Vancouver Titans (1-0) vs Guangzhou Charge (1-1)
Nepal: Titans 0-2 Charge
The night started on Village, and began well for the Charge. Specifically, Jung-woo “Happy” Lee showed himself to be one of the most mechanically gifted Widowmakers in the league. We had seen before just how good he can be if left alone and he was able to have a few good pop-off moments on the first map. The Charge also did a good job of punishing Sang-beom “Bumper” Park who was playing a little bit on the aggressive side. Jin-seo “Shu” Kim also showed some bright spots on Ana. Most notably, he was able to keep Jung-woo “Happy” Lee alive through an entire Primal Rage from Bumper which is usually a guaranteed kill on a Widowmaker.
The same continued on Shrine as well. Guangzhou did a great job on punishing the aggressive play from the Titans. Ou “Eileen” Yiliang, particularly on the Sombra, had a good showing with his hacks and EMP usage. Charge would take a surprising 1-0 lead going into the second map.
Hollywood: Titans 1-0 Charge
This map was not the greatest showing from the Charge. They were full held on their attack by the Titans’ defense. Seung-pyo “Rio” Oh embraced the namesake of his team a little too much having a few charges that put him in right at death’s door. Especially in a GOATs composition, Reinhardt is so important that those are mistakes that can’t happen against a team like the Titans.
On defense, it was quick and clean for the Titans as Charge didn’t stand a chance. Some poor positioning from Hong-joon “HOTBA” Choi on D.Va allowed a few right-clicks from Min-soo “SeoMinSoo” Seo high charged Zarya to get a couple picks and the Charge was defeated.
Volskaya: Titans 3-2 Charge
The Charge headed to the icy lands of Volskaya needing to bring some wind back into their sails. They started out with a Quad DPS composition on defense which isn’t something often seen this season. A lot was on the shoulders of their Widowmaker player Happy to click some heads and gets kills. While he was able to get one or two, the Winston GOATs from Vancouver was able to easily deal with all the squishy targets. With the ult disadvantage after the first fight Charge wasn’t able to hold for very long on Point B.
On offense, there were some bright spots for the Charge. They started on Quad DPS again but after seeing Bumper and the rest of Vancouver on Winston GOATs, they went back into spawn and switched over to Reinhardt GOATs, making it much harder for Titans to deal with their composition. They were able to cap Point A with about a 5 minute time bank. Unfortunately, their Point B offense didn’t look nearly as good. They were in the ultimate economy hole for the majority of their push and without a hero Graviton Surge from Happy to keep the rest of the Titans off of the point the Charge might not have even taken the last tick.
On Charge’s second offense they had a few mistakes that cost them heavily. On their very first push, Shu was out of position and was killed instantly. Charge couldn’t recover from that and was held without a tick. Vancouver had an easy time to take the one tick they needed to win the map.
Route 66: Titans 3-4 Charge
Route 66 was a scrappy game from both sides. Each team was able to push it’s payload to the third point. A lot of Guangzhou’s success came from Hotba on the Sombra. He was getting a lot of good value with his EMPs and farming them at a pretty decent rate. Titans didn’t seem to have an answer for it.
Another thing the Titans didn’t have an answer for was the Quad DPS composition that the Charge brought out on their second offensive push. With only a minute in the timebank, Guangzhou was able to push the payload past Point A by whittling down the health bars of the opposing GOATs composition. On defense, Guangzhou played well around Hotba’s Sombra again waiting for the EMP to confirm their hold and take it to a map 5.
Illios: Titans 2-1 Charge
Going into Ruins as the first map, Guangzhou came out on their Triple DPS composition. Unfortunately, Vancouver had a very good read on the situation opting to run the Winston version of GOATs. Guangzhou’s DPS couldn’t get anything done with Bumper diving onto their backline. Vancouver would take the map and take Guangzhou to match point.
Next up was Lighthouse and this time it was the Charge who got the upper hand. They came out on GOATs and they were able to take the fight very quickly to Vancouver. Charged used their ult advantage incredibly well winning fights with only 1 or 2 ultimates at a time. They took a convincing 100-0 victory as we went into the last map.
On Well it didn’t look good for the Charge at the start. They were being completely outclassed by a Brigitte/McCree composition. They were able to barely take the point back with 99% and managed to hold until the last fight. Unfortunately for the Charge, Hyeon-Woo “JJANU” Choi hit a massive 4k D.Va bomb to give Vancouver the victory.
Conclusion
When the Charge plays towards their strengths there are a lot of bright spots. Especially with their Quad/Triple DPS composition, players like Happy and Hotba shine on characters that can pump out a lot of DPS and make big plays.
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