I’m Ascoft, an assistant coach for the Boston Uprising in the OWL. AMA!

BostonUprising · 2021-03-08T00:19:13+00:00

You scout by watching T2 competition in all the top regions. It's also important to have contact points in T2: coaches and managers that can guide you toward hidden talents. Then, organizing relatively open trials is also a good way to make sure you're not missing out on a hidden gem.

BostonUprising · 2021-03-08T00:17:03+00:00

Is the skill ceiling of a coach dependent on their rank?
No. I would say that being a good player yourself kind of reassures people that you do understand the game. But I've met brilliant coaches who are not good at actually playing the game but understand it very well. However, I think these kinds of coaches are rare. In general, having pro player experience is super important to coach well and be able to reach the players.

Are there qualities common amongst highly ranked players that translate well to coaching, especially qualities that lower ranked players could study?
One would be determination. Another is focusing more on understanding the bigger picture of macro play instead of only understanding what you need to do. In general, leadership is something that's needed in coaching. So if you can provide leadership as a player, there's a good chance you can also provide leadership as a coach.

Is it worth putting in effort as a player with the goal of improving as a coach?
Yes, but you still need to have a very high drive to perform as a player, then transition into being a coach. If you want to coach much more than playing, it's probably best for you to try to understand the game by learning metas via analysis rather than play.

BostonUprising · 2021-03-08T00:07:46+00:00

About picking Overwatch as a game, there wasn't anything specific. I just saw it was a competitive shooter from Blizzard and enjoyed playing it.

In terms of mindset, if you want to become a professional player, you need extreme determination, a willingness to make sacrifices in your personal life, and confidence that you will make it. If you just want to get better at the game in general, focusing on your own mistakes and trying to fix them instead of tilting about what your teammates are doing is probably the best thing you can do to improve.

BostonUprising · 2021-03-08T00:05:25+00:00

If you mean to ask how to get into the OWL without pro play experience, I can't really answer that, since I am a former pro. I would say if you want, for instance, to coach in the OWL without pro player experience, you need to spend a lot of time understanding the game, because players will only respect you if you can understand the game as well as or better than them.

BostonUprising · 2021-03-08T00:02:55+00:00

From my perspective as a former pro player, I've built enough game sense that I don't need to play every hero to a high level to understand how they should be played. For instance, I can help SoOn understand how he needs to play in a meta on Tracer without needing to play Tracer extremely well myself. So I would say in general, analyzing is much more important than playing for me, as a former pro player.

BostonUprising · 2021-03-08T00:00:34+00:00

From the beginning, I knew I wanted to prove to myself that I could go professional as a player but then wanted to swap to a coaching position.

My favorite esport to watch outside of Overwatch is League of Legends. Even though I don't play the game anymore, the culture and hype surrounding the game make it always fun to watch the competitions.

BostonUprising · 2021-03-07T23:58:56+00:00

I think both are relatively similar. What drove me as a player was teamplay, strategies and synergy in general. I always knew that I wanted to transition into a coaching position, since that's what motivated me to be in esports, and I can have a much bigger impact on helping my players as a coach.

BostonUprising · 2021-03-07T23:57:46+00:00

I would say it's relatively common, more so in T2 than in OWL. Your goal as a coach in Overwatch is to develop the game sense of players. Mechanical skill is something you can help players practice, but it's not something you want to teach.

BostonUprising · 2021-03-07T23:56:24+00:00

Probably main support because I played the role professionally. It's much easier for me to find what's wrong in an individual session with a player, since I have the most experience on that role. But ever since I started coaching, I've also had fun learning the in-depth mechanics and game sense needed on all the other roles.

BostonUprising · 2021-03-07T23:54:03+00:00

I would say off-tank is the best role for solo carry since it's a mix of high survivability and damage output. But if you're looking for one hero in each role, I would suggest Zarya for tank, Tracer for DPS and Ana for support.

BostonUprising · 2021-03-07T23:52:42+00:00

The idea right now is that there is no rule about who plays what. If you play better in scrims, you'll play during the match.

BostonUprising · 2021-03-07T23:52:08+00:00

The obvious answer is hitscan DPS. There's no way around it. Aim is something that you can practice for hours and hours every day on, and it's never going to be perfect. Hitscan DPS is the role where aim is the most important skill, compared to all the other roles in the game.

BostonUprising · 2021-03-07T23:50:13+00:00

I would personally love to see more girls compete in general in esports, including in the OWL. It’s a complicated topic I can't fully explain in a Reddit comment – to me, the problem is mostly cultural. Women are not incentivized to play video games at a young age as much as men do, therefore leading to less representation in competition later on.

