London Spitfire (0-2) vs Paris Eternal (1-0)

No one really expected London to be 0-2 at the end of the first week. Despite London’s formidable prowess on quad DPS, Paris were ready for this match, showing adaptability within the GOATs composition and taking apart London’s strategy.

Ilios London 0-2 Paris

During the first round on Ilios, London got taken apart by Soon’s Mccree, only taking back the map once. They were then systematically taken apart by Paris’s GOATs.

With matching GOATs compositions, Paris truly showed the quality of their tank gameplay by picking players off. This meant London never were able to properly contest the point. With a huge shatter from Benbest, London lost the second round 0-100 and lost the map 0-2.

King’s Row London 2-1 Paris

Despite being a map on which GOATs is very prevalent, Paris did not win this one. London substituted Guard in, replacing birdring. Arguably, Guard’s Sombra won London this map.

On defense, London held strong up until the last minute with Guard building an EMP after almost every team fight. Due to the nature of GOATs, almost every EMP hit 5 or 6 people. Paris eventually capped out by picking Guard off in the beginning of the teamfight. London eventually held them at point B by yet another EMP.

On attack, a similar story was told with Guard hacking Finnsi, disabling D.Va’s abilities and allowing London to pick off the team systematically. London made quick work of the streets phase and took the map with a chained earthshatter followed by graviton surge. They won the map 1-0.

Volskaya London 2-3 Paris

London started out on attack with a quad DPS composition, but were countered by Paris’s GOATs composition with Moira. They eventually capped out point A by using their slew of DPS ultimates, including a 4-man barrage from Profit that followed an EMP from Fury. However, they didn’t manage to snowball since they switched to GOATs on point B and had no ultimates. After several failed team fights, they capitalized on Paris playing too aggressively and finally managed to cap point B in overtime.

Paris opted for GOATs over quad DPS on attack, but London responded in kind with dive GOATs, playing Gesture on Winston instead of Reinhardt. This would turn out to be to their demise as Paris capped out point A by picking off Gesture. As a result, Paris had enough ultimates to push forward and snowball point B, capping out their attack round with over 4 minutes remaining.

Paris easily capped out their third round on Volskaya and London lost the map 2-3.

Route 66 London 0-3 Paris

Image Courtest of Team Liquid

London put Guard back over birdring to run their Sombra GOATs composition once again, but it would show that Paris was now prepared to deal with Guard’s Sombra. London lost point A because Guard EMP’ed a second too late after SoOn had used his graviton surge. This continued toward the end of Route 66 – even though London seemed to be dominating with Guard’s EMP, the last EMP didn’t hit Hyp in Transcendence, giving the team enough healing to pick of Guard and Bdosin. London got staggered for the rest of point C and Paris capped out in overtime.

On attack, it was clearly shown that Guard’s strategies were no longer going to be effective. With Paris paying close attention to disable Guard, London were full held on point A

With London on attack, Nico killed Guard right at the start, forcing london back into spawn. Even though they eventually won one team fight to push point A, Paris were able to recontest and won by using more ultimates. London lost the map 0-3.

Conclusion

Overall, Paris definitely showed their ability on GOATs and proved that the Europeans do play GOATs the best. Further to that, although Guard showed how to take apart GOATs with Sombra, Paris proved their ability to adapt and remove London’s win condition. This allowed them to win the match and to the surprise of many, London is now 0-2 at the end of the first week of Season 2.

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