OWL Power Rankings: January 22

OWL Power Rankings: January 22

This article is part of our OWL Power Rankings series.

Another week in the books and not much has changed in the overall scheme of the Overwatch League. Well, the Dallas Fuel are beginning to implode, sure, but that wasn't a complete surprise given how haphazardly the team performed during opening week. On the flip side of Texas, the Houston Outlaws were our biggest movers of the week, rising four spots with a strong Week 2 showing. Let's take an in-depth look at our the teams fall after two weeks of competition.

1. Seoul Dynasty (Last Week: 1)
Seoul Dynasty remains in the first spot again with two more 4-0 wins to add to its undefeated streak in the Overwatch League. Despite the fact that both Boston Uprising and Florida Mayhem are some of the weaker teams at this point in time, in both matches Seoul Dynasty fielded more iterations of its enormous A-Tier roster, showing off Koo "XepheR" Jae-Mo, Kim "KuKi" Dae-Kuk, Moon "gido" Go-Do, and Choi "Wekeed" Seok-Woo, to name a few. With such a giant roster to handle, it's impressive alone that the team is able to coordinate such a plug-and-play roster at will and remain a dominating force in the league against established rosters. -- Steven Nguyen

2. London Spitfire (Last Week: 2)
Watching this team play Overwatch is almost like watching poetry in motion. While I don't think anyone doubts the might of the Seoul Dynasty at this point, London still sits along with Seoul in a league of their own. The Valiant may have come close to picking up a win, but the Spitfire showed just how strong they are during that fifth map. With the San Francisco Shock and Boston Uprising on the slate in Week 3, don't expect the Spitfire to lose this second spot anytime soon. -- Wyatt Donigan

3. New York Excelsior (Last Week: 4)
New York Excelsior have grown comfortably across the first two weeks of the OWL. While perhaps not putting up a decisive performance by failing to close out the Los Angeles Valiant and ending the last map in a draw. This keen ability to dominate the opposition showed up once again later in the week when they stomped the Los Angeles Gladiators. It also helps that New York is just a better city than Los Angeles. (Editor's note: As a Los Angeles native, I take great offense to that. 1v1 me, bro.) -- Christiaan Kutlik

4. Los Angeles Valiant (Last Week: 3)
While this team may have dropped a peg this week, it can't be understated what a moral victory their 3-2 loss to the London Spitfire was. Taking the second-best team, who along with Seoul are basically in a class of their own, to five games after being down 0-2 shows what kind of fight the Valiant have. They may be stuck in this four spot for some time, but it's a close fourth to the Excelsior and they sit comfortably in the top tier when compared to all teams below them. -- Wyatt Donigan

5. Houston Outlaws (Last Week: 9)
Like I predicted last week, the Houston Outlaws had the potential all along.The Texas-based organization soared through the rankings this on one match alone: their 4-0 win over Dallas Fuel. This was an upset to many as Fuel was seen as on the cusp of a top-tier team. And now? Fuel since close to the bottom as the Outlaws dominated them, thanks to flexible players like Austin "Muma" Wilmot. -- Christiaan Kutlik

6. Los Angeles Gladiators (Last Week: 8)
The Gladiators have quickly become one of the most exciting teams to watch in the OWL with a wide variety of strategies and exciting individual talent. Sure, Los Angeles might not be able to beat the top teams in the league, but they can certainly put up a fight, as shown by their commendable outing against New York. Against other teams, however, the Gladiators have proven that they are stacked with individual talent in every position, although some problems still linger in the main tank and support roles. It's safe to say, though, that the Gladiators can bring the big fight to anyone in the league, provided they get a good map pool and keep working on its defensive play. -- Noah Waltzer

7. Philadelphia Fusion (Last Week: 6)
Philadelphia is, for all intents and purposes, Boston+. The only strategy the Fusion have shown thus far are variants of the dive composition, but they still managed to do it incredibly well. From emerging star Gael "Poko" Gouzerch's proficiency on D.Va to the extremely talented DPS duo of Lee "Carpe" Jae-Hyeok and Georgii "ShaDowBurn" Gushcha, Philly has few weaknesses as far as roster is concerned. Main tank Joona "fragi" Laine's tendency to feed at the beginning of every fight remains an issue, and the Fusion have been pretty one-dimensional thus far in the league, but there is definitely room for improvement for this team. Still, their starting power level has been much higher than expected for a team that missed the preseason. -- Noah Waltzer

