San Francisco Shock vs Dallas Fuel

For our second match of the day we have a somewhat interesting fight between the Dallas Fuel and the San Francisco Shock.

Now while this isn't the most engaging or the most important match of the week, it still carries great significance for both teams. They're both in a somewhat bad state right now, with Dallas Fuel being one win ahead of the Shock. Even though both teams had the exact same opponents in the first two weeks, the Shock were only able to defeat the Shanghai Dragons. That's one of their biggest problems, because as time went on it became apparent that the Shock are quite frankly a bottom three team at the moment. They simply aren't prepared to aim for higher as they always failed to beat any team above them (other than a fluke win against Boston at the very beginning of Stage 1), but always managed to dominate any team below them in the standings like Florida Mayhem and Shanghai.

The last we've seen from them was a very strong 4-o showing against the Shanghai Dragons. They started off with a fantastic hold on Hanamura as they didn't allow Shanghai to even take the first point. Danteh played a huge part as he had an insane couple of plays and some incredibly impactful "Pulse Bombs" on both attack and defense. Nepal was much of the same as Babybay pulled out his staple Soldier:76 and even though the Dragons fought tooth and nail (even managing to take a point thanks to some great play from Undead and Diya) it wasn't enough. They were faster and more aggressive on the map and - as expected - had far better synergy than the struggling Shanghai roster.

The Shock are fairly well equipped for the current meta. They have an incredibly talented hit-scan player in Babybay who can compete with the very best in the League, and a seriously underrated Tracer in Danteh (who can also swap to Junkrat, Sombra and even Pharah if need be), a very solid Zenyatta in Sleepy and perhaps an even better Lucio in Dhak.

The problem with San Francisco is that, even though they have a very competent roster whenever they fight against a team that has some synergy and can compete with their DPS duo - the Shock fall flat.

As for Dallas Fuel, they were unable to carry over the momentum that they've built in week 1 as they were handed two 3-1 losses by the Seoul Dynasty and the Los Angeles Valiant. EFFECT was unable to pop off and play at his usual (expected even) level which seriously impacted their attack. (finished Hanamura with 11 eliminations and 11 deaths) Soon was the bane of Dallas' existence as he had an outstanding couple of Tracer games. Paired with Kariv's lethal Widowmaker, they took both points and the map. Dallas bounced back nicely with a point win on Nepal but it simply wasn't enough. Soon was fully enabled to pop off thanks to Kariv's Widow and Valiants tank duo Fate and Envy. Mickie and xQc simply didn't have the synergy down to compete with Valiant's frontline. The same can be said for Hollywood as Dallas failed to push the payload even to the second point.

Dallas was finally able to bounce back a bit and win Watchpoint: Gibraltar however that's a pretty disappointing consolation prize seeing how out of sync they were for the majority of the match.

The Fuel have the tools to compete at a high level - just not yet. They need more time, and perhaps more roster changes but that's ways off. Perhaps the most troubling thing that they've displayed last week was a very clear lack of adaptation, both in-game and between maps. The fact that a good part of their roster is underperforming for the majority of the time isn't helping at all. Perhaps the only two members who have shown consistent play are AKM and xQc and they can't carry on their own, especially not against top tier teams that have shown far greater consistency and team cohesion.

Luckily for all Dallas Fuel fans, San Francisco is no Seoul or LA Valiant. Dallas has the upper edge regardless of the map and they shouldn't have too big of a problem taking down the Shock. They're surely looking to rebuild some of their lost momentum and this is the perfect match to start. That said, depending on how well they bounce back from last week it might not be that dominant of a showing.