It’s been an interesting year and a half for the Houston Outlaws. After a strong start in the Inaugural Overwatch League Season, the Outlaws struggled to keep up their initial success as the year went on. At the halfway point of the 2019 season, things weren’t looking much better either. The team was at 3-11 in the standings and had just come off a 0-7 Stage Two.

“I stopped taking things for granted, because we were the lowest team. For a moment, we were [in] the bottom three.” – LiNkzr

Coming into Stage Three, nobody expected anything to change. However, the Outlaws managed to take the New York Excelsior to five maps in week one and looked much stronger despite the loss. Many were left wondering whether their success against the Excelsior was just a fluke, but the Outlaws managed to finish Week Two of Stage Three with two resounding wins – one over the Boston Uprising 4-0 and another over the San Francisco Shock 3-2, ending the Shock’s 11-match win streak.

For Jake Lyon, the first half of the season was less than ideal. However, Jake insists that his mentality overall has better this season than the last. “This year, I feel a lot better,” he said after the team’s loss to New York. “It’s a combination of the schedule not being as crazy – no constant grind with two matches every single week – but also, I feel like I’ve become more of a professional and more able to deal with the stresses of winning and losing. Even though we had a really rough stage last stage, I feel very zen about it. It doesn’t really affect me or my play.“

Known as an emotional team who could swing one way or the other very quickly in the Inaugural Season, Jake has worked dilligently this year to temper those highs and lows out. “I’m less prone to have negative momentum and feeling bad, and then being like ‘Oh now I’m going to play bad because I think we’re gonna do bad.’ Now I feel much more mentally focused and losses don’t really phase me anymore. That’s been a big improvement for me personally.”

“That’s something I wanted to focus on this season. You’re gonna take losses – this is a lot more than we wanted to take, obviously, but just being able to take that and not let it affect you as an individual pro is a big skill that I’ve been working on.“

“At this point, we’ve had a really rough season,” Jake admitted after the New York match, “but we’re down at the bottom – the only way to go is up. Everyone has that same mindset: pressure is off, time to just play our game, play what we want to play.”

Although that neutral mentality wasn’t enough to get them over the line against New York in Week One, Jiri “LiNkzr” Masalin says it definitely helped them secure the victory against the Shock in the following week. “We had a really good mentality going into the [Shock] game. After the 0-7, we kind of accepted that we were slumping and took a hard look on ourselves and where we needed to improve as a team and individuals.”

“I feel like I’ve become more of a professional and more able to deal with the stresses of winning and losing. Even though we had a really rough stage last stage, I feel very zen about it. It doesn’t really affect me or my play.” – Jake

“The New York match was a good showing that we were improving,” said LiNkzr. “There was a definite time when we were like ‘Okay, these strategies are working, this strategy isn’t.'” LiNkzr cited Horizon and Nepal Sanctum as areas they revised after the New York match and worked to improve before Week Two. “All those little changes we noticed [against] New York. As a team, we understood that there’s room for improvement with everyone, so we found answers to the problems we had [in Week One].”

This is all part of a larger, new approach the team has taken to strategy as of Stage Three. “In the stage break, we kind of went back to the drawing board, to some extent,” said Jake. “Trying new stuff, being more open minded, playing to our strengths as opposed to what we think is the most optimal comp. So far, I think it’s been working out pretty well for us.”

LiNkzr agreed with Jake’s sentiment. “We took a different approach strategy-wise. We tried Sombra-GOATS before, but I think when it came to improving the strategy, we looked at things that individuals can do better. Instead of ‘the team can do this’ or ‘the team can do that’, it was like ‘I can do this, I can do that, and it helps you do this.'”

“Playing heroes we think we’re really good at works out really well for us,” said Jake. “We end up doing super well. Trying to find more places to do that is a good idea for us. Still, there’s a lot of maps where that’s not viable. Almost every map, at some point you have to get off the DPS. Even Numbani, you’ve got to play GOATS on third. It’s too hard to play DPS there. We’re starting to get better at understanding the strategy around that, and not just playing to our strengths but having a whole strategy built around our strengths.”

Despite still needing to play GOATS in certain situations, it’s their new DPS-centric style that helped them get the wins over San Francisco and Boston. One of the advantages of playing DPS and Sombra-GOATS compositions into high-level GOATS teams is that your opponent won’t have much experience playing against those compositions. However in some situations, DPS and Sombra-GOATS compositions are just a strong counter-option regardless of a team’s experience.

I asked LiNkzr how much of their recent success came down the strength of the compositions Houston ran versus their opponents lack of experience playing against those comps. “It’s a bit of both. Player experience affects a lot. With Sombra GOATS vs Normal GOATS, Sombra GOATS is really strong if people haven’t played against it a lot. I personally still think Sombra GOATS might not be the most viable strategy in the long run, but it’s really good for us, because we know how to play it well. We have been practicing it and the top teams haven’t had much practice against it. The top teams just play GOATS because they know they win most things with it, it’s the most consistent [composition].”

“A t this point, we’ve had a really rough season, but we’re down at the bottom – the only way to go is up. Everyone has that same mindset: pressure is off, time to just play our game, play what we want to play.” – Jake, speaking after their loss to the NYXL

These new, wacky DPS comps have also helped Jake take advantage of his knack for in-game, on-the-fly adaptation. “As a player, I always thought my biggest strength was being able to see the enemy team’s comp and think about what comp we should play and how we should play it to counter to them. Where should we go on the map to punish them.” Against New York, Houston’s third round attack on Point A was something Jake thought of in the moment. “We see their comp and I’m like, ‘Oh I’ve never tried this before, I’ll go Hanzo.’ We switched to Zen so we have more shield break. We put a tonne of point pressure on with Sombra, so they have to play point, and it worked perfect. That’s what I love about Overwatch. Being able to make those plans on the fly.”

It’s a trend that carried over into the next week’s matches and helped them secure their massive win against San Francisco. However, despite breaking the Shock’s win streak, LiNkzr was still hesitant going into the Boston game. “What I was personally afraid of was that after the win we would get too cocky, thinking like, ‘Okay we can beat everyone now.’ But I think today’s game showed that because of the 0-7 stage, we are much more calm in intense situations. We keep doing the things we practice, and the mentality is happy and excited, but we’re still calm and collected when it really matters.”

If they keep up the pace for the rest of the stage, Houston could easily make Stage Playoffs. The hardest matches of the stage are out of the way, leaving only Paris, Washington, Toronto and Florida as their opponents over the next two weeks. Despite the seemingly easy schedule, LiNkzr won’t take the matches for granted. “I stopped taking things for granted, because we were the lowest team. For a moment, we were [in] the bottom three … People are a bit sick a bit – Muma is sick, so we are taking a couple of days off – but every match we have, we’re gonna take them as seriously as our first game.“

Houston go up against the Paris Eternal in their next match of the stage on Thursday the 20th of June at 5:15pm PST. You can view the full Overwatch League schedule here.

Featured image provided by Steward Volland for Blizzard Entertainment.

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