Overwatch League: Washington Justice vs Los Angeles Valiant Recap

Both the Washington Justice and Los Angeles Valiant entered the match on Friday night with only one win to their names. The Justice have struggled mightily in Stage 2 while the Valiant seemed to be trending upwards with a win over Atlanta and a close loss to the Los Angeles Gladiators. With the records so close the match could have gone either way.

Oasis

Photo courtesy of Overwatch

The first match began on gardens with Nikola “Sleepy” Andrews on Moira. making his Washington Justice debut just hours after being acquired from San Francisco. The Justice were able to capitalize on a Corey “Corey” Nigra hack on Koo “Fate” Pan-seung and secured the point first. Brady “Agilities” Girardi countered with a Pharah ultimate to flip the map back to the Valiant’s favor. The teams traded flips and ultimately the Valiant came away with a 100-99 victory.

University was up next and saw both teams running a GOATs composition. The Valiant struck first with the initial capture. After several team fights the Justice flipped the map back their way at 84%. The Justice were able to hold out until they gained 94% but Corey fell and his team followed leading to a 100-94 loss.

Temple of Anubis

The Valiant attacked first with the Justice defending in a classic GOATs lineup. What looked to be a solid opening defense quickly turned as Hong “ArK” Yeonjoon was cut down, and without one of their supports the rest of the team were quickly erased. A drawn out team fight ended in victory for the Valiant on point B as they secured a 3:14 time bank.

The Justice attacked with their own GOATs comp while the Valiant defended with Baptiste in place of Brigitte. Janus broke open point A with an Earthshatter and charge that took out Kyle “KSF” Frandanisa. On Point B Janus’ Earthshatter opened the door for a big D.VA bomb from Kim “Sansem” Hyang-ki allowing the Justice to capture the point with 1:30 left.

In Overtime the Justice attacked first wrapping around the right handside of the map and capturing the first point. They carried that momentum to point B and finished the map despite the small time bank.   

The Valiant attacked but the Justice were able to hold on the back of Janus’ big Earth shatters until the time bank was down to 40 seconds. The Valiant weren’t able to capture point B as the Justice tied the series 1-1.  

King’s Row

Photo courtesy of Overwatch

The Valiant attacked first on King’s Row they were able to make short work of the first point and started the cart. The Justice showed little resistance on point B allowing the Justice to push for point C with more than 4 minutes left. The Valiant would only need a bit more than a minute finishing with 3:05 left in the time bank.

The Justice began their attack they were able to capture point A just as quickly as the Valiant did during their attack. Things went much worse as Washington attempted to capture point B nearly allowing their five minute plus time bank to expire. With little time remaining to capture point C the Justice lost in overtime.

Rialto

The Valiant attacked quickly navigating to a quick first point capture. The Justice weren’t able to find an answer for the Valiant and were rolled over as they quickly captured point B and C.

The Justice came out looking noticeably slower than the Valiant did during their push. While the Valiant completed the map in 3:46 the Justice were full held for three minutes. The map and match went to the Valiant as the Justice once again lost 3-1.

Conclusion

Courtesy of the Overwatch League

This was another rough 3-1 loss made even more difficult to stomach by how good the Justice looked on Temple of Anubis. The player of the game goes to Janus, he put his team in position to win on Oasis and Anubis with big Earthshatters. He wasn’t as dominate in the final two matches but gave fans something to look forward to. With Sleepy having little to no time to get to playing with the team this week is a bit of a wash, next week will be the real test for this new line up.

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