More semifinals preview: Los Angeles Valiant vs. London Spitfire.

Philadelphia Fusion is not a team of consistency. While they have gotten upgrades throughout the season that have steadily improved the quality of the team (and looked scary at times) they never proved themselves to be the best. Their biggest highlight of the season was in stage 2 when they made it to stage finals by beating the London Spitfire and narrowly losing against the New York Excelsior.

Their aggressive playstyle caught both of these teams off-guard until Excelsior stood their ground and put an end to the series. Since then, they had their ups and downs until last week they have shown the world, again, that they were a dominant force by putting on a super aggressive show, and completely rolling the Uprising with a 3 – 1 victory in their third match of the quarterfinals.

The stage 4 upset.

New York Excelsior, on the other hand, was coming off the worst stage of the season and losing against the Valiant in the Stage 4 finals. However, some claim that this has been an elaborate plan of “sandbagging”, which refers to purposely underperforming for whatever goals they may have. This may certainly appear to be so as New York Excelsior have constantly playing compositions that were being targeted by the opponent, and stubbornly refusing to switch.

So, the real strength of the Excelsior with the meta has yet to be seen. And this week we will truly see if the Excelsior was really struggling or sandbagging for the final moments.

The Philadelphia Fusion is against the odds. With the playoff maps that were drawn, their chances of winning is at 25% against Excelsior’s 75%. They were only able to take one map in Dorado and two maps off in Lijiang Tower out of 12 playoff maps they have played together. They were also completely rolled in Stage 4 and not even taking a single map off the Excelsior.  

They were beaten every stage by the Excelsior since their only victory in Stage 1. The Fusion are eager to get their revenge and this week will be the last chance they will have for the season.  

And it could soon become a reality.

The Flex Kings of Overwatch

A lot has changed since the Fusion were swept 4 – 0 against the Excelsior. Carpe claims that his team has no fear of NYXL because of their double sniper meta. In Stage 4, Shadowburn was playing in place of eqo for, reportedly, a wrist injury. Eqo is back and he is currently leading the postseason stats in damage with 9,401 in damage per 10 minutes. What has he been playing in the new meta? Well, pretty much everything. He has been leading in damage with the usual Hanzo, Junkrat, and Genji. But, now he has shown that he is the ultimate flexibility king by also playing D.Va and Zarya.

With an all-star roster (quite literally), it is not hard to imagine that the New York Excelsior is going to take this one with ease. However, with a meta so diverse, all eyes are on Libero, the Flex King of New York. He was the reason why Meta Athena (his former team) were able to run out-of-this-world compositions and strategies that were unheard of at the time. He isn’t your usual troll in ranked games that plays off-meta heroes, he dominates with them.

In Overwatch League, he has become tame, and he consistently plays a smaller range of heroes, but he is slowly becoming masters of them. He is deadly with Genji, Junkrat, Pharah, and his specialty Hanzo. There are times when he is invisible because of the sheer number of playmakers in the Excelsior, but there are also numerous times where Libero has singlehandedly won Excelsior games.

Verdict: The match will depend on who can quickly change and adapt to changing compositions of the opponent and be the enabler for the team. With two of the best flex players in the League, the semifinals would depend on them and their ability to swap and be effective.