In OGN APEX Season 2, Meta Athena became famous for being one of the most innovative, left-field thinkers in Overwatch. The team followed a playstyle of their own and never became slaves to the proverbial “meta”, to the full irony of their name. They didn’t play what patches and numbers told them they should and instead found their own comfort zone, defined by the unmatched flexibility of Kim “Libero” Hye-sung, who played more than half of Overwatch’s entire hero pool that season alone. As they walked towards completing the royal road, or winning a major championship on their first try, Meta Athena abused Mei walls, invented new attack paths and threw a squall of curve balls their opponents’ ways. Many considered them favorites to win the season before would-be champions Lunatic-Hai stopped them in the semi-finals.



Fast forward to the current Season 3, and Meta Athena are breaking their backs, struggling to find a dominant showing in most of their matches. They were reverse-swept by Team EnVyUs in the Round of 16 and are set to play them again for tournament survival Friday after losing 3-0 to Afreeca Freecs Blue. They have had moments of weakness even against the unconvincing BK Stars and are miles away from the confidence they exerted in Season 2. With AF Blue already through to the semi-finals, it’s more than possible that MA lose the race to either nV or X6-Gaming.

How the new Athena plays

Coming into Season 3, Meta Athena stumbled into a metagame that was unforgiving to their tendencies for trickery. Winston and Genji had become staples alongside Tracer, heavily favoring 2/2/2 dive style compositions, something at which MA didn’t really excel in Season 2, relying mostly on triple tank line-ups. Modern Overwatch seemed more rigid in terms of permitting experimentation, which would be a stifling point for MA as they could not really play their own game anymore. They would have to match the other teams aim for aim, and at that MA were never really good.



MA’s first Season 3 match against BK Stars allowed them to feel up the field and test several compositions: Dive on control and 2CP maps like Nepal and Temple; Pharmacy on Dorado; and their favorite triple tank on Hollywood. The viability of heroes like Hanzo, Orisa and Roadhog was also tested, as MA would never pass on an opportunity to play around with out-of-the-box picks.



With the lessons they learned, MA entered their second match against nV with the full intention to stick to what they know. They would play Pharah comps on maps like Oasis and otherwise stick to Roadhog-less triple tank, something they’ve quite enjoyed in the past. Sayaplayer was kept mostly on Soldier and McCree for the entire match, with the occasional swaps into Tracer and Widowmaker. Hoon played his Zarya and D.Va whenever possible, Nus kept picking Ana and Alpha was the Reihnard shield the majority of the time.

Even if that style wasn’t particularly “meta”, it made sense for the once royal road contenders. It allowed them to circumvent the insufficiency of high-skill pure DPS players on their teams, something MA never tried to fix during the off-season. It allowed Hoon to be secondary carry to Sayaplayer, playing to both their strengths. It featured an invincible vanguard of Reinhardt, D.Va and Zarya, impervious to direct confrontation and constantly feeding energy to Hoon. Therefore, even though it’s technically a triple tank, this composition could play out as 2/2/2 because of Hoon’s playstyle and even allow a transition to triple DPS if Libero gets off D.Va and tap into his deep hero pool.



For all the strengths this style has, it has a notable weakness, which is also the one weakness you don’t want in current OW meta: backline vulnerability. Triple tank / single DPS compositions are susceptible to back-line sniping. It’s even more true for MA’s style, which doesn’t run a Roadhog to pick entry kills or pull treats away from the backline or Winston who can reposition himself quickly and is generally effective against diving characters like Genji and Tracer.



It took EnVyUs two maps to figure this out but when they did, MA were done for. Game 4 on Dorado and Game 5 on Hollywood went both to nV as Effect’s Tracer was having a field day, and since the match was a step-by-step guide on how to beat MA’s triple style, they would have to adjust.



This is where they encountered their second problem.

The Meta are not equipped to beat the meta

The main reason why MA played the way they did during Season 2 is because they knew they couldn’t catch up to the teams playing a more traditional style. Rosters like Lunatic-Hai, LW Blue and AF Blue had been perfecting their craft since the earliest days and there was no way for MA to match them directly in that short amount of time.



Ironically, MA’s only viable option for Season 2 is what’s suppressing them now. The team spent long months practicing anything but 2/2/2 dive only to find themselves needing proficiency in precisely that in Season 3. Like anything in Overwatch, dive compositions require complete and flawless synergy across all six players, and the style is so razor-thin that even specialists like AF Blue have been seen botching it at time. Even though MA did 3-0 Rhino Gaming Wings, this is a win against a team that’s an APEX first-timer, which won a total of one map in the Round of 16 and which comes from a non-dive background itself. It almost doesn’t count.



Furthermore, MA are set to lose the direct aim-for-aim and hero-for-hero duels against the top teams in the region. For all his flexibility, Libero will never match the Genjis of WhoRU and Rascal, the Tracers of Effect and Birdring, or the Pharah of Fl0w3R.

There's no one reliable on Meta Athena to play the raging ape.

МА further lack a Winston specialist, as neither Alpha, nor Changsik are reliable enough to frontline their divers like Miro, Mano or even Cocco are. Even NoSmite, the tank for ex-challengers X6-Gaming who are in the same quarter final group as Meta Athena, has more hours on Winston than the entire Meta Athena roster combined, including Hoon and Libero.



To put it simply, everyone—even challenger teams—are better at dive than Meta Athena.

What’s next for Meta Athena?

The reality is that Meta Athena can’t do much more this season. EnVyUs are favored to eliminate them from the quarter finals and so are X6-Gaming, who already beat nV in the dive mirror and who are also capable of running off-meta picks like Widowmaker, Roadhog and even Junkrat. If by some miracle MA make it to the semi-finals, they will have to play the likes of KongDoo Panthera and AF Blue, which have always been significantly ahead mechanically.



Consequently, MA have a few options. They can try to reinvent the art of deception and survive two best-of-5’s that way, which is unlikely. Or, they can start specializing.



Even if they likely won’t improve drastically to challenge nV and X6 in by the end of the month, the latter would be the wiser thing to do for MA in the long run. Improvements in the tank line are heavily needed and at least one of Changsik and Alpha needs to become proficient in the aggressive playstyle. Libero needs to become more focused, too, perhaps putting emphasis on Genji and Pharah to become a reliable projectile DPS to support Sayaplayer’s Tracer and Soldier. Nus needs to start practicing Zenyatta—something he seems to have figured out judging by MA’s last games—to make up for the significantly nerfed Ana and further benefit dive-centric line-ups.



MA aren’t going to win APEX Season 3. They probably won’t even make it to the playoffs, but brighter future is possible still. If the team is going to have a good Season 4, they have to do what they’ve done best: Stay smart and adapt.