The NA Team We’ve Been Waiting For?: An Analysis of Selfless’ Comp and Style
This column is heavily inspired by and adapted from Josh “Sideshow” Wilkinson’s analysis of the same topic. Click here to see his video.
If you have paid any attention to competitive Overwatch over the last week, then you will know that the team that has everyone buzzing is Selfless Gaming. Though the team has existed — albeit in varied iterations — since June of 2016, it is their recent second place finish in the Alienware Monthly Melee and first place finish in the Overwatch PIT Championship qualifiers that has exposed their talent to the mainstream.
Selfless had a 34-match win-streak over seven tournaments going into the Melee, but their wins were not against prominent, well-known teams, nor in particularly important tournaments. Their recent participation in the OW PIT qualifiers and the Melee have provided Selfless with the tough competition audiences needed to see — and their performance may be something for North American fans to get excited about.
Team EnVyUs, RogueGG, Cloud9, and Fnatic have been at the top of NA OW virtually since launch, but their NA status comes with a large asterisk. EnVy lost its token American in November, Cloud9 has two Swedes, Fnatic has three Americans remaining, and Rogue is comprised entirely of Frenchies who happen to live in Las Vegas.
With the best team in the region and the two teams with the most amount of NA players having been recently eliminated from OGN APEX Season 2, NA fans have not had a good time.
But Selfless — composed of four Americans and flaunting a refreshing, exciting playstyle — may be the new blood spectators have been waiting for.
The roster is comprised of sinatraa (damage), dafran (flex/damage), emongg (flex/off-tank), Kresnik (tank), Michael3D (support), and dhaK (support).
Selfless’ chief composition consists of Ana, Lucio, Reinhardt, Roadhog, Tracer, and Soldier:76. On specific maps, this comp can vary — e.g. on Temple of Anubis defense, Tracer may be swapped for a Sombra — but it is uncommon; the aforementioned 2–2–2 comp is their bread and butter.
Selfless maximizes objective contestation while on defense, and minimizes it on offense.
The team has a well-deserved reputation for spawn-camping, but their aggression is not without purpose. Selfless plays a brawling, scrappy game of Overwatch in which the aim is to maximize the number of team fights per map. This playstyle is illustrated best on escort/hybrid maps, but is present on assault and control as well.
To ensure the most amount of team fights, optimal positioning is sacrificed. Spawn-camping lacks advantageous chokepoints and the nearby offensive spawn more harshly punishes deaths on the defending team. On pure escort maps like Route 66 and Watchpoint: Gibraltar, most pro teams allow the offense to push the payload over half way to the first checkpoint before engaging because the gas station and server room provide ideal defensive positioning, respectively.
Selfless chooses to engage earlier, and this gives them the potential for two or three team fights with less than optimal positioning before the payload reaches the capture point, rather than one or two team fights with optimal positioning. Their first point defense on Gibraltar versus LG Evil is a perfect example of this: Selfless first engaged outside of offensive spawn (i.e. pass), then in the pit before server room, and finally full-held meters before the checkpoint.
On Gibraltar, Selfless can milk three team fights from a first point defense because defensive spawn is actually closer to server room and the final checkpoint than offensive spawn, but on other maps, a forward fight and a checkpoint fight may be all that is possible.
Selfless is similarly aggressive on attack. Kresnik, the team’s Reinhardt player, typically pushes the payload alone. Although the cart moves at a snail’s pace, it allows the remaining five players to push up, stagger enemy respawns, and take fights that do not stall the payload.
Furthermore, these skirmishes are won more often than not because they are so often uneven; five offensive heroes may gang up on three defensive heroes that are running back from spawn, unaccustomed to Selfless’ overextension.
All of this is to say that this team plays the timebank game better than most. Whether or not Selfless loses the spawn-camp fight (and they generally do by virtue of respawn advantages and ultimate usage) does not matter so much as the amount of time spent contesting the objective. When defending, Selfless can regularly bleed anywhere from 30 seconds to a minute and a half off of the attacking team’s clock. On the reverse, their tendency to initiate fights away from the objective allows for undisputed, if slow, capture.
Selfless is not aiming to conclusively win team fights all of the time. Rather, their strategy depends on skirmishes, brawling, and stall tactics in which a staggered spawn or Hail Mary defense is worth 30 seconds of delay. By the end of a map, these small increments — 10 seconds here, 30 seconds there — add up.
Selfless’ forward, aggressive playstyle is made possible by the inherent sustain and kill potential of their composition.
Apart from Reinhardt, all heroes in Selfless’ composition are able to self-heal. Ana has Biotic Grenade; Lucio has an aura heal; Roadhog has Take A Breather; Soldier:76 has Biotic Field; and, Tracer regains health via Recall. Reinhardt’s lack of self-heal is compensated for with his large health pool, shield, and Ana pocket — but more on that later.
