Twilight: Image Courtesy of the Overwatch League
This match promised to be close after the Titans played some tough maps against the Houston Outlaws last week. However for the most part, they looked completely dominant here. Lee “Twilight” Joo-seok and Kim “Haksal” Hyo-jong had a great day for the Titans. With this win Vancouver has now equalled Boston’s own record for most consecutive match wins in the league and what a statement of a game it was.
The first round of Lijiang took place on Night Market and the Vancouver Titans began on Reinhardt GOATS. The first team fight was all over the place with Vancouver seemingly thrown for a loop by Boston’s DPS heavy composition. It was the Uprising who took the first 56% on the point. They cycled their ultimates impressively early on this map, and were showing their best early on in this match. However as per usual in this meta, Vancouver were able to retake the point because of their superior compositional sustain.
The Titans were able to capture 99% of the point before a clutch Pharah Barrage by Jeffrey “Blasé” Tsang flipped it back in favor of Boston. However again, it was the superior composition that came out on top with Vancouver slamming their tanks into Boston to take back control and win Night Market.
Courtesy of Blizzard Entertainment
The second stage of Lijiang in this series was Control Center. Boston chose to play a DPS heavy composition again with a Junkrat. The Titans played their favorite 3-3 composition with Ana instead of Zenyatta. This stage was quite back and forth. Choi “JJANU” Hyeon-woo boosted onto the high ground to eliminate the Junkrat of Boston, which gave Vancouver the first percentage on the point. This got under the skin of Blasé, who immediately swapped to his signature Doomfist.
Another three or four fights later, Boston and Vancouver found themselves in a scrappy fight with 60% percentage taken by both teams. It was Twilight who staved off Blasé’s Doomfist and Kelsey “Colourhex” Birse on Tracer by himself whilst healing his team, who helped Titans’ control the point. Although this map was close, the Titans ended up taking it 2-0.
The Titans began on defense here playing Winston Ana GOATS. Boston forced the Titans back into the small rooms surrounding the first point early with their long range poke compositions. However, the sustain coming from the Ana healing combined with Winston’s Primal Rage allowed the Titans to cling onto the point. Again and again Boston poured damage into Vancouver only to have it healed by Twilight or mitigated by JJANU’s Defence Matrix.
It was in overtime that Boston managed to finally dislodge the Titans and take Point A. Both teams played GOATS on the second point. Boston opted for the Sombra instead of D.Va and thus Vancouver opted to play Ana to exploit this. With a superior composition, Vancouver again clung to the point with their great sustainability. It took both an EMP and Graviton Surge to complete the map for Boston and it came in overtime again.
Courtesy of Overwatch
On attack the Titans played their Goats composition but with a Symmetra. This allowed them easy access to the high ground where Boston’s Bunker composition was set up. The Titans failed with this composition and staggered themselves inside the carpark area of first point thinking they could turn the fight around.
The Titans then switched to Reinhardt GOATS. An extended fight on the point ended with the Titans taking it in overtime. They had no business winning this fight, no defense this season looked more certain than this one from Boston. However the Titans are the champions for a reason, and they clutched it here. They then snowballed onto second point and managed to finish the entire map with time left over.
Only the Titans finished with time left in the timebank and thus they only had to take one tick of the point to win Paris. Their attack looked much cleaner this time and to end the map Haksal mopped up with a lighting quick Dragonblade. With that the Vancouver Titans went up two maps to zero.
No surprises here, Boston began this map on Sombra GOATS and Vancouver on Ana GOATS. Boston took the first point after a minute or so. However they had to burn both their EMP and Graviton Surge just to get the solo kill on Haksal’s Brigitte.
Boston got through street phase relatively easily and continued on toward the third point with only an EMP being used. This is where Boston were halted. Not a single EMP for the rest of that round hit Twilight who was building Transcendences very quickly. In a scrappy overtime fight, Park “Bumper” Sang-beom hit a clutch four player Earthshatter on his way back from spawn, to finish Boston’s attack round for good.
Image Courtesy of Blizzard Entertainment
There were no changes in compositions for either team for this round. Boston managed to repel the attacking team for the first two big fights and they looked really solid. However it was again Bumper who managed an early Charge pin onto the opposing Reinhardt which opened the flood gates for Vancouver.
Although Boston mounted a decent defense during the second phase of Kings Row, they used all of their Ultimates trying to cling onto the second checkpoint. This spelled death for them, with the Titans then having a larger Ultimate bank to roll into the final checkpoint and take the map.
The Titans felt very confident heading into this match, substituting Twilight out for Kim “Rapel” Jun-geun. Boston steamrolled through first point on attack with only one and a half fights being played out. Their Bastion Pirate Ship composition looked very well oiled and they went into the third point of Gibraltar with 5:37 on the clock. Rapel looked as if he was slow to adapt as he had a couple of costly late Transcendences. Rapel then switched to Ana on the final point. Despite some stalling toward the end, Boston managed to record the third fastest Gibraltar attack time in OWL history.
The Vancouver Titans were personally offended by their own lapse in dominance and they themselves completed the map with a similar timebank. The Titans took the first point with the rare Genji Nanonblade, which scored Haksal four kills. The Uprising had some late staggers and compositional swaps during the second phase which allowed the Titans to take Hangar phase with only one team fight won. Rapel looked somewhat settled on stage by then which helped the Titans to cap their attack round with a very fast time.
Image courtesy of Blizzard Entertainment.
On the Titans’ second attack they looked much more dominant. They were not surprised to find a Torbjorn Bunker composition on defense this time around. Vancouver pushed the payload all the way to between second and third point before they were finally slain. They then were able to spawn camp Boston in a somewhat embarrassing way to seal the deal and take the 4-0 match win. After Vancouver’s poor first defense, this map was as one-sided as they come.
The Titans were in complete control during this match. Every single player on this team played phenomenally and at times helped them to clutch map wins. In particular Twilight played superbly and was justifiably awarded the Player of the Match accolade for his performance. There were concerns heading into this stage that Vancouver may have become predictable with their composition and play style. However they were experimenting a little bit during this set and that should be encouraging to see. Vancouver look set to again go 7-0 this stage.
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