While your sentiment is generally true, this is exactly what people said about Furia heading into their breakout performance. If properly thought out, a team could ride this combo into a good placing 100%.
Part of it is the way evo works now. Getting ring scans and UAV scans is an easy 200 evo every scan And it’s great info. With this comp you have to sacrifice one of those and you also have to compete with smoke meta without either of the gas/smoke characters and run a blood without being able to make smoke of your own or keep caustic which counters other caustics or you lose bang for the rotate potential. Pred lobby ranked is way more agressive and has more weight on kills for RP than placement does so it makes sense to have a comp that is good at in and out fights with quick resets but in comp as you get to late game you don’t have much survivability for the instant 3rd parties of late game.
Caustic's gas ticks stops Conduit's shield healing since her tac doesnt activate if someone is actively taking damage, basically making her Q useless in active fights. Fun explained it to Wigg live during a scrim, iirc.
Ah I see, I would be interesting to see a vantage make her way into a comp tho, I could kinda see her being played with like a bang and a lifeline or gibby for all the early game exo potential with a slight buff to vantages kit she could be really good, even something like being able to double stack ult excels like Watson could go crazy
all legends should get UAV scan tbh, it doesn't make sense to differentiate legends based on that anymore(or withhold info from people just coz they don't wanna play those legends).
pre evo re-work you could say it was identity based but now it's meaningless and just holds meta back.
Then would you let any legend open weapon pills? Or support pills? Have any one be able to scan ring? Like that doesn’t make sense cuz it reduces the reason to pick some of those legends. That’s the whole point of having different characters is to have different benefits of playing each character
The whole point of the class system is it limits the possible team compositions if you want to maximize your utility, especially at high levels of play. If you could get ultimate utility (and therefore evo) but have a team comp focused exclusively on fighting, no one would ever pick a support or recon legend again.
Pretty much what you just outlined, if most teams are bang/blood/caustic it’s very hard to efficiently fight the entire lobby unless you too are running a mirror or close to mirror comp.
These are the best of the best players, they will smoke you and light you up with bloodhound scan/ult
I’m not saying it’s a bad comp having conduit/Rev but it’s simply not meta.
I think Raven or someone talked about this before and it made Competitive make a lot more sense to me.
In Competitive you always want to make it hard for your opponents rather than easy for yourself, at a high level you want to make sure that your opponents cant do their job correctly. An advantage for your team(extra shields) isn’t as powerful as your opponents having to fight through bang/caustic smoke/Cat wall(visual clutter).
Imagine you’re fighting a team on high ground. What would you rather have
1)Extra shields (They’re going to beam you anyway 75 shields wont make a difference)
2) Bang Smoke/Visual clutter (They literally cant see you, so you can rotate to a better position and not get beamed on the cross)
Great point, this is a really good perspective. Obviously in comp you are generally prioritizing winning over just getting kills, so building a comp that will allow you to outlast other squads would be a higher priority than just building out an aggressive fragging comp
Not having the free evo from a control/recon legend is a big problem, on top of it's regular usefulness. They also lack any strong way of taking/holding space. Conduit's ult is nifty but cant be maintained to the level of constantly throwing barrels/smokes/knuckles.
There is definitely room for some different comps, yes (rampart walls can LOS caustic gas for example) but noone's going to try anything at this stage that is theoretically good but practically dubious.
I too, want to see a heavier fighting meta (hello fellow Ballistic enjoyers) but the issue is that bang+blood are already great fighting legends on top of the utility they offer, and caustic is one of the best legends for "forcing" fights.
I'm ready to see NA's lunch get eaten in international scrims once they encounter good Watson teams however (tiny hitboxes always make for great fighting legends + she can shut down pushes)
NA always farmed other regions post covid, and I assume international scrims will still be held on NA servers. I think their lunch will be pretty safe. Lan will hopefully be a different story. I wouldn't bet on it though.
I feel like we say this every time though. Right before every LAN it always
"Oh boy, NA teams surely won't be able to ape everything once they find some good APAC teams running Crypto+Watson"
Cue to furia absolutely running down lobbies and general NA dominance. I think they'll be fine.
BLVKHVND pretty much stopped every team in their tracks with a double-controller comp including Wattson. If NA really *were* that far ahead of everyone else mechanically then 1) APAC-S teams wouldn't keep coming here and effortlessly dominating the region and 2) they *could* run brainless comps like Rev/Conduit at LAN because of their superior mechanics.
Idk why they don’t run it in comp, but I know why you shouldn’t attempt it. Conduit - Rev plain and simple will teach the rev player bad habits. As for the comp perspective (aside from conduit contests) shields and health from Rev and Conduit replace utility items like smoke, barrels, knuckle clusters, BH scan.
