I recently wrote a piece assessing Dallas’ problems in Stage 1, how they might address them in Stage 2 and what the roster might look like considering the team’s new signings. Throughout each week of Stage 2, I’ll follow Dallas and assess their roster changes, performance and overall attempt to lift themselves back up the ladder. I’ll also look at the next week’s games and weigh in on Dallas’ chances.

Heading into week 1 of Stage 2, many viewers’ eyes were on the Dallas Fuel. The team’s performance in Stage 1 was nothing short of disappointing, featuring suspensions, indecisive rosters and consistent losses until the latter weeks of the stage. In the stage break, Dallas signed Dylan “aKm” Bignet, formerly of the disbanded Rogue, and Dong-jun “Rascal” Kim, traded from the London Spitfire. Although great players, many questioned whether Dallas needed to pick up more DPS players, as opposed to other roles such as off-tank, for which had no backup players and had looked somewhat inconsistent.

Dallas Fuel players aKm, Mickie and xQc celebrating a win.

Coming into Stage 2, Dallas had five DPS players, three support players, two main tanks and one off-tank. There was speculation as to whether some players might transition across roles within the team and what roster would be fielded for Stage 2. Many hoped that the post-Mercy nerf meta might see the return of Chipshajen on Ana. Likewise, xQc was now free from the suspension that had prevented him from playing in weeks 3–5 of Stage 1. New pickups aKm and Rascal were available, but might not necessarily be played straight away. Seagull’s role in the team was also increasingly unclear, considering aKm and Rascal now covered the majority of his OWL hero pool and then some. Fuel were shrouded in many uncertain elements heading into Stage 2.

Dallas ending up finishing the first week of the stage with two victories — the first against Shanghai Dragons (3–1) and the second against the Los Angeles Gladiators (3–1). The victories definitely cleared up some of the uncertain elements surrounding the team. However, they also introduced some new pieces in the ever-changing puzzle that is the Dallas Fuel.

The biggest shock to the roster was revealed just before their match with Shanghai on Wednesday. On the pre-game desk segment, league insider Soe announced Taimou would be moving over across from DPS to a main tank role for the team. Prior to the announcement, no one had even considered this would be a possibility, especially considering the team already had two main tank players. Regardless, Dallas took no time in putting this plan into action — Taimou played Winston for almost the entire match against Shanghai (78%) with a bit of Roadhog (17%) and Reinhardt (4.35%) thrown into the mix.

How effective was Taimou as main tank? Well, Taimou’s Winston against Shanghai was statistically on par with xQc’s Winston against the Gladiators two days later. Both had a similar fight win percentage (55.77% for Taimou, 54% for xQc), percentage of team kills (15% for Taimou, 12.1% for xQc) and ultimates gained per 10 minutes (3.98 for Taimou, 3.85 for xQc). Surprisingly, Taimou had a lower amount of deaths per 10 minutes (4.78) compared to xQc (5.78), which can probably be accounted for by xQc’s aggressive style.

Félix “xQc” Lengyel returned last week after his suspension in Stage 1.

Unfortunately, statistics like damage done and eliminations have not been made publicly available by Blizzard, but a good way to get an approximation of this is to look at the average time to charge ultimate (thanks to Yiska, writer for Winston’s Lab, for the tip). When looking at this statistic for xQc and Taimou’s Winston against the Gladiators and Shanghai respectively, xQc charges his average ultimate 13 seconds faster than Taimou (xQc: 105 seconds, Taimou: 118 seconds). This indicates that despite the earlier statistics, there’s no doubt that xQc still has the edge over Taimou on Winston.

It’s worth noting that Taimou played against the Shanghai Dragons, a team which has yet to win a game. Going up against a stronger team, Taimou’s statistics might not be on the same level as xQc or other main tanks just yet. On a general level, however, the gap between the two is statistically close. At this point, xQc is probably doing more to enable his team in ways that can’t be represented with statistics. Nonetheless, the statistics do indicate that with more practice Taimou could make a great addition to the Fuel’s main tank lineup.

