PLAYER POWER RANKINGS: Kings of the Countdown Cup revealed!
Who carries the crown before playoffs?
TANK:
SADO
Although Philadelphia continued their unfortunate theme of coming close in the finals, SADO looked incredibly clean on that Winston. All tournament long, SADO showed perfectly controlled aggression combined with immaculate coordination. I would say that SADO and smurf are both on the same level (and one leap above anyone else) but I was far more impressed by SADO’s coordination with every player on his team, whereas San Francisco seemed to coordinate groups of players together and split up. But it’s not only his Winston play that he showed so powerfully on — throughout the whole tournament we saw him occasionally take out the Reinhardt and even the Wrecking Ball! This type of flexibility from one player is a key part of the Philadelphia Fusion’s identity and danger as a team since you never know what they can bring out, but you know it will be a world-class performance nevertheless.
DPS:
ANS
Coming into this tournament after reaching rank 1 DPS player in the Americas, ANS was on fire from the beginning. Using Florida Mayhem as a practice range, ANS clicked head after head with a huge pop-off at the final moments on Havana when he forced a 6 VS 6 into a 4 VS 5 in his team’s favour and eventually winning the series off of it. Going into the finals, ANS did what he seems to do with every single match he enters — he made himself known and made the opposition fear him. Fusion had no choice but to focus him down but they’re attempts seemed weak given how many resources were invested to keep ANS alive. ANS’s only weak moments recently (including in this tournament) is when he plays Sombra — he had some weak EMPs and poor positioning, but when you’ve got STRIKER as your DPS partner it’s hard to go wrong. Given that they only pay ANS’s Sombra on Watchpoint: Gibraltar, I think it would be a better idea to either: keep ANS and STRIKER on DPS but have ANS on Tracer (which, although not as good as STRIKER, his Tracer is still high level) and STRIKER on the Sombra (which he usually plays on any other map that it’s needed) or Shock could go for a Rascal and STRIKER DPS line as we know Rascal is very flexible and STRIKER could play either Tracer or Sombra based on Rascal’s strengths.
SUPPORT:
Twilight
Twilight really came alive in the second half of the finals as he hit sleep after sleep and shot after shot. You would be hard-pressed to find many moments where he was outperformed by MVP candidate, Alarm. As they almost matched everything the other did — one moment that stood out to me was on Numbani when we saw smurf get slept and then the camera cut to see that SADO was also slept over on the opposite side of the map! Great minds think a-like and clearly great players play a-like. One moment that Alarm didn’t match, or even see coming, was the classic San Francisco Shock type of flank that Twilight pulled out on Oasis: Gardens. He comes around the enemy’s side of the objective to coordinate the Biotic Grenade landing perfectly (along with Rascal’s dash and smurfs leap) on both of Fusion’s supports to end the fight before it even got going. And as if that wasn’t impressive enough… He goes and does it AGAIN! This time Viol2t joins him with the Rally and the Shock’s supports alone take care of Alarm and win the whole map off the back of this play. If we can continue to see this classic “all attitude, no fuss” (as Jaws put it) version of Shock then everyone should be terrified, even the Shanghai Dragons!
NEXT WEEK:
As I said, Shock are looking to reign dominantly over all of North America and put in a repeat performance of this recently game as they will have a re-match against Fusion — this is sure to be a match that keeps you on the edge of your seat since we all know Philadelphia don’t go down easily. Looking over to the APAC region, it is quite clear that nobody can hold a candle to the Shanghai Dragons as they expect to pick up some more easy wins. Seoul will be an extremely interesting team to watch though, as they’re downfall in the Countdown Cup was absolutely they’re composition choices. If they can keep up this good level of play and combine it with playing the meta compositions, Seoul could be one to look out for next week as they face NYXL.
Written by,
Cameron Jones — www.overwatched.site
