It’s the second batch of Overwatch League for the day, coming straight from Dallas Texas. After a surprisingly quick first two matches being hosted in New York City, there was a bit of downtime between the two streams; just long enough for everyone to try to figure out where they needed to click to get to the Dallas stream. Fun times were had by some.
The second batch of the day sees some one-sided matchups, to the probable chagrin to Dallas Fuel fans that were rendered mute in the show yesterday.
Vancouver Titans / Los Angeles Valiant
Both teams are walking into this match with the same ratings for Season 3; they’ve both won precisely one match. Yet there is a staggering difference in regards to pedigree, where the Vancouver Titans are consistently considered to be a top-three team, and the LAV has had a healthy mix of odd defeats and odder victories since the inaugural season. Titans were heavily favored to win this series, although some considered that LAV’s off-season roster shakeups might be enough to surprise the Titans; namely with their DPS duo of KSF and KSP.
The first map was Lijang Control, and featured the closest thing we’ve had yet to a mirror match-up in the Overwatch League; both teams ran Lucio, Ana, D.Va, Reinhardt, and Mei. LAV opted for their primary DPS, KSP, to take McCree from spawn, and Titans opted for Seominsoo to take the reins of Reaper. Valiant struggled to put up solid numbers, and Titans walked away with the first map win in what appeared to be a surprisingly easy fashion.
The second map was once again Blizzard World, the hybrid game type that begins with teams needing to capture an initial point before escorting the payload. Titans attacked first and switched up their composition greatly, with Sombra, Genji, and Winston, while maintaining the previous healer heroes and off-tank of D.Va. The roster gamble paid off as Valiant were still running the comp from Control, and Titans Dive composition took the first point under a minute with tremendous pressure being applied by Haksal on Genji, and Fissure on Winston. Titans took the second point in a similarly speedy fashion, with the cart being stalled only once by McGravy hopping around as de-meched D.Va. Titans completed BW with over three minutes remaining in the time bank after many multi-kills coming from Haksal’s legendary Genji and Twilight’s Ana pulling multiple clutch heals on a Genji that found himself consistently at critical health.
LAV began their attack with the same composition they’ve been running the entire series, and Titans had the mirror comp to defend. LAV put down a similarly speedy pace for the first point capture and started on a tear of their own across BW, led by impeccable aim from both LAV DPS KSF and KSP. Valiant end up with an even faster time on BW than TItans did, and suddenly the match appeared far more interesting than it originally promised. Valiant’s time clearing BW was the third-fastest time ever recorded in Overwatch League for the Hybrid map.
Titans were back to attack with their dive comp, and Valiant actually defended the first point against the dive comp for about two minutes before Titans were able to circumvent the attack with a well-timed Blizzard from KSF. The Titans run ended at 107 meters, setting a reasonable checkpoint for LAV to tie. Unfortunately, LAV wasn’t able to muster together the same speed on their second attack and was stopped shortly after claiming the first point.
Fissure just got deleted while nano’d oof – /u/throwawayrepost13579 via Reddit
The third map was the Temple of Anubis; a map that Vancouver historically dominate teams on being how flexible Genji is for scaling walls and surprising defenders by attacking their back lines. Both teams complete the map once, but the Vancouver Titans ended up with over five minutes to simply capture the first tick of the first point after LAV failed to progress on their attack.
The third clean sweep of the day and many were looking closely at the upcoming match to see if four clean sweeps would happen in one day.
3 / 0
Dallas Fuel / San Francisco Shock
Everyone was likely gathering up their coats before the next match even began; you have the Dallas Fuel that struggled against the Los Angeles Valiant (that was just slapped down by the Vancouver Titans), against the reigning champions of the Overwatch League, the San Francisco Shock. It’s not a match that should even be close, frankly speaking; SFS traveled to Korea to train on the competitive servers there during the off-season. A frightfully strong team spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to bring their team to the pinnacle of competitive PC games in South Korea, and they’re likely eager to take to the stage and start kicking some faces in.
Dallas Fuel had a massive mountain in front of them that they would need to climb to have a mere hope of taking a map from the Shock, much less the series as a whole.
The first map was Control of Oasis, and Striker and Sinatraa opted for the meta DPS of McCree and Mei, while Fuel’s Doha and Decay opted for Mei and Reaper, respectively. After a scrappy first fight, Sinatraa took a brief moment to tea-bag (tactically crouch) the face of Gamsu’s corpse in front of the home crowd, which was likely the funniest moment of Overwatch League today aside from London Spitfire’s performance. San Francisco Shock took the first stage of Control with relative ease, although there were moments that appeared that Dallas could have taken the stage from them. In the second stage, Dallas Fuel came out looking for blood and managed to steal it away due to fantastically aggressive plays from Gamsu and Trill. Teams were tied with one stage each when they entered the third stage of Oasis, City Center.
