Image courtesy of Abraham Engelmark for DreamHack.

Viewers of this weekend's Overwatch Championship at the Dreamhack Winter event in Sweden were treated to a completely different Overwatch. 

From teams experimenting with a variety of team compositions to the new hero finally showing her true potential in the professional scene; this tournament was nothing short of satisfying.

The tournament was headlined by Ninjas in Pyjamas, Misfits, Fnatic, CompLexity Gaming, and with PENTA Sports, LDLC, UnWanted, and Mousesports qualifying through the BYOC qualifier.  

Sombra shows out with elegant style

At this year's DreamHack, viewers were finally treated to Sombra play in a professional setting and it was a sight to see. Sombra's ultimate is a great engagement tool, and the speed of which it gets charged makes it viable as is. An example of this would be the matchup between NA team CompLextiy Gaming and EU team PENTA Sports. Player Torktjo from CompLexity Gaming showed amazing promise playing Sombra by shutting down his tank heavy opponents. Torktjo kept attack pressured by maintaining health pack control, damaging enemy support, and placing well timed EMP's. Due to this strategy, PENTA struggled throughout the entire bout which led to a CompLexity victory. Below is just one of many times Torktjo was able to setup a team wipe against PENTA Sports.

Many teams, different compositions

With players still reeling in from the recent patch, many teams have started playing an adaptation of the previous meta. Characters such as Soldier: 76 and D.Va showed a strong presence across many rosters. Misfits performed well with having three DPS characters instead of the usual tank heavy line, and it proved to be a stronger composition. Even though Zarya still had a presence in the tournament, she did fall well below the former must pick status she once had, being absent even in tank heavy teams. With teams trying out new character lineups, expect more Misfits-like play in the near future.

Technical difficulties steal show on day 1 of broadcast

Day 1 was not as smooth a spectator experience as day 2 proved to be. Viewers were treated to a number of replayed matches caused by numerous server crashes. Because of the amount of crashes, a lot of the scheduled matches had to be played off stream, surely disappointing many viewers of the event. After day one, the matches went smoothly with no crashes for the rest of the tournament. Further details of the event can be found here.

Team Misfits take victory as Team Fnatic falls short

Even in a changing meta, Misfits still showed to be at the top of their game when it comes to producing successful team compositions. The team showed that neither the time since the Overwatch Open nor the return of Skipjack weakened the Misfits performance. 

Misfits showed amazing Tracer gameplay by Terence “Soon” Tarlier who caused havoc in Fnatic’s backline playing the standard two/two/two team composition. Even with Casey “Buds" Mcilwaine making a crucial switch to Tracer to duel with Soon, Fnatic struggled to overcome being outflanked and out damaged, eventually giving Misfits the win 2-1 on Dorado. 

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