Can the Dallas Fuel adapt their way to a second OWL tournament title?
Kim Sp9rk1e Yeong-han told the Overwatch League world that it is currently the Dallas Fuel meta, but his head coach already disagreed. The rush composition the Fuel used to earn their second trip to Hawaii wasnt Yun RUSH Hee-Wons favorite for his June Joust-bound squad, which has a match against the Shanghai Dragons at 9:30 p.m. CT Thursday. Winston, DVa, Lucio, Moira, Reaper and Echo are comfort picks for the team, but the fights in this meta dont provide the Fuel with opportunities to win engagements fast. Dallas likes to press the opponent, force them into a corner and pick on weak targets. Thats harder to do in the death-ball style meta like this one that depends on support ultimate usage and DVa bombs getting a kill or two. What the Fuel have needed to do is improvise, or even adapt to what their opponent throws at them. At this point in the tournament, I feel like most of the teams are doing pretty much very similar things, Yun said via interpreter. So its highly dependent on how fast our players are able to adapt to comps or play styles that are perhaps difficult to play against. As we face different opponents every day, we see different things, different compositions, different styles, and thats where you have to quickly fix your problems one by one. Those experiences will all pile up, and then it will reflect on the match itself.  Yun was candid about how well his players could adapt. Off-tank player Choi Hanbin Han-been thinks for himself the best, but Yun joked that they were all dummies.  The Fuel locked up in their loss to the San Francisco Shock on May 30. The Shock ran a Widowmaker on Dorado and dominated the map, which was the only lopsided round in the match. The Fuel didnt adapt at all in that one. The Los Angeles Gladiators gave the Fuel the same treatment on Sunday, running picks like Widowmaker, McCree and Torbjorn. Heres what happened when the Fuel first saw it on Junkertown. Not pretty. Dallas response was different than against the Shock. It was really dangerous how they almost full-defended our attack, Lee Fearless Eui-Seok said via interpreter. But I feel like what made the difference was that we were just really focused and we made sure that we were communicating properly, and we worked hard all together, and then we were able to push the day.  The Gladiators made a mistake, and Fearless used his ultimate to take the Gladiators support players out of the fight. That gave Dallas the opening that led to a map win. The Fuel will certainly have to adjust the gameplay mid-match again. The Dragons will want redemption after losing to the Fuel twice in the May Melee, including in the championship match. Shanghai gave the Fuel the most trouble in that tournament run, and could likely be the toughest opponent again as opposed to the Atlanta Reign or New York Excelsior. Kim thought the Fuel would be their own toughest opponent. As long as we dont outplay ourselves, I feel like most of the time were really good at using our brains to try to combat whatever the enemy has against us, Kim said. Lets say that the opponent brought out a completely different comp that weve never seen anybody use before, then sometimes its just really difficult to come up with a solution to that.  Dallas has a chance at repeat glory, and can take its place at the top of OWL firmly with another dominant Hawaii trip. +++  Find more Fuel coverage from The Dallas Morning News here. Find more esports coverage from The Dallas Morning News here.