Selfless’ composition also has consistent damage output. Contrasted with other beefy comps such as the Mei/Reaper/Zarya stacks of metas past or the average tri-tank setup, Selfless’ 2–2–2 has kill potential that is not stored largely in ultimate abilities. The Mei/Reaper/Zarya comp was limited to short-range engages and reliant upon Graviton Surge+Blizzard combos or Nano-boosted Death Blossoms for kills; recent tri-tank comps are similarly challenged.
Selfless’ 2–2–2 comp resolves some of these issues with traditional stall comps — Soldier has great ranged damage; Tracer harasses teams’ backlines; both have consistent damage output, while Roadhog provides pick potential — but the trade off is in difficulty of execution.
Where Selfless’ playstyle differs from that of most is in Reinhardt’s role within a team. Traditionally, the tank is the focal point of the team’s movement. His shield is first and foremost used to protect squishy damage dealers and healers, and is played behind when possible to maximize damage blocked.
Kresnik, comparatively, is often playing a solo game. With his armor and large shield, Selfless’ Reinhardt’s primary responsibility is to survive and contest the objective. This strategy is in vein with Selfless’ timebank philosophy — the objective remains contested for every second possible while the remaining players are free to position themselves how they prefer without cart restrictions. Lucio, typically tethered to the payload, is free to support his team’s spawn-camping endeavors.
Particularly, dafran benefits from this playstyle. He values good positioning above most else and will go out of his way to secure it before properly engaging in a fight, regardless of whether his team is attacking or defending.
emongg, who plays Roadhog, provides protection for Ana when necessary, and the value of his consistently high hook accuracy cannot be understated. dhaK wall-rides to his heart’s content and keeps emongg alive, occasionally with support from Ana. sinatraa continually harasses teams’ backlines and cleans up kills from dafran and emongg. None are beholden to the objective, nor Reinhardt’s shield.
Consequently, Kresnik is often left grounded, isolated, and vulnerable. To compensate, Ana’s chief concern is to keep Reinhardt alive; that is, Kresnik receives the majority of Michael3D’s heals.
Because of the resources dedicated to Reinhardt and the brawl-style engages Selfless prefers, each player must be self-sufficient and individually skilled. Particularly, dafran has great tracking on Soldier, sinatraa has exceptional movement on Tracer (though his Pulse Bombs leave something to be desired), and emongg is one of the most consistent Roadhogs in the game.
Once Tracer mismanages a Recall or Soldier wastes a Biotic Field, the fight becomes infinitely more precarious because they have, essentially, lost the bulk of their sustain; errors are more acutely punished when each hero is playing a relatively solo game.
However, Selfless’ strategy and composition are not without limitations.
Currently, Selfless lacks finishing power and upward mobility, or verticality.
While Selfless’ comp does have consistent damage output and kill potential, their brawling playstyle does not lend itself to the clean team wipes that are necessary for closing out assault maps and final checkpoints.
Nano-boosted Tactical Visor is the extent of the team’s limited finishing power. Their signature comp lacks a Graviton Surge to set up kills, and Kresnik’s Earthshatters are first and foremost reserved for shutting down enemy ultimate abilities.
As such, nullifying dafran’s ults is paramount. When one is negated, Selfless tends to swap sinatraa to Zarya to build up a Graviton. This strategy has worked thus far against teams like Rogue and LG Evil, but the adjustment bleeds more time off of Selfless’ clock and occasionally requires multiple hero swaps that put the team at an ultimate percentage disadvantage.
The line-up also lacks vertical mobility. Heroes like Genji, Winston, D.Va, and Pharah provide easy access to high ground that is otherwise time-consuming or difficult to reach — the shuttle on the second stage of Gibraltar, the roofs of Hollywood Wild West stage (depending on RNG), etc.
When playing against compositions with more mobility than theirs, Selfless’ struggle to quickly and easily contest these areas is obvious. sinatraa has experimented with Genji, and the inclusion of the hero in their composition should significantly rectify this weakness.
Finally, teams that dive dafran have been more successful than most. Again, Soldier:76 is the bulk of Selfless’ damage, and his ult is their team wipe potential. Their defense can crumble if he is removed from a fight early on. Pharah/Mercy dive comps in particular lend themselves to this strategy.
Selfless is by no means perfect. They did lose to Rogue, as hyped as their match-up may have been, and there are plenty of well-known teams they have yet to face.
But going into the PIT Championship and beyond, they are a team to watch — literally and figuratively. If nothing else, their willingness to play an aggressive, unsafe game of Overwatch makes Selfless a refreshing and exciting team for spectators.
