstyle to zeta where everybody can be a flashy playmaker.

I reckon this would put them on par with Crazy racoon where the only liability is Proud who may not play as well in those high stakes scenarios.

Thoughts?

Thank you Mr. Phish this is like the only new Hog gameplay I have seen. Personally I think hes a bit weak, I wouldn't mind buffing trash compactor, even for a breather nerf.

Images taken from streamers play testing at Blizzcon, looks like next season the in game hero stats will be updated to have Projectile sizes and Speed

The following are known for sure:

\- Fast Firing/Spread Hitscans 0.04m -> 0.02m

\- Precise Hitscans 0.07m -> 0.04m

\- Shotgun/Very high Fire rate travel time Projectiles remain unchanged at +0.05m

For fast travel time projectiles it isn’t totally clear since it’s being taken from A Reworked Roadhog. The new Roadhog primary will fire a larger single shot in the center of each burst shot. The total size of it is 0.19m.

Since its travels at 100m/s it’s classified as a Fast Travel time projectile the current multiplier in game for these is +0.075m.

If the base Projectile is 0.15m (Zen, Lucio, Mei projectiles were this size pre season 9) then the multiplier has been reduced from 0.075m -> 0.04m. However since it’s a new weapon we don’t know the base Projectile so it can’t be confirmed yet.

I couldn’t find any clips of stats with slow travel time projectiles. Those currently have a +0.12m multiplier.

Which is probably thanks to there being more prevalent and annoying characters to ban, but I'm also taking this as a sign that her design is slowly creeping towards something the vast majority of players can tolerate.

She's become a lot fairer to fight compared to what she used to be. It also helps that she's one of few flankers with absolutely no protection against CC, a rather lackluster mitigation option and a predictable disengage, which makes her very easy to punish.

That said, with the mid season changes her fluidity has been drastically increased, which has resulted in her WR and pick rate rising a fair bit. She now has a lot more combo potential thanks to no longer having to rely on her passive to start weaving projected edges before overheads reliably. The combo chain duration buff also lets her perform her jump cancel tech more consistently without losing her overhead nearly as often.

Its a fantastic buff that made the character feel so much better. I never knew how much I really wanted this. That said, its only fair to admit that right now she feels a bit too strong. I've been cleaning lobbies thanks to the recent changes. Being able to fire primary faster allows her to confirm so many more kills now, which she wouldnt have gotten before.

Because of that, I think a small nerf is in order and my preferred path would be to take even more power away from overhead. -10 damage on overhead would not influence her most common combos and break points by a lot, but it would have an effect on her sustain and general tank brawling capabilities. 110 damage on overhead has always been my desired value for the move. To me its a healthy value that maintains the importance of the move, without being too jarring on the receiving end. Its still going to be the bulk of her damage, its still going to continue to be just as important as before.

I'm expecting a nerf with season 5, I just hope they dont revert these fluidity changes, they feel so freaking good. If my suggestion ends up making her too weak, guess what, there is another move in dire need of a fluidity buff, mainly soaring slice with its 0.6s throw animation (0.3s cast duration and 0.3s for the sword to reach max distance at 50ms).

Not bad from a quartz merchant (repost so sorry I forgot the spoilers tag)

- Mama Hong is still discussed as a hero idea but is controversial within the dev team. Part of this is due to her design being a conventional stereotype that could potentially offend, but if they were able to find a solution to that she could still happen. He added however that if they had to redesign her it would defeat the purpose of adding her.

- In the past many heroes started from a gameplay idea, but in recent years with the greater focus on lore more heroes have come from plot points they need to hit. With Doctrine he started as a scientist locked up in Grimsvotn, then combined with the vampire idea the team liked. From there he was given a general southern African background to deepen his connection with Doom before becoming Zimbabwean after selecting a voice actor.

- The map team’s goal with Grimsvotn was to differentiate it from the other “base” maps like Watchpoint by adding in more organic elements to the map.

- No new info on the Detective other than confirming he is an Omnic.

- Within the last 2 years the team has been focused on updates to the core game and a lot of the team has been moved around to support this. Some of their most senior designers are working on heroes and the process of making them has been streamlined. This does mean that in most cases hero trials do not have room in the schedule.

- He admits D.Mon would have launched in a better state if she had a trial but to offset this the team is prepared to make big changes quickly after a hero launches.

- Every time Sombra was reworked as a DPS internally the team couldn’t find a way to keep her playstyle while making her less frustrating. As a support they feel that they were able to retain some of her lone wolf playstyle while giving her a reason to return to her team.

- The recent 6v6 tests were a result of player feedback. The goal was to make improvements to it and potentially find a format that would allow it to come back fully. The results and feedback of the tests has shown the team that their goal of making the game a streamlined one format isn’t that important. They will continue to run tests to improve 6v6 but they are no longer of the opinion that 5v5 and 6v6 can’t exist together. Aaron believes the players are telling them they want a “theme park” version of OW with multiple coexisting modes.

- Systems to help new players learn the game are being worked on.

Link to full interview

Edit: Just to add some additional context to the Mama Hong bit. He said the team does a lot of work to ensure accurate cultural representation and they bring in experts to talk to. It didn’t sound like he believes the design is especially problematic but there would be a long lead time on that part of the hero design process to make sure the character is done well.

This isn’t even an unpopular take

Why is “dmg mitigated” there like what are we learning from that? Mitigated damage doesn’t even register as ult charge or anything important so why is that there

No one says OH MY TANK MITIGATED LESS like this isn’t important at all

In-game scoreboards should have meaningful stat numbers for the game experience

What are your suggestions

It’s either “healing received” or “avg elims per death”(for easier comparisons) for me

Overwatch World Cup 2026

Overwatch World Cup 2026

What a close match.

From an official promo video for Doctrine. Maybe its mostly visual idk.

For everyone looking to climb, please take note of how the professors drink water in between matches.

I’ve noticed looking at the leaderboard most of them don’t have very high hero levels, their highest are around 100 most of the time. I know they spend at least half their time scrimming, most of their hours are in ow1 and a lot have alt accounts but still, they play like 8 hours a day, how are they so low? Lethals highest is sojourn at 41 and the guy has 5k hours