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The Roar

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Overwatch League playoff preview: London Spitfire

Can the London Spitfire repeat their Stage 1 heroics in the playoffs? (Photo: Robert Paul/Blizzard Entertainmemt)
Editor
7th July, 2018
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The inaugural season of the Overwatch League gets underway this Thursday (Australian time), with the top six teams battling it out for the right to be crowned Overwatch League champions – and a cool $1 million (USD) prize.

The Roar will be looking at all six playoff teams before their first match of the postseason and today, we’re looking at the only team from the United Kingdom – the London Spitfire.

Expectations were high for London coming into season 2018. With a roster positively brimming with Korean superstars, many bookies had them pegged as the favourites to go all the way.

The season that was

Pre-season expectations looked to be on the money in Stage 1, with the Spitfire winning their first five matches – mostly in decisive fashion. Two losses in the fifth and final week of the stage saw them scrape into the Stage 1 playoffs purely on map differential, but from there they showed the rest of the competition why they were considered the frontrunners.

A convincing 3-1 win over Houston set up a date with the league-leading New York Excelsior, where the Spitfire turned a 0-2 deficit into a startling 3-2 victory. Even more impressive was the fact that Houston and New York were the two teams who’d defeated them the previous week.

Things looked to be going swimmingly for London once Stage 2 began, with three wins from four matches putting them at 10-4 on the season, before the club dropped a bombshell when they announced they’d ‘parted ways’ with coach Beom-joon “Bishop” Lee.

There were rumours at the time that the playing group had requested his ouster, but nothing solid ever materialised.

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In any case, the team did even better in Stage 2 – going 8-2 to finish in the Stage playoffs once more, although this time they suffered a shock loss to Philadelphia.

As impressive as London were in the first half of the season, the Spitfire have spluttered since then.

They appeared to really struggle with the Brigitte meta, losing four of their first five matches in Stage 3 before recovering to finish 5-5. Stage 4 was even worse, with just two wins from their first eight matches having them on track for a disastrous finish to the season, before two wins in the last week averted the catastrophe.

In the end, London finished with a respectable record of 24-16, although their map differential of +33 is the best of any non-division winning team.

Why they can win it

Has it been a while since we’ve seen London’s best? Undoubtedly.

Is London’s best good enough to win it all? Absolutely.

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While New York predictably dominated the Atlantic Division’s All-Star team line-up, Jae-hui “Gesture” Hong made the cut on the back of his superb Winston play all season, while Jun-ho “Fury” Kim is also one of the better Tank players going around.

Spitfire have some strong Support players too. Jong-seok “NUS” Kim has one of the higher average healing rates among Mercy mains and, at 2.15 eliminations every 10 minutes, isn’t too shabby with the pistol either.

London have had two full Stages now to get accustomed with the new metagame and, while that’s no guarantee they’ll be able to rediscover their winning formula, the calibre of their playing list is undeniable.

They are every chance to deliver on their bountiful pre-season promise.

It’s a big series for…

London’s DPS players.

No London players finished in the top 10 for eliminations per 10 minutes in Stage 4. In fact, only one player from the team featured in the top 15 in that stat – and it was Tank main Fury in 15th.

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The Los Angeles Gladiators – their first-round opponents – had four in the top 10.

Despite recent nerfs, Brigitte’s power level is still quite high, so she’ll likely feature heavily in the playoffs. Given it’s been common practice for a DPS main (in London’s case, Jun-young “Profit” Park) to use her despite her Support status, a lot of the long-range damage is going to be left to Ji-hyeok “birdring” Kim playing as Widowmaker – or even Zenyatta main Seung-tae “bdosin” Choi.

If Gesture can get a bit more comfortable with Reinhardt, that might allow Profit to get back to using Tracer and Genji a bit more and give London the damage boost they badly need.

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