8. Dallas Fuel (Last Week: 5)
Oh, say it ain't so. Dallas Fuel were primed to be one of the top contenders in the Overwatch League and after starting off with an incredible series against Seoul Dynasty on opening day, it has since then continued to disappoint all spectators alike, fans or just impartial viewers. This week saw a questionable decision to bench Timo "Taimou" Kettunen against the Houston Outlaws, seeing compositions that were unsuited to the fielded players that surely would have benefitted with Taimou's presence. Soon after, Dallas fielded its original roster of Taimou, Pongphop "Mickie" Rattanasangchod, Christian "cocco" Jonsson, Sebastian "Chipshajen" Widlund, and Jonathan "Harryhook" Tejedor Rua along with Hyeon "EFFECT" Hwang against London. While London is certainly the stronger team, it couldn't have been more obvious how disjointed and fragmented Dallas were playing even in light of fielding its all-star roster. It was a miracle this team even got one map off of London, so until further notice, Dallas doesn't deserve the benefit of the doubt moving forward from here on out, but godspeed to its players. -- Steven Nguyen

9. San Francisco Shock (Last Week: 11)
The Shock's performance in Week 2 was a solid step in the right direction. Their coordination has improved, their mechanics are solid as always, and they're really to apply more complex strategies in their gameplay. That being said, this is only the beginning of their journey. Some decisions they make as a team are questionable at best and in the thick of things they tend to have trouble focusing down concrete targets. While prevailing over the Boston Uprising is a good first step, it's only that. It also doesn't help that their next match is against our #2 team, the London Spitfire, for which they'll need to play better than they ever have before to come out on top. -- Liam Craffey

10. Boston Uprising (Last Week: 7)
Boston's somewhat high placement last week seemed to have more to do with how poorly other teams performed as opposed to how well the Uprising performed. Despite the loss being in overtime, Boston still lost to the San Fransisco Shock, who are still one of the messiest and unorganized looking teams in the league. We are seeing something of a pattern emerge of teams playing just a little bit worse after having to play the Seoul Dynasty. The only reason they didn't fall lower this week in the power rankings is the Shanghai Dragons are still winless and the only team the Mayhem have beaten is Shanghai. -- Travis Elliott

11. Florida Mayhem (Last Week: 10)
Winning 4-0 against the Shanghai Dragons shows that at least the Mayhem aren't the worst team in the league. Rather, the match shows the entry level of skill and coordination a team must pose in order to really compete. Florida Mayhem can perform dives and its clear from their match against Seoul Dynasty that they put thought into their decisions during teamfights. However, beyond that, we didn't see much change from the Mayhem this week. They still try to throw off their opponents with unexpected compositions at times, but even this has been decoded by top-tier teams. Unless the Florida Mayhem can start performing with effortless synergy across all six members they're gonna stay pretty far down the list. -- Liam Craffey

12. Shanghai Dragons (Last Week: 12)
FeelsBadMan, monkaS, whatever your preferred emote of choice may be, the Dragons are in a rough spot. Honestly, sometimes it looks like Shanghai's supports are playing from China while the rest of the team is on LAN. This team is astoundingly passive and doesn't seem to have a firm grasp of some of the fundamentals of Overwatch. There's no analysis to be done apart from moderate flaming, so I'll continue. This team might be a scary 6-stack to hit in ranked but in a highly competitive global league? Laughing stocks. Shanghai lost to Florida this week, the team everyone has ranked in the bottom two along with the Dragons, in a 0-4 stomp. Ouch. -- Noah Waltzer

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Wyatt Donigan
Wyatt is RotoWire's esports assistant editor. When not writing or catching a game of Dragon Ball FighterZ or Overwatch, Wyatt can be found nose deep in his latest read.
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