Dallas Fuel enjoyed a perfect week as the inaugural Overwatch campaign moved towards the postseason.
Fuel surprise
Dallas entered Stage 4 as a team that were at the same level as the winless Shanghai Dragons, due in part to the announcement that star DPS player EFFECT would be taking an unknown amount of time away from the team due to fatigue.
However, Dallas looked incredible in both their matches this week, beating the Boston Uprising 3-0 and securing a hard-fought 3-1 victory against in-form Philadelphia Fusion.
It appears as though Dallas have benefited from the reduction in value of Tracer in this Stage as it has allowed their DPS players in Seagull, Taimou, and aKm to focus on practicing a myriad of other heroes.
Coupled with the sudden brilliance from Mickie on the newest hero to the league Brigitte, Dallas have emerged as a threat to be reckoned with in this stage.
Gladiators remain unbeaten
The Los Angeles Gladiators showed that they should be counted amongst the Overwatch League elite by beating the Houston Outlaws 3-1 and the Florida Mayhem 4-0.
The Gladiators’ victory against the Outlaws was particularly impressive as their opponents had appeared to be one of the top two or three teams in the league.
It was the first week that the Gladiators were able to use Void, who split time with Bischu in his debut week.
The Gladiators are currently the main challengers to New York Excelsior, with four possible DPS players complimented by incredible Tank and Support play.
At times the Gladiators do lack a player that can single-handedly dominate a match, but their consistency, even against the other elite teams, has been impressive.
Spitfire return to form
After a major overhaul of their roster that saw them move four players to an inactive status, the London Spitfire finally returned to their Stage 1 form with 3-2 victories against the San Francisco Shock and the Seoul Dynasty.
The Spitfire are relying on a core group of players and are finally finding some consistency.
London had not been able to find a settled team until recently and, while San Francisco and Seoul are mid-table squads, the Spitfires’
victories against them has been a major boost to their hopes.
Outlaws stumble
Houston Outlaws suffered two surprising defeats and, although they were a little unfortunate to lose 3-1 to the Los Angeles Gladiators, they looked completely out-of-sorts in the 4-0 defeat to the San Francisco Shock.
Everything had appeared to be going Houston’s way as both the map pool and meta adjustments were working in their favour with continued improvements from a myriad of members.
However, they suffered a complete meltdown in their match against the Shock and were completely disorganised from the start.
Houston are still considered a top side and, with matches in Week 3 against the Shanghai Dragons and the Florida Mayhem, they should be able to get back on track.
Dynasty show signs of improvement
Even though they lost both games this week, the Seoul Dynasty looked better after shifting ryujehong back to the Support position.
Allowing Miro and KuKi to play the Main Tank role yielded mixed results for Seoul but falling to the Excelsior before losing a narrow series to the Spitfire is nothing to be ashamed of.
The ryujehong Main Tank experiment was essentially a disaster but Seoul now have a much stronger line-up and will be hoping to get back on track against Shanghai and Florida.
Conclusion
The New York Excelsior, Los Angeles Gladiators and Los Angeles Valiant all concluded the week with an undefeated record.
That will not be the case after Week 3 as all three teams have tough schedules, not least the Valiant who play the Gladiators and the Excelsior.
