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Chengdu Hunters Esports Betting Online
If we had any doubts about China’s love of Overwatch, they were answered this past offseason. Even with the Shanghai Dragons going down as the worst professional team we have ever seen after posting an 0-40 record in 2018, three new groups decided to bring an Overwatch team to China with Chengdu, Guangzhou, and Hangzhou joining the mix. The Chengdu Hunters announced their team name in November, and they will look to carry the banner for China.
Chengdu Hunters Owners
Chinese streaming platform Huya owns Chengdu, which is interesting since the company is headquartered in Guangzhou. Huya have been labeled the Twitch of China, and they have made significant investments into Esports and gaming over the last few years. This is their largest investment to date though. With teams estimated to be selling for around $40 million, Huya decided to get on while they still could, and they are looking to use the team to help grow their brand with all sorts of inter-company partnerships.
Huya brought in Royal Never Give Up to handle the day-to-day operations of Chengdu, and the company would love if Chengdu enjoyed the same success as RNG has in League of Legends. RNG has been one of the top League of Legends teams in the world since their foundation, and they were considered the top team for most of last year. They have the best AD Carry in the game’s history in Uzi, and they will look to make more superstars in Overwatch.
Chengdu Hunters Roster
Credit to Chengdu for going the national route with their team. After the abysmal failure of Shanghai, the other two Chinese franchises decided not to form an All-Chinese roster, but Chengdu decided that the Dragons’ problems stemmed from something besides the inability of top Chinese players to compete on a global stage.
That being said, Chengdu did bring one part of Shanghai into their organization. The team’s head coach is Rui, who was Shanghai’s head coach last year before stepping away for health reasons. He redeemed himself as head coach of Team China at the Overwatch World Cup, and he helped lead China to a second place finish at the event, thus earning himself another bite of the apple.
Two players on Chengdu are already very familiar to Chinese fans. Support Yveltal and flex tank LateYoung were both on the Overwatch World Cup team, and they are likely to be two of the team’s best players. Yveltal is a Mercy main with time on Lucio and Zenyatta, while LateYoung is likely to be the team’s primary D.Va player.
The other supports on the team are Kyo and Garry. Kyo formerly played a lot of Ana and Zenyatta on Team CC before taking last year off, while Garry played the same style of champion on Lucky Future last season.
Tank position should be interesting with Elsa joining from LinGan to be a flex tank to counter LateYoung, and the main tank will be Ameng. Many consider Ameng to be one of top players on the team even though he his a Hammond main, and he has been adding other traditional main tanks to his repertoire. Jiqiren was added to provide some depth at main tank just in case Ameng didn’t develop well enough on traditional mains.
There is a lot of potential at the DPS positions, but there are a lot of questions too. Both Baconjack and YangXiaoLong were once considered two of the best hitscan players in the game. However, both players took all of 2018 off to instead focus their skills on PUBG, so they might be a little rusty. JenMu is an extremely bold DPS player that has some highlight reel plays on Genji, but his positioning is something the team will need to work on.
Chengdu Hunters 2019 Preview
I’m rooting for Chengdu to prove that all-Chinese teams aren’t inherently flawed, but there are a number of questions. Most of the players selected here are relatively unknown out of China, and it’s hard to judge just how well they will do. There are real concerns about what we will see in both tank and DPS, so I can’t predict the playoffs for them. Chengdu are talented enough to get wins though and won’t embarrass themselves.
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