Goats Overwatch

Goats Overwatch

June 6th - Coluge announces that his year-long ban from Contenders has been rescinded. He also announces that the ban for Gator has been reduced from one year to one season, and as such Gator moved to a coaching position in the team.
June 6th - GOATS announced their roster for NA Contenders Trials S2 , xQc joins the team for Trials. [1]
July 14th - Sit announces he is rebuilding the GOATS roster. [2]
August 18th - GOATS rebuilds for Open Division Season 3 North America .
October 3rd - GOATS announces their new roster for NA Contenders Trials S3 . [3]
October 9th - GOATS announce that The , Choco and simon have joined the team staff. [4]
October 25th - Boostio announces that he is no longer playing with the team. [5]
November 14th - Most of the roster and staff leave the team and form First Generation . [6] [7]

March 19th - GOATS announces their comeback with their new Open Division roster. [8]
March 26th - Higan leaves the team. [9]
April 3rd - Boostio leaves the team for Wave Check . [10]

January 8th - Goats announce their Open Division 2020 Season 1 roster. [11]
February 23rd - MoonBlue leaves the team. [12]
March 8th - Goats announce their Open Division 2020 Season 2 roster. [13]
April 1st - TracK leaves the team. [14]
April 12th - Soko and Karrotz leave the team. [15] [16]
April 25th - Switch leaves the team. [17]

This page was last edited on 28 July 2022, at 23:22. Text/code is available under CC-BY-SA . Licenses for other media varies.
Goats is a North American Overwatch team originally formed from the core of Fractal Esports . They played in the Overwatch Contenders Trials after placing first in the 2018 Season 2 Open Division .

After their main tank Gator was banned for one season of Contenders, former Dallas Fuel main tank and popular streamer xQc joined the team during Trials.

On November 14th, 2018, most of the roster and staff left the team to form First Generation .

On March 19th, 2019, the team reformed to play in Open Division 2019 Season 2.

First Generation (Assistant Coach)

First Generation (Assistant Coach)

First Generation (Assistant Coach)

Open Division: Breakable Barriers: North America #1
Overwatch Contenders 2018 Season 3 Trials: North America
Open Division 2018 Season 3 - North America
Overwatch Contenders 2018 Season 2 Trials: North America
Overwatch PIT Championship - North America Season 3
Open Division 2018 Season 2 - North America
Academy Gaming Overwatch Weekly #56
Open Division 2020 Season 1 - North America
Open Division 2020 Season 1 - North America
Open Division: Breakable Barriers: North America #1
Open Division: Breakable Barriers: North America #1
Open Division 2018 Season 3 - North America

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What is GOATS in Overwatch, and why are fans so upset with it?

By

Eric Van Allen

Feb 25, 2019, 3:30pm EST

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But GOATS leads to less flashy games

