In what is easily the biggest upset in Overwatch League history, the 17th ranked LA Valiant, who were 6-12 going into this match, have toppled the mighty Vancouver Titans, who were previously undefeated in the regular season, with a perfect 19-0 record.
The Valiant defeated the Titans 3-1. Here’s how it all went down.
Map 1 Oasis
It looked like another day at the office for the Titans, who took an early lead in the series by dominating City Center with a modified GOATS comp of Winston, D.Va, Lucio, Ana, Brigitte, and a lone Soldier to counter Valiant’s Phamercy comp.
Unfortunately, despite some amazing sleep darts from Young-seo “KariV” Park’s Ana, the rest of the Valiant were unable to capitalize, and the Titans took round 1 easily.
On Gardens, Valiant continued to run Phamercy, but clearly, the Titans weren’t too worried, swapping Min-soo “SeoMinSoo” Seo off of Soldier and onto Sombra.
With almost nothing to challenge their Phamercy combo, the Valiant took the point first and looked firmly in control, building up to a 73% lead, until a big team fight initiated with some clutch hacks from SeoMinSoo let the Titans take control of the point. LA flipped the point on the next team fight, and reached 99% but Vancouver came right back and flipped it again.
With the map at 99-99, the Valiant engaged the next team fight and looked to have the upper hand, flipping the point, but somehow the Titans made it back and SeoMinSoo was able to land a huge EMP onto four members of the Valiant, cleaning up easily with some help from Sang-beom “Bumper” Park’s Winston.
Map 2 Paris
On Paris, the Titans were on attack first, but their Sombra, Genji, Lucio, Ana, Wrecking Ball, D.Va comp was completely ineffective against the Valiant’s bunker comp led by Russell “FCTFCTN” Campbell’s Orisa. With just 30 seconds left, the Titans switched to GOATS and were able to cap Point A in overtime, but were unable to snowball Point B thanks to a huge six-man EMP from Johannes “Shax” Nielsen’s Sombra.
On their attack, LA stuck with FCTFCTN on Orisa, to protect their triple-DPS comp of Hanzo, Pharah, Sombra. They managed to take Point A on the back of an Orisa Supercharger, but stalled at Point B. Both teams eventually made the switch to Sombra GOATS, and LA managed to close it out thanks once again to another huge Shax EMP.
Map 3 Eichenwalde
Vancouver made a huge mistake to start Eichenwalde, expecting Brady “Agilities” Girardi to play Pharah again, and putting SeoMinSoo on McCree to counter. However, while Agilities did indeed start on Pharah, as soon as Valiant saw Titans running McCree, they ran back to spawn and swapped over to a Sombra GOATS comp.
With no Zarya to help Bumper’s Reinhardt, Point A fell quickly, and the Valiant managed to push the payload almost non-stop through to completion with over four minutes left in the time bank.
Shax’s Sombra once again hit some beautiful EMPs, including this one at the end that deleted Sung-jun “SLIME” Kim’s Sound Barrier.
Both teams were running mirror Sombra GOATS on the Titans attack round. The Titans started strong, taking Point A on their first attempt, but the Valiant fought them throughout the rest of the map, draining valuable seconds from the clock.
Vancouver made it within inches of completing the map, but were forced to regroup with less than a minute remaining. Before the Titans could even make it through the castle doors, Shax met them with an EMP on the bridge that delayed them enough for time to run out.
Map 4 Dorado
Both teams were once again playing mirror Sombra GOATS with LA on attack first. SeoMinSoo got the first EMP off, but it missed Custa’s Lucio, who managed to keep his team healed up long enough for it to wear off. Shax hit his own EMP and FCTFCTN followed it up with a massive Earthshatter to get LA to Point A.
LA continued to roll through to Point B, and pushed onto the end of the map. The Titans weren’t able to mount much of a defense with SeoMinSoo failing to get much value out of his EMPs. Shax, on the other hand, kept hitting clutch EMPs, and the Valiant were able to complete with just under two minutes left on the clock.
Staring down the barrel of their first ever regular season loss, the Titans decided to switch things up for their attack and went with a Phamercy comp with Hyojong “Haksal” Kim on Pharah and SLIME on Mercy.
The new comp had limited success with the Titans struggling but eventually managing to take Point A. Despite having no hitscan DPS to counter Phamercy, KariV’s Ana single-handedly kept Haksal in check with multiple sleep darts, including this amazing rooftop shot:
With time running out the Titans started making mistakes, wasting ultimates and struggling to secure picks. Right on the doorstep of Point B, with less than 30 seconds left, the Titans swapped to Sombra GOATS and went for one last push, but a huge Biotic Grenade from Kariv stopped it in its tracks and both Haksal and Slime went down early.
SeoMinSoo came in with a 5-man EMP but it was too late, and with two men already down, the Titans couldn’t capitalize as time ran out.
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