Once Again vs. the World - Pro-Chaser Association Season 3 Weeks 1 and 2 Recap

Six months ago, the Pro-Chaser Association was created with the intention of sustaining Chinese Overwatch through a competitive drought. Overwatch’s Chinese server shut down in January 2023, severely limiting the possibility of new esports talent. Plus, after the final season of the Overwatch League, China’s existing Overwatch esports players had nowhere to compete. A handful of players participated in tournaments here and there, but without a dedicated OWCS region, China’s competitive scene went dormant.

Now, that period of hibernation is over. The official Overwatch Esports account recently rang in the new year by announcing a Chinese region in the 2025 OWCS season as well as a live event in Hangzhou. Overwatch’s Chinese server will return on February 19; currently, the Quick Play version of the game is available to play as a technical test. “These past two years were so hard [for Chinese Overwatch],” the caster Muzi wrote on Bilibili. “In any case, we’ve already reached rock bottom. The only way to go is up.”

The 2025 OWCS season starts later this month, and we’ll likely receive more news about OWCS China before then. Fortunately, in these final weeks of waiting, there’s still Season 3 of the PCA — and now it’s even streaming on YouTube!

In Accordance With Standards

In the lead-up to PCA Season 1 back in August, Ameng (now Meng of Young Blood) made a post announcing his messy departure from Oldest Pro. “If the Chinese server comes back and there are real orgs with real teams, then I’d still want to be a pro player again,” he wrote. To describe these hypothetical orgs and teams, Ameng used the word 正规 (zhèng​guī), which means “according to standards.” He then edited his post to a longer, more measured statement, but not before fans could take screenshots.

This is all to say that, months later, 正规 has become a meme among Chinese fans. The PCA has once again upgraded its production value from the previous season, giving people ample opportunity to spam 正规 in the stream chat and Bilibili comments — the PCA accords to standards, after all. Among the PCA’s new production features are a team popularity poll and a graphic displaying the map’s hero bans.

Hero bans were introduced this PCA season following the announcement of hero bans in OWCS 2025. For the past two weeks of the Group Stage, PCA teams have mostly used these bans to play different variations of Hazard comps, with occasionally unexpected results. MMY managed to take a control round off Once Again after banning Shy’s signature Sojourn. And when Lazuli also banned Sojourn against Once Again, NewJ predicted that Shy would go for the next-best pick of Tracer and decided to run it down on Torbjorn. Did the NewJ Torb work as a Tracer counter? Well, no, but it was still pretty entertaining.

All Eyes on Once Again

Viewers of the PCA broadcast on Bilibili can now root for their favorite teams with the “PCA Audience Support Meter,” a live poll that shows by percentage which team the audience favors to win the match. (Typing “1” or “2” in the Bilibili stream chat casts a vote for a specific team.) After this new stream feature was implemented, something immediately became obvious: no one was cheering for Once Again.

Viewers of the PCA Bilibili broadcast consistently vote for the opposing team during Once Again’s matches.

In 2023, the Hangzhou Spark placed third in the Overwatch League Playoffs after pulling off two exhilarating reverse sweeps against the Atlanta Reign and the Boston Uprising. The Hangzhou Spark core went on to represent China at the 2023 Overwatch World Cup, where they placed second. For a little while, this group of players was one of the best Overwatch teams in the world, or at least the most electrifying. Then, under the new name of Once Again, they showed a disappointing performance at the 2024 Esports World Cup, raising the following question: Is the Chinese superteam washed?

But an aging, washed Chinese superteam is, in the end, still a Chinese superteam. Once Again has won all of their matches in the Group Stage, only dropping a map to the Japanese team Lazuli. We will see if Once Again’s win streak continues, though chances are it will. On paper, the team still outclasses all the other teams competing in this tournament, and anything other than a Once Again championship would raise more than a few eyebrows.

I say this as a dedicated Once Again fan: voting against Once Again for the audience support meter is just funny, and the PCA viewers know it. Imagine if the coughing baby really did take down the hydrogen bomb.

Stats Corner

The PCA stats team has started releasing English versions of their infographics, and for that, I am very grateful. My days of haphazardly Photoshopping Chinese graphics to add English text are long behind me.

The following three tables rank the top five Hazard, Sojourn, and Lúcio players from the Group Stage according to their kill/death ratio.

Meng just barely beats Guxue in hero damage dealt per 10 minutes, with 24 more damage dealt. However, Meng leads the damage taken stat by a large margin.

Oblivionis (formerly known as Insane) spent a whopping 91 minutes on Sojourn. Team XX played three matches in Weeks 1 and 2, and one of those went to five maps.

 Soax said on social media that he is aiming to become a top 3 Lúcio in the PCA.

The astronomical gulfs between Once Again players and the next highest-ranked players by stats speak to Once Again’s sheer dominance as a team during this Group Stage.

Three Stars

As always, the final section of this column highlights players who I thought played notably well this week. For the Group Stage, I decided to focus on lesser-known players who haven’t yet become household names in the world of competitive Overwatch. (Sorry, DPS Guxue. Maybe next time.)

Third Star: Sgy (99DIVINE) 

99DIVINE’s 3-2 match against Wenzhou Ouyue started and ended with Sgy on Venture. R3K made the ill-advised decision to swap to Mauga in the final round of Nepal, but 99DIVINE still managed to clutch out Map 5 off the back of hero plays from their DPS line.

Second Star: 800 (Team XX) 

800’s standout moment in Week 1 was not on the meta tank Hazard, but on D.Va. After Ice Flame forced a Map 5 with a dominant showing on Colosseo, Team XX took Ice Flame by surprise by banning Hazard on Dorado. As D.Va, 800 ran circles around a discombobulated Ice Flame, and Team XX won the match 3-2.

First Star: SeungAn (Lazuli) 

PCA juggernaut Once Again has only lost one map this Group Stage, and that was in large part thanks to SeungAn’s outstanding Junker Queen. Hazard was banned on Hanaoka, so both LiGe and SeungAn played Queen, and SeungAn got the opportunity to show off his skill on the hero. At one point, he performed a 180-degree Rampage in a last-ditch effort to save himself after falling to low health and unexpectedly hit both Shy and LiGe.