Revamped Dallas Fuel looking for redemption

Few teams in the Overwatch League share the same championship pedigree as the Dallas Fuel. After a shaky start to the season in Stage One, Dallas have made the necessary changes in team mentality and roster personnel as they are once again making a charge towards an eventual championship haul.

The original APEX Kings

Before they were Dallas Fuel, chipshajen, cocco, HarryHook and Taimou were part of the original Team Envy roster that won the first APEX invitational tournament in Korea. At the time, this feat was unprecedented by a foreign team in a competition heavily favoring the local squads featuring stacked rosters like Lunatic Hai. Regardless of the many disadvantages they faced in the second tournament in Season Two, they were able to upset the believed status quo of Overwatch at the time and rallied with another impressive performance at MLG Vegas, solidifying their place as one of the most popular and winningest squads in the entire sport.

On top of their heroics in their first few tournaments, Team Envy made their own history by amassing an insane 57 game win streak over the course of 2016 as one of the most dominant squads to play the game. As they included their first international acquisition in Mickie, the team finally started to develop that all-star caliber roster that changed their fortunes from simply performing well in LAN tournaments to competing, and even winning, major tournaments overseas.

New team, new struggles

Not everything has been peachy for Dallas Fuel as they continue their climb in the Overwatch League. Coming into the tournament they were expected to dominate as one of the most solid Western rosters in the League that could combat with the talent featured on some of the other prominent squads.

While Mickie, EFFECT and Taimou still showed signs of their world-class playing ability, the overall team cohesion for Dallas Fuel was off as they struggled out of the first stage of Overwatch League play with a dismal 3-7 record. As some players were facing confidence issues and overall poor performance from their results, other players like xQc saw themselves on the sidelines due to poor out of game performance in ranked play. All those little factors overtime led to a poor run of form for a Dallas Fuel team that was expected to place top four to say the least.

Revamped and ready

The first split of OWL action did not go their way, but the organization is built off a professional mindset that cannot accept defeat as an option. With that mission statement in mind, Dallas Fuel made one of the biggest acquisitions of the first OWL transfer window as they added French DPS star aKm into their ranks. While it’s not the most indicative performance of their first week of play together in week 5, aKm did show signs of synergy along with Mickie and EFFECT that saw them pick up dominant wins over the Shanghai Dragons and Los Angeles Gladiators to start the new stage.

Obviously every team in the OWL is expected to get better with time, but the level of championship winning players on this team give Dallas Fuel a higher skill ceiling than most. Players like aKm, EFFECT and xQc are hungrier than ever to prove their capabilities alongside the original Team Envy squad that has built an almost legendary core group of players.

When all six players are operating at the same beat, Dallas Fuel can charge onto any point and wreak havoc on enemy backlines with the efficiency of a well-oiled machine. Looking forward, the only direction to go for this newly motivated Dallas Fuel team is up as they look to go on another deep winning streak that can rival their 2016 run.