After being swept by an underwhelming Paris Eternal on Friday, the Charge looked to bounce back against a strong San Francisco Shock. Guangzhou wanted to prove that they can hang with the league, but the match didn’t show an inch of that.
Similar to the rest of the match, the Charge simply couldn’t do anything to stop Matthew “super” DeLisi. The main tank walked all over Guangzhou early, smacking Jin-seo “Shu” Kim in one fight and shattering to essentially cancel Hong-joon “HOTBA” Choi’s graviton surge in another. The Charge would get close in round two, as they gathered up to 96%. Ou “Eileen” Yiliang put in the work as Sombra, flipping the point at the Shock’s 99% and saving the very next team fight. Jay “sinatraa” Won would bring the comeback back down to earth, as his tracking would foreshadow his dominance in later fights.
Photo Courtesy of the Guangzhou Charge
The only map that Guangzhou completed, they would in contrast lack in defense. Shu was caught out of position, giving sinatraa and San Francisco more than seven minutes in the first round to cap point B. Finley “Kyb” Adisi would be effective in stalling the push, as his Brigitte play stunned super in a handful of situations. Hyo-bin “ChoiHyoBin” Choi eventually turned the fight on a self-destruct elimination as D.Va.
As HOTBA moved to a Pharmercy composition on the attack, the Shock struggled to defend. A long first fight burned time, but HOTBA eventually broke through for four eliminations. As Shu demeched ChoiHyoBin and Seung-pyo “Rio” Oh shattered San Francisco, the Charge capped and forced overtime.
The Charge looked great on offense in the extra rounds, but the amount of time left came to haunt them as they only gained one tick. This became apparent in overtime, as sinatraa used a graviton surge to keep Guangzhou off the point. This sealed a 2-0 lead on the Charge and it snowballed from there.
The Charge opened up with terrifying aggression, as a HOTBA rocket elimination on Grant “moth” Espe would lead to another double elimination barrage. The rest of the round was all about San Francisco’s attack, as a sinatraa EMP caught Guangzhou off-guard to cap the first point. The Shock would push under the bridge despite losing Min-ki “Viol2t” Park, as the Charge scattered on high ground not contesting the cart. This summarized the Charge’s defense, as the Shock would complete the full cap.
HOTBA and Jung-woo “Happy” Lee put up a strong offense on Pharah and Soldier, but it wasn’t enough. The pair had some good moments, including HOTBA sharing four eliminations with rio in one fight to cap point B. In the final push in overtime, the Shock would slowly peel the Charge one-by-one to lead to tactical crouches.
The score itself tells the tale of this map for Guangzhou. As San Francisco ran the Pirate Ship composition, sinatraa led the way with four Bastion configuration ultimates in the first round. Comboing with Dong-jun “Rascal” Kim’s Baptiste play, the damage was just too much for the Charge throughout the entire round. Guangzhou’s attack wasn’t half as effective, as they ran with Symmetra to try and gain high ground immediately for two straight fights. Although the Charge gained high ground almost instantly and maintained it in the second fight, their position was poor. Being too far to move the point, the Charge wasted time to try and wrap around the Shock to contest the payload.
Overall, the Guangzhou Charge seemed to not have the awareness to compete with the Shock. Through the first two maps, the Charge had only one elimination on sinatraa. With Stage 1’s statistic of teams losing team fights more often than not when the Zarya falls first, keeping the energy high melted Guangzhou. This miscommunication would also be apparent when Eileen went for ChoiHyoBin after he launched a self-destruct, but ended up being KOed with his EMP. With a talented set of players, the meta still relies on constant teamwork and a good flow of communication. The Charge will have one more shot this stage against San Francisco, as they’ll be their next opponent in Week 2.
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