Written by Colin ‘Howl’ Kenitz (01.28.2018)

[ +2 ] NYXL (5 – 1:18 – 7 – 1) [ -1 ] Seoul Dynasty (5 – 1: 19 – 5 – 1) [ -1 ] London Spitfire (5 – 1: 18 – 8 – 0) [=] LA Valiant (4 – 2: 16 -8 – 2) [=] Houston Outlaws (4 – 2: 21 – 4 – 0) [ +1 ] Philadelphia Fusion (4 – 2: 13 – 14 – 1) [ -1 ] LA Gladiators (2 – 4: 9 – 17 – 0) [ +2 ] Boston Uprising (3 – 3: 13 – 14 – 0) [ -1 ] Dallas Fuel (1- 5: 7 – 15 – 3) [ -1 ] SF Shock (2 – 4: 9 – 14 – 2) [=] Florida Mayhem (1 – 5: 6 – 18 – 0) [=] Shanghai Dragons (0 – 6: 4 – 21 – 0)

Week three of OWL was without a doubt my favorite so far. It was a week for me that was going to tell a lot of stories for how stage one is going to shape up. The Dallas Fuel finally had an easier week and a chance to show us if they really do belong toward the bottom of our power rankings. We were all treated with our first full Korean roster match up between the Seoul Dynasty and NYXL. If you looked ahead to this schedule last week, you would have been as excited as me, but no one could have predicted how exciting this week’s matches ended up being.

1. Dallas Fuel Begin to Cast their Form

At this point I’m getting a little sick of this topic, but I feel it’s crucial to at least touch on Dallas’ shortcomings thus far. Overall, I would say that Dallas had a really impressive performance over the San Francisco Shock. This was a really telling match for the Fuel, and the results, a 3 – 0, construct a stark dividing line between the middle of the pack teams and the lowest ranking teams. Despite Shock’s upset over the Boston Uprising last week, this week’s results really leveled them back to where we thought they should be on this playing field.

I say this because the Shock’s win over the Uprising was not as convincing as Boston’s win over the Fuel on day 4 this week. San Francisco’s win over Boston could have been anyone’s game, but Boston’s win over the Fuel yesterday was a match that simply showed higher level play. Although it was a back and forth 3 – 2, strategies were executed from both sides much more clinically, and Boston’s dominant 2 – 0 on Li-Jang tower followed up a strong showing on Ilios (2 – 1) demonstrating a clear understanding of what needs to be done from each player.

That being said, Dallas look to be finding their footing. Mickey expressed in his post game interview that he really disliked their schedule this week, playing the last match late Friday night and then playing the first match the next morning; a reasonable complaint as it would really restrict prep and rest time, especially since matches begins so much earlier on Saturdays (11AM PST, as compared to 4PM PST on Friday). KyKy, their head coach, also addressed the reason we haven’t been seeing Harryhook play, being that he’s been sick. Despite these disadvantages, I think that the Fuel are beginning to find their style as a team. They continue to surprise us with weird team compositions, and to my surprise, have done a fantastic job of integrating Seagull into their team. Hastr0, their owner, also announced that they’re working on signing AKM this week, the former DPS of Rogue. The Fuel have had a rough start, and by no means are they looking like a strong contender for play offs yet, but we may very well see that change in stages to come.

2. Reverse Sweeps, Upsets, and more Upsets.

One of the best matches slated in this week was the LA Valiant versus their rival city team, the LA Gladiators. While neither of these teams are vying for number one right now, they’re extremely close in the rankings, which makes for an interesting match. And did it deliver. The Gladiators stormed out of the gates, completely destroying their counterparts on both Eichenwalde and Horizon: Lunar Colony. However, anything past half time was a different story.

The two LA teams played a nail bitingly-close Ilios, in which the Valiant pulled it out 2 – 1 with point three, Lighthouse, going to 99% for both sides. The match began on ruins, on which Soon’s Widowmaker seemed unstoppable. Try as he might, iRemix repeatedly failed his dives as Winston, meanwhile Asher’s Widow hardly made any picks all game. This resulted in a 5v4 advantaged fight on point for the Valiant. The difference maker here wasn’t just numbers, though, but the fact that Silkthread was on tracer for the Valiant while the Gladiators were running triple tank with Hydration on the Roadhog. Gladiators ran into a wall here, because without the widow making picks, they have no true DPS characters, so Silkthread was just pumping bullets into these tanks, acting as a battery for his ultimate, and giving Valiant the advantage.

Point two was turned about with Gladiators coming out on top simply through outplaying the Valiant, but also due to fantastic patience and management of their ultimate economy, knowing when to give and when to take. On Lighthouse the Valiant managed to close out the match despite Bischu having really good ultimate usage and overall playing exactly where his team needed him. iRemix found himself many early deaths due to being discorded, putting his team in several situations of numbers or resurrect disadvantage.

Ultimately, every game of this series was close. In the end it took the extreme poise of the LA Valiant to close out the series. Envy’s Roadhog looked amazing on Junkertown, which stymied the Gladiator’s momentum of what looked to be a solid attack round. The Valiant’s players seemed to ramp up as the match went on, and after half time they seemed to have figured out the slight edge they needed over the Gladiators. The credit for this has to go to the players really stepping up, but also to the Valiant’s coaching staff making second half adaptations.

