In this series, I’ll be looking in-depth to the conditions, tactics, prior-influence, and individual tactics that affect — and ultimately decide — pivotal fights in Overwatch Contenders. In doing so, I hope to help the community better understand and appreciate the tactical and mental side of semi-professional Overwatch, a side that is often overlooked in favor of highlighting mechanical skill. In particular, I want to explore the steps taken by teams that are reflective of preparing for their opponents’ tendencies and strategic habits, to highlight and show appreciation for the coaches and analysts that dedicated so much of their time and energy to advancing the level of play in this wonderful game.

Episode 1: Understanding the Steamroll

Gibraltar (Contenders NA, S2, Week 4, Day 1, Fusion University v Gladiators Legion, Map 4)

https://youtu.be/S4SVDvtdEqg?list=PL41rnuHYysaVIYAhO8jNV0YWa46-LqDhk&t=1746

The first iteration of this series comes last season on Gibraltar, in a matchup between Fusion University and the Gladiators Legion. FU full holds Legion with an interesting Torbjorn defense, and then steamrolls them in one sustained fight to handily win the map. Although FU’s attack was made easier by their stellar defense, said attacking phase made it look like the Gladiators simply rolled over and died to superior mechanical skill. However, this attack by FU was a carefully planned series of steps designed to push GL into checkmate before they even realized what was happening. How did it work, and how could it have been beaten? Let’s take a deep dive.



**Background, Tactics, and Habits**

Like any good strategy, Fusion’s attack was built on a foundation of metagame knowledge, specifically the pathways by which a team retreats on Gibraltar. Through the history of Overwatch, we have seen a number of full holds on this map, and many of them have very similar positions taken by the defense, primarily surrounding the courtyard in which the first checkpoint is located. Central to this defense are the L-shaped balcony that rests above the main hangar doors (henceforth called “L”) and the high ground with boxes that rests over the mini health pack, and is on the inside of the final turn the payload makes on this point (henceforth referred to as “boxes). These two areas serve different purposes in a steadfast Gibraltar defense, and a defending team controlling both is important to winning the map on first point. The L-shaped high ground is a dominant position for long-range damage dealers to sit, both due to their control of sightlines in the courtyard (specifically into the server room and down to the opposing high ground that the payload travels under) and because said position is difficult for opponents to get to without (and even with) vertical mobility. Tracer specifically must take a long route to get to a widowmaker or zenyatta on the high ground, and in doing so must also take the only route in available, which is watchable by heroes stationed on that ground. In theory, a tracer dueling someone on that high ground is experiencing one of the most positionally disadvantageous duels possible for her in the game of overwatch. That being said, this duel is mostly made difficult when there are multiple members of the defending team on the L-shaped high ground, who are able to support and defend each other from the approaching tracer. If there is merely one player, such as a widomaker, who is tasked with dealing with an approaching tracer AND winning a widow duel, the pressure can often prove too much and result in victory for the attacking players. Traditionally, teams would place their flex support (zenyatta or ana) on this high ground both to assist in dueling against dives aimed at the widowmaker, and because this spot is excellent for them to work from as well.

The “boxes” high ground serves a multi-faceted purpose as well. Primarily, it serves as a lookout for the enemy team’s approach, making it difficult for them to execute full dives into the courtyard. This position also overlooks the courtyard, and allows any team that holds it to put damage down during a chaotic fight while being more difficult to shoot at themselves. Critically, though, it serves as a dive-blunter for heroes attempting to dive to the L-shaped high ground, chief among them genji and d.va. If a genji wants to approach a widowmaker or zenyatta on the L-shaped high ground, he must either take a suicide run up through the courtyard before dashing, or he must take an extremely long and equally suicidal approach up around through server, and then dash with a prayer once he leaves the room with the window overlooking the point, taking the same route that tracer would take with arguably even less safety. The ideal approach for a genji is over the boxes high ground, using his dash nearly horizontal in order to get to a widowmaker, where she has little to no warning before she is beset by the oft-injured ninja. The distance from the boxes to the most common widow perch is nearly the distance of a dash, meaning that a skilled genji player could get full value out of a dash-melee combo when utilizing the boxes approach. In the past, the genji dive here was the key to breaking a defense on gibraltar, and he was often seen run in tandem with a widowmaker to apply pressure on the defense once the defending widowmaker was distracted or eliminated. The final advantage of this spot is that it, along with any heroes positioned along the L-shaped high ground, provides an addition high ground escape for a defending team’s mercy, the mobility protecting her from divers that primarily use longer cooldowns than that of guardian angel.

