For Oldest Pro, the journey to the Grand Finals was much easier than expected.
The outcome of the Lower Bracket Final match between Oldest Pro and Team XX was uncertain; Oldest Pro had lost a grueling seven-map series against Team CC earlier in the bracket, while Team XX looked to be on the up-and-up thanks to Argon’s bone-chilling Mei. Plus, a recent D.Va nerf had shifted the meta toward Ramattra rush comps, meaning that Oldest Pro could no longer rely so much on Lateyoung’s D.Va. Team XX had a real chance of defeating Oldest Pro and advancing to the Grand Finals to face their sister team, Team CC.
Then, in a heartbreaking turn of events, Team XX forfeited the Lower Bracket Final match and settled for third place in the tournament. One of Team XX’s support players was ill and their star tank player PEPPI had left the team to join Victory Esports, so Team XX were unable to compete with a full roster. Oldest Pro were in the Grand Finals by default.
4-0verwatch
Previously, Oldest Pro and Team CC had faced each other in two of the most exciting matches this season. Oldest Pro had pulled off a reverse sweep in the Group Stage, but Team CC managed to get revenge in a seven-map back-and-forth series in the Playoffs. I couldn’t predict exactly how the final meeting between these two teams would go, but I was sure the match would be a banger.
I was wrong.
The PCA Grand Finals were over in less than an hour, as Team CC swiftly won four maps in a row. Lateyoung struggled on Ramattra. Jinmu, who used to carry matches on Pharah, was often relegated to Mei duty. Pineapple’s Sombra ran circles around Oldest Pro for most of the match; every EMP from Pineapple felt like a guaranteed Team CC fight win. Sometimes, Oldest Pro would play a Reaper-Mei comp meant to counter Sombra, but Pineapple would just shrug and switch to his equally terrifying Echo pick.
You could blame Oldest Pro’s poor performance on the recent meta shift or their lack of scrims that week, but, in the end, Team CC were simply the better team. Aside from Pineapple’s dominating Sombra play, LiGe was a beast on Ramattra, and Farway1987 secured quite a few picks on Kiriko. Team CC’s earlier problems with adjusting to Juno comps had completely evaporated.
During the post-match interview, Farway1987 credited a large part of Team CC’s Finals success to their new coach Kama, who had previously worked with the Chinese Contenders teams Rhodes and Bilibili Gaming. “Kama helped unify our team,” Farway1987 said. “We all compete online. Everything really improved after Kama joined, including the pressure we were feeling as a team and the way we communicated tactics.”
The one-sided 4-0 series wasn’t the match we were hoping for, but it was an ending true to Overwatch esports: a seven-map banger in the Playoffs followed by an uneventful steamroll in the Grand Finals. Team CC and Oldest Pro were both teams of former Overwatch League pros, fighting to capture some of their old glory by competing in a B-tier online tournament. The Pro-Chaser Association didn’t have the glitz and glamor of a worldwide league, but I think these two teams managed to find what they were looking for. In any case, they didn’t do any worse than the Overwatch League in the 2019, 2021, and 2023 seasons — all of those Grand Finals matches were also 4-0 sweeps.
No Ults, Widow Only, Castillo
The PCA’s Grand Finals weekend also featured two more lighthearted events: a Widowmaker 1v1 tournament and a rookie showmatch. The Widowmaker 1v1 was played on the Arena map Castillo. Seven Widow players from various PCA teams joined the server to crouch, A-D spam, and click heads.
For the most part, these duels were standard Widow 1v1 fare: a lot of quiet scouting and sneaky grapples, plus the occasional goofy close-up battle. Notably, Insane managed to get a sick jump shot on Twe12e three times in a row. He then lost the matchup because Twe12e realized Insane was only going for near-identical jump shots. (The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, etc, etc.) At one point, Jimmy used Widowmaker’s sitting emote in an attempt to silently scout using the third-person POV. I wasn’t sold on his strategy’s effectiveness.
The Widow 1v1 tournament offered players from lower-tier teams a unique opportunity to show off their raw hitscan skill. Jeongmin, the winner of the tournament, was a DPS player for Mad Wind, a team that did not advance past the Group Stage. In his winner’s interview, he attributed his skill on Widow to the older generation of Chinese Overwatch hitscan players. “For strategy, it’s enough just to watch Jimmy,” he said. “For aim, I watch Diya.”
Young Whippersnappers
The rookie showmatch was held over two maps. As prize money, the winning team would receive 200 yuan (around 28 USD) per player. To accommodate the lack of fresh Chinese Overwatch talent, the definition of “rookie” was expanded from “players who had never competed before the PCA” to “players who had barely competed before the PCA.”
Unfortunately for Team 1, the result of those two showmatch maps boiled down to a comp difference. Team 1’s Taimouren and Casanova did their best as two hitscan players in a flex DPS meta, but they kept getting demolished by Insane’s Venture. Compared to the one-sided Lijiang Tower, Runasapi — a map where Ashe and Tracer are still somewhat viable — was considerably closer. Deng had an impressive performance on Junker Queen, but Team 2 still managed to close it out in the end. Team 2’s 2-0 victory netted each player 200 yuan. Not a bad way to earn 28 dollars.
Stats Corner
Last week, the PCA shared a new infographic ranking the most efficient support ultimate usage in playoffs. Support ult efficiency was calculated by dividing team eliminations by team deaths. Elimination and death numbers were tracked from the time a support player used an ultimate up until the end of the teamfight.
At the top of the list is Saya, a Brigitte one-trick who spent this tournament showing the world that one-tricks can still flourish in this age of counter-swapping. At the bottom of the list is Kyo. Oh, Kyo. Due to Kyo’s ancient esports age of 25, Kyo’s fans and teammates call him by the nickname 老登 (lǎo dēng), a derogatory term for an old man which became a meme after Chinese internet users associated it with Joe Biden. There may be a vast gulf between Kyo and the next lowest-ranked player, but I don’t hold that against him. As one Bilibili commenter jokingly put it, “First from the bottom is still first.”
This Isn’t a “Goodbye”, It’s a “See You Later”
After the Grand Finals, Oldest Pro disbanded. Their main support player D (previously known as Xerneas/Yveltal, now rebranded under the name Mew) had left the team to join Once Again. The remaining four members of Oldest Pro were unable to find a suitable main support player to fill the hole in their roster. (As Exceed Glory’s Soax told me in the first week of the PCA, there aren’t many high-level main support players in China.) Rather than making a player role-swap to support, Oldest Pro decided to disband. There was no point in continuing on as a subpar version of the original team, a ghost of its former self.
During the post-match winner’s interview, Team CC team leader Cogito said, “The new generation of Chinese Overwatch is this group of young people. Our old players will gradually step down from the stage.” By “young people,” he was referring specifically to Team XX, Team CC’s sister team, but the sentiment also applies more broadly to the rookies who competed in this season of the PCA, to players who might compete in future tournaments, or to anyone who might pick up the game after Overwatch 2’s Chinese server finally comes online.
Time passes. The Chengdu Hunters disbanded in 2023, and Oldest Pro was formed the following year from some of those former Hunters players. Nothing can fully replace that direct reincarnation of the Chengdu Hunters, but I believe a team will come along that embodies the same Hunters spirit which captivated Overwatch League audiences all those years ago. Maybe we’ll even see that team soon.
Season 2 of the Pro-Chaser Association begins next month on October 25.
Comments