Now that Stage 2 of Overwatch League has essentially concluded for the Houston Outlaws, they are in an interesting spot. The path the Outlaws have taken to arrive at this position in the standings is one of the more unique courses in the league. To recap, the meta in Stage 1 mostly revolved around Mercy, which played to the team’s strengths. As Muma stated in Focus: Chapter 12, (the Outlaws’ weekly internal coverage of team developments; uploaded to their YouTube channel and high quality content at that, recommend watching) everyone was normally on their best hero in Stage 1. JAKE, or J LuL K E as known by Twitch chat, looked like a tier 1 DPS player on the Junkrat role. LiNkzr, arguably the best Widowmaker player in the league, thrived along side JAKE on the sniper-friendly maps, such as Junkertown and Eichenwalde. Muma and CoolMatt retained their top flight synergy from their time playing for FNRGFE. Rawkus flexed quite a bit in this meta, off from the usual Zen/Ana and played a solid amount of Soldier:76 and Road Hog. The last main player on the squad is Bani. Bani’s Mercy was extremely key to the Outlaws success this stage, pulling out Valkyries and resurrections at the most opportune moments. The Outlaws finished 7–3 in Stage 1 which was good enough for a 3rd place finish, losing to the eventual champion London Spitfire in the first round of Stage playoffs.

Moving to Stage 2, 2 of the Outlaws’ best heroes had been nerfed. Junkrat received a damage falloff to his concussion mine and Mercy’s Valkyrie was heavily nerfed. This led to Boink playing much more, as teams were seeing Lucio being brought back into the meta. The first week of Stage 2 actually went very well for the squad, beating the Spitfire in 5 maps and a 4–0 victory against the Uprising. Week 7 is where things started to fall apart at the seams. The Outlaws lost a barn-burner to the Fusion, coming down to the last possible team fight on a map 5 Ilios, tied 1–1, 99%-99%. Not only did they lose, but they were reverse swept. One can only imagine the mental toll it takes on a player when this happens. Then after losing 0–4 to the NYXL, the team had to regroup and refocus. It turns out, the players had skipped VOD review for this week. Head coach TaiRong was not happy about this and it seemed that the players were remorseful of their actions. Into week 8, the surging Valiant with KariV slotted into the DPS position proved to be too much for the recovering Outlaws. The Mayhem match, however, was a different story. Going down 0–2 in the first half put the guys in green in a precarious position. Under JAKE and Muma’s leadership and mental fortitude, the Outlaws persevered and managed to pull off a reverse sweep of their own, winning 3–2. This was huge for the team’s confidence, as they were on a 13 map loss streak before their win on Hollywood.

In week 9, the Outlaws lose in 5 to a surging Gladiators team and take a step back against the Shock. Danteh was able to run circles around the Outlaws, tearing CoolMatt and the supports limb from limb. This week came with the biggest sting to the Outlaws fans, as the lack of a star Tracer player was evident. After the Gladiators match, GM Flame tweeted that Clockwork de-meched Bischu twice and JAKE went 25–3 on Gibraltar, then ends it with “bUt GuYS yOU nEEd a TrACEr PlaYeR”. As a devout Outlaws fan, this came off as harsh and condescending. There was no explanation for the Ilios map, where Tracer WAS ran and JAKE was clearly outmatched. There was another tweet from Flame the week before, calling out the stat that Clockwork had the lowest damage/10 minutes out of all Tracer players. He retaliated that fights on Assault maps are generally very short and concise, so Clockwork’s damage will be low by default. Why not run him on more maps then? If they want to keep JAKE’s flexibility as an option, do not run Tracer for the majority of the time anyway. This may be just Flame responding to trolls and whatnot, but blatantly ignoring such a gaping hole in the team left most people puzzled.

Most fans know most issues are far more complex than a single problem. If you know Overwatch, you know communication is key. In Focus: Chapter 12, Flame lays out the team’s struggles in length and his thoughts. When building team communications, he stated that the team was heavily reliant on JAKE’s comms and leadership skills. This was a mistake, because this means that JAKE has to play almost all the time. Additionally, if JAKE is playing Tracer, he cannot communicate well and lead, since by nature, Tracer goes off on flanks and is a pest to enemy supports much of the time. This worked much better in Stage 1 because Junkrat is normally played more with the tanks and supports. If they bring on a Tracer specialist, they sacrifice communications and team cohesion, (which seems at a low point anyway at the moment) or they sub out LiNkzr, their star DPS player. He also brings up the extremely rigorous schedule of OWL. These types of problems cannot be fixed in 1 or 2 weeks. It takes months to rebuild an identity, change shot-callers, stabilize a consistent rotation of players/subs, etc. With matches twice a week, it can certainly give off the vibe that the team is not working on their issues and just trying to brute force their way to a win. Patience is going to be a big factor with both fans and the team as the Outlaws work through these problems together.

The Outlaw’s work ethic was well documented in Stage 1, paying off immensely. A struggle to adapt to this meta and attempting to reconstruct their identity has got them in a bit of a funk. Most teams in OWL have responded to mediocre play by upgrading their roster. Rod Breslau, or more commonly known as Slasher, reported that ArHaN is set to join the roster in the coming weeks. ArHaN was a Genji/Tracer specialist in APEX and is close to TaiRong. The Outlaws also have DPS player, Mendokusaii, on their roster as well, who stated on Twitter that his Tracer has been feeling great recently. If only he would show up to scrims. Hopefully a new team dynamic will inject Houston with the boost they need to climb back to the top of the standings. With the improvement of the Fusion, Dynasty, and Gladiators, the Outlaws will need to escalate their play in Stages 3 and 4 if they want to compete for the OWL title.