The first map of the match was Village, and Paris rolled out with a Mei/GOATs composition to start things off. Terence “SoOn” Tarlier was able to flex his DPS muscles on the Mei pick and showed just how deadly it can be. SoOn put up wall after wall to split up the Gladiators as they tried to take the point. The Gladiators played right into the hands of Paris’ composition not making any switches of their own. Paris was able to take a rather easy 100-0 first round.
Things got much closer on Shrine. Paris seemed to have a lot of advantages when it came to their ultimate economy. Unfortunately, Overwatch is a game of inches and there were some times where Paris weren’t using their ults to gain the most value. SoOn specifically on Zarya had really unfortunate Graviton Surge eaten in a critical moment. This lead to Paris falling into the ultimate economy hole which they could not recover from. Gladiators took the map 100-99.
On Sanctum, Paris had the game in their hands but let it slip through their fingers. They seemed to have the Gladiators at their mercy in the first few fights. However, in the last few fights of the map, Chang-hoon “rOar” Gye had a monster performance on Winston getting many clutch environmental kills to secure his team the reverse sweep. Specifically in the last fight, Damien “HyP” Souville was using Transcendence to save his team but rOar booped him into the sanctum pit. The match ended with another 100-99 score for the Gladiators and they took a 1-0 lead.
Paris’ weaker map type is usually control, so going into Numbani Paris didn’t look very worried about being down 1-0. Paris was on another level when it came to their GOATs composition. Something that had been lacking in their previous map was the use of ultimate combos and here on Numbani it looked much better. Finnbjörn “Finnsi” Jónasson and Harrison “Kruise” Pond looked very good when executing their timings to get kills.
On their first offense, Paris played a crisp and clean composition that was executed perfectly. They used Nicolas “NiCOgdh” Moret as bait on Widowmaker, letting the rest of his team pick off the rest of Gladiators while the enemy Widowmaker was trying to fight him. Paris was able to roll over the Gladiators on their first offense with great coordination and with a 5 minute time bank.
Image Courtesy of tentonhammer.com
Their second offense looked like it was going to be a repeat of the first one. With Gladiators being held to only 3 points all Paris needed was a single tick to win the map and take a 2-1 lead. The start looked very good as Paris flexed their diversity a little bit bringing out a triple DPS composition that seemed to catch the Gladiators off guard. Paris would take Point A with 3 minutes to spare only needing that one tick on Point B to give them the map win. Unfortunately for Paris, a few errors followed in the next three minutes. A lot of ultimates weren’t hitting paydirt in situations that they should’ve been. For instance, SoOn had issues with his Graviton Surges throughout the series and the two that he used in the last three minutes hit none of the Gladiators or were eaten by the enemy Defense Matrix. Paris earned a draw and it was left to a deciding map 4 on Dorado.
This map was the one that made Paris fans sweat the most. Paris’ defense was hit or miss with SoOn again not shining the brightest on the Zarya pick. Graviton Surges were being thrown into the enemy Defense Matrix quite often hindering Paris’ chances of being able to take a full team fight. If it wasn’t for the stall heroics of HyP coming out on the Tracer and cleaning everyone up Paris was able to hold Gladiators before they could win the map setting the win condition for Paris.
Paris’ offense looked much better than their defense. This was partly due to the Gladiators giving them massive amounts of space. In the time that it took Paris to capture the second point, Gladiators only took two fights. In a GOATs vs GOATs matchup, you want to take as many fights as possible to maximize the amount of time you take off of the clock. This led to Paris capping the second point with another 5-minute timebank. The glaring issues with SoOn’s Zarya play continued to show in the last push. SoOn would die early in fights and would not use his Graviton Surges in good spots, or the enemy D.Va would eat them. Luckily for Paris, they had a big enough timebank and in the end, Finnsi hit some very clutch Self Destructs to take them to the golden box of victory. Paris would win the series 2-1 but it sure was close.
Paris did take this series and passed one of the harder tests they are going to have this season. It didn’t come without its share of issues. When Paris looks good on GOATs they look like one of the best but there are still some inconsistencies with their play. SoOn will need to find his groove again on Zarya when they face the Atlanta Reign next week.
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