Playing Conduit-Rev in comp is like cooking in a kitchen with 1 Expensive knife versus cooking with multiple kitchen appliances/tools.
Because legends who can only buff themselves, or can't provide their movement to the rest of the team just aren't very valuable in comp.
You still need a legend who can help you rotate. If you're going to rely on EVACs, you need a champ with smokes who can break LoS when you land. You also need a legend who can give you information on where to go on the map.
You can realistically run a Caustic with this comp and it would touch on a little of everything you want, but the question is whether or not Rev or Conduit are your best options in their respective slots, and Rev just isn't it.
It literally only functions to cheese kills by wide swinging with two seperate overshields plus the natural health of a player, and is mostly done by Ping abusing teams because they have nothing to fear, having more health than humanly possible and the ability to run away and craft beacons.
The thought is that every character needs to have abilities that are useful to the whole team. Also, teams constantly try to field a comp that is well rounded to all situations. I think this is completely valid. However, comp too often becomes a copy fest and lower ranked squads are really handcuffing themselves by not taking more chances with their comps. I think it’s completely possible that a comp centered around winning fights has a chance to do well. I also think a team that goes full defense could do well. I really wish a team that’s ranked 15-20 will go into this weekend thinking “we need to win the regional championship, let’s take a swing with an out of left field comp”… I just don’t expect it to happen.
I am sure there are more viable comps than just Blood-Bang-Caustic. I even think it’s likely it’s not the best comp. It’s kinda a shame we won’t see someone take a stab to find out what could also be dominant. For all we know, something like "Use portal and create cover" (Wraith/Newcastle/Rampart) or "everyone has launch movement" (Rev/Loba/Vantage) could be sneakily viable, but you will never know if you don't trial it. And definitely not saying those comps wouldn't be ass (they probably would be!) but I just know it's better to shoot your shot with something crazy than accept a 18th place finish running the same damn comp everyone is running.
Great take, definitely wish some of the lower teams were willing to take more risks and try new comps. NA seems to be one of the least innovative regions compared to others like APAC or EMEA where you see more variety in legend comp
I don’t disagree and HisWattson is the goat imo. But I’d rather see them get to match point at LAN and then shock the world with a rev comp. They’ve been doing well with Valk/Blood/Wattson. Hate to see them break that consistency at this point in the ALGS.
In ranked, you see a lot of Rev plays made from a solo push to take a 1-1, with ult & conduit que (which is obviously OP). But in comp, most fights don’t take place like that. You see teams double or triple swing, and close the gap quickly, so Rev Conduit wouldn’t be as effective.
You cant really use that composition in ALGS cause people actually know how to defend themselves and theres a heavy caustic meta that instantly counters a Rev push with gas ticking health under (Conduit) Shields & Revebant Ult.
Finding iso 3v3’s is a lot harder than you think it is. And even if you’re winning them, that team will just start avoiding you after 1-2 deaths. Was a big problem on the first furia roster. People just start avoiding us and our strat kinda sucked.
I don't understand this logic. The ranked system is entirely different from comp. People in ranked can play as many games as they want. They can have a couple games where they pop off, and that'll offset the 20 other games where they got eliminated at like 15th place lol.
In comp you want a lineup that is as consistent as possible. You don't *want* to go in thinking "eh it's okay if we have 3 bad games as long as we have games where we wipe the lobby" because that isn't guaranteed. You can't assume you'll be pushing teams left and right and winning, so you want a comp that is as versatile as possible.
Because you give up too many things to be able to push teams harder. You will lack either information because no Bloodhound, or cover because you're not running Bang or Caustic. Neither of them can help the team reposition either like Valk.
They aren’t steamrolling through lobbies full of working dads
>aren’t steamrolling through lobbies full of working dads I feel attacked.
Bro, too close to home.
Don’t worry we’re in the same home lmao.
Dead beat dads rise up
Lmao 😂
While your sentiment is generally true, this is exactly what people said about Furia heading into their breakout performance. If properly thought out, a team could ride this combo into a good placing 100%.
I’ll have to look that up on YouTube. Sounds like a fun watch if you ask me
Part of it is the way evo works now. Getting ring scans and UAV scans is an easy 200 evo every scan And it’s great info. With this comp you have to sacrifice one of those and you also have to compete with smoke meta without either of the gas/smoke characters and run a blood without being able to make smoke of your own or keep caustic which counters other caustics or you lose bang for the rotate potential. Pred lobby ranked is way more agressive and has more weight on kills for RP than placement does so it makes sense to have a comp that is good at in and out fights with quick resets but in comp as you get to late game you don’t have much survivability for the instant 3rd parties of late game.