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One word is likely at the top of every team, player, and spectator’s mind after the start of the second season of the Overwatch League. And that word is “GOATS.”
Competitive games like Overwatch are often defined by trends in play. The all-encompassing layer of strategy that dictates and guides anything from hero picks to positioning and rotations is called the “metagame,” or simply the “meta.”
Meta is often just the strategy with the most proven or consistent success in a given state of the game, or at least there’s the perception that a currently popular meta is dominant, which makes everyone try it. GOATS is simply the name of an approach that’s very popular, and effective, in competitive Overwatch right now.
Here’s what you need to know: GOATS refers to a strategy that includes three tanks and three healers, and some very vocal fans hate it because it leads to less immediately satisfying action during big matches. It’s safe, and safe is rarely entertaining.
This specific variation of the triple-tank strategy named for the North American team that popularized it during season two open division play. The GOATS blew through the season with 10 wins and no losses, and won a BEAT invitational as well , while consistently running a lineup of D.Va, Reinhardt, Zarya, Brigitte, Zenyatta, and Lúcio. This run of successful games cemented the name of the team to the name of the strategy, at least for the short term.
The strategy is a little more malleable now and often called triple-triple or three-three when described during a broadcast but, broadly speaking, it means that the team is fielding three tanks and three healers. That’s GOATS in a nutshell. While the term came from the name of the team, in general use it now usually refers to team composition based around this strategy. And it can often seem as if everyone is running GOATS at the higher levels of play.
Three tanks — usually Reinhardt, D.Va, and Zarya — form the beefy frontline in a GOATS lineup, using shields and big health bars to advance forward. Some map-specific permutations exist, usually swapping out Reinhardt for a Winston, but the D.Va-Zarya combo is crucial, as landing the one-two punch of Graviton Surge into Self-Destruct is often a win condition for big fights. The former pulls the enemy team together to one point, while the latter is the Earth-shattering kaboom taking them all out.
Three supports back up the tanks, and the composition of those supports can be a little more flexible, but many teams use healers who can negate the big combo ultimates of the other team, while also chipping away at the enemy’s health. Teams often pick Lúcio and Zenyatta, frequently alongside Brigitte, though sometimes they’ll pick an Ana or Moira. This aspect of GOATS play is much more open to creativity with the right team.
This clip gives you a good indication of how GOATS fights often look and, yes, it can get confusing but also kind of boring if you don’t know what to look for.
A GOATS strategy requires that players use different skills than the strategies that came before, which mostly focused on dealing an intense amount of damage per second. The damage-dealers have taken a backseat because, for right now, it’s difficult for them to whittle down health bars fast enough before targets get re-shielded and healed.
A GOATS-fight is a war of attrition rather than a sizzle reel of headshots or a Genji player popping off with a big dive into the other team’s backline. Skirmishes are protracted back-and-forths that build up, hopefully, to a situation in which one team can wipe out the other using a spectacular combination of ultimates.
There is still room for standout players and creative thinking in current competitive play. Sungwook “Ria” Park of the Hangzhou Spark showed off some incredible self-destructs as D.Va recently, including one where he “ate” — negated with his Defense Matrix — the Los Angeles Valiant’s Graviton Surge just before wiping out three players . It was an electric moment in the game.
There is hope for variation as well, as some teams showed their flexibility and adaptability with picks like Sombra, who can be devastating in the right hands as shown by the New York Excelsior . The character’s ability-blocking hacks can disrupt the combo plays that teams are looking for, leaving them vulnerable and without the use of their ultimates. This sort of strategy is looking like one of the most viable answers to the GOATS blueprint.
A few teams even found room to play other compositions. In the opening series of the season, a rematch of last season’s grand finals between the Philadelphia Fusion and London Spitfire, the latter ran a quad-DPS strategy on the first point of Volskaya , completely throwing Philly off its game.
It was an exciting moment, the eccentricity of which was highlighted by London reverting back to a three-three strategy after taking the first point, much to the displeasure of some in the live studio audience . You can hear the boos when the team comes back out using a GOATS strategy.
Other teams, like the Chengdu Hunters, seem absolutely determined to buck the trend. The Hunters, marred by visa issues, have found an identity in running staunchly anti-GOATS lineups, including Wrecking Ball-centric compositions and other oddities to throw comfort picks off-balance.
Still, it feels like the tone of competition has been largely defined by either the presence or absence of the triple-triple.
The current focus on GOATS isn’t good or bad, it’s just where the game is right now. Every sport goes through its own growing pains, and some fans may appreciate this level of play, while others are bored by the relative lack of big, exciting moves. But meta is never forever, and there are some good things about this strategy while it’s dominant.
GOATS highlights players who wouldn’t normally get attention; being the main tank or healer isn’t usually as flashy as being the sniper, and it’s always a nice change when the spotlight shifts a bit. While players like Seonghyun “JJoNak” Bang will always shine on Zenyatta, other healers and tanks get their moment in the sun in the GOATS meta.
But GOATS leads to less flashy games outside of the big Shatter-Grav-Bomb combos. Rapid-fire headshots are no longer the norm during play, as a constant flow of healing and shields un-does the work of a good DPS (damage per second) player.
And spectators may grow bored watching GOATS matches so often. The appeal of a good GOATS match is often found in its intricacies, such as the positioning and rotation of a team or interplay between different players.
A casual spectator — even if they’re familiar with the basic mechanics of Overwatch — might not enjoy that interplay as much. It’s not as immediately impressive, and it requires a deeper understanding of the game to appreciate. And most of the season’s best matches so far are defined by their absence or permutation of GOATS.
Blizzard already tried to curb GOATS before the season started by empowering the tank-shredding Reaper and reducing the effectiveness of armor, but these changes didn’t do enough to push teams away from GOATS.
Or perhaps, as teams get more comfortable, we will see more strategies like Sombra or Wrecking Ball combinations, or even lineups like quad-DPS, become popular ways to break the mold. Teams like the Chengdu Hunters and London Spitfire have already given me hope that changes to the meta can be forced outside of patch notes. I’m still seeing play evolve as competitive players try new things and adapt to strategies that have become so common.
But until either straw breaks its back, like it or not, the GOATS are here to stay.
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