Does home field advantage really mean something to these teams? If it does, then the Shock better decide on a home venue fast and play as many games there as possible. This was SO much better than the beating that was the LA leg of the cup. It’s also the first time the Shock have actually beaten their bitter rivals from down south. And oh boy, was this game different from past encounters between these teams.

The Shock, a team known for their inconsistency, were consistent.

Let that sink in for a second.

This match should serve as a warning for teams going into next season. When the Shock are working properly they can be extremely scary. The Shock showcased excellent restraint and used the Valiant’s aggressive dives to their advantage, cutting Fate off from the rest of his team and executing ult combos and strategies with ease. And all this while running a bunch of largely unproven and very innovative team comps and strategies. Let’s break it down.

We got a taste of what was to come on Blizzard World, where the Shock got the party started by running Super on Doomfist and no main tanks in sight. Instead, the Shock opted for Zarya and D.Va, and then the GOATs supports of Brig, Zenyatta, and Lucio.

This…dive…thing led to a few extremely scrappy fights. Both sides clearly had issues; the Valiant had no idea what to make of this weird dive comp, and the Shock had some problems diving without a main tank. It’s pretty clear that this comp is tailor made to counter incoming aggressive dives; Doomfist, Brigitte, Zarya, and D.Va are all excellent at peeling. There’s also some decent pushing power here as long as you get picks as quickly as possible. The Valiant were stuck between a rock and a hard place thanks to the Doomfist pick. They couldn’t go Fusion-style balls out dive thanks to the abundance of peel options, but playing too passively would allow the Shock to take control of the situation and push forwards despite not having a main tank. The Shock picked up the momentum and kept it until the Valiant finally came out on top of another very scrappy fight, and the Shock swapped up compositions.

To talk about this match, we need to talk about the style of dive that the Shock (and the Valiant, although to a lesser extent) ran. Take your standard dive tanks and supports (Winston, D.Va, Lucio, and Zen). Then add Brigitte and Zarya instead of whatever DPS you prefer. The end result is a composition with the mobility of a dive but the beefiness of GOATS. It doesn’t have the pure assassination power of Full Dive, but that’s a small price to pay considering just how much it takes to actually kill this absolute unit of a comp when it dives onto you.

The Shock used this Dive/GOATs comp to take second and then slowly but surely wear down the Valiant’s Zenyatta GOATS comp on third. This was textbook from the Shock; precise dives, excellent coordination, and few stupid mistakes made this a sight to behold.

After attempting to run an Ana GOATS on defense and getting mauled by the Valiant’s own Dive/GOATs comp (I’m going to call this composition SHEEP comp from here on out because Dive/GOATs is a dumb name), the Shock swapped to their own SHEEP comp, although this didn’t last all that long. The Valiant slowly trudged forward and nearly got the payload across the checkpoint before the Shock held. Both teams then swapped to GOATs. This is when the Shock came alive. The Shock ran GOATS to perfection, perfectly executing key plays and ult combos, as well as punishing the Valiant whenever they made one tiny mistake. The Valiant didn’t get past second, and the Shock took the map.

Nepal Shrine got off to an interesting start, as the Shock began on a SHEEP comp with Moira instead of Zen but aborted and went to a Zen GOATS once they recognized that the Valiant were running a Zen GOATS of their own. This gave the Valiant a free take to start off the round, but their status as kings of the shrine were short lived. Fate made a YOLO charge that completely backfired, and a GOATS comp with an out of position Reinhardt is easy pickings. The Shock took the point, and then ran GOATS like they had been born for it, executing combos and wiping it up like it was no big deal. The Shock briefly lost the point, but came back with a vengeance and took it back, winning Shrine with relative ease.

The Shock then rolled out with a Moira SHEEP comp on Village, while the Valiant came out with a Pharmercy+Hanzo dive comp. It got off to a very poor start when Nevix got caught out scouting (at least I hope that’s what he was doing. I can’t think of any logical reason to be ON THE COMPLETE OTHERSIDE OF THE POINT) KSF’s Hanzo shredded this D.Va-less team with ease, and the Valiant once again took the point first. The Shock then motored through despite losing Sleepy early to barrage from Agilities. This was largely due to Sinatraa’s situational awareness; he caught Custa out in a weird position, killed him, and then decided it was go time. A great grav nailed KSF despite a Transcendence being used, and the Shock mopped up the rest of the Valiant. SHEEP comp is excellent at herding the other team around and taking advantage of one little positional slip up. The Valiant had a ton of little positional slip ups. This came back to bite them as the Shock mopped up the Valiant in every battle on Village from there on out, and the Shock took Nepal with relative ease.

