Plenty of Boston Uprising fans have asked the same question after watching this stage: where did it all go wrong? While fans did received some insight from the recent Q&A from Boston’s GM Chris “HuK” Loranger, there were still some lingering questions. Some questions can be best answered by looking at the Uprising’s Stage 4 numbers.

By taking a look at the raw data from the past stage, you can get a better sense of what worked and what didn’t for the Uprising. Here’s a glance at Boston’s performance in the final stage of the season.

Overall Record: 0-7

For the first time in two seasons, the Boston Uprising came in last place in the stage. This winless stage was also enough to place Boston behind the Washington Justice in the overall standings. At 19th place out of 20 teams, there will certainly be some moves to make in the off-season.

Map Record: 5-24 Map Differential: -19

A league-worst five maps only further cements Boston’s position of last place in the stage. Boston’s match against Chengdu was the only time they had won more than one map.

Stage 4 Superlatives

Most Likely to Die First: Fusions

Cameron “Fusions” Bosworth did not have a good time this stage. Fusions accounted for 27% of all first deaths in team fights. Mostly on Orisa, Fusions had a rough time creating space for his team and often found himself caught out before the fight even started.

Most Likely to record the First Elimination: Colourhex

In an absolute display of dominance, Kelsey “Colourhex” Birse made it clear that team fights would be dictated by his ability to secure eliminations. Colourhex was responsible for over a third (38%) of first eliminations, doubling his DPS counterpart Jeffery “blasé” Tsang. Colourhex’s insane stat is inflated just a bit due to blasé not playing a DPS role in the second half of the stage. Dohyung “Stellar” Lee contributed just 25 first eliminations in the five matches he played.

Most Likely to Ult First: Kellex

At the start of the stage, this title was very much Fusions’ for the taking. But the moment Baptise became a mainstay in Boston’s team compositions, Kristian “Kellex” Keller took the crown of “Ultimate King”.

Total Eliminations: 2540

Boston’s total eliminations is spearheaded by Colourhex and blasé – recording 484 and 481 eliminations respectively. Fusions wasn’t too far behind with 431, and Persia just missed the 400 mark, raking in 391 eliminations.

Total Deaths: 1252

Fusions not only led the team in first deaths, but he lead the team in total deaths with 259. Surprisingly, Colourhex wasn’t too far behind, dying 234 times.

Total Ultimates Used by Boston: 726

At a first glance, it is a good sign the Uprising have twice as many elims as they do deaths. But with an 0-7 record, that may not be enough to swing more matches their way.

A vast improvement over last stage’s 651 ultimates, Boston was carried by its support line in terms of ultimate usage.

Team Stats vs Opponents in Stage 4

Although teams are forced to have two dedicated damage dealers, the overall damage output between the past two stages has dropped for Boston.

This can be contributed to the fact that Stage 3 saw an immense amount of GOATs compositions, so teams needed more damage to power through the healing output. The lower total damage can also be explained by the resurgence of snipers. While snipers deal massive amounts of damage in one moment, they don’t have strong consistent damage.

The prevalence of Mei also affects the overall damage output quite a bit. Because her abilities are primarily oriented towards crowd-control and defense, her primary fire deals significantly less damage than most other DPS characters. Her secondary fire, however, deals much more damage, but is much harder to land.

For total eliminations by match, Boston seemed to truly lack consistency this stage. Just as they got into the rhythm of 2-2-2 against the Hunters, Richard “rCk” Kinerva needed to step away with an apparent eye injury.

Forcing blasé onto the off-tank role, and bringing in a rusty Stellar, Boston suffered the the two following matches against the Justice and Mayhem. It wasn’t until the match against Los Angeles that the Uprising found their stride again.

Team Compositions

In the previous stage’s “By the Numbers” article, the overwhelming dominance of GOATs made compiling team composition win percentage extremely straight forward. With the introduction of role-lock, you could assume there would be a vast increase in the amount of difference compositions. What actually happened, was absolute chaos.

In the first two matches, Boston experimented with 34 different compositions. Only five lineups appeared in both games between the Charge and the Hunters.

For the next 5 games, Boston calmed down a bit and averaged just under 11 different compositions in those matches.

Winningest Team Composition: Mei-Widowmaker-Orisa-Roadhog-Zenyatta-Baptise

When a team goes through 40-ish different team compositions, it’s tough to pinpoint which one was actually the most successful. For the sake of accuracy, it is best to take a sample size that is large enough to truly display the effectiveness of a certain team composition. Here we have the win fight percentage of four compositions with at least fifteen fights.

Boston saw the most success with the core of Mei, Roadhog, Orisa and Baptiste. The usage of difference snipers relied heavily on map and opponent composition.

Stage 4 Takeaways

Consistency is King

Something could be said about consistency through out the entire season, but Stage 4 put Boston’s inconsistency on display.

When role-lock was announced, fans and analysts saw this as an excellent time for Boston to highlight their stud DPS players. After playing supports and tanks for 3 stages, Colourhex and blasé were ready to make a splash. Unfortunately, only one of those players got their wish. The other was placed back onto an off role.

Having to switch a role halfway through the stage can be exceptionally difficult. There are a few players can play both roles, but swapping roles and adding a new player to the lineup hurts the overall team chemistry.

It was obvious Stellar was nervous in his first match against the Justice. While totally understandable, his performance did suffer and the team faced a rough loss as a result. Thankfully, Stellar did warm up towards the end of the stage and looked to be having much more fun on stage.

The biggest issue Boston had in regards to consistency was their team composition usage. On several maps, one or two Uprising players would fail to generate an ult due to swapping characters so often. It’s one thing to try out compositions in scrimmages, but not having a set game plan in a match was one of the main reasons Boston failed this stage.

Not having a “Go-to” team composition really hurt Boston this time around. Moving into the next season, it would be a huge surprise if Boston doesn’t remedy this issue.

Still Plenty to Learn

The one thing to really take away from Stage 4, is that there is still plenty to learn. The league is young, and so are the players and coaches of the Uprising. Organizations are constantly swapping out players, making roster decisions based on language, and dealing with ever-changing metas in order to stay ahead of the competition. Boston unfortunately had to face all three of those issues head on and then some.

Luckily for Boston, this off-season will give their coaches and players a much needed break. It will be a extremely important time for new head coach Vytis “Mineral” Lasaitis to get familiar with the players and prepare them for the upcoming season.

With time to look over everything from the past stage and season, Boston will look to make vast improvements when they come home to play for their fans.

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