In the past few months, GOATS has defined the meta and story of Overwatch. The 3-3 composition made up of: Reinhardt, D.Va, Zarya, Brigitte, Zen, and Lucio seemed too strong. It was the base on which all strategy was built upon. Though there was a level of skill and nuance to it, the fans cried out to Blizzard or the teams, “Please, save us!” To that plea, Element Mystic have answered that call as they have unveiled their trump card in Korean Contenders

There are various reasons as to why the GOATs composition was dominant above all other strategies. The raw mathematics generally meant they could out heal any amount of dpcs that was thrown their way. The classical DPS characters like Tracer, Soldier, Genji, Widow, and Pharah were just unable to do enough damage to break the composition before they had either already won the fight or taken the objective. It was to the point where the community wondered if the only way to defeat the GOATs was an answer on high, a patch that came down from Blizzard to stop the the GOATs in their tracks.

As for myself, I wasn’t convinced. Not because I had any inkling of an answer, but because esports history has shown that the answer will always come in a way that none of us can expect. Perhaps the best way to understand this is through the rise of two Brood War Legends: Ma “sAviOr” Jae Yoon and Kim “Bisu” Taek Yong. Brood War was a game that has had almost no gameplay related patches throughout its entire history. So it came down to the players having to find answer by themselves. Before sAviOr rose to prominence, many of the top Zerg players believed that there was no answer for the ZvT matchup. That it was inherently imbalanced and that at the highest levels the Terran would win more likely than not. Then sAviOr came into play. He created a tactical revolution in ZvT based off of a unique strategy that he created himself and which fundamentally changed the way all Zergs played the game from that point on. At the same time, sAviOr’s ZvP was so dominant that every Protoss believed that it was an impossible matchup to win. Then Bisu came to battle sAviOr in the 2007 GomTV MSL. In that finals, he rocked the entire Brood War scene as he used his incredible mechanics to completely redefine an old strategy of corsair-DTs. The style was considered obsolete as it didn’t do enough damage, but in his hands he gave the entire strategy new life and forever changed the face of Brood War. For that victory, he was given the title, “The Revolutionist.”

Bisu and sAviOr are the two archetypes that explain all meta revolutions in every esports game. To break the paradigm, you either need a player to come up with a strategy that fundamentally changes the entire base of how people view the game or you need an exceptional player of such skill that they can redefine the metagame through their own image.

When applied to Overwatch, you likely need both as it’s a team game. It isn’t enough that Sung-hyeon “JJoNaK” Bang is a paradigm breaking Zenyatta player, he also needed a team to craft an entire strategy around his excellence.

On December 15th, 2018, that is what we saw in the battle between Element Mystic and GC Busan Wave. This was a match in Korean Contenders between the top teams in group B. Korean Contenders caster, Wolf “Wolf” Schroder had intimated throughout the Contenders season that rumors were abound that Element Mystic had the answer to GOATs. That it was somehow connected to Doomfist.

However we never got to see that answer as no team they faced up to that point could force Element Mystic to play that card. GC Busan Wave was that team. In that series, the two teams played across four maps: Ilios, Hollywood, Hanamura, and Route66. In the majority of those maps and halves, this was the composition that Element Mystic ran:

Kim “Sp9rk1e” Yeong-han: Doomfist

Choi “Hanbin” Han-been: Zarya

Lee “Takoyaki” Young-hyun: Reinhardt

Kim “Doha” Dong-Ha: Brigitte

Yoo “Unique” Dong-hyun: Lucio

Lim “FixMe” Hwan: Zenyatta

While the comp just has them replace D.Va with Doomfist in the GOATs comp, I’ve personally called the composition “One Punch Man” as the polarizing player and hero in this composition is Sp9rk1e’s Doomfist. Doomfist is a unique hero. It has high mobility with an incredible level of burst damage and control, but no sustained damage. It can’t continually put out the hurt like the more mainstream DPS picks of the past like Tracer, Soldier, Pharah, or even Genji. So when a Doomfist goes on, they must hit their combos or else the entire fight will likely go the other team’s way. You either land your first punch or you die.

So then how did Element Mystic use this composition to tame the GOATs of Busan? In terms of strategy, I believe there were two basic ideas. The first was to enable the fact that Sp9rk1e has a fantastic Doomfist. The second was to use divide and conquer the GOATs. The GOATs are at their strongest when they play together as a close knit ball as it maximizes their sustain and allows them to chain combos and support each other in battles.

