The ﻿Dallas Fuel﻿ has had a mixed Stage 2, starting off strong against the Toronto Defiant and Paris Eternal, but falling to the Seoul Dynasty and Vancouver Titans in Week 3. However, with Dallas’ Homestand Weekend coming this weekend, the Fuel look to regain ground by defeating their hometown rivals, the Houston Outlaws, as well as the struggling Los Angeles Valiant.





Upcomer talked to DPS player Zachary "﻿ZachaREEE﻿" Lombardo about his slow escape from “Brig Jail,” the addition of Off Tank Lucas "NotE" Meissner, and the Overwatch League’s first trip to Dallas.





You’re vocal about being in “Brig Jail,” how has it been flexing over to some more DPS heroes, and even Baptiste?





ZachaREEE: Yeah I got to play a healer that has an actual weapon. It’s pretty nice because now you notice teams like Paris and Chengdu are obviously playing more DPS comps, so sometimes GOATS may not feel good on specific points of maps. So like we’ll swap over to Dive comps, or I’ll play Tracer/Sombra, so it feels good to be able to actually play the characters I actually really enjoy playing.





I mean, Brig’s fine but I haven’t enjoyed playing Brig as much, it doesn’t feel like I’m using any of my mechanics or talent, or anything. But it feels nice being able to go around and do Dive stuff, do basic stuff that I’ve known for a long time and being able to play more than one hero is refreshing.





Why do you think this stage has more DPS heroes being played?





I think GOATS is still probably the best comp for most parts, but they did some changes with the way armor is placed, because when you’re taking damage, if you have armor, it’s being broken first. So now characters like Zen and Zarya aren’t always going to be +100 HP because of Brigitte’s ult.





Plus, Brigitte’s ult isn’t permanent anymore, now it’s only 30 seconds with the Rally, and they just slightly buffed some DPS heroes, so Sombra got slight buffs with her hack, Hammond got buffed - he’s really strong against Tanks, Pharah got buffed - she’s really strong against tanks. Those characters are good against tanks, and that’s why people are playing them to cheese first points out of people, or on the beginning of payload maps. It’s mostly just patch notes changes.

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Chengdu was pretty much always playing that in Stage 1, and it was still a decent comp, but it’s not really consistent unless you put a ton of time into it. Now that there are changes that make it a little bit stronger, it’s viable for teams to pick it up in certain scenarios.





You have a new D.Va player in NotE. How has that changed the team dynamic?





We have a different dynamic because rCk used to play Sombra for us in Sombra GOATS, and in triple DPS he’d play Sombra and I’d play Tracer. So we kind of swapped; Note’s primarily D.Va and then if we’re playing a Sombra GOATS comp, we’ll have aKm go Sombra. It lets me and aKm play more characters now, and NotE’s just really solid on D.Va and Zarya and his other picks, like Hanzo, Soldier, Orisa.





He brings really good communication and a very smart playstyle to the team so it’s just really nice having him - for quick moments you might forget something and he’ll always remember it. You’ll win a fight because Note clutches on a bomb, or he’ll notice an ult and then eats it. He’s always really smart and on task.





With Dallas’ Homestand Weekend coming up soon, what are you looking forward to?





We’re all just looking forward to the entire thing, because for most players on the team it’s going to be their first time in Dallas, it’ll be my second. Being able to actually interact with the home crowd will be really nice. Having interviews, meet and greets, it’s building up esports and Dallas Fuel in our own home market, so that’ll be really fun. And then playing against Houston in Dallas should be fun, but it’s just nice being able to see esports being in respective cities and it building up. It’s exciting to see.





Does that make you excited for geolocation?





Yeah, I’m pretty excited for it. We’re Pacific Division, so I think that means we’re going to be going overseas a bit. I’m not too sure how it’s going to work, but it should be fun being able to travel. You just have to hope all the logistics are good so we don’t have really bad jet lag or anything, but if everything works out well, it should be fun.