Decay leads Dallas Fuel to record-setting performance in 3-1 win over Houston Outlaws in May Melee - The Dallas Morning News

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The Dallas Fuel were being suppressed by Dante “Danteh” Cruz.

The Houston Outlaws’ damage star was making a mess of Dallas on Overwatch’s new hero, Echo, and the Fuel needed an answer to avoid an early exit in the Overwatch League’s May Melee tournament Friday afternoon.

Danteh’s flanking style was enabled by his teammates on the mobile hero and the Fuel, who took a 3-1 victory over the Outlaws (5-10), were forced to deal with it if they wanted to defeat their OWL rival. Dallas (5-6) needed the perfect recipe, and it came in the form of their own superstar.

Jang “Decay” Gui-un powered the Fuel, squashing the Outlaws on Widowmaker and having OWL casters all but drooling over his performance.

“That’s not a nine,” caster Jake Lyon said on the OWL YouTube broadcast. “That’s a 10.... That’s truly a best-in-the-world type performance.”

"and then Decay decided to go Widow and everyone died"

FASTEST RIALTO ATTACK EVER. 5 MIN 11 SEC.

WHAT. A. PERFORMANCE.

— Jayne (@EnvyJayne) May 22, 2020

Dallas tossed Decay on Widowmaker on the third map when the Fuel were in a 1-1 tie with Houston. The swap was enough to give Dallas a 2-1 advantage heading into Rialto, which was where the real hurt came for Houston.

Houston completed the map on offense with 37 seconds left in the time bank -- that’s no shabby performance. But Dallas rolled through Houston with Decay on Widowmaker, landing critical hits one after another until the Fuel finished the map with a league-record 5 minutes, 11 seconds remaining.

“Honestly, it didn’t feel special at the time,” Fuel support player William “Crimzo” Hernandez said. “We kind of just did what we practiced and rolled through. We just felt like things were going our way and ended up with a five-minute time bank, which is crazy.”

So why was this such a night and day difference for the Fuel? Widowmaker really isn’t favored in the current OWL meta, which sees a lot of double-shield. Widowmaker isn’t strong against shields, let alone two of them.

But Danteh was the problem for Dallas, and Decay forced Danteh to play so cautiously that the Outlaws lost the real value they were previously getting on Echo.

That doesn’t just happen with the swap of a hero though.

Decay was landing haymakers in the sniping role, deleting any peeking enemies and putting the Outlaws on their heels until the match was over.

Widow isn’t always super-favored, but the way Houston was playing it became a talking point for us in between rounds,” Fuel head coach Aaron “Aero” Atkins said. “So we decided ‘Let’s go. Let’s do the Widow and stick with it’ because it forces Danteh to have to play differently. I think that was the big key.”

Decay posted an astonishing 42% critical hit percentage as per the OWL broadcast, which left the Outlaws in disarray. This was not only important for the Fuel to move on to a play an opponent yet to be determined on Saturday, but for Dallas’ mental state.

The Fuel were swept by Paris on May 17, then got swallowed up by the same Outlaws team in the Lone Star Challenge on Monday. They needed this recovery.

“If we had lost this and gone on a losing streak, it would’ve been really rough and one of the worst losses of the season,” Crimzo said. “It’s a relief to get another win, be confident in ourselves and know that we outplayed these teams and that we are good if we put in this much effort.”

Crimzo was not only pleased to see his team pull out a victory, but was thrilled with the effort level. The Fuel players were mad, he said. But it wasn’t a detrimental anger. It was focused, and pointed towards grabbing a win.

So the Fuel put in “120%.”

“It definitely was a really nice feeling,” Aero said. “Even though the Lone Star Challenge was just a show match, it still really sucks to lose. We didn’t want to lose again, so being up 2-1 in the series and having that kind of attack time was a really nice feeling.”

It will be a long evening for Aero and the Fuel coaching staff, he said. Crimzo said the players will likely relax, grab dinner and take the evening easy. But Aero and the coaches have gameplans to draw up and multiple teams to prepare for.

Their goals for the May Melee didn’t stop with a win against Houston. Their sights were on the whole thing.

Find more Fuel stories from The Dallas Morning News here.

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