The second day of the group stage in the Overwatch Winter Premiere brought games that exposed the weaknesses of some strong contenders for the title, and further exploited the weakness of the teams that looked shaky the day before. As the round-robin continues, teams will further come up with specific strategies tailored to unravel their enemies by each seam.
The first set of the day, between Renegades and Citizen7, showed the lack of flexible picks that both teams have as they both had their main DPS players play Pharah, without any anti-air on both teams.
On the first point of Hollywood, Liam "Mangachu" Campbell for Renegades and Mikkel "Sypeh" Sypeh for Citizen7 were the two Pharah players of the set, and Mangachu was the last one flying. While Sypeh tried to chase down key supports from Renegades, Mangachu took advantage of the lack of counterpicks and took out Sypeh from behind. Once Sypeh was out of the picture, Mangachu had total reign of the skies, leading to a full hold on Hollywood and a crushing push on the first point. While Citizen7 put up a better fight on Nepal -- their loss on Hollywood describes the set in a nutshell -- they lost 0-2.
FaZe Clan bounced back from the previous day's disappointment by taking down compLexity.
CompLexity is known for cleverly having Jake "torkTJO" Lepoff utilize Sombra on key points of certain maps like Hollywood, Watchpoint: Gibraltar and King's Row among other maps. In a strange twist, Viktors "Forsak3n" Bernevs on the first point of King's Row hacked the large health kit in the hotel and ran all the way back to the spawn point to switch to a different hero. This was enough to convince torkTJO to switch off of Sombra and into Zarya, because he believed that at that point playing Sombra would be ineffective.
Getting the early health pack hacked for your own team is important in their strategy, because it hypercharges Sombra's ultimate at a frightening speed while both teams are poking each other at the start. TorkTJO does this specifically for an early EMP to take the first point. Forsak3n hacking that health pack for himself eliminated the Sombra strategy off the board, and forced compLexity to play standard.
While this wasn't the sole reason for their 2-1 victory over compLexity, it revealed the weak point of their strategy for any team looking to beat compLexity themselves.
The last two matches of the day were more straightforward, as Luminosity cut Immortals down on Temple of Anubis for a 2-1 victory, utilizing Symmetra to max efficiency with a well-protected teleporter. Instead of placing the Symmetra turrets on any clever chokepoints, they used them to protect the teleporter itself, which allowed Luminosity to always be on time to defend the first point. With a successful full hold, Luminosity defeated Immortals for a 2-1 victory.
Kungarna steamrolled over Team Liquid on both Route 66 and Watchpoint: Gibraltar. The driver of said steamroller was Connor "ConnorJ" Johnson, playing his signature Roadhog. Of course, credit is given to the entire team of Kungarna, as Roadhog hooks alone don't make a payload push further than the enemy team.
With this phase of the group stage almost being half-over, teams being exposed only means that they must start to adapt and evolve, or be left by the wayside.