The Shock…didn’t get full held on Horizon Lunar Colony! I can’t believe I just typed that sentence, seeing as the Shock were depressingly awful on HLC in OWL S1.

HLC is a map where picks like Orisa, Junkrat, Widow, and Mercy thrive, thanks to a surplus of good high ground and long sightlines, especially on point A. It’s also one of the easiest maps to snowball in the entire game. The Valiant rolled out with this typical entrenchment composition, while the Shock went with SHEEP. KSF’s Widow brought down Smurf and Sleepy to kick off the map, and the rest of the Shock evacuated outdoors into the low gravity zone. This looked super weird at first, but somehow the Shock made it work. (This will be a theme for this map) Smurf roared on in on a solo dive without being killed on the way in, and the rest of the Shock stormed the base, turning what looked like a terrible situation into a sort of weird pinser dive that, thanks to Sleepy’s Ana swap, the sheer bizarreness of this attack, and Fate DCing mid fight, went in the Shock’s favor.

One of the reasons HLC is so prone to snowballs is because the entrenchment comps that really work on point A do not work very well on point B. As such, teams will normally switch to something else (in the Valiant’s case they went with a Zen GOATs comp). The problem is obvious; you lose ult charge and have to set up a completely new composition while the other team barrels on in. Suffice to say, this was a typical HLC match, with the Shock taking B sortly thereafter.

Then came the defense.

With Bastion.

With the Bastion setting up away from the team on the complete otherside of the high ground.

This setup confused me more than the Piranha Plant Smash reveal at first glance. I couldn’t see how this was supposed to work.

The came the attack. The Valiant rolled out with an Ana GOATs and motored up the stairs towards the Orisa/Junkrat/Mercy, typical HLC stuff.

But they didn’t count on the Bastion. And they didn’t count on Nevix giving him full protection.

Nevix was the catalyst in this comp. He positioned himself in a way that allowed him to cover Sinatraa’s Bastion. This in turn meant that two protected heavy damage sources were coming from two completely different sides of the map, and the Valiant didn’t know where to turn. Smurf’s clutch halts didn’t help, and the Shock shredded the Valiant’s first attack. The Valiant then switched to a Full Dive in order to counter this bizarre composition, but it didn’t work very well at first thanks to the Shock having almost every ultimate banked up way ahead of the Valiant. Sinatraa positioned himself in such a way that he could disengage fairly easily once he saw the Valiant’s dive coming in, which meant that the Valiant had to focus him for way longer than they probably should have. This meant that the five other Shock heroes had free reign, and the presence of a Mercy meant that a rez was lined up for Sinatraa in case he did end up dying. Eventually, Sinatraa got caught out in an unrezzable position, and the Shock’s innovative composition fell apart. Then the Valiant snowballed through, despite swapping to a SHEEP comp after taking the point. The Shock swapped to a more traditional dive, and the SHEEP comp of the Valiant won the day.

The Shock went with this weirdo Bastion composition again on defense, but the Valiant read the composition and went with a dive right out of the gate. The Shock’s composition was incredibly well put together. Counterintuitively, Sinatraa was not relying on Smurf’s shield for protection. Rather, Nevix was essentially the pocket tank for the Bastion, who usually set up nowhere near the Junkrat/Orisa/Zen/Mercy that was the rest of the team. This gave the Valiant two targets to dive, and yet they could only dive one at a time. And when they dove one the other one had free reign to just dump in damage. Combine this with the Valiant looking rusty on full dive, and the Shock put together a good first point defense, holding for almost 4 minutes. Then they got steamrolled going into Point B, because, you know, HLC. But the Valiant were forced to cap in OT.

The Shock came out on SHEEP comp, while the Valiant tried out the Shock’s new Bastion comp. They clearly weren’t comfortable on this, and the Shock rolled through them with relative ease, taking both points with time to spare, despite a small hiccup on point B in which the Valiant’s pent up ults saved them some time. Either way, the end was in sight.

The Shock then rolled out with a SHEEP comp once again, and, amazingly, Sleepy and Smurf were picked again while the rest of the Shock bailed out into deep space. This time, though, the Valiant took the fight into space, and in a very scrappy Moon Gravity fight that I’m not even gonna try to analyze (Fate’s dumb positioning being the only standout) the Shock came out on top, taking the point and wrapping up the game.

I don’t have much to say here. The Shock, for once, were consistent. Everyone played well, although special shoutout goes to Sinatraa, Sleepy, and Nevix, all of who played at their best. I need more of this. If the Shock always play like this they will be a force to be reckoned with next season, and I can’t wait to see how they do.