On the first weekend where hero pools were introduced to Overwatch League, the undefeated Philadelphia Fusion was up against the Paris Eternal, who looked extremely poor after a loss to the 19th place team. McCree and Reinhardt, two characters who both teams relied heavily upon in the past, were banned, so fans were intrigued to see how the match would play out.
On the first map, Illios, Philadelphia tried running Eqo, normally a DPS player, on Support. To put it bluntly, this was not a good look for the Fusion; they quickly lost the map in just a few minutes, as substituting out the main support, one of the core members on the team, easily disrupts the established teamwork in-game. Paris ran right through the Fusion, and even after Philadelphia swapped back to their standard main support player, FunnyAstro, the Paris continued their hot streak to win the second map in the series, Junkertown. There wasn’t much interesting to say about this map, it was just Paris continuously demolishing the Fusion over and over, it seemed like the two teams were on completely different levels; almost every player on the Fusion was getting outclasses by their counterpart on Paris. Soon and Xzi, the DPS from Paris, were especially playing extremely well, hitting almost every shot against their enemies.
Going into the third map, with Paris up 2-0, things were not looking good for Philadelphia fans. Although the Fusion was known for making ridiculous comebacks in the past, it felt almost impossible, yet somehow it wasn’t. I’m not quite sure what the Fusion’s coaches could have told the players during halftime, but they looked like a completely new team at this point, revitalized and full of new energy. The map played almost the same way as the previous two, with the only difference being that the Fusion was now the team obliterating Paris. With an incredible defense on Blizzard World, Paris was unable to get a single point on their attack, giving the Fusion their first map of the series. The next map was a bit closer, but Fusion managed to have the edge as Carpe was playing extremely well at this point. Now the score was tied up at 2-2, leaving it to the final map, Oasis, to determine the winner.
Oasis played out as a microcosm of the match as a whole. Paris demolished to win the first point of the map, and the Fusion did the same thing to win the second point. The team that captured the next point would win the match. The fighting when back and forth, each team trading blows and winning fights. The capture progress was not at 99% for each team, entering overtime; the last team to remain on the point would be the victors. First, both teams managed to kill three players on the enemy team, with Philly currently in control of the point. It was almost entirely even, nobody could have predicted what would happen next.
Last Point of Oasis
Both teams eliminated another player, but by now each team had reinforcements of their players who died earlier spawning back in. Carpe managed to get a few more kills, but Xzi managed to take out FunnyAstro from the Fusion, and then ran and shot a well-placed rocket to kill Philly’s tank player that was attacking his own team’s support, skewing the fight back in Paris’ favor. Carpe managed to get a kill on Paris’ support line, however, at this point Xzi was in full control of the fight, killing his counterpart on the Fusion, Ivy, as soon as he made it back to the capture point. At this point, both teams had started to build up ultimates and were using them to counter each other, leading to both Paris and Fusion losing their main tank; almost back to an even fight; except Paris had one more ultimate they charged in time, which gave everyone on their team extra health for a short time. Paris capitalized on this to use the extra health to wipe out the Fusion, and although Carpe managed to get a few kills in this time, it wasn’t enough to spin the fight back in his team’s favor. In the end, it was Paris that won one of the closest, most intense overtime fights in Overwatch League history.
Watch the very last fight here!