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We’re looking at all six Overwatch League playoff teams before the postseason gets underway on Thursday (Australian time). What chance do the resurgent Los Angeles Gladiators have of claiming the $1 million (USD) prize?
The Gladiators are one of a handful of teams with a traditional sports backing featuring in the playoffs, with the club backed by the same group behind Premier League club Arsenal and the Los Angeles Rams of the NFL.
While their sporting pedigree was lauded, coming into the season many thought their roster to be too thin to consider them as playoff contenders – let alone title chances.
Predicted to be a middle-of-the-road outfit in 2018, early results had the Gladiators on track for that kind of result. Decisive wins against strugglers Shanghai and Florida were mixed with thumping losses to contenders in Seoul and New York, putting Los Angeles at 4-6 after one Stage.
The roster around Canadian superstar Lane “Surefour” Roberts was simply too thin. Enemy teams were able to able to focus him down without consequence before taking out the rest of the team with ease.
But the team pulled off arguably the trade of the season, nabbing Fissure from London after the renowned Tank main was reportedly unhappy with his playtime at the Spitfire.
It didn’t materialise immediately, but they got themselves back to an even ledger by the end of Stage 2. A four-game win streak between Weeks 3 and 4 was particularly encouraging, with a 4-0 demolition of their crosstown rivals the cherry on top.
The Gladiators continued to get more competitive each week, although they were still prone to some disheartening upset losses too. A disappointing defeat to San Francisco looked to kick Stage 3 off poorly, but they recovered to eke out some gritty wins over some of the top teams and finish the Stage 6-4 again.
That was good enough for their maiden appearance in Stage title matches, but a 3-0 steamrolling by the red-hot New York Excelsior made it abundantly clear they still had a lot to work on if they were really to contend.
Stage 4, however, is where it really clicked into gear for the team. The Gladiators went 9-1 in the final Stage, taking to the Brigitte meta like ducks to water. They got revenge on New York for their earlier loss too, in one of the biggest upsets of the season.
Their only loss of the stage, however, came against the Los Angeles Valiant, and it was the Valiant who took them down in the Stage 4 playoffs too. Whether that gets into their heads, or whether they use it as motivation for the playoffs, will be a huge difference maker.
While the Gladiators were prone to getting tripped up by lesser opposition in the first three stages – they conversely always found another gear against the competition’s best.
Luckily for them, the opponents that get your adrenaline pumping are all that’s left to compete with.
They are undoubtedly – amongst the wildcards – the form team of the competition. Given we’ll be playing with an almost identical metagame to Stage 4, they’ll hardly have to adjust their strategy too much for the playoffs.
The Gladiators had four players in the top ten in Stage 4 for average eliminations per ten minutes. While two of those players aren’t in their core roster – which could bring up the argument of their stats being conflated – I think this is more a sign of some newfound depth.
It hasn’t been an easy path to the playoffs, but the planets are aligning for Los Angeles’ purple platoon.
Fissure.
It was no secret Chan-hyuk “Fissure” Baek was unhappy with the playtime he was getting with London in Stage 1, so the Korean superstar packed his bags and moved across to LA – where he’s starred ever since.
Guess who he’s coming up against in the quarterfinal? London.
Fissure looked to adjust to the current meta a lot better than his counterparts at the Spitfire in Jae-hui “Gesture” Hong and Jun-ho “Fury” Kim. He looks a lot more comfortable using Reinhardt than his Winston and D.Va-happy former teammates, but if he wants to prove himself as the best Tank main of the lot – he has to do it here.
The Overwatch League hasn’t made (that many) headlines for trash talk just yet – look for some extra spice surrounding Fissure this postseason.