Bubble + Nano + Reaper Is NOT an Engagement (Dallas Fuel vs LA Glad Analysis by Temporal)

Dallas is a top team in the west and had a nice different take on the meta composition than what we’d seen out of other teams in their match vs another top team in LA Gladiators this last weekend. It’s a shame they didn’t execute particularly well. Short video highlighting their issues with the examples here https://youtu.be/nmFTvjZH-Uk

A core aspect of their comp obviously is the shadow stepping Reaper that goes in with a bubble, sometimes also with a nano and it is scary and hard to control. But here is the thing, 4-5 people CAN in fact peel a bubbled or even bubble nanoed Reaper without that much difficulty. Now that doesn’t make the comp bad, the comp is fine, you could think of it as similar to double bubble when double bubble goes in for its actual committal dives (as opposed to soften energy and ult charge dives) with Reaper taking the place of Winston. You could also think of it as closer to 6 man. Either really is fine, but in either, when the diver goes in the rest of the team HAS to be able to contribute to the fight. This is some of the basics of overwatch. (If Reaper want’s to instead soak energy for Zarya and then just wraith out that could be fine as well, but that’s not what Dallas was doing in any of the examples).

Reaper + Genji + Zarya Bubble + Nano isn’t a 5v5, it’s not even a 4v5, at best it’s a 3v5 on a timer that is counting down against the 3. You don’t intentionally take 3v5 fights in high level overwatch. Now you might take a 2v4 as the 2 in order to stop the 4 from supporting a 3v1 that is in your favor elsewhere, but those are split fights that are to serve a purpose, and you’d ONLY be taking that 2v4 if the 4 could/would otherwise be involving themselves in the other fight that’s in your favor. Unfortunately, we all too often saw (as highlighted in the video) fights where Dallas intentionally took Reaper + Genji + Bubble + maybe Nano fights vs Glads. They mostly got punished for it, at least on Eichenwald.

Don’t mistake my railing against Dallas’ engagements to be a complaint about the comp however. The comp is perfectly reasonable (we’ll of course have to see what wins out meta wise in the end) the engagements are the problem. There are ways to drive this comp that are quite good. The Reaper TP in with a bubble AS his team charges in on his heels is quite fine, and we even saw Dallas do it quite a few times, they won the match after all. However, they also regularly took engagements that their backline couldn’t possibly contribute to such as where the fights was (high ground), or where the fight was so far away that the Reaper and Genji would be forced out by the time their backline got there, or ones where Reaper and Genji were immediately going to get dragged out of LOS of their backline.

Frankly, I hope to see them, and many other teams, level things up. Some of this OW2 OWL play looks like teams have just thrown out or forgotten basics that they shouldn’t have from OW1. (Don’t TRY to take 3v5’s, make sure your backline is ready to engage when you go for your commit, don’t triple stack cart at the expense of map control, take map control to stage dives in general, soften brawl before fighting it as a less brawly comp, the list goes on). Of course, the non-OWL players looked much the same in their forgetfulness, so maybe this is to be expected. But let me know what you think, am I being too tough on Dallas (and they’re not the only ones who drove the comp like this this weekend) through my former pro coach lens or was this great Overwatch and Bubble Reaper engages with minimal backline support ARE the future?

Video: https://youtu.be/nmFTvjZH-Uk