How amateur Overwatch teams prepare for FACEIT League and OWCS qualifiers

For amateur teams, the road to the Overwatch Champions Series (OWCS) usually runs through FACEIT: FACEIT League seasons in your division, and OWCS open qualifiers. ALright has coached teams through both. He was head coach of I LOVE YOU in OWCS 2025 Pacific, took Redstone Engineers to 1st in the FACEIT League Season 8 OCE Open, and coached Hayabusa Gaming through the OWCS 2026 Japan open qualifiers. This is how he prepares a roster.

Formats change every year, so check the current rules first. Blizzard publishes them in posts like the OWCS 2026 competitive details, and Liquipedia tracks every FACEIT League season and division.

Start with the basics of fighting

Before strategy, a team has to win fights. When ALright coached New Era in Korea, that's all he worked on:

“At New Era I only coached one thing: the basics of fighting. We were the worst team in Korea.”

ALright

At G-Star Cup 2025 Elite, New Era knocked out O2 Blast and took Ado's Army, a roster of ONSIDE GAMING players, to a 2–3 series, finishing 3rd (Liquipedia).

The two weeks before your first match

Most of the work happens before the season starts. In the two weeks leading in, set three things:

• Map pool. Know which maps you're comfortable on and which you need to scrim more.
• Comps. Agree on what you'll run, so nobody is learning a composition in an official match.
• Ban plans. Decide your bans before match day, not in the lobby.

Then scrim against those plans, and review the scrims that went wrong.

How to give feedback in scrims

When ALright coaches a scrim block, he spectates every map and keeps feedback between maps short:

• Before: the captain sends the lobby details, the comps and the one thing the team wants fixed.
• Between maps: short, specific notes: one fight, one rotation, one call. No long speeches while players are warm.
• After: a debrief in voice, then written notes in the team channel with timestamps the team can review together.

Teams that scrim without a coach can copy the same rule: one point per map, saved notes for after.

Review as a team

Pick one match or scrim and watch it together. Prepare the fights and rotations worth stopping on before the call, so the review doesn't turn into watching the whole game again. Write down notes for each player.

When the season goes wrong

Mid-season slumps happen. Changing everything at once rarely fixes them. Pick a few habits and reset them over a few weeks, with regular scrims and reviews in between.

Getting help

ALright's team coaching covers all of this: a season bootcamp before a FACEIT League season or OWCS qualifier (two weeks of scrim blocks, reviews and map prep, priced per roster), scrim blocks at $100, team VOD reviews at $75, and team months at $559.

Photo: “RunAway at OWC Korea 2019 Season 2 Finals” by leejaegon.tistory.com, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0). Cropped and resized. Shown for illustration; the people pictured are not affiliated with ALright Coaching.