OWL 2023 Power Rankings – #12 Atlanta Reign

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OWL 2023 Power Rankings – #12 Atlanta Reign

Atlanta Reign were expected to possibly be the best team in the West. That isn't going to happen.

Did the Reign take the most mediocre players from each team? Or is there a deeper issue?

Atlanta Reign 2023 Roster

Coming into this season, there were very high expectations for this team. After the Pro-Am, people have a lot more questions. Why exactly did this team perform so far below what fans were expecting to see? Well, between misplaced hype in players, and coaching displacement, this team has a few things dragging them down.

Tank

  • Xander “Hawk” Domecq
  • Min-sung “D0NGHAK” Kim

Frontline strength is going to be very important for this team. The DPS and Supports showed us in the Pro-Am that they aren't the dominating force we thought they'd be. Atlanta came in thinking they were the strongest, and that they could just run into their enemies. That is clearly not the case, as they started getting run through by stronger teams. The Tanks of the Atlanta Reign need to be more reliable for holding space for their team, and not just winning 1v1s in the frontline against other Tanks.

Support

  • Joon “Fielder” Kwan
  • Hyeon-seok “ChiYo” Han
  • Jun “vigilante” Kim

Here's something absolutely nobody wants to hear, but may be true. These guys may not be everything we thought they were. Fielder and ChiYo, two reigning Overwatch League champions, maybe have just been passable, acceptable Supports behind outstanding teammates. There's nothing wrong with them as a duo, even having vigilante in the mix, but its possible that they bring nothing special to the team to push them ahead.

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DPS

  • Hak-yong “Stalk3r” Jeong
  • Jae-won “LIP” Lee

In his rookie year, Stalk3r showed proficiency and talent on a few characters, but was it simply just his meta to play in last season? He now looks to be on even footing with the rest of his new region, which is arguably the overall weaker of the two. It takes more than just one year to really gauge a player's impact. It seems that while Stalk3r is extremely talented, he may not quite be top dog.

LIP on the other hand is supposed to be the big dog, and is disappointing by being only good enough to put up fights against other top teams. Is Stalk3r really that bad? Is not having Fleta by his side becoming an issue for him? Why is the player who has an Overwatch League Championship skin modeled after him getting outshined on maps against everyday Overwatch League DPS players?

It could be these two not performing as well as they used to, or it could be the playstyle of the team around them that they aren't used to yet. Either way, they have a long way to go to reach the place everybody expected them to be.

Atlanta Reign 2023 Power Ranking

This is a team that shouldn't be as low as they are when looking at their players. Coach Gator is filling the Head Coach roll with an Assistant Coach that is much better suited for the job. Not to mention the Assistant coach speaks Korean just like everybody on the team besides Hawk. The staff structure is all wrong, and on top of a team that desperately needs to fix how they play with each other, this could mean very slow adjustments, causing them to be passed by other teams. As hyped as this team way, there's a good chance for them to flop.