Dallas Fuel took New York Excelsior to Game 5 last night and silenced every critic.  Although they ultimately lost, their opponents understood and respected that Dallas is starting to hit their stride.

Head Coach KyKy recently stated that he would bring more transparency and he did not disappoint.  In a recent interview, he acknowledged the previous error of placing Taimou on a tank role and stated Seagull would be trying out off-tank for the NYXL match.  As we can see from last night’s results, it was the right decision.

Examining the games, Seagull’s D.Va and Mickie’s Winston went toe-to-toe with New York’s dive composition on both Lijiang: Night Market and found their groove on Gibraltar.  Being that Mickie is mainly a D.Va player, it makes sense that he already has an idea of how Seagull’s D.Va will move, even if it’s only Seagull’s 2nd time.  

However, there are more factors to explore.  Dallas kept the same line-up for all 5 games and every member has their contribution.

-Reaper and Mei make an appearance at Lijiang: Control Center

No strangers to experimental compositions, Effect and Rascal takes a page from a 2016 playbook and brings Reaper and Mei to win a 100% - 0% game.

-Rascal has Libero’s number on Gibraltar

Rascal’s McCree is able to sweep through Libero’s Genji for more than half the map.  Libero switches to Soldier:76 and Widowmaker, but it’s not enough to stop their full push.

-Improved comms

From a previous clip, we could hear problems between Rascal and Custa over comms.  KyKy has confirmed that there is a clash with Rascal now playing in an international team, as opposed to his previous team London Spitfire which was all Korean.

“He wants to call strategies in game, but he can’t really do it yet, because of his English. He can only say basic things and I think he’s a very smart person and we’re very lucky to have him. But at the same time, you can definitely notice the clash of culture.”

From last night’s game, it seems they are beginning to find a good balance.

-Moving forward with a new mindset

KyKy noted that when they won Overwatch Contenders, they got complacent.  This aligns very closely to a statement EFFECT made during his Inven AMA.

KyKy: "As a team, I think that the biggest mistake we made was, even before preseason, everyone started becoming pretty complacent. We won Contenders easily and I kept telling them that Overwatch League was not going to be this easy, because Contenders was too easy."

EFFECT: "Envyus was just a team that won APEX season 1. Korean teams weren't as good then. We won Contenders but that was like a tier 2 league. I was also just a Tracer one-trick. We're not that good. So we're working hard to improve."



KyKy confirms Re1nforce’s theory and states there is a confidence issue.  Dallas performs well in scrims, but things start to fall apart when it’s game time.

“All last week, our scrim results were actually really good, we made very good progress last week. And then as soon as we got on stage, some people didn’t want to play or weren’t feeling it. Some people weren’t having a good day. It was all over the place.”

From last night’s results, Seagull may be the breath of fresh confidence that Dallas Fuel desperately needed.

All photos inside the Blizzard Arena stadium taken by Robert Paul for Blizzard Entertainment and subsequently released by Blizzard for publication.