Hey everyone! I have not been super active on the forums recently, despite me saying that I wanted to make a lot of posts to hopefully better the Community and make Overwatch a more friendly place, but I am back and ready to post again. I feel like with today being the start of Stage 2 Week 3 in the Overwatch League, that this would be the perfect day to talk about one of my favorite teams, the Dallas Fuel.
In the title I said that there is an issue with Dallas Fuel, now before I continue I want to preface by saying that I have no hatred against the players or the coaches on Dallas Fuel, in fact I have only support for them, but I also have some tough love to give the Dallas Fuel right now. To give some backstory, I do not live in Dallas, so I have no connection to Dallas Fuel because of a connection with the city of Dallas, however the players have always been some of my favorite and I have been following them for a long time, that is the biggest reason that I chose Dallas Fuel as my favorite team. That being said I do not praise their play in the Overwatch League, it looks stale and lackluster, it feels like they do not enjoy playing in the Overwatch League, however I know that is not true, the players would not be playing in the Overwatch League if they did not enjoy it.
I very much feel that the coaching is the problem for Dallas Fuel, because when all these players either play on their own, or when they played on Team Envyus in Overwatch Contenders Season 1, they looked amazing and seemed practically unbeatable. However I am not going to be giving KyKy all the blame for this, I mean seriously, I feel that those that blame KyKy only do not realize that the other 2 coaches are not just bench warmers for coaching, they are coaches just as much as KyKy, even though KyKy is head coach, the other 2 coaches are just as responsible for the issues as KyKy.
The issue with Dallas Fuel is their strategy/play, their player choices/subs and last but not least the roles that each player is put on. To start off, we need to address that Dallas Fuel ran mostly one strategy in all of Stage 1, not only should a team not run the same strategy or team comp through all of a Stage, they should also have multiple strategies that they can switch between during a match, and not play the same strategy for 6 minutes when it is failing (referring to the Seoul Dynasty VS Dallas Fuel Game in Stage 1). This issue is something that needs to be changed, the strategies need to be more crisp and sharp, they need to have multiple strategies and better team play when using those strategies.
Next I want to talk about how Dallas Fuel seems to be subbing in and making starting lineup choices that make no sense, this ties into which players are playing which characters so I am going to make this next part a double feature with both issues. The first thing that I believe most people have noticed is Taimou, why does Taimou never play Roadhog anymore, Taimou is quite possible the best Roadhog in Overwatch history, however Dallas Fuel seems to be deciding to not play Taimou on that role, but rather putting him on DPS or Main Tank when you have Effect/AKM/Rascal on DPS and xQc on that Main Tank role. I also want to talk about how Mickie seems to not understand what to do on D.va, now I believe that this is not only Mickie’s fault, I believe that he is not receiving the right criticism or coaching from the coaches, which this ties into how Dallas Fuel’s coaches seem to not understand the game enough. Now take that and think about it with a grain of salt, because we do not know if they understand the game or not, it just seems that way.
Now how does Dallas Fuel change this, well first off, have Taimou play some more Roadhog, it seems as if a Roadhog would significantly help them, and to give some information on why Roadhog would be good for Dallas Fuel, look back to the first game that Dallas Fuel had in the Overwatch League, yes the match against Seoul Dynasty in Stage 1, that was the closest match they have had to date against a really good team, and that was without AKM/Rascal, now would this fix everything, no obviously not, but it would be a good start and help out a lot. Next put Rascal on Junkrat and AKM on Soldier, and stick with that, or put Effect on Tracer and AKM on Soldier and stick with that, do not play the Widow and Tracer or Widow and Soldier when it clearly is not working for Dallas Fuel.
Last but not least, Mickie, we need Mickie to learn how to play better as a team, Mickie is possible the best D.va player of all time, mechanically that is, not game sense wise, and that is very clear, when I though of the best D.va, I would think of Mickie, now when I think of the best D.va I think of Coolmatt, Envy, Meko, Woohyall (I think that is how you spell the London Spitfire D.va players name). I no longer think of Mickie as the best D.va, not in mechanical sense, but in terms of game sense.
Now I am not a League player, so I do not know all the ins and outs of how things work there, but I do know that it just feels like Dallas Fuel are not connected on a team level, despite most of them recently being from Team Envyus, believe me when I say that I am a huge fan of Dallas Fuel, and all I want for them is great things, but I needed to make this post and give them some tough love. I hope that Dallas Fuel changes for the better and soon, because right now, they are changing for the worse, and it is happening far too fast.
Hope you all enjoyed this post and I hope you all enjoy watching the start Overwatch League Stage 2 Week 3 tonight, and I will be back to posting more often very soon. 