Welcome to the Overwatch League Stage 1 Playoffs Day 3 Recap! The semi-finals took place last night during the next installment of matches for the Stage 1 Playoffs, and fans were treated to two clean sweeps in both matches. With the finalists now locked up, here is what happened in the semifinal matches of the Overwatch League Stage 1 Playoffs.

Seoul Dynasty versus Vancouver Titans

The first semi-finals match was between two teams that go way back, all the way back to when APEX was around and these two teams faced off in the APEX Season 2 grand finals. Back then, they were known as Lunatic Hai and RunAway. RunAway still exists, but the original roster was picked up for the Overwatch League. Lunatic Hai simply turned into the Seoul Dynasty. The APEX Season 2 grand finals ended with Lunatic Hai/Seoul taking the victory over RunAway/Vancouver, but now the tables have turned. Even though Seoul managed to keep it close during the maps, the Titans swept the Dynasty and have progressed onto the grand finals, taking the win with a final match score of 4-0.

The Titans played better than Seoul, and it wasn't like the Dynasty played badly. However, Seoul did have some good moments during the match. Flex player Michelle took advantage of the fact that Vancouver had completely stopped defending the payload during the Dynasty’s attack on Hollywood, so he decided to leave his team to fight the Titans and back-capped the point for a few meters. Unlike Atlanta against Philadelphia, the Titans noticed the back-cap and managed to stop Michelle before he could capture the second checkpoint.

Mixin' up the Compostitions

Another highlight from the Dynasty was their deviation from the GOATS composition on Temple of Anubis. Instead of running the meta-favoured 3-3 composition, they chose to run Pharah, Wrecking Ball, Sombra, Widowmaker, Ana and Mercy instead. They began by using Symmetra as well in order to get flex support Ryujehong as Ana up onto the high ground with the teleporter. The Dynasty got pretty far with it on their first attack round. The Titans shut down the Dynasty on their second point push. It was then, however, that Dynasty switched back to GOATS. They did try it again on their second round of attacking, but it didn’t go as planned. Seoul have had an impressive run of the season so far, and it can only go up from here. Expect them to make a huge impact in Stage 2.

The Dynasty weren’t the only ones to deviate from the GOATS composition. The Titans styled through their match against the Dynasty. One such moment was during their final attack to take the win on Temple of Anubis. Seeing that Seoul had played their interesting composition twice already, they decided to try one of their own. The composition was wacky to the fullest extent, with main tank Bumper on Hanzo, flex tank JJANU on Wrecking Ball and flex support Twilight on Widowmaker, though we have seen flex supports play DPS before.

A weird, wild world

Bumper decided to switch over to Tracer to get back to the point and help his team take the win, and they were very successful. The Titans played their own weird and wonderful composition and got into the heads of the Dynasty. It wasn’t just for style points, though. The mind games played by Vancouver were exceptionally strong. The Titans are now headed for the grand finals, where they’ll be playing against the San Francisco Shock, who are no slouches indeed.

San Francisco Shock versus Philadelphia Fusion

The second semi-finals match was yet another clean sweep, as the San Francisco Shock took on the Philadelphia Fusion. Neither team has been slouching this season, though the Fusion have had some worrying moments in some of their matches with their flex support falling ill for a couple of them. Unfortunately for Philadelphia though, Shock decimated them in a thorough shellacking. San Fransisco took down the Fusion brutally with the final match score ending at 4-0 in favour of the Shock.

And my what a showing the Shock put on for their fans. Every player on the team was doing their job perfectly, but Super and Sinatraa stood out among the rest. Super was landing Earthshatters at crucial moments that allowed his team to help him wipe out the Fusion when it mattered most. But the star of the show was most definitely Sinatraa. If you need some statistics, here are Sinatraa’s stats at the end of the match.

Sinatraa Performs as the Shock puts on a Show

At the end of the four maps the Shock played against the Fusion, Sinatraa had dealt 62,636 points of damage, hit 41 final blows, had an average energy charge of 61%, killed at least one person per Graviton Surge, killed 105 people overall and only died 11 times. Sinatraa had such an impact for his team during team fights, especially during the clean up where he managed to kill four members of the Fusion by himself on Horizon Lunar Colony to force Philadelphia back into spawn. The Shock now have to face off against the Vancouver Titans, and what a match it shall be.

Unfortunately for the Philadelphia Fusion, their stage playoff run ends here. The Fusion didn’t have too much to show off during the game, save for Poko getting three triple kills with his Self-Destructs as D.va during the match. The self-destructs either halted progress for the Shock or allowed the Fusion to move further on. Apart from that, there was nothing of significance to point out. Sinatraa bested Carpe in the Zarya matchups, with Sinatraa managing to charge 21 gravitons in the same time it had taken Carpe to charge 15 in the entire match.

The Philadelphia Fusion couldn’t seem to capitalize on the Shock’s mistakes in time to make enough progress, and the Shock punished them brutally whenever they made a mistake. It’s back to the drawing board for the Fusion to figure out how they can bring it back for Stage 2. That said, Fusion looked great towards the end of the season. Look for them to bounce back in Stage 2.