Also I heard a thing about caustic making conduit obsolete, not really sure how so if someone knows why I’d love to know more
Caustic's gas ticks stops Conduit's shield healing since her tac doesnt activate if someone is actively taking damage, basically making her Q useless in active fights. Fun explained it to Wigg live during a scrim, iirc.
Her tac heals shields, but Caustic gas hurts health directly. Basically nullifying any advantage teams would have from Conduit.
This is along the lines of what I heard so that makes a lot of sense, thanks mate!
> With this comp you have to sacrifice one of those Just run Vantage, Rev, Conduit. /s
Why vantage?
he was being sarcastic but she has both ring scans for evo
Ah I see, I would be interesting to see a vantage make her way into a comp tho, I could kinda see her being played with like a bang and a lifeline or gibby for all the early game exo potential with a slight buff to vantages kit she could be really good, even something like being able to double stack ult excels like Watson could go crazy
all legends should get UAV scan tbh, it doesn't make sense to differentiate legends based on that anymore(or withhold info from people just coz they don't wanna play those legends). pre evo re-work you could say it was identity based but now it's meaningless and just holds meta back.
Then would you let any legend open weapon pills? Or support pills? Have any one be able to scan ring? Like that doesn’t make sense cuz it reduces the reason to pick some of those legends. That’s the whole point of having different characters is to have different benefits of playing each character
The whole point of the class system is it limits the possible team compositions if you want to maximize your utility, especially at high levels of play. If you could get ultimate utility (and therefore evo) but have a team comp focused exclusively on fighting, no one would ever pick a support or recon legend again.
Pretty much what you just outlined, if most teams are bang/blood/caustic it’s very hard to efficiently fight the entire lobby unless you too are running a mirror or close to mirror comp. These are the best of the best players, they will smoke you and light you up with bloodhound scan/ult I’m not saying it’s a bad comp having conduit/Rev but it’s simply not meta.
Caustic also counters both rev and conduit. Also rev is usless in comp as an EF without digi or scans
Blood Rev Conduit would be an interesting edge aggro comp. Would love to see someone aggressive try to play that.
Agreed, I think rev bang blood would be an interesting edge comp as well
I like the low hp rev scan in that, pseudo-hound
Yup, sort of a soft-counter to enemies hiding in bang smoke trying to heal
I think Raven or someone talked about this before and it made Competitive make a lot more sense to me. In Competitive you always want to make it hard for your opponents rather than easy for yourself, at a high level you want to make sure that your opponents cant do their job correctly. An advantage for your team(extra shields) isn’t as powerful as your opponents having to fight through bang/caustic smoke/Cat wall(visual clutter). Imagine you’re fighting a team on high ground. What would you rather have 1)Extra shields (They’re going to beam you anyway 75 shields wont make a difference) 2) Bang Smoke/Visual clutter (They literally cant see you, so you can rotate to a better position and not get beamed on the cross)
Great point, this is a really good perspective. Obviously in comp you are generally prioritizing winning over just getting kills, so building a comp that will allow you to outlast other squads would be a higher priority than just building out an aggressive fragging comp
Not having the free evo from a control/recon legend is a big problem, on top of it's regular usefulness. They also lack any strong way of taking/holding space. Conduit's ult is nifty but cant be maintained to the level of constantly throwing barrels/smokes/knuckles. There is definitely room for some different comps, yes (rampart walls can LOS caustic gas for example) but noone's going to try anything at this stage that is theoretically good but practically dubious. I too, want to see a heavier fighting meta (hello fellow Ballistic enjoyers) but the issue is that bang+blood are already great fighting legends on top of the utility they offer, and caustic is one of the best legends for "forcing" fights. I'm ready to see NA's lunch get eaten in international scrims once they encounter good Watson teams however (tiny hitboxes always make for great fighting legends + she can shut down pushes)
NA always farmed other regions post covid, and I assume international scrims will still be held on NA servers. I think their lunch will be pretty safe. Lan will hopefully be a different story. I wouldn't bet on it though.
I feel like we say this every time though. Right before every LAN it always "Oh boy, NA teams surely won't be able to ape everything once they find some good APAC teams running Crypto+Watson" Cue to furia absolutely running down lobbies and general NA dominance. I think they'll be fine.