Tactically speaking, Sp9rk1e essentially plays three roles. He can either control the frontline, kill the backline, or disperse the entire pack. In the first instance, Sp9rk1e does a combo with Hanbin’s Zarya where he gets the bubble. He then immediately right behind the reinhardt, uppercuts him and then isolates him away from the rest of his team. This is a concept that many lucios have used to try to peel enemy reinhardts away from their backline, but it isn’t quite as effect as Doomfist considering he can not only disjoint the main tank, but has the change to kill them. The second role is to play the hard lurk role. If Element Mystic can setup the fight, they hide Sp9rk1e somewhere so that he can go to the back and either kill or disjoint a support player away from the fight.

As for the third role, Doomfist’s ult Meteor Hammer does a ton of AOE damage which is perfect considering that GOATs wants to stay together as a pack. In the best case scenario, Sp9rk1e kills a player and they snowball the fight. In a worse case scenario, either the enemy GOATs are split up, in which case they are in an advantage positionally to kill the isolated packs, or in worst case scenario, Sp9rk1e is in a position to either control one of the tanks or pick off a support player.

This is essentially the cycle that Element Mystic put Busan in throughout the series. Consider the first map. The two teams played on Ilios Lighthouse and Well. In both maps, the initial fight went in Busan’s favor as they won the first clash using their GOATs against the One Punch Man comp. As we know now, teams that win the first clash happen to win the control point 60% of the time, however in both cases Element Mystic not only won, but did it in dominant fashion. It didn’t matter though as the strategy of Element Mystic and the raw skill of Sp9rk1e was too much for GC Busan Wave to handle. In a head-to-head, Sp9rk1e consistently controlled the frontline. If not, he was killing the backline. That in turn, got him enough ult charge to win the next fight, which then let Element Mystic put Sp9rk1e in a hard lurk position that Busan couldn’t answer.

Throughout the series, GC Busan Wave tried to find answers. On Hollywood, they used a dive comp to try to break ii (Winston, D.Va, Brigitte, Genji, Lucio, and Zen). It worked quite well on the first point, but they didn’t have enough firepower or sustain to push through Element Mystic after they regrouped. They eventually had to revert to GOATs, which was also stopped on the second point. On Element Mystic’s attack phase they used One Punch Man and ran through the GOATs defense of Busan.

The rest of the series was GC Busan Wave trying to find an answer to the Doomfist comp of Element Mystic. On Hanamura, they used a more mobile version of it as they paired it with Winston and D.Va. While that got them the first point, it didn’t have the strength or sustain to break the second. They then tried to use the same composition to break Element Mystic, but it was clear they weren’t nearly as practised on it as EM consistently got the initiative and Busan couldn’t ad-hoc the Zarya-Doomfist combo or the lurk plays of Sp9rk1e. The most interesting thing about this map though was the adaptations on the defense of Busan. They were positioned in a way that took into account the spacing by which Doomfist could break into their front lines and disjoint Reinhardt away from the rest of their team. On top of that, they started to use ION as bait when he had an ult so that when Doomfist went in on him, the Zarya player bubbled ION and ION in turn let loose an ult. While the adaptations worked for a moment, eventually when the fight started to break down, Doomfist reigned supreme.

On Route 66, they continued their attempts to try to find an answer with McCree and Pharah, but it was all for naught as they were nearly held on the first point. Only Lim “ION” Ji-Heon’s Winston play at the end and some strange hero swaps at the end allowed Busan to push into the second point. At which point, Element Mystic reverted to GOATs to close out the defense and then win the subsequent attack phase.

Overall, this was a brilliant series by Element Mystic and in particular Sp9rk1e. Many have wondered if there was ever going to be an answer for the GOATs, and this is Element Mystic’s answer. They were able to build an entire composition around Sp9rk1e’s Doomfist that has allowed them to consistently break down GC Busan Wave. However the defense Busan put up on Hanamura does give me some pause. The team seemed to start coming up with some answers to the One Punch Man comp of Element Mystic and so that will be the question for Korean Contenders moving forward. The rest of the world has already moved on to patch 1.31, but in Korea Contenders, they are still on 1.29 and in that vacuum, we get to see if this Doomfist comp will become the paradigm shift away from GOATs that the Overwatch scene has been waiting for or if it will it be another victim to the ongoing march of the GOATs. As the season moves onward, this battle could well determine who ends up winning Contenders.

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