ESTNN Esports News Brief, March 7th – 13th

Welcome to the ESTNN Weekly Brief! Here’s your rundown of all the esports news for the past week on March 13^th. We’ve got tons of news ranging from a beloved caster stepping down, Overwatch bugs, and roster swaps. Let’s jump right in!

League of Legends

Over the past week, we’ve gotten a ton of news for League of Legends. To start with, Riot developer Ed “SapMagic” Altofer announced that League will no longer use positional rankings as of today, March 13^th.

Hey all, we've heard your feedback on Ranked, and today we're announcing that we're discontinuing position ranks and doing a partial ladder reset targeted at Diamond+ players.

More details in /dev: State of Ranked.https://t.co/Xfk2jrslZ8#ranked2019 #loldev pic.twitter.com/PeCgFoNHyx

— Sapmagic (Ed Altorfer) (@RiotSapmagic) March 8, 2019

SapMagic mentioned the problems that many have had with Positional Ranks, like how grindy it feels as well as the feeling that players are not taking off-position games very seriously. This announcement also comes with a partial reset of Diamond and higher ranks. The reason for this is due to a bug that was introduced with Iron and Grandmaster tiers that allowed players to reach ranks it should not have been possible for them to reach. All players above Masters will have their LP reset to 0 and be demoted to Masters. Diamond players will come down a division but will not be demoted below Diamond IV. Finally, Grandmaster and Challenger ranks will be locked until a week and two weeks after the reset, respectively.

Bye, Silas

We also saw Silas removed from Competitive Play this week due to a number of bugs regarding his kit. His health regen is currently broken, sometimes healing an insane amount off one or two items. We can safely assume that Silas will stay removed from competitive play until Patch 9.5 arrives.

Due to a variety of game-impacting bugs we have issued a global disable for Sylas in competitive play. A re-enable will be evaluated for patch 9.5. The #LEC teams have been aware of this possibility since earlier in the week.

— Maximilian Peter Schmidt (@RiotMAXtheX) March 7, 2019

Finally in League news, caster Aiden “Zirene” Moon has announced that he will leave the League of Legends broadcast team.

After 5 years of shouting at league – March 7th was my last day at Riot Games. I have left to explore and pursue other opportunities. I will be returning to streaming, content creation, and seeing what other offers are out there for me. Thanks for all your love and support, ggwp

— Aidan 'Zirene' Moon (@Zirene) March 13, 2019

Moon was a four-year veteran of League casts. Recently, however, it seems as though he taken a step back. Moon famously overslept for a 2018 Worlds game, taking himself off the rest of the broadcast as a self-inflicted punishment for his error. While we don’t know if his retirement from League has anything to do with his recent lack of casts, it seems like he’s looking to take the next step in his career.

DOTA 2

There was a lot of Dota 2 news last week, starting with the announcement that Disneyland Paris will play host to the fourth Dota 2 Major of the season. This marks the first ever Dota 2 event in France, and it will run from May 4^th through the 12^th.

Dota 2 Autochess is still going strong as well. TwitchRivals announced that they will be running a second Autochess showdown on March 13^th. The tournament will see thirty-two players compete across both Europe and North America. Two regional lobbies will be set up, and each lobby will feature two separate matches simultaneously. The top eight players from both regional lobbies will then be split into the top and bottom four and compete for the prizes.

Meet the streamers from Europe taking on #TwitchRivals Dota 2 Auto Chess Showdown 2!

Catch it Wed. March 13 at 12PM EDT at https://t.co/xea83i1yVm pic.twitter.com/sdtEvcg2ue

— Twitch Esports (@TwitchEsports) March 12, 2019

In roster news, current TI champions OG have decided to part ways with their young CIS carry Igor “iLTW” Filatow. OG cited some poor performances from the young star as the reason for the change.

Спасибо Игор! Thank you Igor!
–> Read: https://t.co/shJCKiP4Sc#DreamOG pic.twitter.com/ICTg9z8fJI

— OG (@OGesports) March 12, 2019

Overwatch

There hasn’t been any life-changing Overwatch news this past week, but we’ve got a few tidbits of things to go over! First off, it turns out that Ashe’s B.O.B. ultimate can be pushed slightly, just like D.v.a’s  Mech bomb. Overwatch player Vidaar posted a video to Youtube where he was able to nudge B.O.B. past a corner to give the robot better sight lines on the enemy team. Check it out.

Pretty impressive, given that he wasn’t even playing Ashe. Now that’s teamwork.

Next up, Baptiste has had his ultimate slightly changed on the PTR. Visually, his Amplification Matrix is now green instead of blue, helping players distinguish it from Reinhardt’s Shield. The patch also fixed the big where Amplification Matrix would incorrectly boost the enemy teams damage.

It was really all bugs this week in Overwatch, as reddit user terppa112 found out that, as Lucio, you can escape a Junkrat trap as long as you wall run just as Lucio steps into the trap. I’m sure this one will be fixed lickity-split.

CSGO

The Counterstrike scene is awash with roster swaps right now. There are so many, however, that we’re just going to run through the big ones for you. For the rest, feel free to check out our constantly updating Roster Swap article.

eUnited

Hot off the presses, eUnited has signed the infamous Armeen “a2z” Toussi onto the squad in the coach position. Toussi is most famous for his involvement in the iBuyPower match-fixing incident back in 2014. His returned to competitive Counterstrike soon after both Faceit and ESL allowed them to play in their tournaments, but never really found his groove. He’ll now try to lead eUnited, ranked #31 in the world, to some success.

NiP

Next up, it looks like Dennis “dennis” Edman is going to step down from the Ninja’s in Pajama’s roster for awhile. The team has attributed it to fatigue, and has signed William “draken” Sundin to compete with NiP for the foreseeable future. No time frame was given for dennis’ return, so it looks like draken could be here for awhile.

G2

Finally, French team G2 has signed the young player François “AmaNEk” Delaunay to replace Alexandre “bodyy” Pianaro who will be benched after the team competes in the WESG event going on now. AmaNEk has most recently played for LDLC.

Other than these roster swaps, WESG is going on right now. Let’s be honest, though.  No one watches WESG, despite being billed as the World Championship of Counterstrike. Instead, you can head on over to ESTNN.com and read our Way Too Early Blast Pro Series Miami article. Trust us, it’s better.

Fortnite

It’s been a slow news week in Fortnite since the release of Season 8, but we still have a little bit of news to throw your way. The last Fortnite patch has removed the ability for players on the Nintendo Switch to party up with players on the Xbox or PS4. Epic commented on the move, saying that it had received complaints from players about skill gaps between the platforms. Evidently, they received enough complaints to change up the matchmaking.

That’s all for the ESTNN Brief for Wednesday, March 13^th! Make sure to head on over to ESTNN.com to catch up on all of the latest news and check back here next week for another edition of the ESTNN Weekly Esports News Brief!