The Atlanta Reign defeated the Dallas Fuel 3-1 at the Los Angeles Valiant’s Homestand Weekend. Now, if the Georgia team can win their Boston Uprising match tomorrow, they’ll secure the 6th-place spot in the playoffs.
Despite a few surprising plays from the Fuel, such as their Pharah-Mei comp, the Atlanta Reign were able to come out on top in almost every team fight. On the first map, Busan, Petja “Massa” Kantanen booped three Fuel players off the ledge as Lucio. While D.Va did survive, it secured Atlanta’s first point on the map.
While fighting for the second point on Busan, fan favorite Andrej “Babybay” Francisty pulled out Symmetra. It was a surprising DPS pick that doesn’t see a lot of play in competitive games, but Babybay stated in a post-match interview that the team practiced the hero and wanted to stay proactive.
“If the enemy team doesn’t know how to play against it, they just lose. You want to play really aggressive. I just know that Dallas Fuel has not been scrimming any matches at all, and don’t know how to play against this match up. Once they engage, as long as I stay alive, I will be doing more damage than them,” Babybay explained in a press conference.
He also noted that Symmetra’s teleporter is a great tool for baiting teams that are not prepared for the match up. On the third map, King’s Row, the Fuel rushed her Teleproter as soon as it was put down, wasting their cooldowns on it.
King’s Row was the same map where Babybay closed out the game with a highly destructive Death Blossom on Reaper.
Still, it wasn’t all bad news for the Dallas Fuel. On the second map, Volskaya, the Fuel gave Atlanta a run for their money, despite it being known as one of their worst maps.
“They brought it to us big time,” Babybay said. “It was actually one of the hardest matches of the stage.”
He went on to say that the Fuel had nothing to lose, since they were not making it to the playoffs anyway. It reminded Babybay of their past match against the New York Excelsior in Stage 2. They felt they weren’t going to make it to the playoffs anyway, so they faced the “top dogs” with a surprising level of aggression and shocking comps that ended up winning them the game.
Even though the team easily took the victory today, they’re a little more wary of their match tomorrow against the Boston Uprising.
“I think Boston is really try-hardy,” Babybay said with a laugh. “They’re really gonna come out and really want to win. Every time you see a team with a big win streak, of course you want to be the team to end it. I think they know we won’t make top six if they beat us. But we’re not going to let it happen.”
Atlanta Reign’s head coach Brad “Sephy” Rajani added that he expects Boston to come out with some “cheese comps,” running surprise lineups and strategies to throw them off.
“But our players today showed a level of adaptability. So no matter what weird stuff they throw at us, we can tackle it,” Sephy said.
Despite their concern with the Uprising match, Dusttin “Dogman” Bowerman expressed that the playoff games are much more important, as well as the post-season. For that reason, the team has been playing post-patch scrims. This had left them a little unprepared for this weekend, Dogman admitted, but they are still confident enough in the 2-2-2 meta to secure that sixth place spot after tomorrow’s match.
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