The Dallas Fuel roster, on paper, was the best Western Overwatch League team at the start of the Season. Being one of the few Western teams to have earned the respect of the Korean fans, EnVyUs, however, had to play in the worse meta for their team.

With the Player signing window still open, Dallas Fuel has already announced a few new additions to the team. They will also have XQC available to play on the active roster with start of Stage 2.

There have been two additions announced to the Dallas Fuel team so far. They have formally announced the addition of Akm to the team while confirming talks for Rascal’s transfer to the team.

The article series covers the three teams at the bottom of the table: Shanghai Dragons, Dallas Fuel and Florida Mayhem.

Dylan ‘Akm’ Bignet

AKM is considered the most talented DPS not to be a part of the Overwatch League. He was a part of the former Rogue roster, which was considered a strong opponent to the Korean teams. If they would have made it into the Overwatch League Season 1, it would have been a strong contender to all the remaining teams out there. However, Rogue was unable to secure a spot and the roster disbanded.

Let’s add another flag to the mix. Please join us in welcoming Dylan “aKm” Bignet 🇫🇷 to Dallas Fuel. #BurnBlue @DF_aKm pic.twitter.com/4rodlqfC8d — Dallas Fuel (@DallasFuel) February 13, 2018

Akm mostly plays a Hitscan role, however, he does not have much experience with Tracer gameplay at the highest level. His performance on Mccree, Soldier 76 amongst others has earned him a lot of acclaims. But his role does overlap with that of Effect on Dallas Fuel to some extent.

Having Akm on the team also allows Dallas Fuel to be able to rest Effect, who has been a constant feature in all of their matches. He took the last few matches off due to personal reasons and Dallas Fuel was scarce for DPS players. With the new meta incoming, we will see AKM being a lot more useful than he could be in Stage 1.

Dong-jun ‘Rascal’ Kim

The former Kongdoo Panthera DPS player has been on the bench for London Spitfire for most of Stage 1. The first week saw him get hardly any playtime while he was sparingly used in subsequent matches. The Captain of the Kongdoo Panthera has a great synergy with Birdring. However, London Spitfire has been using Birdring and Profit as their starting DPS duo.

A player of Rascal’s calibre should not be kept on the bench. He has shown us amazing flexibility in the hero pool in the past. His off-meta DPS picks have created huge excitement amongst fans.

I can confirm we are in the process of negotiating @Rascal’s transfer to the @DallasFuel. Working with @C9Jack, his staff and the @overwatchleague to finalize. — Mike Rufail (@hastr0) February 13, 2018

Rascal is a player who constantly picks heroes such as Sombra, Mei, Doomfist at the highest levels of professional Overwatch. His efficiency with these heroes makes him a really difficult player to counter. However, we have also seen him play Mccree, Pharah and Genji for the team. He is a very versatile DPS and there are very few DPS players in the Overwatch League who can play as many heroes as him.

Rascal fits into Dallas Fuel perfectly. His acclivity towards new and different heroes has reflected in Dallas Fuel bold hero compositions. They have always been the team to pick up a different strategy, a new way of playing on certain maps. They were one of the first teams to introduce the Sombra defence on Volskaya and perfect it. With Rascal, there is even more scope for the team to try out different tactics and compositions.

Check out our Player Preview on Rascal here.

Will Dallas Fuel Play With 5 DPS?

With the addition of Akm and potentially Rascal, Dallas Fuel will be having five DPS players on their roster. While their DPS during Stage 1 might not have been the best, it was their tank lineup which definitely needed a boost. With the lack of coordination amongst the tanks and the DPS, the Dallas Fuel was not able to execute their gameplay perfectly.

Seagull is a very talented player on the team, but we have seen his coordination being way off the mark. His ultimate usage has been questionable at best and the team could definitely do with some more time together.

The addition of Rascal brings a Korean DPS duo possibility for Dallas Fuel. Rascal has always admired Effects gameplay and it would be a deadly duo indeed. The Rascal-Effect DPS duo will not have language barriers affect them and can coordinate their movements in sync.

Taimou

Towards the end of Stage 1, we saw Taimou move to the Roadhog frequently for Dallas Fuel. Taimou has been playing as a flex DPS for Dallas and is often the brains behind their weird hero compositions. However, the Dallas Fuel lack an effective Roadhog player and Taimou comes in with a very effective playstyle. Indeed his Roadhog was statistically one of the most effective characters for Dallas Fuel.

Mickie is a great D’va player, but his Roadhog playstyle does leave a lot to be desired at the professional level. If Taimou were to shift to the off-tank role, it creates a lot of space not only for the DPS but also for the versatility of the team composition. With Akm and Effect covering most of the Hitscan roles, the remaining Rascal and Seagull cover the remaining DPS roles.

Dallas fuel looks set for Stage 2

Dallas Fuel undoubtedly had a poor start to Stage 1. They are at the bottom of the table for a long time and barely pulled ahead in the last week of the Stage.

But going into Stage 2, we expect a lot from the Dallas Fuel roster. The new DPS pickups and the potential role swap for Taimou make this team look extremely balanced, much more coordinated and more versatile with their picks. While they still will not be a contender for the best team in the world, we should be seeing them move up the table very soon.

Dallas plays their first match of Stage 2 against Shanghai Dragons. The match will be streamed live on Twitch on 21st February 1800 PST.

Overwatch League will see diverse gameplay post the Mercy meta.