Coach to one of the brightest up and coming European Overwatch teams in Pale Golden Rod, Kirby sat down with me to discuss the state of the game, Europe’s future, and possibly manning the analyst desk.

_____

Coming into the StriveWire Overwatch Brawl, the Chav’s were being hyped up as one of the up and coming European teams at this tournament. Did you expect them to place better than they did?

Kirby: I think the placings ended up being a bit misleading. In a single elimination tournament, you can very well be the 2nd best team and not make it passed the first round of the bracket if you just happen to be matched against the eventual winner. With how close their series against ex-Reunited was, I'd say The Chavs were probably among the best teams in the tournament. Unfortunately, the randomness of the bracket draw and the fact that ex-Reunited finished 2nd of Group D messed things up a bit.

Your team, Pale Golden Rod (PGR), looked really good in Group D. First going 2 - 0 versus ex-Reunited, then losing to them in the lower bracket. As the coach for PGR, what exactly went wrong? What was the fatal flaw?

K: It's safe to say they probably didn't think we'd be a threat, and took us a bit lightly in the first match. Since their composition doesn't have a good "close out" ult (like Graviton Surge or Earthshatter), we were able to hold them on defense near the last point of Hollywood and on first point Numbani (2 areas of the map that have a significant defensive respawn advantage), thus winning the match 2-0. The 2nd time around however they executed their composition better, and got the picks they needed at the right time. And with on our side some communications issues that arose during our match vs ex-ROX, once they started winning, we weren't able to come back into the game.

It seemed like ex-Reunited came in off the radar. Was it surprising to you that they did so well?

K: When the groups were announced initially, another team was supposed to play in the group (TCB), but I believe they dropped out and were replaced by ex-Reunited a couple of days before the tournament. That's probably the reason why they were "off the radar", simply because people didn't know they'd be playing. But when you look at the strength of the players on that roster, I doubt it's a surprise to anyone that they did well.

The meta seems to be pointing towards aggression and flanking with a “dive” comp. Did you see this coming? And do you think it will stay?

K: The overall healing has been reduced a bit in this patch with the recent Ana nerf, which means she can't quite sustain tanks (and herself) as much as she could before. Because of that, well executed Dive comps suddenly become a bit scarier to deal with. It's not like it was impossible to run Dive before - Misfits proved that at DreamHack Winter during the peak of the tank meta - but right now that playstyle does seem more successful than it used to. However, I don't think it's the only viable way to play the game, just one option among a few others. Teams are still experimenting these various options, so it's hard to say what will stay and what won't. But it's no surprise that teams with really good Tracer/Genji players tend to gravitate towards Dive compositions.

Personally, I quite enjoy your interviews. Will we see more from you in the future? Possibly manning the analyst desk or commentating?

K: I don't plan to stop making content, whether that's interviews or just videos about the game/scene. But the rate at which I release videos is subject to change based on how busy I am with coaching. As for casting, I don't think that's something that really fits my rate of speech, especially considering how fast the pace of this game is, I'm really not sure I'd be able to keep up with what's going on. Being on the analyst desk at an event however, is definitely something I'd be interested in.

With the entrance of some of Europe's biggest Football organization coming into esports (primarily with League of Legends), do you see any of them possibly looking at Overwatch for the upcoming Overwatch League?

K: With all the rumors of the OWL starting with mostly or only NA, there is most likely too much uncertainty to justify a big move by any of these orgs right now. However, once we know more about Blizzard's plans for EU, it's definitely a possibility to see the likes of PSG esports or Schalke04 get involved.

Jason Kaplan has recently been teasing “something” coming or starting for Overwatch in Europe, any thoughts or comments on that?

K: I don't know if he's hinting at an ESL tournament or something bigger like Blizzard's plans for EU, but at this point, news of any EU tournament would be good news.

Last but not least any shout outs or anything you would like to plug?

K: Shoutout to all the cool people in the EU scene, but also to StriveWire and Feenix for sponsoring the tournament, to the casters for all the streams, and last but definitely not least, to Noukky for pretty much making this happen on her own.

Thank you to Kirby for the awesome interview! You can follow some of the content he creates online here:

Twitter: /followkirby

Youtube: /followkirby

______

Written by @Volamel

Images courtesy of Blizzard.