The Charge were looking to make a big comeback against a team that many would consider highly capable. With the odds stacked against them and a 23 map loss streak to try to overcome, Guangzhou needed to play their best overwatch in a long time. While the Charge ended up dropping the series in the final moments, they finally took some maps, looked alive again and proved they are by no means the bottom team in the league.
Courtesy of: Gamespot
On MEKA Base the Charge started with an extremely unexpected Hero, Yiliang “Eileen” Ou on Doomfist, which put Jungwoo “Happy” Lee on Brigitte and Hongjun “HOTBA” Choi on Zarya, forfeiting the D.Va altogether. The Spark were similarly unprepared for this strategy, and Guangzhou took the first cap. They lost the point near the end for a little while, but big ult plays from the team allowed them to secure the round with relative ease.
On Downtown, Hangzhou came in far more wary of the Doomfist play. As a result, GZ lost the chance to capture the first point and lost Eileen early. However, they kept the Doomfist strategy, retook the point after losing 30% and solidly held the point for the rest of the round. Only one map into the game the Charge had broken their near record-breaking map loss streak.
On defense, Guangzhou decided to run a Winston/Ana 3-3, but more importantly, they kept Eileen in, not switching to Finley “Kyb” Adisi like usual. The Charge initially looked strong, but took a lot of damage and gave up first point in 1:30. On Point B a snowball seemed likely, but they finally got a pick onto Qiulin “Guxue” Xu and halted the push. Hangzhou tried again, and a huge 3k shatter/bomb combo between Guxue and Sungwook “Ria” Park opened up Point B with over 4 minutes in the bank.
The Charge’s offense was a rather unfortunate spectacle to witness. They had virtually no success for the entire map, repeatedly having the team get isolated and dismantled. Seungpyo “Rio” Oh managed to backcap long enough to get a tick in overtime, but that was the only progress Guangzhou made all map.
Image Courtesy of Blizzard Entertainment
Beginning on the defensive, Guangzhou started with solid positioning on A. They held for quite some time, but finally the Charge were forced to retreat from A when Hangzhou used a Graviton to secure a positional advantage on point. The Charge gave up half of B, but around one of the corners set up a solid defensive position and knocked off mostly all the Spark’s time bank. Losing Rio right at the end, things looked rough for the Charge and it seemed certain that they would need to relinquish B as well. Yet miraculously they weathered the storm of ults from Hangzhou and bolstered their defenses inches from the second goal. A huge Rio shatter sealed the end of Spark’s offense with only 1 point to their name.
On the offense Eileen once again ran the doomfist, and an early pick by him onto Guxue opened up Point A with a good time bank. The Charge kept their momentum up all map, securing B in quick fashion and providing high focus fire onto Guxue in particular. Guangzhou once again ended up one map up in the series.
On their offense on Gibraltar, a map the Charge have been notoriously poor on, GZ ran a Winston 3-3 composition. A rough series of attacks and weird ult usages prevented any real progress for most of the map, but they finally took Point A in overtime. This pattern continued on B, but this time a well placed Reinhardt charge from Guxue onto Jungyeon “Chara” Kim let the Spark come in and defend the payload, preventing a second point.
The defensive round was very one-sided, but not in the way that benefited the Charge. An early pick onto Rio broke things down for the Charge, and a well placed Grav pulled Guangzhou off the payload not once, but two times right before they could set up a potentially winning defense. Hangzhou quickly ran the map and brought the match to a fifth map.
Courtesy of Blizzard Entertainment
On the Garden phase of the map, the Charge saw the Spark running a bunker comp and thus switched to a triple dps composition. Yet as a result of the swap it gave Hangzhou time to set up first and take the percentage early. The bunker comp gave the Charge a rough time and they could never truly set up a good attack. The round ended 100-0 for the Spark.
On University, bringing out the Doomfist again, Eileen immediately secured a kill on Huichang “BeBe” Yoon. This opened up the initial cap for the Charge this time around. Guangzhou held most of the map, but gave up the point once most of the team died. They came close to retaking several times, but in the end, could not secure a flip of the point, and thus dropped the series in a very close fashion.
A Guangzhou Charge win tonight would’ve been a sight for sore eyes for sure, but one cannot help but notice how strong this team looked compared to before. They were at their best running the unique strategy of Eileen on Doomfist, and considering they found so much success with it on maps three and five, it shows this was much more than a means to catch the Spark off guard. By finding one niche strategy, Guangzhou hopefully has realized how much they can do off meta when they find combos that other teams don’t think to try. Once they get even more roster depth in the future hopefully this will improve even more.
You can ‘Like’ The Game Haus on Facebook and ‘Follow’ us on Twitter for more sports and esports articles
For more from Ethan make sure to follow him on Twitter!!
“From Our Haus to Yours”
Players must be 21 years of age or older or reach the minimum age for gambling in their respective state and located in jurisdictions where online gambling is legal. Please play responsibly. Bet with your head, not over it. If you or someone you know has a gambling problem, and wants help, call or visit: (a) the Council on Compulsive Gambling of New Jersey at 1-800-Gambler or www.800gambler.org; or (b) Gamblers Anonymous at 855-2-CALL-GA or www.gamblersanonymous.org.
