Boston Uprising vs Philadelphia Fusion

After 240 matches and almost six months of competitive play, the season playoffs are finally upon us.

The break between the Stage 4 finals and the Stage Playoffs was quite a lengthy one. Perhaps even too long. The majority of people online even forgot that the playoffs were happening this week. In a way, the final clash between the Los Angeles Valiant and the New York Excelsior a couple of weeks ago seemed like the high point of the stage and it was celebrated as such.

However, the best part is yet to come.

For our first match of the playoffs, we have a clash between the Philadelphia Fusion and the Boston Uprising.

When it comes to Boston, it's important to note that they have been winless throughout the majority of the fourth and final stage. They had an 0W-6L record coming into week four and that's quite "scandalous" for a team that managed to go 10W-0L in Stage 3. They were only able to get their first wins against a crumbling Seoul Dynasty, and the 0W-40L Shanghai Dragons - hardly anything to brag about.

To their credit, they did beat the New York Excelsior in week five, but that win has a huge asterisk seeing how much New York were saving their energy as well as playoff-centric strategies.

So how was their stage four performance in short? Pretty darn bad, in every way, shape and form.

They were ranked eight after ten matches, with four wins (three of which were against the very last three teams in the standings) and six losses. They really didn't show anything worth mentioning overall, other than Striker popping off on multiple occasions, and Aimgod proving to be more than worthy of the starting support position.

Mistakes in particular had a pretty abysmal showing, and while he's renown for his Hanzo and Widowmaker play, he was far from a dominant sniper in Stage 4, in fact he was bested by the majority of other hit-scan players that were forced to adapt with the huge meta shift and Brigitte's foray into competitive play.

Philadelphia, on the other hand, almost managed to get into the Stage 4 playoffs. They were able to pick up the pace after a pretty mediocre showing in Stage 3. While they weren't exactly demolishing teams left and right, they did have a pretty solid grasp on the meta and their individual play was also top-notch.

Carpe is also one of the best Hanzo's in the entire League and he isn't even playing him as often as he could. EQO's ability to fill any role will help out as well, and they have one of the best double-sniper players in the entire League, which is a huge upper hand coming into the playoffs.

The Fusion boys are also a lot more flexible in general, and even though the map pool favors Boston in the first match, the Fusion should still have the edge when all is said and done.

Boston is favored in this one, and I have no idea why. Sure, they have the right players for a double-sniper meta, they did improve as Stage 4 came to a close, but the meta is completely different than what they're accustomed to, Mistakes isn't really playing like a top-tier DPS player right now, and overall they're far from their Stage 3 form.

Now sure, a multi-week break could benefit them as well, but they just have less tools to win with when compared to Philadelphia. That said, they are capable of making this an incredibly close match, so this is far from an easy win for Philly. We're also on a completely new patch and there's a reworked Hanzo on board as well, so there might be some surprises overall.