HisWattson, fresh from shaking up the Apex scene at LAN, won TwitchRivals NA Showdown 4. The tournament, played across Worlds Edge and Storm Point has taken criticism for it’s roster rules.
Competing alongside Extesyy and Keoon, ‘Team HisWattson’ took home a combined $7500. HisWattson also netted an extra $200 for scoring the most eliminations in the tournament.
HisWattson single handedly shaping Apex meta
Even if he did not reign victorious, HisWattson’s influence was strongly felt across this Twitch Rivals event.
Firstly in Apex ranked, and then all the way to the ALGS Championship LAN, HisWattson has been pioneering a Seer meta. The 4th most picked legend in Champs dominated this Twitch Rivals event. While official pick rates are not published, the vast majority of teams had Seer.
HisWattson told esports.gg at the LAN event in Raleigh that “I go against the grain a lot in Apex and I’m very vocal about it.” But, Furia’s strong 2nd place performance and HisWattson’s Monster MVP award seem to have brought the grain to HisWattson.
Photo Credit: EA
Some teams that use off meta picks, or start new trends struggle when people copy them. Kungarna (now 100 Thieves) pioneered the Valk, Gibraltar, Caustic composition and then struggled when other teams followed suit.
However HisWattson seems unphased and he led Keoon and Extesyy to victory in a very talented lobby.
Classic aggression from HisWattson
The hallmark of a HisWattson performance is simple. Kills, kills and more kills. They averaged a huge 9.93 kills per game. Their placement was far less impressive – but with so many kills it really doesn’t matter to them.
In the opening game, HisWattson and team died in 13th place, but with a staggering 11 kills. To put that into context, that is over half of the players that were out of the lobby at that point.
Their most impressive game was on Storm Point, they racked up 15 kills on the way to a game 4 victory – and the win was all but secured after they followed that up with a 2nd place and 13 kills in game 5.
It really cannot be overstated how impressive this level of consistency is, even in a TwitchRivals event.
What this event also shows is just how confident and talented HisWattson is. Furia dominated the ALGS Championship, but in this event HisWattson recreated their results and their performances with two totally different players. One player on each team wasn’t even allowed to have reached masters since season 9. To play this way with your full time competitive team is one thing, but to play like this with not even a full squad of high ranked apex players really is impressive.
This result will further lock in the Seer trend, and HisWattson’s position as the top Apex player world wide at the moment.
Twitch Rivals top 5:
HisWattson – 87TiffaJessi – 78Verhulst – 60Nokokopuffs – 52Surefour – 51
Team Captains names listed. Full leaderboard on Liquipedia.
Controversy over team rules
Elsewhere, Twitch Rivals has once again faced criticism of it’s team rules for Apex Legends events.
This event had the following selection rules:
A team captain (invited by Twitch Rivals)Limited to 1 ALGS Pro League player (2021-2022)Limited to 1 non ALGS Pro League player that has achieved the rank of Master or higher since season 9
The rules are designed to create interesting teams, and give players who wouldn’t normally get to compete a chance. However naturally, people look for loopholes, due to the opportunity to win money.
Take for example team iiTzTimmy. Timmy picked up Sweetdreams and Zombs. That met the criteria, Sweet was the ALGS PL player, Timmy was the non PL player and Zombs hasn’t hit Master since season 9. However, Zombs is a pro Valorant player and has won Apex Legends LAN events before he retired.
Every Twitch Rivals, there is always some sort of controversy over the rules. ImperialHal has said that he won’t play in any future Rivals events that have team restrictions. Notably, he has been criticised for using loopholes in the past.
Twitch Rivals organiser frustrated
Understandably, the Twitch Rivals organiser CloudFuel has expressed frustration over the criticism. However, this has been a problem for several Rivals events in a row.
CloudFuel hints that for future events, they may drop restrictions entirely. This would remove any controversy over selections – although it would very quickly make these events an all pro affair besides captains.
A common suggestion seems to be to have just one simple restriction.
Having this simple rule would at least mean that Twitch Rivals is unique from the standard ALGS and other high level events we see. Fans would certainly enjoy seeing players that are usually rivals team up and compete together.
Do you think that Twitch Rivals should change their rules for the next Apex event? Tweet us @esports and let us know!
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