Oasis, as far as maps go, is well known for being an aggressive dive and Pharmercy friendly map; at least outside the University stage where more tank-y line ups can flourish with the tight chokes onto point and low ceiling.

Kinda not amazing for pharmacy here to be honest.

Time and time again we have seen teams fall back to these pharmacy dive compositions to win them rounds, confident that this is the best composition is the best to win them the map.

New York went against this completely with their compositions. Instead they would run slow line-ups that worked well with chokes. and they would effectively beat Los Angeles Valiant, a team well known for being proponents of aggressive dive tactics with it.

Easy Youtube link.

So what was New York running?

Very much not a dive comp.

I think its important to show how New York’s comp synergises in a void before talking about what they do differently in game. The linchpin of the composition is Mano’s Orisa; who enables Meko and to a lesser extent Pine on the McCree through her shield ability.

Junkrat on the other hand wants to be playing in situations where hes spamming into chokes and tight corridors.

Finally Mercy and Zenyatta are the support duo de jure as well as synergising well with both McCree and Junkrat. Its a no brainer to run them here.

How does this contrast with Las Angeles Valiant?

A dive comp.

For the sake of brevity I’m not going to go too much into the Las Angeles Valiant line up because at this point unless you’ve never watched Overwatch before you should know what this composition is and what it aims to do. This is a classic dive composition. It aims to find targets and blow them up using high mobility and burst damage.

The fortress

Excuse my terrible paint drawings

New York’s plan revolves around creating what amounts to a fortress and daring Las Angeles Valiant to enter it. Orisa edges point with her Protective Barrier which enables hog to get hooks off it. Junkrat can play off this shield or spam other chokes. supports sit in the middle and enable and can peal for who ever they want, while McCree can flank and position as he wants to secure kills.

Positioning in this side room shuts down and negates a Pharamercy combo as well as the mobility that D.Va and Winston bring by forcing them into the tight chokes of the doorways, where they’re susceptible to the burst damage of Junkrat.

Pines adventures

The nature of New Yorks composition would seem on the surface to leave little in the way of peel for any aggression or pushing away from the main death ball, but under the surface there is a surprising amount of support for Pines McCree as long as he plays within the confines of the green square. Both the Mercy, Zenyatta and Road Hog all have the ability to rotate and peel for him.

A million chokes to spam.

As well as the three main chokes Junkrat plays with his team he has a number of chokes he can “forward hold” by holding the choke circled in the picture above and spamming from there into the two further chokes of the enemy team.

What could have Valiant done differently?

New York’s composition demands that the enemy team initiates into their own position. In that way it is purely reactive. If given the point in the first place New York become ever harder to dislodge from their area of control, able to endlessly contest.

So For Valiant the mission is to not play into New York’s game. Playing the jump pad and far side of the point means that New York is forced to play more aggressive, putting Junkrat, Orisa and Roadhog in positions which play less to their strengths.

Pine also presents a tasty opportunity provided he isn’t allowed to kite them all into the Junkrat bomb filled chokes. the low mobility of McCree and burst-y nature of Valiant’s composition allowing a potential quick kill.

Or you could just run a Junkrat into it.

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As always you can find me on twitter at @maid_OW or on twitch at twitch.tv/maidoverwatch. Come abuse me in live chat at discord.gg/Gg8cn76