In the fourth stage of the Overwatch League, and in 2018 Season 2 of Contenders, teams gained access to a tool to suppress and control this approach route in the form of brigitte. No longer could a genji properly line up his dash without risking utter annihilation. The ability of brig to stay in a contested area while also threatening mobile heroes who wanted to travel through said area makes her prefect for sitting with the tanks on this spot. Furthermore, her shield takes away some of the risk of being headshot by an opposing widowmaker, which in turn is essential for holding on to this tactical location throughout the defense. Brigitte can also use the spot to rebuff any attempt to chase down low-health tanks that retreat off of the payload, as a winston and d.va will spend most of the match rotating up and down from contesting the payload to prevent an offensive point take. This position, like any good high ground, also gives brig a number of sightlines to dole out armor packs to the low ground fight area, or the long-range heroes on the L-shaped high ground. The main drawback of putting brig on boxes is that she is unable to AOE heal the heroes on the L-shaped high ground, or give them rally armor. This crucially, leads to a decision for a defending team; do we want to put our zenyatta in the traditionally ideal defensive position (L-shaped high ground) to help and support the widowmaker, or do we want to keep him near the brigitte to get rally armor? I believe that the decision made by Gladiators Legion, and FU’s anticipation of and adaption to that decision, are the key piece in understanding the steamroll in this match.

**Choices and Consequences**

An important thing to not in this match is the disparity in scouting information between the two teams. Fusion University, between the PIT championship and the previous three weeks on contenders, had only played Gibraltar once, in a match the previous week against Mayhem academy. Legion, on the other hand, had played Gibraltar each of the three previous weeks of Contenders season 2, and it is learning from the habits they showed here that FU developed their attacking strategy. The shown strategies by Gladiators Legion begin with a zenyatta positioned far forwards with the team near where the payload begins. In theory this is done to give the zenyatta a chance to build ultimate charge and to generally keep him with the rest of the team, but it also puts the zen (in this case Roolf) in an awkward position of trying to get to a better position for the rest of the fight. The Gladiators Legion have displayed a consistent method for repositioning the zenyatta, which is planned for by FU. However, the failure of Legion to adhere to this pattern gives the Fusion key information for the rest of the fight, and allows them to capitalize on other habits of the Legion

. Against Last Night’s Leftovers and GGEA, the Legion had sent the zenyatta down on a long rotation through the server room back up to the L-shaped high ground, and although their opponents were not running a composition designed to capitalize on this, the zenyatta was nevertheless exposed throughout the period of that rotation, which was done alone as the rest of the team is needed elsewhere. Despite the zenyatta establishing ideal positioning, in the matches against LNL and GGEA the Legion choose to abandon the boxes high ground when under pressure. Ceding that control is key to them losing the L-shaped high ground (to a dive from boxes) and ultimately the point against LNL, and only a display of clutch mechanical skill and better coordination allows the Legion to hold strong against GGEA. Although hanzo and genji operate quite differently as heroes, the pressure put on by an attacking hanzo that is able to establish himself on the boxes high ground is similar to the threat of a genji dash in how it affects the ability of a defending widowmaker and zenyatta to properly operate from the L-shaped high ground, as we see in the match against LNL.

From these previous matches, Fusion learn a couple of things that are key to building their attack. Firstly, that Legion have an obsession with starting their zenyatta far forward. Secondly, that contesting the Widowmaker is key to preventing a couple of clutch headshots from undoing a planned strat. And finally, and most importantly, that the Legion will abandon the boxes high ground quite easily under pressure, and the for heroes without mobility they will be forced to retreat into the low ground door to hanger, a proverbial barrel for some proverbial fish.

**Pressure**

It should be noted that one of the first hero selections that FU makes in the match against the Legion is putting Bernar, an offtank on tracer. This tells us that either FU were screwing around and Bernar felt like playing DPS (unlikely) or that they were prepared by their coaching staff to take advantage of vulnerabilities of the Legion. Namely, that blasted Zenyatta rotation through the server room. We see early on in FU’s attack that Bernar quickly blinks into the server room and does a quick check for the zenyatta, which he doesn’t find. This tells him that the zenyatta is in one of two places; either sitting on the high ground already (unlikely, given GL’s previous habits, and it’s also possible that the rest of FU has scouted Roof’s movements) or that Roolf is with the rest of the Legion going to boxes, which happens to be the case. Furthermore, by eventually finding out that Roolf is not on the L-shaped high ground, it means that there is one less damage dealer that Bernar has to duel when he eventually contests that high ground. Roolf’s forward position, although it didn’t get him killed (yet) has indirectly led to Corey’s doom, through a failed duel and hasty retreat.

