Houston Outlaws vs San Francisco Shock

For our third match of the day we have a clash between the Houston Outlaws and the San Francisco Shock.

The Outlaws are slowly but surely becoming a force to be reckoned with, as they managed to string not only four wins in a row, but four clean sweeps! In addition, they looked rather unstoppable when they're in the zone, and the level of competition that they've faced was diverse as well. 4-0'ing the Shanghai Dragons doesn't go for much these days, but annihilating Dallas Fuel and the Los Angeles Gladiators - who reverse swept Philadelphia Fusion the week prior and gave the Valiant a run for their money last week - is no easy task. While their opponents might not be the pinnacle of professional Overwatch they're far from bottom tier teams which makes Houston's achievement that much more noteworthy.

As for week four of the Overwatch League, Houston is fighting the San Francisco Shock who are by all accounts in the bottom part of the standings but the Seoul Dynasty as well which should be quite the exciting test for Houston fans. The last we've seen of them was an extremely dominant 4-0 beating over the Los Angeles Gladiators. While they weren't that strong in their defense on Numbani, they didn't skip a beat when attacking, with Jake and LiNkzr making quick work of the Gladiators' front and back line.

Much of the same happened on Anubis as well, although the Gladiators couldn't even capture the very first point on attack. (4 final blows in total, whereas Housuton had 22) The Outlaws continued their dominant run on to Ilios as well, where their DPS duo flexed across multiple picks - Jake on Tracer and Junkrat and LiNkzr on his staple Widow and McCree.

LiNkzr is an absolute hit-scan monster (joined Fleta, EFFECT and Carpe in the "100 Widowmaker Kills" club), Jake is renown for his Junkrat but also showed incredibly solid Soldier, Genji and even some Pharah play, they have a fantastic tank duo - one of the better D.Va players in Coolmat and an aggressive Winston in Muma and they have one of the most versatile flex support players in Rawkus, who has perhaps the best Soldier in his team.

As for the San Francisco Shock, they failed to do much last week against a struggling Dallas Fuel. They weren't prepared for EFFECT's insane McCree and Tracer play, they were out-of-sync for the majority of the game and even though individual members like Babybay and Danteh managed to have a couple of stand out moments (Babybay's Pharah on Eichenwalde comes to mind) that simply wasn't enough to defeat Dallas. (leading them to a rather unimpressive 2-4 record) Through Babybay's fantastic DPS play they were able to go to a draw on Eichenwalde but it all went downhill afterwards. Whatever they did good - like Danteh's Junkrat on Lunar Horizon, Dallas did better. (thanks to Seagull's fantastic Junkrat play) Even though Dallas went for the exact same team comp almost every time, the Shock simply weren't able to contest the way they wanted to.

If there is one thing that became apparent from watching the Outlaws it is the fact that they don't have a single doubt in their mind that they can be one of the best teams in the League. With such a fearless approach, they might even stand a chance against the upper OW echelon. Unfortunately for all San Francisco Shock fans, they simply don't have the tools to contest a rampaging Outlaws roster.