Nobody was in the room to celebrate with Noh “Gamsu” Youngjin Sunday evening. No high-fives. No hugs and certainly no hand-shakes. Gamsu needed to celebrate though, because he and the Dallas Fuel just captured their first win of the season in a 3-2 thriller against the Los Angeles Valiant, snapping a 15-match losing skid.

The Fuel needed a win, and got it using their own style. They didn’t cave into the popular hero picks, which has been a goal for them since the offseason. Getting that to work was the hard part, and they finally did.

Also, Gamsu found a way to spread his joy.

“It was weird,” Gamsu said. “Usually after a victory we high five and get excited together, but at home I just hugged my dog.”

So proud of my team! We’re going to keep working hard and do even better in the future. Uni is happy for us too 🥰 thank you for supporting me Uni and all the fans too! pic.twitter.com/w6pqRdHCM1 — Gamsu (@GamsuOW) April 6, 2020

The win was the perfect cap to a roller coaster of a week for the Fuel (1-3). They felt confident in their team composition involving either a Tracer or a Doomfist when practicing against other Overwatch League teams. That was until this week’s meta composition emerged.

The Los Angeles Gladiators exposed the holes in the Fuel’s strategy in a 3-0 win Saturday evening. The Fuel decided on Doomfist over Tracer and stuck with it all match, but could never breakthrough for a map-win. The Fuel had to search for answers before they faced a talented Valiant team.

“After the match yesterday we brought the Tracer back up as a talking point,” Fuel head coach Aaron “Aero” Atkins said. “A lot of the issues we had yesterday were more about cleaning things up, regardless of what hero we choose. We talked about it all morning and practiced in warmups.”

Dallas plugged their damage star Jang “Decay” Gui-un on Tracer against the Valiant and were rolled on the first map. The scene was similar to their loss to the Gladiators. Promise, but not enough for a win.

Aero regrouped with his team after losing that first map, and Decay was adamant about where he stood.

“Decay was like ‘Let’s stay Tracer,’ and we all decided we could make the adaptations to win,” Aero said.

Decay and the Fuel responded with a win on the second map, but the Valiant were convincing in taking the third map of the match. Dallas had its back against the wall without much practice time on anything other than compositions that weren’t particularly strong against what the Valiant ran.

Aero’s team had to execute the rest of the way, and that’s what happened.

“Torbjorn is usually a counter to Tracer, but Decay is a skilled enough Tracer that a lot of that didn’t matter. The way the Valiant were positioning and the resources they were putting into a Tracer as opposed to our Reaper we felt like we should stick with it and how we could maximize it.”

Both Decay and Gamsu were instrumental during the deciding moment of the match, which came on the fourth map. If the Fuel didn’t win the next two fights, they’d remain winless in a competitive OWL season. Decay made a huge play with his ultimate, getting a couple of eliminations and bringing the momentum to the Fuel’s side.

Aero even said if it wasn’t Decay playing the Tracer, that it wouldn’t have worked. He’s one of the only players in the world that could make something out of nothing against a composition that was objectively a counter.

The Valiant had more resources for the final fight of the map, though. The Fuel required a massive play. Gamsu had his team covered, landing a massive ultimate to seal the map and bring the match to a fifth round.

“I was thinking that they had a lot of ultimates for that play,” Gamsu said. “I think if I didn’t make that play, we wouldn’t have won. I had to believe in myself there.”

A confident Fuel squad carried their success into the final map and had their opponent in disarray. The Fuel may have only gotten their first win of the season, but the moment meant more than a 1-3 record to Aero.

“To me, it was a matter of time before we won,” Aero said. “I was hoping it would be yesterday but at least it was today. The whole, 15-game thing, there is a big difference between this season and last season. Even though we are 1-3 right now, I expect that we will see more wins because we’ve been growing up.”

The Fuel had a unique style and was able to make it work. A couple of star players that were brought in made a win-worthy impact and now the Fuel have a chance at stacking wins instead of losses.

Find more Fuel stories from The Dallas Morning News here.