How Overwatch League and Rankings Work
How Overwatch League and Rankings WorkThe Overwatch League consists of 20 teams from all over the world. The 20 teams represent the different distinctions, cultures and colors of the cities that they compete for. There are a total of 280 matches throughout the regular season which starts in late winter and ends in fall. With almost over a $5 million dollar reward for the winning side, exciting rivalries and the best Overwatch players in the world under one roof, the Overwatch League is one of the world’s biggest Esports events.
Overwatch League Format
A regular season of the Overwatch league consists of 20 teams playing 280 matches in total. The games are played inside the Blizzard Arena in LA. There are 4 stages in the regular season. Throughout a season the teams are ranked by the number of wins they have. If there is a tie, it will be broken down by map differential. The stage play-offs are played after the first 3 stages and the post-season playoffs follow.
Stage Play-offs
Following the first 3 stages, the top 8 teams based on most games won will qualify for the Stage playoffs and will face off in an intense play-off bracket with glory at stake.
Post-season Play-offs
After the fourth stage ends, the top Atlantic and Pacific team will qualify for the post-season playoffs regardless of their positions with the next top 6 teams joining them. The teams placed 7th between 12th will play a single-elimination tournament with the top 2 joining the other 6 in the play-offs. These 8 teams will compete for the championship in a double-elimination tournament.
Grand Finals
The Grand Finals are the second championship series of the Overwatch League and is played between the top 2 teams in the regular season.
All-Stars Game
In the time between the 2nd and 3rd stages, the Overwatch league joins together the best players from the Pacific to face off against the best players of the Atlantic.
Match Format
The Overwatch league matches consist of 4 matches played across 4 different maps with each match win rewarding a point, if neither is in the lead after the 4 matches, a 5th tie-breaker game is played with the victor being awarded the winning point.
Overwatch Rankings
Originally Overwatch ranked it’s players by a 10 match placement system with your skill rating (SR) depending on the number of games you win, but in Season 18 Overwatch released a much more fair and effective way of playing the game with Role Queue, setting a 2-2-2 style of playing the game, equally balancing 2 tanks, 2 DPS and 2 healers.
The player has to select the role that he wants to queue for before the game with Tanks and Healers having a significantly lower queue time as compared to damage players. The player has to play 5 placement games for each role with the player’s SR being decided in the same way. Simultaneous losses result in a bigger drop in SR than losing every few games.
As you progress throughout the ranks the SR you gain or lose through games will be affected, losing a game in a higher rank drop much more SR than losing a game I the lower ranks. Losing simultaneous games in the higher ranks such as Grand Master will result in an immediate drop in rank. You will gain competitive points depending on the rank you finish in at the end of the season, these points can then be used to buy Golden skinned guns for your favorite characters.