Excerpt of Taimou’s Post-Game Interview

However, the question still stands as to why Fuel felt the need to transfer Taimou to main tank and, on a macro level, what he brings to the team in that role. One of the Fuel’s key areas for improvement after Stage 1 was communication. The team realised it was hard to commit Taimou to main shot caller when he played DPS and so they tried to switch to a free flow style of shot calling between all of the members playing. Although it’s hard to distinguish how well this worked without direct access to Fuel’s comms at the end of Stage 1, it’s fair to say it might have been a large factor in why they looked so disjointed throughout the stage. Bringing Taimou over to the main tank role fixes that problem. In a post-game interview with Soe, he said, “overall, because I used to be a main caller for a long time, it’s much easier playing tank because it’s easier to call.” It’s also been made clear that xQc doesn’t want to be the star tank of the team, which makes the move for Taimou even more logical.

Despite this, Taimou didn’t play in the second game against the Los Angeles Gladiators. Before the game, Mike “Hastro” Rufail (CEO and owner of the Fuel) tweeted that xQc would be playing for “at least” one map — so whether Taimou would be subbed in hadn’t yet been decided. xQc ended up staying on for all four maps against the Gladiators with an absolutely dominant performance. Interestingly, Fuel didn’t look uncoordinated or sloppy without Taimou’s supposed crucial shot calling. xQc did note, in an interview with DBLTAP, that the weak point of his shot calling is when things aren’t going to plan. Almost everything went to plan for Dallas in both games, as they faced two of the league’s easier opponents, so perhaps in tougher situations Taimou’s shot calling would be a better fit.

xQc returned with an entrance modelled after one of his main heroes, Winston.

At this point, Cocco’s role in the tank lineup is unclear and in dangerous territory. Considering his lacklustre performances in Stage 1 it seems unlikely he will be subbed in in the near future.

As mentioned earlier, better communication was the key improvement needed for Fuel in Stage 2. The tank roster adjustments are the most obvious example of how the team is addressing this problem. However, diving a bit deeper, it wasn’t just the tank line that was altered for better communication — the whole roster was altered to shift in favour of communication. The support roster for both games consisted of HarryHook and Custa, both notably very vocal members of the team during games. Many were hoping for Chipshajen to make his return on Ana, the hero for whom he is famous. However, the early meta doesn’t seem to favour her enough to justify running an Ana specialist. Chipshajen is also still working to improve his in-game communication. All things considered, HarryHook and Custa are probably the strongest support combination for Fuel at the moment.Their flexibility and in-game communication abilities are sorely needed on the team. It was great to see HarryHook back on Lucio and, besides a few misfired ultimates, Custa looked great on Zenyatta.

After Custa misfired a few ultimates, Rascal and HarryHook jokingly reminded him where the ‘Q’ button is.

The true highlight for Dallas this week was the DPS players. The DPS roster changed quite frequently — Effect played every map bar King’s Row against the Gladiators, meanwhile aKm and Rascal shared the second DPS spot. Akm lived up to the hype, playing an oppressive Soldier: 76 that dominated the high ground and protected the back line. Meanwhile, Rascal mainly played Junkrat, Genji and Sombra. Both of them looked great and seemed to gel well with the team despite the limited time they would have had to practice with the team.

Effect was back playing Tracer, which was nice to see after so much Widowmaker in Stage 1. He had previously stated the increased Widowmaker in Stage 1 was because the communication and synergy with the tanks wasn’t good enough for him to be able to play Tracer. Clearly Fuel have fixed some of those problems if he now feels confident to go back to her. Although Effect wasn’t the flashiest DPS player on the team this week, he was consistent, which is what Fuel need. Fuel’s difficulties in Stage 1 put a lot of pressure on Effect to perform. The addition of Akm and Rascal have likely taken some of that pressure off and allowed him to feel more comfortable and relaxed in-game.

An example of aKm’s dominant Soldier: 76 against the Los Angeles Gladiators on Hanamura.

