Are the Philadelphia Fusion the Kings of OWL 2020?

Week 4: Houston Homestand

Written by: Landon McBee

Well, that's it. Week 4 of Overwatch League 2020 has come to a close, and what a surprising week it was. This weekend there were seven games that were packed with entertainment and some surprises too. If you would like to go back and read about my predictions for this week, you can find them here.

Philadelphia Fusion: Future Champs or Over-hyped Chumps?

This weekend we only saw Fusion take on one team, and it was the Boston Uprising. Throughout the Overwatch League so far, it can't be doubted that the Philadelphia Fusion were regarded as one of the best teams to play so far. The inverse of that statement could have been said for the Boston Uprising. Even though the Uprising took their seven map win over the Houston Outlaws, that didn't change many people's minds about them as a team. Not many had high hopes for this to be an incredibly close match. If you were wondering about how the players felt about it, well...

Fusion main support and Lucio extraordinaire, FunnyAstro, was truly trying to live up to his name with this tweet by claiming the 3-0 sweep was not worth their time.

Next, Philip "ChipSa" "Bench Boy" "Doomfist One Trick" Graham decided to throw in his opinion that he garnered from his time in the dugout. With that being said and trash talk aside, this 3-0 told us a lot more than one would expect from the scoreline.

A lot of fans and even analysts were confused during the Fusion's first few games when we saw a lot of Poko and Ivy being played over legendary players such as Fury or Eqo. However, those curiosities took a backseat to the team's breakout performance after Philadelphia began to dominate their competition. Still, a lot of people wondered where these players were and why weren't they being played? This week, fans got a taste of the answer they were looking for. There was really no explanation, but Fury and Eqo saw playtime against the Uprising. Before this game, many people cited their reasons for Fusion being a scary roster was the fact that superstar off-tank, Fury, was sitting on the bench. On March 1st, 2020, those fears were confirmed. The Fusion came out with a squad that wasn't the core six players they had fielded in weeks prior, and they still looked extremely clean, impressive, and dominant. 

Can the Fusion Shock the World?

The real question on everyone's mind is: can the Philadelphia Fusion take down last season's champions in the San Francisco Shock? The only way we can be sure to tell is by seeing these teams face off. Sadly, we are going to be waiting awhile for that one. The first, and only, regular season game between the Philadelphia Fusion and the San Francisco shock will not occur until week 24 of the Overwatch League 2020 season.

It is already hard enough to predict whether the Fusion can take down the Shock, but with their first regular season meeting being a whole 20 weeks away, it is next to impossible. Although, when considering a few factors, I believe it is possible that the Philadelphia Fusion could dethrone the San Francisco Shock. Two words could easily decide this matchup: the meta.

The meta is a very important part of Overwatch, and no team is better at perfecting a meta than the San Francisco Shock. However, with the coming addition of hero pools, the meta might not be stagnant for extended periods of time like it has in the past. I believe that the deciding factor of this match will be the adaptability of the roster you're fielding. The next question being, is there a team more adaptable than the Shock? The answer is honestly no at this point. There are obvious weaknesses in the Shock roster. Viol2t not being the best Ana, Super being a Reinhardt one-trick master, and only having one off-tank player. However, the best part of the Shock is that one player's weaknesses are another's strengths. As we saw earlier this season, Viol2t not performing on Ana? No worries, your Flex Master DPS player Architect can play for him and out perform most of the actual flex supports in the league. Super not performing as well on other main tank heroes as he does on Rein? It's all good, we'll throw in Smurf so he can pop off on the other main tank heroes. Only one off-tank? It's Choi. This roster is extremely flexible and has few weaknesses. With that being said, if the Fusion want to take down the Shock, they truly need a meta that plays into all of their strengths.

Thank you!

As always, thank you for reading. What do you think, can the Fusion beat the Shock?