After last week’s confusing matches of each Chinese team beating one and losing to one, this week solidified which teams were truly better than others. Philadelphia Fusion, Shanghai Dragons, and the Los Angeles Gladiators seem to be some of the strongest teams that played last weekend.

First, we will talk about the Shanghai Dragons. They competed against the two Chinese teams that hadn’t played against yet, the Hangzhou Spark and the Chengdu Hunters. They won both their maps in a dominating fashion, only losing a single map to Chengdu and not losing any to Hangzhou. The DPS duo of Fleta and Lip had a lot of highlight plays, but the true carry of the team was their main support, Leejaegon. He was protecting his other support play very well, and constantly disrupting the enemy team when they tried to engage. For example, in this clip, we see Leejaegon knock an enemy support off the map, as well as finish off Chengdu’s main tank, to close out the fight for his own team. Stand1 and Void also played well as tanks, blocking enemy ultimates as well as hitting their own. We will have to see how Shanghai compares against the other top teams to accurately place them within the top 5, but they certainly deserve a spot within it.

Leejaegon’s elimination of enemy support and main tank

Philadelphia Fusion only played one match this week, against the Washington Justice, who was defeated 3-0. The match had both teams playing a fairly unpopular hero, Torbjorn, with it being a match of Corey on the Justice against Carpe of the Fusion. Carpe certainly had the better of Corey in most of the matchups, shutting down the enemy turret as constantly spraying lava on the tanks of the Justice. The most notable thing from the match up was the incredible team synergy of the Fusion. So many of their great plays were from setups of multiple players of the team. For example, at one point Poko launched his ultimate into the enemy team, with Sado earthshattering 3 of the Justice on the payload. The enemy Reinhardt, however, was not shattered and could block the entire combo, however, Heesu (in his debut game nonetheless) managed to land a hack on him at the same time, leading to a team wipe for the Fusion.

Poko’s D.Va bomb leading to a team wipe

Although LA Gladiators doesn’t have an amazing record at 2-2, they’ve only lost to two of the top teams, that being the Vancouver Titans and Seoul Dynasty. This week, they annihilated the Dallas Fuel, and last week they beat last season’s champions, the San Francisco Shock. They aren’t the best team in the league, but from watching their performances so far I would put them in the bottom of the top 5. Their signing of OGE as the main tank was an incredible pickup, as we watched him demolish his old team in a convincing fashion. The support line of Biggose and Shaz has always been a consistently great as well, often landing strong first kills and making sure not to overlay their ultimates in the same fight. With a little bit of work, this team could easily become championship level, but they are just out of it for now.

OGE landing a great Earthshatter for his team to capitalize on

The other top teams who did not play this weekend are the Vancouver Titans, New York Excelsior, and Seoul Dynasty. Out of these, we will only see Vancouver play next week, but in the future, any of the matchups with any of the teams mentioned in the blog should be a great fight.