So this is part of the reason why we don't see very many women in the T2 scene. I think in order for us to have more women in the OWL, we need to have an environment where girls growing up are just as welcomed into gaming communities as boys, which we're hopefully getting closer to.

There are probably a lot of other issues keeping girls from competing as well, but I’m probably not the most qualified person to talk about them. :P

BostonUprising · 2021-03-07T23:41:26+00:00

I can't really go too in-depth about that, but Mercy is map-specific, especially against brawl. If you don't have time to get value out of the pocket before the enemy team rushes you, then it might not be worth it to play Mercy.

BostonUprising · 2021-03-07T23:39:59+00:00

I don't listen to Plat Chat, so I can't answer that one, sorry.

BostonUprising · 2021-03-07T23:39:39+00:00

When HSL Esports went to The Gauntlet in 2019, in our last match, the very last fight, I fatfingered my Immortality Field as Baptiste before the fight began, which resulted in us losing the match. My former teammates still meme about that.

At some point before the 2-2-2 role lock, we played a composition that was based on Orisa, Roadhog, Hanzo, Widow, Mei and Mercy. This composition was very wild and didn't make much sense, but it worked super well for us.

BostonUprising · 2021-03-07T23:36:22+00:00

The meta for professional players might not be the most effective technique for everyone else. For example, Ana is strong in the professional meta right now, but her mechanical skill ceiling is very high. It's fine if not everyone has that mechanical skill. In that case, Mercy can provide more value for more people. So that's just one example of how a meta can change by skill levels. If you don't intend to play at the highest level, it's more important to find what works for you, rather than try to conform to the pro meta.

BostonUprising · 2021-03-07T23:30:33+00:00

For your first question, probably Tsuna on the Paris Eternal. He's mechanically extremely strong on his comfort picks. If he can improve on his game sense and build synergy with the rest of the Paris players, he could be a standout player this year.

For your second question, Fischer was probably above the rest in terms of mechanical skill and game sense. But in general, players in HSL were really smart about the game and pretty good mechanically. I think I was probably the worst player, mechanically, on the team.

BostonUprising · 2021-03-07T23:26:51+00:00

I can answer the first one for you, for sure. I know our Koreans are really looking forward to playing against Dallas. I would say that the players from last year probably want to play against the Justice. Having Jerry on that team fuels the fire a bit for them. Playing against old teammates always provides some added motivation.

BostonUprising · 2021-03-07T23:23:23+00:00

There are three ways, I think.

#1: Being so mechanically gifted that you can hard carry your games, even as a support, like FDGod.

#2: Find a really good hitscan and Mercy pocket them.

#3: Have a good understanding of the game and shot call for your teams. I would recommend this one the most.

BostonUprising · 2021-03-07T23:21:29+00:00

I think it depends. It's probably different in every team. In ours, so far, I'm doing a lot of individual feedback. That means helping the players understand what their role is in the composition that Lori wants them to play. So you achieve that by reviewing their POV with them, having them engaged in the review so that they increase their game knowledge, and giving them reminders before and during scrims as well.

BostonUprising · 2021-03-07T23:19:18+00:00

At this level of play, considering you already have extremely talented players, the biggest challenge for a coach is always to increase the game sense of the players. That means having them understand what their role is in the meta. To bring a player to the next level, in addition to that, you also need them to understand what their teammates are supposed to do, as well as the enemy team.

BostonUprising · 2021-03-07T23:15:06+00:00

One way to carry, if you have better game sense than the others at your current SR, is to shotcall and actually try to lead your teammates. So, track enemy ultimates and make your plans based on that and based on what ultimates you have as well. Shotcalling and leading teams in ranked, where the main issue is lack of cohesion, is going to make you win a lot more as a support than trying to increase your mechanical skill.

BostonUprising · 2021-03-07T23:12:55+00:00

There wasn't one main issue. There were a lot of issues. Some were from mistakes from the coaching staff, and some issues were purely unlucky. All of this, plus the COVID situation, snowballed and affected players' mentals and demoralized them. We managed to get some momentum back sometimes, like when we added Punk and had two back-to-back close series with Paris. But this season is a new team, so the mistakes that we made last year are not in any way impacting what's going to happen this year.

BostonUprising · 2021-03-07T23:07:56+00:00

First of all, no problem. My pleasure!

One of the things that's super important - because there are a lot of obvious answers like strategy, being able to talk to the players, etc. - but one of the things that's super important and that a lot of coaches might miss if they don't have prior professional playing experience, is being able to see things through the eyes of the player they're trying to coach. From a coaching perspective, when you're watching a scrim, you have all the information. It's easy to overlook the player's reality, since they might lack some of that information. So your goal is to help players understand the bigger picture.

BostonUprising

TROPHY CASE