Photo: Stewart Volland For Blizzard Entertainment

‘Chiu on this’ is a short and regular opinion blast



The playoffs of stage 1 Overwatch League have begun with an upset. In the first series of the day, the Seoul Dynasty beat the New York Excelsior 3-1. It was a fairly comprehensive victory by the Dynasty as they completely threw off NYXL on the control map with their previously unseen lineup of (tobi, ryujehong, marve1, fits, fleta, and zunba). The dynasty controlled space better and were able to take advanced positions against the NYXL and forced NYXL to become the aggressors which is antithetical to NYXL’s strengths.



After that the Dynasty reverted back to their standard Fissure-Jecse lineup which thrashed them on Hollywood. The third map had NYXL pull out some of the clutchest point captures we’ve seen in Overwatch League off the back of Nenne and JJoNak.



In the final game of the series, NYXL were close to taking the map as they neared the third point on Rialto on their offense. However the team stalled multiple times. Their attacks were uncoordinated, some of their ults were thrown away (notably JJoNak’s) and in the last fight Nenne used his grav in a desperate attempt to kill sombra.



The idea of trying to grab sombra was smart. NYXL had 6 ults, but because of how the layout of the final choke works out, all 6 of them could be EMP’d. They worked under the worst case scenario that Sombra had ult up and because of that Nenne tried to get the grav. The idea itself wasn’t the choke, but the execution was.



While it’s fair to say that both JJoNak and Nenne choked in the fourth game, they were also supremely clutch in the third. As that’s the case, it’s hard for me to label either as perennial chokers. (We’ll have to see how well they perform under high pressure games going forward).



The other thing to note is that the Dynasty have found their color at the most inopportune time as none of these games count towards the season and the patch is about to reset the meta. Even so, it’s a good victory for the Dynasty. They break any psychological barrier they had in the head-to-head against NYXL, the process of finding their color should help them find their color in future metas, and they have found working synergy with potentially 2 cores of lineups.



As for individual players, the biggest factor in this game was Michelle. He consistently outdueled Meko and JJoNak as sombra and was easily the MVP of the match.

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