We're now into the second part of the season after seeing the Spitfire finish with their second top three finish of the season. Once again it started with the rival week with games with the Houston Outlaws and the New York Excelsior meaning that it was likely to be an all or nothing week results wise. With a change in meta and the Excelsior coming off winning stage two. Everything was up for grabs to start the stage.
Each week of the regular season, I'm going dive into both games and provide to you what I thought was good, what was bad and finally what was down right ugly about the London Spitfire's performance. If you've not already seen the games this week then leave now, as this will reveal the result and the starting line ups. So grab your pipes, line up your sets and get prepared for a dog fight.
Thursday 5th At Houston Outlaws
Starting Line-Up: Bdosin, Birdring, Fury, Gesture, NUS & Profit
Result: 2-3 Loss
The Good
Temple of Anubis comes back into the rotation in stage three and it started off with a bang. The offence was slow but methodical and was led from the front by Gesture on Winston and Profit behind him supporting with his Junkrat and a very spicy Sombra. It may have taken them a little while to cap point A but when they did, they took control and easily disposed of the Outlaws to clear there attack.
If their attack was good then their defence was outstanding. Every threat that the Outlaws could throw at the boys was repelled with ease and the team together locked point A down. If it wasn't for one mistimed push by Birdring. It would have been a full hold
When you face the Outlaws you know full well that you'll be facing the Jakerat too. Thankfully the boys were fully aware of this and managed to shut down every tire that came there way. Minimising his effect in the overall game.
While we had a heart breaking loss to the Fusion on Route 66 in the playoffs, the Spitfire came back strong on one of their favourite maps against the Outlaws.Lead by some in point accuracy from Birdring's Widowmaker and some important and well timed Mercy healing and resurrections from NUS meant they looked consistent up until the C9. The Route 66 full hold however was a thing of beauty and showed that when the Spitfire are able to get on the same page, especially with their tank line of Fury and Gesture, they are a forced to be reckoned with.
The Bad
I feel a bit off calling the teams performance on Blizzard World bad, simply because it's a brand new map that's just come into the rotation while the boys were back home in Korea, during the mid season break. However, it was clear that they didn't have much of a game plan or strategy for the map when they started their attack run. While their defence between point one and two looked good, more work will need to be done to catch up.
The Ugly
I'm sure that every Spitfire fan will tell you that when we see the control map type our heart are in our mouths, every time we see it's Oasis as the map pick, it's squeaky bum time and when Woasis is the tie-breaking map for stage three, we're praying to the Overwatch gods that we don't have to go to game 5 this stage. The Spitfire are now 14-16 when it comes to Control map types and are consistently showing their worst games on this mode.
If their attack was good then their defence was outstanding. Every threat that the Outlaws could throw at the boys was repelled with ease and the team together locked point A down. If it wasn't for one mistimed push by Birdring. It would have been a full hold
When you face the Outlaws you know full well that you'll be facing the Jakerat too. Thankfully the boys were fully aware of this and managed to shut down every tire that came there way. Minimising his effect in the overall game.
While we had a heart breaking loss to the Fusion on Route 66 in the playoffs, the Spitfire came back strong on one of their favourite maps against the Outlaws.Lead by some in point accuracy from Birdring's Widowmaker and some important and well timed Mercy healing and resurrections from NUS meant they looked consistent up until the C9. The Route 66 full hold however was a thing of beauty and showed that when the Spitfire are able to get on the same page, especially with their tank line of Fury and Gesture, they are a forced to be reckoned with.
The Bad
I feel a bit off calling the teams performance on Blizzard World bad, simply because it's a brand new map that's just come into the rotation while the boys were back home in Korea, during the mid season break. However, it was clear that they didn't have much of a game plan or strategy for the map when they started their attack run. While their defence between point one and two looked good, more work will need to be done to catch up.
The Ugly
I'm sure that every Spitfire fan will tell you that when we see the control map type our heart are in our mouths, every time we see it's Oasis as the map pick, it's squeaky bum time and when Woasis is the tie-breaking map for stage three, we're praying to the Overwatch gods that we don't have to go to game 5 this stage. The Spitfire are now 14-16 when it comes to Control map types and are consistently showing their worst games on this mode.
Friday 7th vs New York Execlsior
Starting Line-Up: Bdosin, Birdring, Fury, Gesture, NUS & Profit
Result: 0-4 Loss
The Good
Hooreg hasn't had a lot of playing time and it's hard to get into any form of consistency when you have two of the top five DPS players in the league on your team. He did however look like the best out of the three this weekend. To a point it looked like Hooreg has going to start putting the team on his back until he was focused further. He's been getting a lot of unnessary flack recently but in actual fact Hooreg has improved week on weak and people need to realise that he's not the flashy DPS player that both Birdring and Profit are.
The Bad
I think it's time to accept that the Fury and Gesture tank line just isn't working. There's something there that isn't quite clicking the same as to when it's Gesture and Woohyal. I'm not sure if it's a co-ordination or a play style thing but we just got straight up bullied in this game. Not to discredit Fury at all as he's a very good player, but I feel that it's time for a starting line up that includes Woohyal instead and seeing how Tizi and Fury pair up maybe the way forward.
Positioning errors, they were something that could be seen but kept to a small contained area in both stage one and two. The first two games of stage three has seen them reappear and with some vengeance at that. The main culprits of these errors seems to reside with the Supports as far too often they were out of position, leading to either a botched attack or weakening the defence. This is something that stay's bad for now but will need to improve sharply.
The Ugly
I'm really hoping that I don't have to say this too often and the fact that this is the first time all season that I am, but we looked awful and fully deserved the 0-4 result that the Excelsior handed too the team. I'm not sure if it's still a bit of a hang over from the previous stage but the team just seemed a little flat in this game to take the series back to 2-2.
The C9's for the love of god the C9's. The fact that there's now so many appearing shows to me that communication is a problem and it needs to be addressed. I'm not sure if it's the shot calling strats from NUS/Closer or the fact that they are at time too kill hungry but the fact this is a reoccurring thing is a problem.
That's it for week one of stage three, we end the hardest week of the season on an 0-2 record. We return on Thursday 12th April with a 2am BST match against the Florida Mayhem and then finally a return of a EU friendly time slot when trying to avenge the playoff loss to the Philadelphia Fusion on Saturday 14th April.
No comments
Post a Comment