And all of that was just day 1 of the week. On day two we were all surprised to not only Boston upsetting the London Spitfire, but subsequently to the Philadelphia Fusion upsetting NYXL. Both matches were really close 3 – 2s, however most notably both o f them ended up in Li-Jang maps that went 2 – 0 for the tie-breaker. Neither case was particularly surprising, though, and here’s why.

The Spitfire have shown that their performance makes major lapses on control maps. Their overall record is 1 – 3 (3 – 6) on Oasis, two of which were 0 – 2, and 1 – 1 (3- 2) on Ilios. There are myriad reasons this could be, and there’s been a lot of speculation on London dropping these maps in matches against teams they otherwise dominate. I have my own theories as to why this is, but the point is is that London hasn’t looked good on control thus far, and so it’s not surprising they’d be less practiced on Li-Jang than the standard control maps in the current pool.

As for New York my prior statement might seem a little off. Overall NYXL have looked amazing on control maps, currently famed for being the only maps they bring Pine into. Their overall record on Ilios is 3 – 0 (6 – 1) and 3 – 0 (6 – 1) on Oasis. This week they even had to play Ilios versus the Fusion and Oasis versus the Dynasty and they still won both. So, how did they lose so badly on Li-Jang Tower? This was the first time New York has had to play a tie-breaker match at all. Meanwhile, Philly had already played 2 games on Li-Jang, making this their third. While Philly did lose this map to the gladiators, they did look amazing on it against Houston in their first match of the season. They have pretty good flexibility within their roster for this map particularly due to the nature of wanting to run Roadhog and Zarya. For me then, it wasn’t surprising that NYXL looked a little lost here while Philly looked strong. Despite the upset, this loss may have given them a slight edge in experience on Li-Jang, which they managed to clutch out against Seoul the next day.

3. Seoul Versus NYXL: The Apex Final that Wasn’t to be.

The bit of history that many don’t know, but need to know, going into this match is that New York’s roster is primarily the old Luxury Watch Blue roster that participated in the Apex tournament in South Korea, seasons 1 through 3. LWB was a roster that was always capable of making the finals but never did. Admittedly after Apex season 1 they were off to a slow start. They made it through the second group stage but fell to BK stars, but despite this their promise was clear. In season 2 they made a run all the way to third place, losing to Run Away 3 – 2 in the semi finals but beating Meta Athena in the third place match.

In Apex season 3 LWB found themselves in the group of death in the second group stage. Their group consisted of a newly refurbished KongDoo Panthera, having Birdring moving over from their sister team Uncia, and adding Void, an amazing D.Va player to the roster. The other team that placed above them in their group was none other than Lunatic Hai, the former core of the Seoul Dynasty roster. These two teams in their group would go on to face one another in the final match with Lunatic Hai going on to win the tournament. Looking at LWB’s accolades on paper looked unimpressive, but their reputation as a top tier roster was no secret. When New York picked up the entire LWB roster everyone was excited they were confirmed for OWL, but it was disappointing that they decided to drop out of Apex season 4. In hindsight, it looks like everything paid off because I think they look like the strongest team all around in the OWL right now.

The match against Seoul was highly anticipated, and honestly, either way this match went the result wouldn’t have been surprising. When the level of play is as high as this, though, that doesn’t matter. It was truly a back and forth with these teams trading blows in some of the most exciting games we’ve seen in Overwatch. Particularly, the Dynasty’s comeback with a massive time bank disadvantage on Horizon: Lunar Colony is an instant classic. New York punched back on Oasis, showing their dominance on control maps once again, but there’s one thing that’s important to note about their schedule this week. In the previous two weeks New York exclusively had to practice Ilios or Oasis, however this week they played one match on each. Prepping for twice as many maps couldn’t have been easy, however they pulled it off, looking impressive despite, to many’s disappointment, not fielding Pine for this match.

Despite NYXL’s defense looking tight and stopping Seoul before second point of Junkertown, the Dynasty had an even more impressive rebuttal, not even allowing New York to take first point which brought the match to a tie-breaker on Li-Jang tower. Seoul have looked really strong overall on control maps, however, as I pointed out earlier, they had no stage experience on Li-Jang before this game. In an extremely close match between the two, I really think NYXL’s experience the previous day against the Fusion gave them the edge they needed to pull out this neck and neck victory, once again showing their chops on control maps. New York got a chance at a team that, on paper, has all the accolades and reputation. With this win they not only showed they can run with the best, but edge out as my number one ranked team in the OWL this week.

Player of the week

Kim ‘Libero’ Hey-Sung – Libero came to this team as an addition from Meta Athena. They were a team that always had a creative approach to the game, innovating strategies, but never really had a solid all around roster. Libero was consistently a stand out player on this roster who seemed to be able to play any character or any role. Although he looked lack luster in the preseason on support while substituting for Jjonak, he’s earned himself a starting position on this top tier roster. His projectile characters are top tier, and this jack of all trades, master of none, is certainly more often better than one.

This was a long one! Tune in next Sunday for a summary of week 4’s OWL matches. Look out for other content on OWL in the future, or check my archive of past articles.

Twitter: @Howl_CK