It makes sense when a playoff team clinch their spot early, and they rest their starters and close their playbook. Tired players get much-needed rest after a long season before the emotionally-draining playoffs. It minimizes injury risk. They get to save stratagems for matches that really matter.
But sometimes, that little late-season vacation extends into the playoffs. Not every player or team can turn off a competitive engine running at top speed for months and then rev it back up to that level at will.
It’s one of the most cliche narratives in sports journalism. But sometimes, it’s an apt one.
New York Excelsior entered the Overwatch League playoffs as heavy favorites. They finished the regular season with a ridiculous 34-6 record, a full eight losses less than the next ranked team and playing a mistake-free brand of Overwatch. They feature all star talent in every spot in the lineup, and field the league’s first MVP, Bang “JJoNak” Seong-hyun. They clinched playoffs weeks before opponents, and said they were taking a bit of a break in the final quarter of the season. Yet they still finished with a 7-3 record in stage four, narrowly losing in the stage title matches to Los Angeles Valiant.
Against Philadelphia Fusion, the sixth-seeded team, Excelsior are big favorites on paper, even in a meta that seems to favor Fusion’s powerful DPS duo of Lee “Carpe” Jae-hyeok and Josue “Eqo” Corona. But today, in the opening match of this best-of-three semifinals, Fusion looked like the world-beating team, sweeping New York in three straight maps to take a lead in the series.
Maybe that stage four vacation wasn’t such a great idea.
Of course, there were many more factors contributing to today’s result. The ever-changing Overwatch metagame has finally reached a point where Zenyatta, the league MVP’s primary hero, isn’t a 100 percent pick. New York have reportedly struggled adjusting to the current metagame, and it showed today.
New York even had the benefit of watching Philadelphia Fusion play an entire series against Boston Uprising in the quarterfinals in this current metagame, but that advantage didn’t make a difference.
Fusion came to play tonight, but New York barely took the stage.
The match opened on Dorado, and Carpe instantly leaped out of the spawn as Widowmaker and sniped New York’s Mercy. Philly used the pick to roll through the first point, and while New York eventually slowed their momentum, stopping them near the last checkpoint, it was clear that Fusion weren’t going to roll over for the league’s top team.
They took Dorado on the back of a scrappy brawl in the map’s final section. The payload stalled just a few meters from an Excelsior victory for a fight that lasted minutes. Philly love that scrappy type of Overwatch, allowing their individually-skilled DPS players to shine, and New York uncharacteristically played into their hands.
Oasis was next, and while Excelsior secured the second round of the map thanks to some great Pharah play from Kim “Libero” Hae-seong, it was clear Philadelphia had the front foot the whole way through. On University, there was one moment where it looked like Excelsior could turn the match around, winning a ridiculous four-vs-six fight in overtime to save the map, but Philadelphia had plenty of time left and simply regrouped and crushed New York.
Eichenwalde wasn’t very close—Fusion finished the map with time in hand and New York couldn’t take the second point, ending the series.
New York Excelsior need to go back to the drawing board, because their gameplan tonight didn’t cut it, and some of the decisions they made seemed almost inexplicable. For example, double-sniper compositions and the new Hanzo, with his rapid-fire Storm Arrows, is one of the strongest heroes in the current metagame. Philadelphia played over 27 minutes on the two heroes through the match. New York were in single digits. That’s even more surprising when you consider they feature Libero in their lineup, a player famed as perhaps the best Hanzo in the world.
Excelsior seemed to struggle with other aspects of the meta. Philadelphia featured Reinhardt for at least some part of every map today, but New York seem scared to feature the hero more prominently. They also started the streaky and inconsistent Kim “Pine” Do-hyeon in their first two maps, and while he had his moments, it’s surprising to watch New York lose in such a fashion while keeping one of Libero or Park “Saebyeolbe” Jong-ryeol on the bench for the first two games.
Luckily for New York, they’ll have a couple days to prepare to change their playoff fate. They’ll finish the series against Philadelphia on Saturday, giving them two full days to figure out what went wrong tonight. Needless to say, this series is far from over.
Philadelphia were dominant tonight in a convincing 3-0 win that showed they had a better understanding of the current state of Overwatch than their foes. But we saw Los Angeles Gladiators sweep London Spitfire on Wednesday in a similar game, and London came back on Saturday to win six straight maps to sweep Gladiators off the stage.
Philadelphia may be in the driver’s seat after tonight, but New York Excelsior are still the best team in Overwatch—and they still have time to show it.
