How Season 2 of Overwatch League will play out in 2019.
The first details for Overwatch League 2019 have been confirmed by Blizzard.
The second season of top-tier Overwatch play will commence on Thursday 14th February (Valentine’s Day, romance fans), with the eight new teams joing the competition being seeded into existing divisions.
Along with the expansion of the team roster, a handful of changes are also being made to the play format to ensure that players have adequate rest time, and the opportunity to spend more time in their home markets connecting with their local fanbase.
To get you up to speed, here’s the complete lowdown on how Overwatch League 2019 will work:
Divisions in Overwatch League 2019)
There will be two Divisions in Season 2, the Atlantic Division and the Pacific Division.
Here’s how the teams are split, with the new teams making their debut in italics:
The Atlantic Division
- Atlanta
- Paris
- Toronto
- Washington DC
- Boston Uprising
- Florida Mayhem
- Houston Outlaws
- London Spitfire
- New York Excelsior
- Philadelphia Fusions
The Pacific Division
- Chengdu
- Guangzhou
- Hangzhou
- Vancouver
- Dallas Fuel
- Los Angeles Gladiators
- Los Angeles Valiant
- San Francisco Shock
- Seoul Dynasty
- Shanghai Dragons
The official Overwatch League YouTube channel published a breakdown of the Top 5 plays from the epic grand finals of Season 1. Have a look at this for some of the best action from the closing stage of this year’s tournament!
Format for the Overwatch League 2019
The format of play for Season 2 has also been confirmed. Note that Blizzard has introduced a more flexible schedule where players will play either zero, one or two matches each week to create more breaks.
Here’s how the rough format of play looks:
- 20 teams
- Each team plays 28 matches across four five-week stages
- There will be seven matches per stage
Stage Finals will also feature in Overwatch League 2019, following the conclusion of Stages 1, 2 and 3.
The best eight teams from each stage will progress to the Stage Finals, which are being reworked somewhat to allow for a seeded playoff bracket.
Based on their performance record in stages, divisional winners will be put into the 1st and 2nd seed slots, followed by the next six best ranked teams.
There’ll also be a period called the Playoffs Play-In. As before, divisional winners and the next four teams in the standings will automatically qualify for the post-Stage Playoffs.
This time though, two more teams will also make the Playoffs, based on a tournament held after the conclusion of Stage 4. Teams ranked 7-12 in the overall standings will play each other for a spot in the final showdown.
That’s all of the information we have at this stage of the competition, but it’s likely we’ll hear more detail about Overwatch League 2019 as we approach the end of the year.
