Bencel’s OPL Tier List and Season Preview

We are delighted here at Snowball to be able to bring to you the preseason tier list with a bonus preview on all 8 OPL teams – coming straight to you from the mind of former SIN Gaming coach and reigning Coach of the Split in Bencel. With this kind of recent knowledge and first-hand experience preparing with and for most of these players, this is a not-to-miss piece! Thanks so much for sharing this with us all, Bencel!

 

Tier 1:

Dire Wolves

The top side of the map is still the most consistent and hardest to deal with at all stages in the game. This is only upgraded with Triple who is likely to flourish in a team where he is not relied upon to carry and has a less rigid champion pool than Phantiks.

 

Tier 2:

Chiefs

Taking the best parts of the Dire Wolves and Chiefs bot lanes from last year sounds like a recipe for success and the veterancy Destiny and Swiper bring to the younger members make this a solid roster with huge potential.

 

Tier 3:

Order

This team brings strong individuals but a lot of concerns especially in the top side of the map and lack of apparent coach. All the members on the top side of the map have not shown considerable improvement over the last year and give me no confidence in their ability to handle their counterparts on the top two teams.

 

Tier 4:

AV

Sin

Legacy

Bombers

These teams are hard to read based on the amount of members that have changed and thus haven’t kept the same core members as last year. I have put them all in the same tier because at this stage I would say it is too hard to tell who will take 4th and 5th place into playoffs.

AV would be the exception to this, they have replaced Ceres and Sybol with Pabu and Only who have shown a lot of promise but very little on paper as of now. They have lost their star mid laner and though Frae is a strong player it’s doubtful that he could fill the huge void Triple has left, who consistently did 35% of his team’s damage last year.

Sin have changed so many members and replaced them with totally different players giving us no idea on how this team will play. The only hint is that Praedyth is definitely worth playing around and Juves has shown he can nurse his carry top laners into a good state.

 

Legacy have done a good job in putting together a decent roster given the shambles we thought it would be in knowing how many of their players were leaving. The two things to watch will be how well Soulstrikes and Carbon can bring them together as a team and also whether Claire takes on a carry role that he never did with Tally and Lost on the lineup.

 

Bombers have retained three of the same players and although arguably Looch and Rosey were their two strongest players they both had very questionable champion pools throughout last year and showed very little growth. Seb often had extremely predictable pathing which is not a good combination with the fact that the team seemed very reliant on gaining a lead in the lane phase.

 

Tier: 5

Tectonic

Shok and Low showed glimpses of brilliance of last year but it was far from consistent. The main concern for me here given that we have very little information on the actual skill level of these players is where the in game leadership will come from. Tgun brought that to the team last year but with him gone I would only guess that Low would take up the mantle.