Why eUnited stand above the competition at Overwatch Contenders

If you watched much of the Overwatch Contenders tournament over the last two weeks, you probably noticed that eUnited looks to be worlds ahead of the other teams in the competition. What exactly makes them so much better than the teams around them?

The first thing, and likely the most important, is that this is one of the more experienced teams in the west. Outside of squads like Team EnVyUs and Rogue — neither of which are competing in Contenders — few teams in the west have had much of an opportunity to play some of the world’s best Overwatch players for more than a month or two.

eUnited, however, competed with a largely similar roster back in Apex Season 2 under the name ReUnited. The skill and experience gained from consistent week to week competition against the best the game has to offer can’t be overstated, but it’s the areas that skill has translated to that really make eUnited stand out.

Perhaps most obvious is the way that the team coordinates with each other. Their pushes and point movement as a team frequently prevented split spawning — when some of the team dies and the others don’t making regrouping difficult — and kept the team from wasting precious time or ultimates in their quest for the point.

Speaking of ultimates, one of the defining characteristics of a good team versus an average one so far at contenders is how well they coordinate the use of their ultimate abilities. While good teams often feature highly coordinated ultimates they also waste them often, which brings us to exactly what makes eUnited’s ultimates great.

While other teams at the competition would use two or three ultimates to capture a point or restart a push on the payload, eUnited would most often get the job done in just one or two leaving spare ultimates to be used when others teams would have none.

It’s not just their teamwork that separates from the competition. On an individual level the players themselves are also playing a slightly more nuanced game than some of their Overwatch Contenders competition. No where is this easier to see than with the Tracer play of DPS Hendrik-William “Vallutaja” Kinks.

With most Tracers at the tournament so far, the primary goal has been to pick off their opponents’ healers and DPS by jumping behind the tanks whenever the opportunity presented itself. What Kinks does is a little different.

Instead of waiting for the enemy to slip up and present a chance for picks, Kinks focuses on building his ultimate through poking and harassing the backline, often building his ultimate almost 25% faster than the opposing Tracer. Because of this faster ultimate charge, Kinks is able to create his own picks rather than relying on miss-positioning, helping his team to more effectively create plays on both offense and defense.

These may sound like small differences, but as the game gets more competitive and the teams themselves get better at things like coordination, ultimate use and ability to create plays from nothing will continue to separate the world’s best teams. Until then eUnited simply stands above most of their European competition and gives other teams a perfect model to follow to step up to the next level of international Overwatch competition.