One week into the Overwatch League 2022 season’s Summer Showdown, the stage’s equalizer meta is coming to light due to the close series almost every team had in the first week. With Junker Queen both joining the hero pool and her viability, all league teams are running a similar composition. With Junker Queen on tank, Lucio and Brigitte as your supports, and Genji along with a hitscan on DPS, teams rush down enemies with speed and group healing. Some of the fights can take a lot longer, but the playstyle change led to some big upsets in the first week alone. However, this analysis is just off of the Western matches; we have yet to see what the Eastern teams bring to this meta.
WIN 👏 NA 👏 BLE 👏
The @SFShock make a massive comeback and walk away victorious!#WINNABLE | #OWL2022 pic.twitter.com/j80kY0HgWv
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For example, the San Francisco Shock needed to reverse sweep the Washington Justice to avoid their first qualification match loss. Plus, the Los Angeles Gladiators and Atlanta Reign have yet to win a series. Even with limited time, it’s clear that this meta is shaking power rankings up.
Junker Queen makes her debut
It’s fair to say that the cog that makes this meta machine in the Summer Showdown is the new tank, Junker Queen. Her abilities focus on quickly leading a team into battle; she doesn’t have any shields, but she does come with with self-healing and anti-healing abilities. For example, the most essential ability in her kit right now is her Commanding Shout.
It speeds up nearby allies and grants them some overhealth, a great engagement tool. The only other hero in the game that can do something similar is Lucio, a hero known for his prevalence in rush metas. So, putting those two together, you have two separate team engagement tools on separate heroes, on separate cooldowns.
The Summer Showdown meta composition
Adding onto those two, you have Brigitte, another group healing tool that can rush with the team and keep people alive over time. At that point, you have your tank and healers decided, so the DPS pick what works best around them. Genji’s mobility, kill potential and flexibility between team engagements and flanks makes him an easy pick. As for the other, the league started with Ashe as the hitscan. The reason she was so good was her dynamite and her ultimate, which can heavily swing fights when enemies don’t have any shields.
But, we’ve seen some map-specific changes for both DPS positions. For example, on control maps, we’ve seen Sojourn played over the Ashe simply due to her kill potential. Sojourn has a much more likely chance of one-shotting an opponent, which matters for longer fights on control. We’ve even seen on close range maps like Control Center on Lijang Tower and Villiage on Nepal include the Mei pick, to wall off a player to secure a pick.
It’s fair to say that one week in, we have an understanding of what this meta will focus around. There might be some changes throughout the oncoming weeks heading into the regional tournaments. Alas, Junker Queen’s entrance into the league has made the focus shift off of what previous metas focused on. For example, the tank players themselves have a higher chance of carrying fights if their abilities are used right. So as the second week of the Summer Showdown is yet to begin, we’ll start to see who really rises to the top as the best Junker Queen team in the league.
