Shadow League Season 5 Semi Finals

Greetings all, and welcome to the first update for the Overwatch’s divisions Season 5 Shadow League tournament. Last night the epic Semi Final matches were held. Both the matches were held on the following maps: Rialto, a payload map where the attacking team have to escort a payload to the finish and the defending have to stop it, Temple of Anubis, a two point capture the objective map where both teams take turns attacking and defending to capture 2 points, and finally Lijiang Tower, a full control point map where both teams have to battle it out to hold a point till completion, being the tie-breaker map.  

For our first semi final match we had Pesky Pachimaries (PP) vs Naughty Tomatoes (NT). It was PP who were attacking first. PP had 2 unsuccessful initial pushes due to Merata, who was playing Reinhardt for NT, getting 2 huge Earth Shatters, his ultimate ability, being able to stun almost all of PP effectively rendering those attempts futile. It was ultimately Aviex  playing Junkrat for PP, using Riptire that let PP take the first point. PP tried to rush to the second point but they were abruptly stopped by a solid defence by NT. It took some time before PP could organise themselves as a team before they could make a successful push. It was again Aviex’s tire that allowed PP to take the second point when the match was about to head into overtime. Alaaris, who was playing Zarya, was then able to get an impressive Graviton Surge allowing NT to get the enemy off the payload and ending overtime.

We then swap sides and it was now NT’s turn to attack. Aviex was able to get several picks on the enemy Pharah resulting in NT having to pause their push to wait for a regroup. NootNoot, who was playing Hanzo, got an amazing Dragonstrike which led to an ulting enemy Moira getting killed, denying the enemy a vital source of healing and at the same time allowing NT to get several picks. theTable, who was playing Ana, was able to get several picks on the Pharah, and NootNott was able to get several overtime picks allowing NT to take the first point. After the first point was taken PP just couldn’t get their synergy right as NT was able to snowball through the entire second street phase enabling them to take the third point leading NT to win the map with a score of 3:2 to NT.

After a short recuperation break the second match between PP and NT commenced. It was NT’S turn to attack first and they decided to run with a standard deathball composition. PP was able to halt the first push with Aviex, who was playing Junkrat, getting a double kill with his tire. NT then decided to change it up and go for a dive comp. This worked out much better for them as they were able to focus targets more efficiently. theTable, who was playing Ana, was able to get an insane Biotic Grenade as it managed to hit most of the enemy team thus denying any healing to be done from the enemy’s teams Zenyatta ultimate. This allowed NT to capture the first point with ease and they then proceeded to try and rush second point which did not work out so well so they decided to fall back and regroup fully. Seeing as the dive composition was not working out so well for them, NT decided to change back to deathball for the second point. NT spent some time building ultimates before going for a push. It was a good Dragondstrike by NootNoot combined with a Sleep Dart and Biotic Grenade from theTable that NT were able to take second point ending the first round with a score of 2.

The second round saw PP’s attack phase, where they decided to run a newly formed composition called Goats. This is when a team consists of 3 tanks and supports. The mobility of the set up enabled PP to take first point with ease as NT did not expect PP to run this comp as they have not previously done so in the league. NT soon recovered from this initial shock though and were able to stop a complete snowball effect from occurring. It was at this point that PP were struggling to figure out what to do with Goats so they made the sensible decision to switch back to a composition that they were more comfortable running, which was deathball consisting of Reinhardt and Zarya. However as NT were adept at playing against this kind of comp they were able to hold the second point fairly easily, resulting in PP not being able to get hold of the second point.

This concluded the first match of the semi finals with the results of NT winning both maps and being the first team to proceed to the finals.