So what will Dallas’ roster look like for the rest of the season? It seems likely that aKm, Effect and Rascal will swap out on a map-by-map basis as the DPS core. It’s unclear at this point whether Taimou or xQc will be the starting tank, although all signs point to Taimou once he’s had more practice. Although many might doubt the use of transferring Taimou across roles as opposed to simply benching him, Taimou is probably more instrumental to the team than can be visible from an outside perspective.

A screenshot from Seagull’s discord via twingalaxies.com

Seagull didn’t play at all this week, leaving a big question mark on his role within the team. However, he confirmed in messages on his discord that he will be transferring over to the off-tank role. This is another interesting roster change for the Fuel, whose only other off-tank player is Mickie. As I’ve noted before, Seagull would a be a great Zarya player for the team. He’s also confirmed he’s learning D.Va so he can fill in for Mickie if need be. He also reiterated that he joined the team as a substitute and understands that 80% of his job is on the bench. These changes will make Seagull an even stronger substitute to have on-hand — given his flexibility, he’ll be able to confidently fill in for Rascal, Mickie and probably aKm in the future.

We can also expect to see more dive compositions out of Fuel now that they’ve signed some new players and switched some roles. Taimou noted in his post-game interview with Soe that they were “very focused on trying to learn dive … [and] Rascal brings a Genji to the team.” Although some would argue that Seagull was supposed to be Fuel’s Genji player, perhaps the Fuel coaching staff were hesitant to rely on him for such a crucial role in dive compositions when he was only meant to be a substitute player. Considering this, signing Rascal begins to make more sense.

Don-jun “Rascal” Kim made his debut for Dallas last week after transferring across from the London Spitfire.

Overall, the Dallas Fuel looked much better this week than they did in most of Stage 1. However, do we really have a good measure of their improvement? They have five victories total, but because of the repeated schedule between stages, four of those five victories are against Shanghai Dragons and the Los Angeles Gladiators. These are undeniably the weaker teams in the league and Fuel still have a long way to go before they prove themselves.

This week, Fuel will go up against the Seoul Dynasty and the Los Angeles Valiant. These are good middle of the pack teams that are a logical step-up from last week’s games. Seoul certainly didn’t look great towards the end of Stage 1 but, considering their performance last week, they’ll still be a good test of Fuel’s abilities. Valiant have been much more wishy-washy, but hopefully they pull together and put up a good fight.

The most important takeaway from week 1 of Stage 2 is that Fuel looked more confident and decisive than ever. Not only that, but their roster was coherent, strategic and logical. Even if some may continue to question whether it’s the right decision to move Taimou to main tank, at least it is a solid and clear decision. So much of Fuel’s Stage 1 was indecisive and uncertain — it’s nice to see the Fuel go in one clear direction. Hopefully they stick with it.

Things to look out for in week 2:

The tank match-up: Miro looked amazing last week. Fuel would be putting themselves at a disadvantage playing Taimou against Miro — this is a match where Fuel needs xQc on a technical level. The real question will be whether this technical ability is worth the trade for any potential loss in shot calling or team cohesion if Taimou is not playing.

Miro looked amazing last week. Fuel would be putting themselves at a disadvantage playing Taimou against Miro — this is a match where Fuel needs xQc on a technical level. The real question will be whether this technical ability is worth the trade for any potential loss in shot calling or team cohesion if Taimou is not playing. The potential Ryujehong vs Chipshajen Ana battle: Could this match see the return of Chipshajen playing Ana? Could we see two of the world’s most renowned Ana players going up against each other? Let’s hope so — the map pool and post-Mercy nerf meta certainly help our chances. Fingers crossed.

Could this match see the return of Chipshajen playing Ana? Could we see two of the world’s most renowned Ana players going up against each other? Let’s hope so — the map pool and post-Mercy nerf meta certainly help our chances. Fingers crossed. Sneaky Soon: He pulled off one of the best backcaps of all time against Fuel in Stage 1. Will he be able to pull it off again and send xQc into a spinning fit of non-primal rage? Part of me hopes he does.

Keep an eye out for part 2 of Refuelling next week, where I’ll break down week 2’s matches and look towards week 3.

All stats thanks to Winston’s Lab.