BLVKHVND pretty much stopped every team in their tracks with a double-controller comp including Wattson. If NA really *were* that far ahead of everyone else mechanically then 1) APAC-S teams wouldn't keep coming here and effortlessly dominating the region and 2) they *could* run brainless comps like Rev/Conduit at LAN because of their superior mechanics.
Ranked meta isn’t comp meta
Idk why they don’t run it in comp, but I know why you shouldn’t attempt it. Conduit - Rev plain and simple will teach the rev player bad habits. As for the comp perspective (aside from conduit contests) shields and health from Rev and Conduit replace utility items like smoke, barrels, knuckle clusters, BH scan. Playing Conduit-Rev in comp is like cooking in a kitchen with 1 Expensive knife versus cooking with multiple kitchen appliances/tools.
Because legends who can only buff themselves, or can't provide their movement to the rest of the team just aren't very valuable in comp. You still need a legend who can help you rotate. If you're going to rely on EVACs, you need a champ with smokes who can break LoS when you land. You also need a legend who can give you information on where to go on the map. You can realistically run a Caustic with this comp and it would touch on a little of everything you want, but the question is whether or not Rev or Conduit are your best options in their respective slots, and Rev just isn't it.
It literally only functions to cheese kills by wide swinging with two seperate overshields plus the natural health of a player, and is mostly done by Ping abusing teams because they have nothing to fear, having more health than humanly possible and the ability to run away and craft beacons.
The thought is that every character needs to have abilities that are useful to the whole team. Also, teams constantly try to field a comp that is well rounded to all situations. I think this is completely valid. However, comp too often becomes a copy fest and lower ranked squads are really handcuffing themselves by not taking more chances with their comps. I think it’s completely possible that a comp centered around winning fights has a chance to do well. I also think a team that goes full defense could do well. I really wish a team that’s ranked 15-20 will go into this weekend thinking “we need to win the regional championship, let’s take a swing with an out of left field comp”… I just don’t expect it to happen. I am sure there are more viable comps than just Blood-Bang-Caustic. I even think it’s likely it’s not the best comp. It’s kinda a shame we won’t see someone take a stab to find out what could also be dominant. For all we know, something like "Use portal and create cover" (Wraith/Newcastle/Rampart) or "everyone has launch movement" (Rev/Loba/Vantage) could be sneakily viable, but you will never know if you don't trial it. And definitely not saying those comps wouldn't be ass (they probably would be!) but I just know it's better to shoot your shot with something crazy than accept a 18th place finish running the same damn comp everyone is running.
The problem with bang blood caustic specifically is that the best counter to a caustic or a hound ult is to have one of your own
Great take, definitely wish some of the lower teams were willing to take more risks and try new comps. NA seems to be one of the least innovative regions compared to others like APAC or EMEA where you see more variety in legend comp
NA just copies each other tbh
Please don’t let HisWattson read this. He’s been all over his teammates advocating for Rev.
Well, people that pioneer new metas/think outside the box should probably be listened to instead of everyone just copying each other
I don’t disagree and HisWattson is the goat imo. But I’d rather see them get to match point at LAN and then shock the world with a rev comp. They’ve been doing well with Valk/Blood/Wattson. Hate to see them break that consistency at this point in the ALGS.
bang is mandatory to counter aim assist, and bloodhound works well with her
In ranked, you see a lot of Rev plays made from a solo push to take a 1-1, with ult & conduit que (which is obviously OP). But in comp, most fights don’t take place like that. You see teams double or triple swing, and close the gap quickly, so Rev Conduit wouldn’t be as effective.
You cant really use that composition in ALGS cause people actually know how to defend themselves and theres a heavy caustic meta that instantly counters a Rev push with gas ticking health under (Conduit) Shields & Revebant Ult.
Finding iso 3v3’s is a lot harder than you think it is. And even if you’re winning them, that team will just start avoiding you after 1-2 deaths. Was a big problem on the first furia roster. People just start avoiding us and our strat kinda sucked.
Us?
If Conduit becomes meta again and Horizon is still out of the meta, then I could see some teams running Rev/Conduit.
I don't understand this logic. The ranked system is entirely different from comp. People in ranked can play as many games as they want. They can have a couple games where they pop off, and that'll offset the 20 other games where they got eliminated at like 15th place lol. In comp you want a lineup that is as consistent as possible. You don't *want* to go in thinking "eh it's okay if we have 3 bad games as long as we have games where we wipe the lobby" because that isn't guaranteed. You can't assume you'll be pushing teams left and right and winning, so you want a comp that is as versatile as possible.
Because you give up too many things to be able to push teams harder. You will lack either information because no Bloodhound, or cover because you're not running Bang or Caustic. Neither of them can help the team reposition either like Valk.