Lunatic-Hai, the perennial champions of OGN Overwatch APEX Seasons 2 and 3, met its end in the final match of the quarterfinals group stage in Season 4, in Seoul, South Korea. Newcomers GC Busan cemented the next step of its Royal Road quest as it swept Lunatic-Hai's chances of winning another back-to-back championship under the rug.
GC Busan vs. Lunatic-Hai
Game 1: Lijiang Tower (Control)
Game 2: Eichenwald (Assault/Escort)
Game 3: Hanamura (Assault)
Extremely close brawls on Lijiang Tower signified the beginning of a very close match between the two teams, and it came down to the wire -- the capture percentages going 100-99 in GC's favor. GC Busan's Jo "HaGoPeun" Hyeon-woo's Zenyatta saved the day with incredibly clutch Transcendences that stopped a Dragonblade by Lee "Whoru" Seung-joon and scured Lijiang Tower.
Eichenwald was a flurry of back and forth exchanges between both teams, good and bad. GC Busan's rocky road to push the payload to the end was only successful because of a beautiful final push from point B to point C, which was opened up by Park "Profit" Joon-yeong' Pulse Bomb snipe as Tracer onto Lunatic-Hai's Yang "tobi" Jin-mo. This allowed Lee "Hooreg" Dong-eun's Doomfist to clean up the point after. With tobi out of the picture, Hooreg went to work and captured the point in overtime.
While Lunatic-Hai forced a timebank stage, it was made possible due to a disasterous mistake involving a D.Va self-destruct that got caught in a corner instead of launching itself into the Lunatic-Hai Team. Either way, Lunatic-Hai was crushed in the timebank stage, awarding GC Busan the 2-0 lead.
After that, Lunatic-Hai swapped out Whoru for Kim "EscA" In-jae with the hopes that a comforting, veteran presence would bring order to the LH line-up, and they were correct. LH looked a lot more coordinated on Hanamura than it did thus far in the series. Even so, GC Busan was the superior team with the better DPS lineup, and Hooreg's Soldier 76 crushed LH in its tracks to cap off a 3-0 sweep that kicked Lunatic-Hai out of the tournament for good. The back-to-back champions of APEX leaving the tournament before the semifinals is huge, but even bigger was GC Busan securing its Royal Road, making it the second Royal Road in this season alongside NC Foxes.
The first semifinals match will take place on Tuesday, Oct. 10 with Cloud9 Kongdoo taking on GC Busan in a best of 7.