Hi all. I am a Team Manager for a Tier 3 professional Overwatch team in EU. I know this is kind of long for a post in this forum - and really it is intended for those who are deciding if they want to try to go Pro. It’s a bit of information of what you need to know/to do to begin your path to pro - from the perspective of a teams manager already working with teams doing so.
Tier 3 is your starting point on the path-to-pro - where you learn to play as a team and to go deep into strategy. Professional levels of play (“professional” is defined as those who want to make this a career) are broken down by Tiers. Tier 1 is Overwatch League. Tier 2 is Contenders. And Tier 3 are all the teams working to win a Contenders slot through Open Division tournament placing and then Contenders trials. As you can imagine, Tier 3 is very large and typically classified either by high/medium/low Tier 3 or simply Tier 3, Tier 4, Tier 5.
I get asked a lot of the same types of question from players who have achieved GM in competitive ranking and want to consider options of going pro. Since there isn’t a lot of information about how to get started, I’ll put myself out here now to give aspirants an idea of what we are looking for and what you will have to consider if you choose this as a career option. Tier 3 is where you get your foot in the door and it is VERY different from what players do in Competitive. Of course, I welcome thoughts/corrections/additions from other tier 3 managers. And the various T3 scenes across the world do operate a bit differently than here in the EU (which is most similar to NA).
Preparation. First and foremost, you must understand the commitment this requires. You will have to scrim 5-6 days a week, typically in 2 two-hour blocks (four hours total). This usually means a weekend as well. When you are not scrimming, you should be willing to give up more time to VOD reviews and coach discussions. This means your schedule has to be flexible: at the T3 level, you need to play in any tournament you can find to help your team establish a presence. Often, that means a full Saturday (e.g., the now defunct Heroes of Ananas tournament) or Sunday (e.g., ESL’s go4 tournament). Tournaments are very important to the T3 level but of course the true objective is to place in the top in the Open Division tournament.
As with many professions/building your own business, you aren’t paid much, if at all, in the beginning. Instead, you gain valuable experience - often spending 1-2 years doing so. This is not unusual - and your parents/loved ones need to be reminded of this. E.g., you aren’t paid when you play in local regular sports (like your local football team) and you aren’t paid when you apprentice/learn a field of study (e.g., photography or architecture or game development). You have to understand that what you are doing now is building your own brand/business; how well you make yourself attractive to teams will influence how many opportunities you will have in the future. To have the best chances of succeeding, you must be ambitious and you must get over yourself and be a team player/work well with others. Because things have changed in the last two years of OW and it is now much more than just being technically good - it’s about being well rounded as a team player, a committed professional, and being reliable in all aspects.
My first recommendation is to sit down with your parents/girlfriend/boyfriend/guardians and lay out a plan for one year to try to get to pro. Show them the statistics of this burgeoning esport, how it is fully backed by major corporations, and how it is not only a legitimate career but also one worth the time invested. It’s important to you and it is your dream. Parents/loved ones worry that you are ‘just playing video games’ but you know you are going for a career so tell them that. Most parents think you are just avoiding reality (as one aspirant told me, “I had to tell them that this is different than all the time I spent on Yugi Oh”) so you need to bring them on board and get them involved. Otherwise, you will likely reach a breaking point with them since they are operating in the dark that this is a legitimate career path and a rare opportunity for you. I have seen so many careers sabotaged because the parents weren’t on board and pulled the plug on the player or coach, etc., making them miserable and unable to compete. If you can’t get that support, this likely is not a viable option for you as a career. But to go for a dream career, most parents will want to fully support you and give you a chance at the life you want most.
Here are some important things to bring up with them to bring them on board to give them an idea of why it is important right now:
Right now, the OWL is in flux. From what we know, most players signed for 1-year contracts with an option of 2 years. There will be huge roster changes in many, if not most, orgs at the end of this inaugural season. Contracts will be canceled and players let go. There will be many open positions that will be filled from lower ranks. This means huge opportunities for advancement right now.
In addition, with the expansion teams also looking to fill 12 man rosters, Contenders should see huge upheavals and large amounts of open positions as well as players called up to the OWL. This also means huge advancement opportunities from T3.
