Aero, Dallas Fuel ‘probably’ the best they’ve been in the clutch all year. Will it be enough to top - The Dallas Morning News

alemonarki.blogspot.com

Are the Dallas Fuel the most clutch they’ve been all season?

“Probably,” head coach Aaron “Aero” Atkins said on Thursday. But the Fuel are perpetually striving for more than their own self improvement. They want to compete for an Overwatch League championship and have felt their roster was strong enough to do such all season.

This weekend provides a unique opportunity. The Fuel play a dominant Philadelphia Fusion team on Friday and finish a packed weekend with a match against a formidable Atlanta Reign team.

Dallas already won its first two seeding matches for the Countdown Cup, and one more would prompt them for a quality start to the tournament.

So why do the Fuel think they are good enough to come out of the weekend with two wins? They haven’t defeated a top opponent all year in seven tries — Dallas lost three times to San Francisco, twice to Paris and once to both Florida and Philadelphia.

Aero and the Fuel are still confident because those matches were often decided by a couple important moments that went the way of their opponent. A positioning error, a rotation blunder or a mistake in timing.

“Do I think we are the best out of all year? Probably,” Aero said. “Clutching is always something we’ve struggled with in the moment. A lot of times we would forget our basics and focus too much on things that aren’t as important.”

Even if it’s one mistake, those things matter against teams like the Fusion. So that’s where the Fuel have looked to enhance their gameplay.

Dallas tank player Lucas “NotE” Meissner said the Fuel have worked relentlessly to improve their clutch ability. The fact that they’ve lost close matches to the Overwatch League elite was enough to propel the Fuel forward mentally, he said..

“In those super close matches against the good teams where we can’t be making small mistakes, we need to focus on keeping calm and making the right play at the right time,” NotE said. “We are bringing it really close, but we didn’t have the finishing power in the past. Knowing that we were that close in the past has pushed us to be better in the future.”

Philadelphia will be the tougher of the two matches this weekend, but Aero and the Fuel have also prepared for Atlanta as if it will be at full strength.

Dallas suffered a 3-1 loss to Philadelphia on May 10 — The story of the match was already recited. Close maps, not enough clutch plays.

What the Fuel have going for them is that they are a fairly different team. Still similar firepower for Dallas in the DPS lineup with Kim “DoHa” Dongha and Jang “Decay” Gui-un with the addition of Stefan “Onigod” Fiskerstrand.

The Fuel have a true vocal leader now that’s brought consistency to the support line with the pickup of Nolan “Paintbrush” Edwards. Dallas didn’t have either Paintbrush or Onigod when it lost to Philadelphia in May.

It wasn’t against a team like the Fusion or Reign, but the Fuel did come up clutch in their 3-2 reverse sweep of in-state rival Houston Outlaws on July 17.

That match wasn’t a DPS carry, either. The support and tank lines arguably made the biggest plays of the match. That’s something NotE said the Fuel were working towards for a while.

“I think everybody has to pull their weight to get the best out of this team. No matter how good of a player you have in one role, if everyone else isn’t playing together and supporting each other, it’s not going to matter,” NotE said. “Really getting everyone on the same page and making sure we get full value out of everyone on the map has been super important as a goal for us.”

NotE has put in the hours on Sigma specifically. He started that grind early in the season after realizing how strong the double-shield meta would be, and that he’d need to mesh with Noh “Gamsu” Youngjin’s Orisa.

Onigod’s Ashe fits into that composition and style well for the Fuel, too, NotE said. The Fuel feel like they are clicking now, which has given them the confidence that they can grab a win this weekend, if not two.

“Personally I’ve been improving my Sigma as much as possible to keep getting better,” NotE said. “I need to be better in order to match some of the crazy players on the enemy team. Going up against Choi and Fury is a tough match, so I’ve been trying to bridge that gap as much as possible.”

NotE agreed with Aero that he thinks the Fuel are better, if not different than they were the last time they played an elite squad. He didn’t know exactly what that would look like in a match, because he didn’t care to base a prediction of results in scrims.

“I feel like we have improved a lot,” NotE said. “If we can get down those close encounters and clutch moments it will be super doable.”

Soon the Fuel will know how their best self looks next to OWL giants.

Find more Fuel stories from The Dallas Morning News here.

Find more esports stories from The News here.

Let's block ads! (Why?)

"fuel" - Google News
July 31, 2020 at 05:26AM
https://ift.tt/33o8Ksj

Aero, Dallas Fuel ‘probably’ the best they’ve been in the clutch all year. Will it be enough to top - The Dallas Morning News
"fuel" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2WjmVcZ


Bagikan Berita Ini