The Dallas Fuel have a fresh look from last season, picking up their missing links. The starting roster for their first game of the season had Zachary “ZachaREEE” Lombardo, Richard “rCk” Kanerva and Wonsik “Closer” Jung debuting in OWL.
San Francisco dominated this series and looked much better than Dallas on the meta composition. Positioning, a lack of direction and focus fire plagued this team all series. Dallas has all of the parts they need to succeed this season, now they need direction. Perhaps Dallas isn’t an amazing GOATS team and might be better trying to counter the meta? Regardless, San Francisco dominated this series and won 4-0, making it look easy.
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Looking to put a smile on everyone’s face, Effect rolled out on his signature Tracer. Dong-jun “Rascal” Kim’s Pharah and Min-ho “Architect” Park’s Widowmaker dominated early.. Minseok “OGE” Son’s Winston play impressed everyone winning them a team fight. However the Shock swapped to a GOATS composition and overwhelmed Dallas on map one.
Dallas started to reluctantly play the full GOATs composition and roll out with a Tracer, Sombra and a Winston for OGE. The second map saw the Shock going back to spawn just to swap back to the 3-3 composition. GOATS was out and Dallas started with an ultimate disadvantage. Dallas struggled to get a clean teamfight and lost the matchup. Shock won Nepal 2-0
Courtesy of Blizzard Entertainment
The pressure was on for Dallas as Dylan “aKm” Bignet came in for rCk on Kings Row. Sombra GOATS was out for the Fuel on Defense, but Hyo-bin “ChoiHyoBin” Choi’s Hammond lead to an early capture. The Sombra stopped the bleeding for Dallas and they found their footing for a short time.
The Ana pick from Architect proved to be difficult for the Fuel to deal with. The nanoboosts held the Fuel for several minutes until OGE opened up with a three man earthshatter. San Francisco seemed dominating on the GOATS composition with Jay “Sinatraa” Won spawncamping as Zarya and building up Graviton Surges much faster than his counterpart. The Dallas Fuel were held on the second point of Kings Row and Shock went up 2-0.
Courtesy: Blizzard Entertainment
Dallas started on defense with an anti-dive composition. San Francisco played slow and worked the Dallas Fuel apart on point one. With an ultimate bank of EMP and Dragonblade Dallas was quickly overwhelmed on point two defense. The Shock countered with several minutes to spare.
OGE opened up their attack with a pick onto the enemy Winston. ZachaREEE quickly built an EMP to capture point one, running an old school Tracer and Sombra dive. Point two was GOATS time, both teams sporting the meta picks and the Shock looked more comfortable. After a hard fought attack, OGE stepped up making two opening kills and pushed Dallas to an overtime capture.
San Francisco ran a sneaky Symmetra composition to quickly teleport to the point and capture it before Dallas could react. The San Francisco Shock won the game and subsequently the series.
Courtesy of Blizzard Entertainment
Effect was taken out of the roster for aKm on the last map of the series. Rialto is a GOATS map and San Francisco looked dominant. Dallas halted the Shock at the end of point two where they found their footing and dished out some payback. rCk was hungry and ate one of Sinatraa’s Graviton surges. Dallas was able to hold San Francisco back until one minute was left in the timebank.
The Frenchman aKm looked comfortable on the Zarya, but it was not enough. San Francisco held on the first choke of Rialto for several minutes, however rCk opened up the fight with a D.Va bomb kill onto the enemy Zenyatta. OGE managed to land an earthshatter, but the follow up was not there. San Francisco held the Fuel on second point and won the series 4-0.
The Dallas Fuel looked like a passive GOATS team, where aggression dominates. Not only that but the positioning for the Fuel lead to many opening picks for the Shock. Dallas was outclassed on the GOATS composition, so experimenting may be necessary. If Dallas wants to improve on GOATS, they will need to work on positioning and aggression.
OGE tried too hard to put the team on his back, this lead to him being out of position and out of sync with his team. This meta is all about team play and carrying, if the Fuel can understand and work on that, they could become a dominant team in the League.
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Featured image courtesy of Blizzard Entertainment
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