The San Francisco Shock and Vancouver Titans clashed at the 2019 Overwatch League Grand Finals in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on Sunday in front of a sold out crowd at the Wells Fargo Center. The Shock’s 2019 OWL MVP Jay “Sinatraa” Won took matters into his own hands with a dominant Doomfist. Vancouver’s own 2019 Rookie of the Year, Hyojong “Haksal” Kim, had some impressive plays as well, but it wasn’t enough. The San Francisco Shock walked away as the Overwatch League 2019 champions.
Continuing their dominance from the playoffs, the Shock made a statement early on with their dominance of the Titans. It all started on map one, Lijiang Tower, where Sinatraa punctuated the first team fight with a huge Meteor Strike, paving the way for a decisive win. He would finish Lijiang with 22 final blows.
Eichenwalde told a slightly different story for San Francisco, who brought in Minho “Architect” Park and DongJun “Rascal” Kim for a Bastion/Mei battery. It worked well in their initial attack, where they made Vancouver look disorganized and unable to deal with their strategy. The Titans reeled it back, however, mowing down the Shock in their own attack round. In overtime Rascal held things down with incredible Pharah play, giving the Shock just enough breathing room to snatch yet another map from their opponents.
The third map was Temple of Anubis, and, as fights typically develop on Anubis, this one was a back-and-forth match with no clear winner until the very end. Both teams drew narrow victories on each turn, but San Francisco had the fuel to go the distance with another overtime victory. Sinatraa once again lived up to his reputation, this time pulling off late clutch plays with a defensive Mei. Both the Shock and the Titans enjoyed a healthy ultimate pool heading into the final fight, but it would be San Francisco with the most important, timely kills in the end.
With the Grand Final on the line, the Titans needed to pull something special together to regain some traction on Watchpoint: Gibraltar. Unfortunately, the final map had a grim start for Vancouver, as they were once again unable to handle Architect’s Bastion. Their push through point B was convincing, but everything fell apart on the final point, starting with HyunWoo “Jjanu” Choi getting caught way out of position on Sigma. The Titans could never recover, and would end up falling to the vastly superior performance of the San Francisco Shock.
As is typically the case with professional Overwatch, the teams with the most creative coaching staffs and flexible rosters will usually be the ones that shine in dynamic metas. We saw many traditional underachievers blossom in the 2-2-2 meta in Stage Four with the Shock at the head of the crowd, riding that unstoppable momentum all the way to the Grand Finals against a team that was destined to take it all. A fitting end to this era of Overwatch League, as teams prepare to play in front of home crowds around the globe in 2020.