City Center proved to be a violent back and forth, with memorable notes being Sinatraa playing Tracer and receiving a nano boost, only to promptly be booped by Closer’s Lucio right into traffic. Dallas brought their percentage to 99 when Shock dove back onto the point and managed to take it back in seemingly futile overtime, squarely on the shoulders of Striker and Sinatraa. A nasty flank ran by Sinatraa on Tracer climaxed in synchronization with Super’s Earth Shatter, dropping a pulse bomb on the Dallas Fuel team laid low by the tactic, and Shock won the first match of the series by a harrowing margin.
Striker doesn’t lose Oasis – /u/Greatmars via Reddit
The Hybrid match was up next, and thankfully it wasn’t Blizzard World again; instead, Eichenwalde was in the cards. Shock attacked first, and set a blazingly fast time with all three points taken with 2:22 left on the clock. Dallas began to return in kind with five minutes left on the clock when they reached the second point, and Decay likely needs to get his back checked after attempting to carry the entirety of his team. A stalwart defense from the Shock removed all hope of the Fuel completing the map, however, and rendered the crowd completely silent.
Going into halftime, and everyone was looking at another likely 3 – 0 sweep, regardless of how close Dallas was playing with a substitute in for their healer Unkoe, who was sick.
The map switches to 2CP with Horizon Lunar Colony, and Shock takes the first swing at the attack. On the back of miraculous plays by Fuels new DPS lineup Doha and Decay, they manage to hold the San Fransisco Shock to a little over 50% on the first point. On attack, Dalles brings a classic Dive comp with Sombra being an additional pick by Doha. The Sombra was readily countered by The San Fransisco Shock, who were used to Sombra plays from the GOATs era; they were firing errantly, everywhere, and Doha had tremendous difficulty getting close enough to farm up her ultimate. By keeping the pressure up, Doha was able to get his EMP that cracked the point’s defense wide open. Striker on McCree for Shock struggled valiantly to remove the stubborn Fuel from the point, yet ultimately succumbed to consistent pressure applied by Decay and Doha.
Dallas had successfully broken San Francisco Shocks second map streak on Lunar Colony, and they were using a substitute that hadn’t trained with the Fuel during the off-season. Dallas looked ready to dive into the first pure escort map of the series, with Havana, and bring the heat back towards the Shock.
Boy howdy I sure wish there was a hero who could absorb Death Blossom. Maybe some Korean chick in a big robot? – /u/snickerbites via Reddit
For Havana, Trill was substituted in for Note on the side of the Dallas Fuel, and it seemed poised to be another hard-fought map for both teams.
Shock attacked first, and the two teams exchanged blows for a while until Super broke the first point defense with a well-timed shatter and charge, wiping the majority of the team by himself (and the massive hammer of Reinhardt). The chorus of Super wiping the Fuel would continue across the map of Havana, with his Reinhardt charging fearlessly into the enemy team, time and again while his healers chased him across the battlefield. Super continued his rain of blows as Dallas began their attack, and the Fuel desperately struggled to even leave the spawn room as Super swung his massive weapon to and fro.
It took two minutes for the Fuel to finally escape their spawn and begin pushing the cart. Overtime began before Dallas could even reach the first point, and the Shock came charging out when the overtime began. In a climactic finish, Gamsu and Super were both swinging their respective hammers into the enemy team, before Super’s experience put the Shock ahead. The Fuel’s attack crumbled when the cart was a mere two meters away from the first point, and Shock took the third point of the series.
3 / 1
I Need Healing
The entire first weekend featured Ana many times, and her ability to offer directed healing to specific characters makes her a force to be reckoned with. It was easily viewable in the Vancouver Shock versus LA Valiant, when Architect was able to consistently land shots on a friendly dashing Genji. Ana is the only hero to offer direct healing via accurate round placement, and after being MIA during the GOATs mess, it’s fantastic to see the healers that have impeccable aim be rewarded for it.
There wasn’t as much Baptiste as many figured would be present on the opening weekend; Baptiste can be oppressive when played well, hiding drones behind walls that enable immortality for friendly troops.
It’ll be interesting to see what heroes get banned for next weekend, and how that’ll affect gameplay.