Breaking it down: there will be mass movements of players between the three tiers at scales we will never see again in OWL. This means that players will never have as great an opportunity to move up and become a pro as we will see in the coming few months. As they say in America, the time to strike is when the iron is hot - and that is now. With each year, more players will enter the playfield, new prodigies will be found, no new teams will be created, and players will sign longer contracts; your chances to become a pro diminish greatly as the OWL builds momentum and becomes established in the coming years. Put everything into it now and let your loved ones know that you need to do this so you do not have a lifetime of regrets for letting this huge opportunity go. They will need to support you through this - so you need them involved in this investment in your future. If it doesn’t work out in a year, then likely this isn’t the career path for you and it is best to move on. But at least go into the future knowing you put your all into making this happen so you don’t have regrets.
Minimum Requirements. Most T3 teams won’t consider you until you a) have scrim experience as a team player and b) are 4.2K+. So how do you get scrim experience? You have two options: join an academy team of a more established T3 team or advertise as a ringer (sub) in places such as The O.W. Discord (mostly NA, EU).
But there are other requirements that are less tangible than pure skill and affect your ability to get on - and stay on - a good team:
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Reputation. As a manager, I can tll you that we all know of your reputations. Are you the difficult guy who tilts every time he gets killed? Are you the one who always oversleeps and is late for scrims? Are you the guy who cancels last minute because your girlfriend got mad you were playing on the computer again? Are you the immature kid who thinks racist/homophobic/inappropriate jokes are funny? None of those are wanted in T3 level - and certainly they will guarantee you fail at higher levels. OWL is a business and you are representing the league and your org while in it; it is naive and counter-productive to your career to pretend otherwise. So either commit fully to being a professional in this sport or don’t waste your time. It’s no longer about you - it’s about the team and the sooner you realize that, the faster you can advance in the sport. The days of wild and wooly endemics doing their own thing and players being able to do/say whatever they want is gone. It’s big business now and you have to respect that (because with big business come big paychecks for you - so yes, this IS better than the old days of low paychecks and not enough money to support yourself). We’re not asking you to sell your soul to the corporation; we’re asking you to see a big picture and the paychecks that you can get as a result of being employable and less selfish. Again, it’s not about you - get over that. It’s about the team, the org, and the business/sport.
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Perspective. Many of the players getting into T3 are young and don’t know what it means to be an adult yet. I don’t want to waste too much time with the particulars of how people sabotage their own careers unwittingly, especially when young and eager but naive. But one thing we see most often with newer players is their inability to understand that this is a team game and you let your team down when you make everything about you. We see a lot of ‘hard carry’ players who got to their high ranking due to great skill that they use to win games alone and despite/in spite of their team - the guy with all the ‘gold medals.’ But that is counter productive to being on a scrim team. You need to change your mentality to understand that you have to a) trust the IGL (in-game leader/shotcaller) and teammates implicitly. And b) you have to trust your coach and do whatever he/she says you need to fix. I know most players think they know better - but the truth is that they see one small part of a big complex puzzle that is high level OW play. Here’s an example I saw in a scrim last night with a trial for our team: while the IGL is calling to get the Rein shield down our Hanzo is playing peek-a-boo with the other Hanzo on Kings Row point A instead of focusing the shield. Without that damage, shield doesn’t go down, the team gets picked off, and we lost the point. But our Hanzo eventually killed theirs and then demanded to know why the team lost the fight when he even got a pick! We see this so often at T3 level and it’s frustrating to have to watch coaches repeat the same instructions over and over to players who think they know better. Trust your coach. Trust your teammates. Realize that there is a larger picture that you should let the others control. If you have to die so that your team can take the point, that shouldn’t even be an issue. You will look best to to prospective scouts when you play best - and you can’t play best if your team loses or you aren’t working with them.
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Communication. The next thing you have to learn about being on a scrim team is constant communication. E.g., if you are DPS, you are constantly feeding information to your IGL: locations of key targets such as Zen or Widow, the enemy team composition, status of your counterpart’s ultimates (e.g., if you are Hanzo, let your IGL team know that enemy Hanzo has ulti), etc. If you are a main tank, you are working closely with your off tank. If you are off tank, you can coordinate attacks with your DPS. If you are DPS, your work with the other DPS so you have different sightlines onto the enemy. The worst thing you can be as a new recruit to a T3 team is to be silent. We have let so many players go, many who were very good, because they were unable to communicate effectively. This is especially true of main supports (who usually HAVE to take the IGL/shot caller role) and main tanks, who coordinate target calling with the IGL. But even DPS and off tank have to be able to work together - a Zarya who has to keep asking the Hanzo if he is ready to combo because the Hanzo isn’t keeping the Zarya updated is a Hanzo who is losing the fights as opportunities are missed.