FU also prepare to take advantage of the willingness of the Legion to abandon the boxes high ground, as they bring a winston and a genji to travel through said high ground, and a widowmaker to put additional pressure on it. FU are intent on forcing that retreat.



**Hammer and Anvil**

The actual execution of the fight is a work of beauty. FU put just enough pressure on the boxes to bring the mercy in to heal, and to distract the tanks long enough to allow Bernar to juke Corey and go for the kill. Simultaneously, FU rush over boxes with Winston (Beasthalo) and Genji (WhoRU). WhoRU gets a dash through (or a set of shirukens on) the mercy, forcing her to attempt a retreat to either Corey or Gods (who is just now going to peel for Corey). However, the follow up dive from Beasthalo to the L-shaped high ground, supported by Bernar, does enough damage to zone out both Corey and Gods, who both drop down and attempt to take the same retreat path. Due to the fact that Pookz (mercy) is himself at low health, he must cancel his flight and drop down, and in doing so he has to turn around in order to fly back to boxes. On this defense, it is key that the mercy remain off the ground, for the ground is death as we soon learn. Now, the question becomes, why is Panker, the highly-touted main tank for GL not present? Well, someone has to be contesting the payload, and he is doing just that, in fact he receives an armor pack from Brigitte as the rest of his team dies in the lower hallway.

The main mistake made here is by Roolf. With his mercy at extremely low health, and his Brigitte attempting to hold the high ground in order to give the mercy an extra escape, he decides for some reason to abandon the boxes while under pressure. despite the fact that he has not apparently taken damage. He sees an opportunity to heal his teammates, and potentially defend them, and drops down into the hallway with a d.va and widowmaker, both at extremely low health. This becomes the killing field as two of the three dps of FU drop down and clean up, and the threat of an approaching widowmaker and zenyatta make it so that the Brigitte of the Legion is ill-advised to jump down and join that fray herself. Bernar and WhoRU clean house, and the Legion are left scrambling as they attempt to avoid certain doom. Panker goes to the same hallway where his teammates just died as his retreat from the payload, and he is also killed for his troubles by the follow up from Beasthalo. Just poor mistakes all around as FU roll to an easy victory won by forcing all of the Legion into a hallway where they are more easily killed.

**Conclusions**

FU’s attack was made much more successful by mistakes made by the Legion, and although one of their main selling points (sending tracer through server to catch a rotating zenyatta) did not bear fruit, their triple dps composition would’ve been able to easily dispatch GL in other ways. Primarily, the pressure exuded by having both a genji and tracer diving the L-shaped high ground puts immense, retreat-forcing pressure on Corey, and yet the Legion are locked into both the Brigitte and the Widowmaker for the entire match, the Brig to attempt to hold onto the boxes and to pressure the genji, and the Widowmaker to win the duel. FU also makes said brigitte’s job more difficult with their own widowmaker, as the defending brig cannot freely turn to stun the attacking genji without risking a headshot from Zacharee, giving WhoRU more space to get in the back.

The main mistake that undermines and ultimately dooms the Legion is that they are too quick to abandon the boxes high ground. In this case, it not only puts their zenyatta in a position to get killed, but also causes Corey to flee to low ground rather than the relative safety of the boxes. Although the divers of FU could still reach that position, they would’ve had to encounter a Brigitte when doing so, and the fight could have been more easily matched. However, the insistence of the Legion to attempt to retreat back to their spawn through the quickest available means was not only expected by FU (as it was the gameplan in each the the Legion’s previous matches), but also played ideally into the hands of a team with Genji and Tracer.

Legion should have placed more heroes throughout the L-shaped high ground to start, which would have (A) given more options to Pookz to retreat from the pressure from WhoRU, (B) made the attack by Bernar that dislodged and ultimately killed the Widowmaker more risky and potentially more difficult to time properly with the rest of his team and ( C ) put Roolf in a different spot so that the willingness of the Legion to easily abandon the high ground when under little or no pressure wouldn’t lead to his death in a tight hallway.

There were other mistakes made, but we should take time to appreciate the fact that FU knew the bad habits of the Legion, and took advantage of them, putting on pressure and forcing predictable retreats into veritable deathtraps, winning Gibraltar (and the series) in one fight.

If you got all the way here, thanks for reading this episode of Fight by Fight, which is essentially the pilot episode, based on work I had done for a previous project. Future editions of Fight by Fight will cover Contenders Season 3, and I hope to improve both my writing and my game knowledge. If you think I missed something, or that I interpreted a game event wrong, don’t be afraid to PM me. I’ve got a lot to learn, and I know that there are a lot of people out there able to help.

Cheers,

Sp3ctre7