ESTNN Esports News Brief: March 20– 27, 2019

Welcome to the ESTNN Weekly Brief! Here’s your rundown of all the esports news for the past week on March 27^th. We’ve got tons of news ranging from League of Legends Playoff brackets, Overwatch PTR patches, and new Auto Chess heroes. Let’s jump right in!

League of Legends

Playoffs are imminent in both the LEC and LCS this week. Over in the LEC, we’ve got Fnatic, Vitality, Splyce, and SK facing off this weekend to see who continues on to the quarterfinals. In NA, Flyquest, Golden Guardians, TSM, and Echo Fox will duke it out on Saturday and Sunday.

In other news, Cloud9 played their academy team in their match against Clutch Gaming on Sunday after the main roster locked up the second seed on Saturday. Believe it or not, C9 Academy absolutely stomped Clutch in a little under thirty minutes. While we won’t see Cloud9 this weekend, we’re set for a fantastic Spring Split playoffs, especially with Liquid looking vulnerable lately.

Patch 9.7 is incoming, and Product Lead Richard “MapleNectar” Henkel gave the community some ideas of what they should expect when it hits. Leading the changes are some nerfs to Lissandra, Kayle and Morgana, as well as buffs to Garen, Skarner, and Dr. Mundo.

Hey all! Here are the current planned changes for 9.7 though there may still be some additions or removals from the list. Will try to answer questions as I have time today if folks have any. pic.twitter.com/4D0MdkQgF1

— Richard Henkel (@OdysseyMaple) March 26, 2019

DOTA 2

In Dota 2, watch statistics are in for the most recent DreamLeague Major, and it turns out that people really like to watch Dota. According to the Esports Observer, fans watched over 10 million hours of the tournament. This boost lifted Dota 2 to the top of the Twitch charts.

In other Dota 2 news, the popular mod Auto Chess looks to be adding two new heroes. You can read all about it here, but our writers think both Zeus and newly-released hero Mars may be coming to Auto Chess.

New heroes coming soon pic.twitter.com/0Jpo35hLF4

— drodostudio (@drodostudio) March 26, 2019

We’ve also got a few patch notes for you here for Patch 7.21d! While you can read all about the changes here, we’ll give you a quick and dirty overview. Valve have adjusted Rod of Atos, Aeon Disk, Guardian Greaves, and Solar Crest in a variety of ways, with some of the items receiving buffs and some nerfs. We also saw a large variety of buffs and nerfs across the board for heroes.

Overwatch

Baptiste is finally live on official servers as of last week! You can read more about his abilities and playstyle here, but just know you should be getting out of the way when he drops his Amplification Matrix!

We’ve also got some PTR news for you, as Blizzard has buffed both Reaper and Junkrat in the current PTR patch. For Reaper, players can now use Shadowstep while in the air, and upon coming out at his new location he will be completely invisible. It also takes him about a half a second less to completely materialize when he’s done teleporting, so Shadowstep can now be used as a seriously powerful offensive ability.

Junkrat has also received some changes on the PTR. These revolve mainly around changing the way his Frag Launcher works, specifically the speed at which his projectiles move and how quickly they explode. The grenades themselves now move faster, meaning less of an emphasis on spamming grenades and more focus on precise aiming. Additionally, the grenades explode quicker and bounce less, meaning that Junkrat can be more accurate and have more of a direct impact on focusing down a target.

Stage 1 Playoffs

Don’t think we forgot about the Stage 1 playoffs! Vancouver outplayed the Shock in a 4-3 shootout that left every fan impressed at the Titans level of play. For an expansion team, they came into the League and smashed every opponent, finishing the regular season with an undefeated record. Vancouver is proof that just because you’re an expansion team doesn’t mean you have to be bad, and we here at ESTNN look forward to seeing if they can continue their form into Stage 2.

Speaking of Stage 2, the first games kick off next week on April 4^th with the Philadelphia Fusion taking on NYXL, Boston Uprising facing off against the Atlanta Reign, the Shanghai Dragons stepping up to the Los Angeles Gladiators, and a battle of the expansion teams with the Guangzhou Charge and the Paris Eternal.

CSGO

Some weird stuff is going on in the Counterstrike: Global Offensive world recently, both inside and outside of the game. To start, we recently got to see how the economy changes effected pro play at Blast Pro Series Sao Paulo this weekend (Astralis won, no surprise). Teams were rarely put on eco, and each game became a slugfest. It’s still too soon to see how large of a factor this economic adjustment is, especially since Blast Pro Series has such an odd (bit refreshing!) format. Look to both ECS and ESL Pro League for a better picture on how it will play out.

On the roster side of things, Rogue has announced that they will no longer field a team in Counterstrike: Global Offensive. The move comes after months of having players poached and then having to rebuild. The Spencer “Hiko” Martin-led team took to a Twitlonger to explain the decision.

Feels really bad that it came to this especially when we have shown really good results lately. Planning on streaming for now until an opportunity arises. Should be back to streaming after we get back from China https://t.co/Oh7fK2FaAa

— 100T Hiko (@Hiko) March 22, 2019

Also on the roster front, Cloud9 has decided to trial ex-Ghost Gaming player Daniel “vice” Kim. For all the Cloud9 fans out there, we think this could be a great young addition to the roster. Whether he will continue on with Cloud9 after Blast Pro Series Miami remains to be seen, but at least fans will get to see him in action.

Fortnite

Epic Games has continued its trend of adding insane stuff to Fortnite, with an “Explosive Bolt Bow” weapon possibly coming to the battle royale game in the next patch. Dataminers have discovered some cool stuff in the files of the Fortnite v8.20 update, including a bow that shoots explosive arrows. The dataminers didn’t find any stats, but it looks like it will be a Legendary in terms of rarity.

Officially, v8.20 has also added some other new items. Players can now forage for bananas that restore health, peppers that regen health and give a speed boost, and coconuts that replenish shields around Fortnites' map.

8.20 has also added a new limited time mode, The Floor is Lava, wherein the map gradually fills with Lava, forcing players to think strategically about building and looting. There are a ton more balance and gameplay fixes in this patch, so make sure you check it all out over on Epic Game’s website.

That’s all for this week's Esports News Brief. Make sure to head on over to ESTNN.com to catch up on all of the latest news and check back here tomorrow for another Episode of The Brief!