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Attractiveness. Be an employable person. Hardly anyone is getting paid in T3; heck, most Contenders teams aren’t even being paid much, if anything at all. But that doesn’t mean you don’t work on how attractive you make yourself to an ‘employer’. Accept responsibility for your errors and move on. If you mess up, don’t make excuses or get defensive if you are called out on it. A simple, 'you’re right, I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again" works much better than a defensive or passive aggressive list of excuses why it wasn’t your fault. This isn’t about you - it’s about the team and how your mistakes affect the team. Make sure people WANT to play with you and know they can trust you. If you make it miserable for your team, you are directly contributing to your team’s losses. Morale is so huge in a team sport - and all teams experience losses. If you cannot handle losses, this is not the esport for you.
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Punctuality. If you can’t even be bothered to show up on time regularly in ANY job, you get fired. If you don’t show up on time, even 5 minutes late all the time, to scrims, you make 12+ people wait for you. It’s not hard to get an alarm clock, etc. The scrim cannot be played if you don’t show up. I don’t know of any T3 team currently who puts up with a player who never makes it on time. Especially not at high T3.
The State of Tier 3 Teams. At least here in the EU, tier 3 is a Wild West. Teams continually blow up, change, or are in a constant state of flux. There is also a hierarchy - top T3, middle T3, and then ad hoc/project teams trying to get into T3. There is also a HUGE difference in skill levels since many T3 teams don’t have access to solid coaching and so have to learn by trial and error. Many T3 teams don’t even have any management behind them and are pretty much 6 players trying to break into the scene through willpower and some talent.
Here are things to work on as a player to try to break into this environment:
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Reliability. Be on time, be receptive to feedback, be a team player. Do the extra steps of preparation NOW to ensure you have availability and have a mindset to grind the long hours of scrimming to get to the top. Get a calendar and use it!
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Teamwork. Be prepared to change your way of thinking how to play OWL. The ones who figure this out fastest are the ones that move up to better teams fastest. It’s not about you any more - it’s about what wins fights. If you think the world revolves around you, you are in the wrong sport. Ranked is VERY different than T3 - and most teams will never take someone directly from ranked for that reason.
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Communication. Cut the chit chat and meaningless banter. Learn what communication/with whom is needed for your hero class. Keep management updated about when you need to take a day off or if you might be late. Keep management updated with any issues with the team or other players. Help resolve conflicts early rather than pretending they aren’t there until they blow up the whole team. Learn to work with difficult people and you will be a better persoall around anyway.
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Attitude. Be someone the team wants to work with: positive, focused, committed, and a true team player. No one wants to play with the guy who whines, moans, complains, and just tilts every time he gets killed. No manager wants a player who doesn’t give advance notice of availability issues or who doesn’t show and so 11 people waiting to scrim are frustrated and become tilted. No one wants to play with the immature guy who thinks bad jokes are funny or who seems to be desperately seeking attention all the time.
For now, I think most will have read about how bad/frustrating/poorly realized the pro scene is beneath Overwatch League - Contenders is underfunded and difficult for all but the OWL Academy teams. Tier 3 is even worse - lack of structure and only the Open Division as a clear channel to pro. But you have to start somewhere and being fully committed and making the most of this huge opportunity right now, putting all your time and effort into a short 6-month or 1-year plan, is your best chance to making sure you know you did everything you could to break into a professional Overwatch Career. It won’t happen for most - but if you do put everything you have into this right now and don’t make it, you won’t have regrets that you lost a precious opportunity. so, e.g., really consider whether you go to the Summer cabin for a month in Summer or spend more days with your girlfriend instead of playing.
Be prepared for ‘long hours in the basement’ to maximize your chances to make it to pro while you have your best opportunities to do so. It’s really an ‘all or nothing’ right now but the good news is that you only have to spend 6 months to a year of your time to know whether you have a shot at it or not. You won’t waste several years only to wash out. And of course, make sure you don’t burn yourself out - find time outside of scrims for yourself and to reconnect with you loved ones and remind them how much you appreciate their sacrifice now to help you for your dream
Of course, I welcome any questions. The reason for me making this post here and on Reddit is so that those of you going pro know how to maximize your time better and so that we can work with players who are better prepared for what is required at this time to begin a path-to-pro career in professional Overwatch.
I have also started a series on what players of each hero class (DPS, Tanks, Support) need to start focusing on to become a professional. If this post is useful on this forum, I am happy to share that as well.
