The Overwatch League‘s 2020 season is officially underway and the Toronto Defiant has an early 1-0 record on the year with their win over the Paris Eternal. Paris started strong, but Toronto ended up taking the match 3-1.
Lijiang Tower
The Paris Eternal came out strong with an Orisa, Rein, Symmetra composition on this map and took the first point 100% to 0%. The second map was a little closer and a big Earthshatter from the Defiant helped them take the point shortly, but Paris ended up taking Lijiang Tower 2-0. Ki-hyo “Xzi” Jung had an excellent performance on Symmetra and shut down the Defiant. The Eternal’s success didn’t last very long, however.
Eichenwalde
The second map was Eichenwalde, and the Toronto Defiant decided to sub in their star DPS Lane “Surefour” Roberts after sitting him on Lijiang Tower. Surefour had a strong showing on Reaper and Toronto was able to take Eichenwalde 4-3. Surefour has been a signature player in the Overwatch League since its inception.
Horizon Lunar Colony
The Assault map was the infamous Horizon Lunar Colony. Toronto looked like it was starting to get in a groove at this point. They ran Surefour again alongside Brady “Agilities” Girardi and made great use of the Mei/Symmetra combination on attack to gain a hefty advantage in the time bank. Toronto would go on to take this map 3-2.
Havana
Andreas “Logix” Berghmans came in for Agilities on DPS for the final map. His play on Widowmaker was a core part of their 3-2 victory, which sealed the series win for Toronto. He was able to shut down Xzi’s Widowmaker and give his team a major advantage.
Takeaways from the first match of the Overwatch League 2020 season
This match showed that both of these teams have a lot of potential in the Overwatch League. The Defiant got off to a great start with a 1-0 record, but Paris showed that they could hang with them.
The Defiant’s new players seemed to integrate well with the team, despite some previous questions surrounding Toronto’s tanks. Adam “Best” Denton looked great on Reinhardt and had some key Earthshatters. Andreas “Nevix” Karlsson also played well on D.Va and had a key bomb at the end of the game on Horizon Lunar Colony.
The Paris Eternal came up short here, but they still looked great on the first map, especially Xzi. If they can find out what went wrong on the other three maps, they could easily build on their early performance and become a strong playoff contender.
