It was the team that full held NRG at BEAT Invitational and beat Fusion University twice at Overwatch PIT. And it was the team that recruited xQc for Contenders Trials. So what happened? They were two games away from making Top 4. How did they fail to qualify for Trials?
Unstable roster
With xQc sitting at the top of the announced roster, you'd expect good results. And it seems the team thought so as well, as the first two games were streamed by both xQc and Coluge.
But after those losses, we started to see some changes. Coluge was having electrical power issues and they needed to bring in Hawk as a ringer. And by Game 4, xQc was missing during scrim warmups for their match vs. LNL. As a result, Knellery was brought in to Main Tank.
The results are what you’d expect with a last-minute tank lineup. There simply wasn't enough time for Knellery and Hawk to fully adjust and GOATS were defeated 2-3.
xQc contacted the team afterwards, but it’s clear he did not play for them anymore moving forward. After speaking with GOATS, it was confirmed xQc was 100% done.
Not enough practice
With the original core members, they already had synergy due to their days together as Fractal. In a now deleted tweet, Gator said they won 2nd at Overwatch PIT with little practice. But the fact is that for Contenders Trials, more practice was needed since new members xQc, Knellery, Majesty and Moffitt needed to gel with the original team.
As described by Knellery, the GOATS 3/0/3 comp was previously led by Gator’s decisive aggression. Gator filled 60% of the comms, followed by 30% from Tensa and 10% by the rest of the team. But since Gator is Coach for GOATS on Contenders Trials, it’s his job to pass his method onto xQc and Knellery.
With Knellery on Main Tank, GOATS took their only win against Bye Week. Considering that GOATS was only 2 games away from Top 4, they might have qualified if Knellery was played from day one.
But to be fair to xQc, all of the games he played were close. So why did he choose to leave? Had he stayed, he might have fully synergized with the team and taken them to Top 4 qualification.
Regardless, both xQc and Knellery are excellent tanks in their own right and we might have seen GOATS playing in Contenders if the roster had been static.
Moving forward
To be clear, there is no blame placed on any individual player's performance. In this clip, xQc was willing to accept responsiblity for their loss vs. Grizzlys.
However, there are definite questions on whether the roster could have been handled better in order for GOATS to properly synergize. Regardless, their chapter is closed and the players are moving on.
Majesty is joining Team Canada for Overwatch World Cup 2018 and Sit is joining Contenders EU team: Bazooka Puppiez.
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