Coming into the start of the Overwatch League, many heavily favoured the Contenders Season 0 champions Team EnvyUs to impress in their new form, the Dallas Fuel. With the ‘OG Envy 6’ made up of Cocco, Mickie, Taimou, Effect, Chipshajen and Harryhook, and the new signings xQc, Seagull and Custa, the team looked balanced all around, virtually meta-proof, and appeared to be one of the most flexible teams in the league. You can read more about their backgrounds in my article here.

Many thought that Dallas had absolutely made the right signings, the idea being that xQc would play the aggressive Winston, while Cocco would play the more passive Rein. Mickie would play his trademark D.Va, Seagull projectile and Custa to be a shotcaller and leader for the team. But the plan was almost too good, and Dallas were trying to be everything at once, a team that tried to play everything and ended up with nothing.

The team started to struggle, going 3–7 in Stage 1 after the loss of xQc to a suspension. With such an essential piece of the puzzle out of the picture, Cocco was forced onto his less favoured Winston for the rest of the stage, and coupled with the unfamiliar Mercy meta, Dallas struggled to even put together a starting six. Things were not much different in Stage 2 and 3 as roster shuffles and general mayhem ensued, with xQc being dropped from the roster, Cocco and Seagull disappearing for entire stages altogether, Taimou and Mickie switching onto main tank etc.

Nevertheless, the Fuel entered Stage 4 with almost no pressure on their shoulders and a meta that almost certainly played to their strengths. The addition of Brigitte into the game appeared to favour triple-tank compositions, which had almost single-handedly won EnVyUs the Apex S1 title. The addition of new head coach Aero sent the Fuel on a dramatic 4–2 run in the first three weeks of Stage 4, winning more matches than they had in the previous 10 weeks combined.

Mickie and OGE during Dallas’ 3–1 win over the London Spitfire. Source: https://overwatchwire.usatoday.com/2018/06/05/dallas-fuel-get-clinical-on-london-spitfire-in-3-1-victory/

The recent success of the Fuel depends heavily on Seagull’s stumbling onto the D.Va role after being pushed to grind it for Stage 2 by previous coach Kyky, now of the Houston Outlaws. This, coupled with off-tank Mickie’s remarkable Brigitte play, enabled the Fuel to easily run either triple-tank or 2–2–2 comps without needing substitutions, somewhat similar to the Philadelphia Fusion playing EQO on D.Va in triple tank comps on King’s Row. Another bright spot is uNKOE, who brings some much-needed firepower on Zenyatta and has come in clutch several times to save his teammates with Transcendence.

However, the Fuel have looked predictable despite their hot streak, with nary a deviation away from the favoured Rein-D.Va-Brigitte or Winston-D.Va-Brigitte. A large reason for this is Seagull’s aforementioned D.Va, as well as Mickie’s widely-hailed Brigitte play.

Here, then, is the first problem with Dallas’ roster: Mickie can play Brigitte and a subpar D.Va, but he also happens to be the only person in the team practiced enough on Brigitte, which means he can’t be subbed out. Seagull plays a very good projectile DPS and D.Va, but he cannot do both at once, and Dallas does not have another projectile DPS to cover for him. Taimou can play Junkrat, and AKM can somewhat play Genji, but neither of them do both, nor do they bring the immense flexibility and ability to run other heroes such as Hanzo or Mei that Seagull brings, which enables double-sniper comps. Admittedly, Mickie’ D.Va has not looked that bad this stage, but it could be attributed to Dallas commonly swapping off 2–2–2 to go back to a triple tank comp the moment one push is stopped. If only they had a Korean projectile player who could make a deadly DPS duo with Effect…

The second problem with Dallas’ roster is the indecision over whether to play Taimou or AKM. AKM’s signing was questioned by many in the community, with most believing him to only be good at Soldier and McCree, heroes which were more than adequately covered by Taimou and Effect. While such concerns were forgiven after a while (especially after popping off against the Gladiators in Stage 2), Aero’s decision to use AKM as a map specialist for control and payload maps is also coming under fire. The Frenchman seems to be coming in to play a combination of McCree, Widowmaker, and Zarya, due to his renowned tracking. The decision not to utilise his Pharah and use Seagull’s instead forces Mickie onto D.Va while AKM either plays DPS or Zarya. While reasonable, given Seagull’s renown on projectile heroes and AKM’s hitscan prowess, this decision can be especially fatal on control maps, with both Oasis and Lijiang heavily favouring teams with good Pharah and Zarya players, as well as teams with good D.Vas to counteract the damage these two heroes can output. Indeed, Dallas appear to still be struggling with attempting to control the enemy Pharah. Mickie’s previously mentioned subpar D.Va play does not appear to be adequate in this situation, nor does AKM have a particularly outstanding Zarya. This has resulted in inconsistent play on Control; Dallas’ win rate on such maps this stage stands at 50%, with two out of 3 wins coming against the struggling Shanghai Dragons and Boston Uprising and blowout losses to the San Francisco Shock and the Philadelphia Fusion. Nevertheless, AKM still puts in good performances, and while he may not hit the highs that Taimou does, he has his moments, and that may be all Dallas needs right now.

AKM gets 6 final blows in 1 fight. feat. a great body block from uNKOE

On the other hand, Taimou is usually played for the first two maps, and with his regaining confidence, many have pointed to the Finnish superstar as one of the major reasons for Dallas’ revival. Taimou has been known to be a streaky and inconsistent player who can take some time to warm up, but can also be the kind of player who single-handedly decides the outcome of an entire game.

One frequently sees comments along the lines of ‘subbing Taimou out for AKM while he’s hot???’, and while AKM’s play has been solid, one also wonders whether it might be beneficial to keep Taimou in, especially if he’s on a roll. A case in point would be Taimou playing Gibraltar in Week 2 against the Fusion as AKM was out recovering from tooth surgery. Taimou went almost even with Carpe in that match despite not having scrimmed on it, allowing Dallas to close out the map and the series.

Taimou did exceedingly well on Gibraltar, especially considering he was going up against Carpe, one of the deadliest Widows in the league.

Taimou has also historically been Dallas’ shotcaller since the EnVyUs days, and it is only recently that Harryhook has been pushed by Aero to become a leader for the team. Subbing him out, therefore, might be detrimental to the team’s communication. Indeed, the numerous miscommunications in the second half of the 1–3 loss to the Houston Outlaws looked characteristic of the leaderless Stage 2 and 3 Dallas, and it is not altogether impossible that Taimou being subbed out in some way caused Dallas to lose focus or structure. Fundamentally, however, the problem is that Taimou and AKM have almost identical hero pools, and Aero’s experiment with map specialisation does not seem to be yielding any conclusive results.