Blizzcon 2016: 'Overwatch' World Cup Finalists Russia And South Korea: Who Has The Best Genji?

Blizzcon just wrapped it’s first day, leaving players with a ton to think about. We got to see our first look at the necromancer in Diablo, the Mean Streets Of Gadgetzan for Hearthstone and a brand new Overwatch hero. If you were too busy picking your jaw off the floor, you might have missed all the amazing eSports action that has been going on this weekend. The Overwatch World Cup semifinals had some of the most action packed games ever broadcast, with well over 100,000 people watching on Twitch and around the world

Russia Vs. South Korea: Arhan Vs. Shadowform

Two teams remain in the fight for the World Championship; Russia and South Korea. Both steam rolled the other teams in the preliminaries and continued their force of aggression at Blizzcon. Russia’s game against Finland was a case study in team coordination. Russia’s very own Shadowform, who played nothing but Genji, kept getting triple and quadra kills with well coordinated ultimates from his teammates.

Whenever Rubikon, one of team Russia’s supports, would say it’s time to go in, the whole team would give it everything they got, without hesitation. And it worked, Unfixed on Mei would throw down a perfect snowstorm ultimate allowing Shadowform to just come in and clean up. In a post game interview, Shadowform said: “We have a lot of space in our combo, they tried to counter me, but I just poked around and waited for a time to strike, I made a distraction for my team.”

That didn’t stop Finland from putting up a fight. In game one, Taimou on McCree managed to pull off an amazing 1-versus-5 teamfight, killing the whole Russian squad with just a revolver and really good aim. Finland played extremely well, but weren’t nearly as coordinated as their Russian competition. “I think (Finland) didn’t play enough around the time, so it was a worse defeat,” Shadowform said.

In the next game, South Korea went up against the Swedish squad. South Korea has been an absolute monster this tournament, stomping out team USA in a quick 2-0 victory. Sweden didn’t fare much better, failing to get through important choke points on Route 66 and Eichenwalde. Arhan on the Korean team, who has also played a lot of Genji , performed just as well as Shadowform.

Both these teams are carry oriented, revolving around a strong DPS to clean up fights. In another after game interview, Arhan said that his Genji is stronger, but we are going to wait until the final day of Blizzcon to find out for sure. Tairong, Korea’s support, thinks that: “Russia tends to rely on certain heroes which could be their weakness.”

South Korea is a dominating force in all eSports, with SK Telecom taking the League Of Legends World Championship for the third year last month. According to Arhan, the reason Korea has been dominating Overwatch is because: “I think Korea has a lot of competition. When you compare Korea to Europe, the ladder is just so much better.”

Tune in to the Overwatch World Cup finals tomorrow to find out if Korea can continue winning at every eSport, or if it’s Russia’s chance to finally win a major tournament.