Overwatch League Stage 2 Changes - PARIS & BAPTISTE to be included

General Discussion
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WHAT’S NEW IN STAGE 2?

With Stage 2 starting on Thursday, April 4, we’ve got all the important details to get you ready.

BAPTISTE COMING

Overwatch’s newest hero, Baptiste, is making his debut on the pro stage in Stage 2. While he’s technically a support, Baptiste has some unique offensive and defensive abilities. Head over to his official hero page for more details on his kit, and check out his origin story cinematic.

PATCH WORK

The latest patch (1.34) will also tweak the abilities of many other characters: Ana, Doomfist, Hanzo, Lúcio, McCree, Mei, Moira, Orisa, Pharah, Soldier: 76, Sombra, Torbjörn, Widowmaker, and Wrecking Ball.

WE’LL ALWAYS HAVE PARIS

The game’s newest map, Paris, will join the Stage 2 map pool. A robot singer, winding cobblestone streets, a playable piano… this assault map has it all!

1422-paris.jpg

X MARKS THE SPOT

We’ve made an important change to the map order. We are switching the order of the assault and hybrid maps to reduce the likelihood that a match is decided part-way through the third map as draws are more likely on assault. The revised map order is control, assault, hybrid, escort, with a control tiebreaker if necessary. Here’s where the Overwatch League pros will battle it out during Stage 2:

1422-map-pool.jpg

TIME AFTER TIME

Heading into the 2019 season, we were anticipating matches would take 90 minutes. However, after reviewing the data from Stage 1, we have seen that matches are typically running 105 minutes. To make it easier for everyone to tune in to watch their favorite teams, we’re officially resetting the schedule to account for actual match length. Check out the schedule page for the updated times.

TIEBREAKER TWEAK

We’ll also be adding some additional tiebreakers to minimize the odds of a tie for seeding in the stage and regular-season playoffs. We’ll announce the specifics at a later date.

Stage 2 starts on Thursday, April 4, at 4 p.m. PDT, when the Philadelphia Fusion take on the New York Excelsior. Watch all 2019 season matches live and on demand on overwatchleague.com, the Overwatch League app, our Twitch channel, MLG.com, and the MLG app.

Article from: What’s New in Stage 2? - Article Metadata Detail | The Overwatch League

Discuss what you think of these changes below. This is going to be VERY GOOD stage 2 in my opinion.

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DOUBLE SURPRISE!

I just checked the Overwatch League news section and BAPTISTE IS GOING TO BE IN STAGE 2! This is huge! Last year, any new maps and heroes had to play out in a Competitive Season before appearing in a Overwatch League stage.

2 Likes
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A welcome change, imo! I had a feeling Blizzard wasn’t going to stomach another stage of goats

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The 1.34 balance patch was going to hopefully affect that, but with Baptiste being added to the hero pool, we may have another GOATS like comp coming in unless pros figure out how to shoot down the Immortality Field quickly (which I hope they can).

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Now the Commissioner is finally getting it. We want to see the pros play on the same patch as we do. This is great news!

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To clarify, both in 2018 and 2019, each stage of Overwatch League starts with whatever the current live patch is. The only exception was in Stage 4 in 2018 due to a bug with the 1.23 tournament client. Which caused them play on patch 1.22 (the last patch with Scatter Arrow Hanzo). Now the Overwatch Development Team are trying to plan out patches for the live game at intervals which should put patches as close before to the start of a new stage as possible (but this is not guaranteed).

Furthermore, in 2018 the rules used to be that new heroes and new maps had to be withheld from Overwatch League play until the end of the current Competitive Season. This apparently is not the case for 2019 (Baptiste will barely be selectable for Competitive Play by the time Stage 2 starts much less waiting to the end of season 15). I honestly was expecting both Paris and Baptiste to be withheld until stage 3, so I consider this a HUGE CHANGE.

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It has come to my attention the link to the patch notes in the article only goes to the original PTR patch notes. They should be linking to the live patch notes of the patch that released today:

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So, this all looks good. Apart from one large issue. As an avid fan in the UK, I am going to have to pull an all-nighter if I want to watch the League live and to get those tokens for skins.
Can you rework the token system so they can be awarded for watching VODs or Twitch re-runs. Having forked out for the all-access pass I fail to see the value in this.
Unfortunately I am no longer the sort of person who can stay up all night. The other half will murder me.

1 Like
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Is there any chance they will get the current PTR version instead?

I’m curious if the Reaper changes will make him being played more in OWL.

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Not likely, a PTR patch usually has a three week vetting period, so the current patch is likely to be the patch used for stage 2.

1 Like
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Insanely excited to see how the meta shapes up.

Was watching SBB’s stream lately and he’s still an absolute Tracer god. I hope he and other DPS players get off the bench and into the game ASAP.