Apex Legends Global Series: Online Tournament 2 Round-Up
The Apex Legends Global Series Online Tournament #2 was played out over the weekend of March 21-23 and resulted in some amazing wins and some terrible losses for your favourite teams.
What is the ALGS? And how does it work?
The ALGS Online Tournament matches are played for points (and $300k prize money). The ALGS points teams accumulate are used for seeding and to cement spots in a Major. Eight regions around the world compete, in 160 teams. The final 20 teams who make it through each region will have their five-match Finals broadcast at a later date.
Points are accumulated by placement and eliminations.
Who Won?
Click to enlargeTeamSoloMid enjoyed more victories as their dominance in Apex competitive play continues. Alliance held their own for the European matches, while newcomer team NINE smashed the opposition for SA.
Who Dominated?
As points are played for placement and kills, earning the Apex Champion status is preferable, but not necessary in every game to win your region. Getting a high number of eliminations is also a way to gain enough points to become the overall winner. A good example of this is Dream Team, who didn’t win any games, and sometimes didn’t even place top 10, but ended up placing #2 overall at the end of the matches, based on points picked up through kills.
TSM dominated the NA matches, winning three out of five games. In the EU tournament, Alliance won two out of five of their matches.
Who Performed Better or Worse than Expected?
NA
The teams who were the “ones to watch” in the NA matches were TSM (for obvious reasons) SniperAbusers, Liquid Blue, Dream Team and STR8 Rippin. SniperAbusers came overall second in the Apex Legends Global Series Major 1 (NA Qualifier) but didn’t rise to the occasion in the Online Tournament 2. In the previews, commentators discussed SniperAbusers being TSM’s biggest competition, when gdolphn is participating, and suggested this clash of the titans would be seen again. During the first of five matches, presenters Fallout, Bravo, Jamerson and Raynday, talked about TSM being unwilling to give up their crown, after winning 4 straight Majors.
WINNERS
Game 1 – (Ex)EUnited
Game 2 – TSM
Game 3 – Sola Fide
Game 4 – TSM
Game 5 – TSM
Click to enlargeTSM finished out the tourney as overall winners with 77 points amassed from three wins and a considerable number of eliminations, and a 12 point gap (from winner points) between them and 2nd place Sola Fide.
EU
The top picks to come out on top in the EU matches were both Poland-based teams; GamersOrigin and TeamTriumph. These ones to watch did end up disappointing, however, as GamersOrigin (GO) ending up placing 12th overall, with Triumph securing one victory over five matches.
WINNERS
Game 1 – Alliance
Game 2 – Wygers
Game 3 – Alliance
Game 4 – CrowCrowd
Game 5 – Triumph
Click to enlargeAs we saw with NA, the points divide between the winners – Alliance – and 2nd place Wygers is vast and ends up coming down to points from kills, plus their added victory.
Reciprocity and Luminosity are well known in the esports circles but didn’t end up performing as well as we would expect, filling out the bottom of the leaderboard.
The Meta In This Tournament
The team loadouts have not changed since the last major tournament, and the team loadouts we are seeing are still consisting of Wraith, Pathfinder and Wattson, with an occasional swap out for Gibraltar. The way these Legends can work together works seamlessly for Ranked also, and it appears that line-up won’t be changing anytime soon.
As for the gun meta, the Wingman, Peacekeeper and R-99 were the weapons most seen gracing the 2-gun loadout of all players across the board, with the addition of the G7 Scout.
We did, however, see weapons such as the Flatline and EVA-8 make their way into the rotation. This could be because of looting issues, or perhaps the meta is finally changing.
Rotation around the map and trying to gauge where the next circle may be is becoming more challenging. More and more teams are trying to push for position, which ends up funnelling a lot of teams into the same area, much earlier in the game than previously.
The next ALGS event will be the Online Tournament #3, which will begin on April 4, 2020.
Images via Respawn Entertainment, Battlefy and ALGS
