It’s tournament week! This is the last of the regional tournaments before the postseason begins so let’s get into it.
News and Blues
Before we get into the tournament itself, we have some news, mainly that the Dallas Fuel imploded over the past week.
- Fuel release Decay, part ways with assistant coach Tikatee
- Dallas Fuel release head coach Aero
- Dallas Fuel release HarryHook due to player misconduct
I hope this means that the Dallas Fuel come out a better organization and a better team for next year. Their performance over the last couple years has been disappointing to say the least. Losing their star DPS player before the post season however means that unless they somehow markedly improve in a couple weeks, they won’t be getting far in the playoffs.
There was another bit of news, a new signing for the Seoul Dynasty, a two-way player, Toyou. Toyou is a off-tank player who did say some playtime in the Countdown Cup this weekend. A two-way contract means that he still plays for Seoul’s academy team in Contenders Gen.G esports.
The Meta
The meta for the duration of this tournament was mostly two variants:
- Winston/Zarya based dive
- Orisa/Sigma double shield
DPS pairings were usually Sombra/Genji or Genji/Ashe (or Tracer in some cases). Support pairings were either Ana/Brigitte or Baptiste/Brigitte, some teams did occasionally opt to replace the Baptiste with Zenyatta instead like the San Francisco Shock.
It was interesting to see dive compositions go up against double shield compositions. Some teams were definitely more successful with their dives (for ex – the Philadelphia Fusion), others not so much.
It was also a week where we saw top tier Ana players like Alarm hit incredible sleep darts and Zenyatta players like Viol2t hit orb headshots. A fantastic week for supports.
The Games
So as per usual with these tournaments I want to pick good games from each region.
Los Angeles Gladiators vs Toronto Defiant [NA]
This one is a five mapper that ends in the most hilarious way possible for the Defiant. Getting killed by a Junkrat tire and losing the series. This was the funniest series in this tournament. As a Toronto fan, I can’t even be mad at this because its so funny.
San Francisco Shock vs Philadelphia Fusion [NA]
If you had to pick one series to watch from this weekend, this is the one. A banger of a match between two of the best teams in the NA and it was in my opinion fairly close. Philadelphia’s performance was spectacular but yet again they got so close to a tournament win and then lost.
Seoul Dynasty vs Hangzhou Spark [APAC]
This series is another tragedy for the Dynasty. The first two maps were looking good but Hangzhou turned up the second half and started the reverse sweep back to a map 5 tiebreaker which they won. Hangzhou’s performance in this tournament was surprisingly good considering their performance recently so this was a bit of a surprise.
Shanghai Dragons vs Hangzhou Spark [APAC]
This is the most one sided tournament series I’ve seen in a while. The Dragons absolutely destroyed the Spark. Not even close. Shanghai was winning fights where they were at a disadvantage. Fearless was on fire. Few mistakes were made by the Dragons. I don’t think Hangzhou played badly necessarily, it was just that the Dragons were a level higher than their best play. I really want to see the Dragons face off against the Shock, that is THE matchup.
Wrapping things up
This was overall a quieter tournament than the last two, there were a couple upsets but mostly my first round predictions were correct.
We have two more weeks of regular season games left before the post-season begins on September 3. So I’ll be back next week with another post like this.
Before I go, here have a couple wholesome tweets:
See y’all next week!