The Dallas Fuel came off of a rough sweep at the hands of the Vancouver Titans just two days ago, and needed to prove what they were made of today against the Seoul Dynasty. Unfortunately, despite being the favored team, the only thing waiting for them was another 4-0 as they were trampled by Seoul.
Starting out on Control Center, Seoul ran the same Doomfist strat that Guangzhou did last night and got first control of the point. They proceeded to body Dallas all round and prevented them from securing percentage until overtime. Dallas finally gained control of the objective and took it to 99% themselves, but a double kill off of Seoul main tank Minseo “Marve1” Hwang secured the round for the Dynasty
In Downtown, the Fuel came in strong and punished Marve1, but died before they could capture the point. The rest of the round went similar to the first, except the Fuel did not manage to flip at any point, giving the Dynasty an easy series lead.
Image Courtesy of Blizzard Entertainment
On defense, an early loss of Minseok “OGE” Son opened up Point A rather quickly. Dallas were forced back to B, but prevented a snowball off some clever ult usage and good positioning especially from Benjamin “uNKOE” Chevasson. Nevertheless, Point B fell with 2:30 in the bank for Seoul.
On offense, it seemed unlikely that Dallas would even get a single tick given how well the Dynasty were playing. Yet in what seemed to be a miracle push and Lucas “NotE” Meissner living longer than he should have, the Fuel finally took A in overtime. Dallas were held up on B as well but still completed the map from slow methodical pushes with less time in their bank.
On the second offense, the Fuel were unable to get anything done. Zachary “ZachaREEE” Lombardo dying first nearly every fight, as he had most of the series thus far, prevented any progress on the point. Meanwhile, in very little time of their own, Seoul came in and secured the objective with relative ease, putting Dallas down by another map.
Dallas put up a strong initial defense on this map, with NotE having a huge bomb set up by Wonsik “Closer” Jung that stopped Seoul’s best push. Dallas did lose the point in the end, but had a very strong defense halfway through B. They held this point for several minutes, and effectively prevented the Dynasty from getting through the doors on Eichenwalde.
The Fuel offensive push looked the strongest here thus far, as an initial pickoff onto Jinmo “Tobi” Yang opened up the payload section very quickly. Dallas dominated most of their push, but Seoul stopped them only 2 meters from the point. With even more time to burn through, Seoul set up a miracle defense, and boop-god Tobi came back scoring 8 environmental kills in a single map. Off of this insane play and to the Fuel’s dismay, Seoul held and took the match.
Image courtesy of Blizzard Entertainment.
On their Gibraltar defense, Dallas began with an off-kilter strategy banking on preventing the payload’s movement while hiding behind Zach’s Mei wall. While humorous in theory, the strategy failed after a bit of time, and Dallas had to give up both A and B quickly after needing composition swaps. They held off a lot more time on C, but Seoul was able to take the round with time still in the bank.
Dallas’ offense was a thing of legend, as they plowed through the entire map in a new league record time. They finished of Graving the whole Dynasty in spawn just to prevent any recontest. With well over four minutes in the bank things were looking good for the Fuel.
On their second defense, five members of the Dallas Fuel were hit by big anti-nade from Sangbeom “Munchkin” Byun. This would set the tone for the rest of the round, as the Fuel were constantly pushed back by the Dynasty until nearly the end of C in overtime. While Seoul were pushed off the cart before getting the sixth point, it was an impressive feat to get that far. On Dallas’ attack, despite having far more time, they were held up more often and a huge bomb from Minhyuk “Michelle” Choi ended the series and gave the Dynasty a full sweep.
Dallas should be a bit worried given these two losses. While many analysts were placing them in the top 5 teams, this week’s showing casts many doubts on that belief. With Dallas’ homecoming weekend next week and two lower-ranked teams to fight against, they shouldn’t be too worried about picking up more wins this stage. However, considering the mistakes that ZachaREEE and OGE were making today and the history of choking that this team has, they still definitely need to work on bolstering their defenses and solidifying positioning.
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