Halo champs OpTic may have found their kryptonite with another upset loss at HCS Dallas Qualifier

After a year of dominating Halo Infinite esports, OpTic Gaming have finally hit a bit of a roadblock. In the HCS Dallas Qualifier on May 13, the team lost for the second time in three weeks to an unlikely challenger, Complexity Gaming.

OpTic is a legendary organization in the Halo esports world, with some of the greatest players in the game’s history representing the team dating back to 2012. More recently, after a slow start to the Halo Infinite era, the team reached a new level just under a year ago in June 2022 and became close to unstoppable.

Since then, OpTic have won September’s Orlando Major, October’s World Championship, and February’s Kickoff Major, while not missing a single grand final from June 2022 to April 2023. 

This finally came to an end on April 23, though, with OpTic exiting the HCS 4k No. 2 tournament with a top-six placing following losses to Complexity Gaming and Native Gaming Red. Now, just three weeks later, OpTic have recorded another fifth-sixth exit at the FaZe Clan-organized HCS Dallas Qualifiers, with Complexity being the team to eliminate them after an earlier loss to FaZe.

These two games between OpTic and Complexity each went to five maps, and it was the standard Slayer game mode OpTic struggled on the most. Despite OpTic performing well in this game mode against other strong opponents, they lost all four Slayer meetings against Complexity by some margin: 50-39, 50-41, 50-41, and 50-40.

In the two other tournaments OpTic have played in since February’s Kickoff Major, they looked like their winning self. They took down FaZe twice to win the HCS 4k No. 1 and SSG twice to win the HCS 2k No. 3, meaning even with the recent blips, they’re still the most successful team over the last few months. OpTic remain the No. 1 team, just one that’s shown a very particular weak spot to Complexity. 

Complexity, best known for being co-owned by Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, was first involved in Halo esports in 2011 and recently was announced as a partnered organization for Year Two of the Halo Championship Series last November.

Since then, Complexity has made two changes to its 2022 World Championship lineup that earned a top-16 placing. Daniel “Tusk” Ruiz came in after spending most of 2022 on G2 Esports while Kahari “Kuhlect” Miller joined after an extended period on Spacestation Gaming as Joseph “Juziro” Bartholomay and Donnie “Suppressed” Lopez exited.

While Complexity previously peaked with a few top-eight finishes in NA since this team first played together three weeks ago, they have already finished second in the HCS 4k No. 2 and third in the HCS Dallas Qualifiers, being eliminated by FaZe in both cases. 

Due to their performance in these two tournaments, Complexity will be attending the upcoming DreamHack Global Invitational in Dallas, Texas, the second of six international tournaments in the 2023 season. Here, the team will hope to prove their worth in a LAN environment despite being one of the newest teams in attendance.

As for OpTic, Matthew “FormaL” Piper, a Call of Duty and Halo world champion who currently plays for the Green Wall, immediately took issue with OpTic not being the DreamHack Global Invitational top seed despite earning the most HCS Points over the last few months of play. Instead, the top two seeds were awarded to the top two teams from the HCS Dallas Qualifier, SSG and FaZe, with OpTic being down in third place. 

“The HCS format is laughable, we just played like 10 2k/4ks just to have those points mean nothing,” FormaL said. “Just another hilarious decision out of them.”

This means despite having not lost a game on LAN since May 2, 2022, OpTic will on paper sit behind their two biggest rivals in Halo Infinite at the Invitational, with the current FaZe and SSG rosters being best known as the core lineups of the 2022 Sentinels and Cloud9 teams.

Alongside the 10 North American teams previously listed, the Global Invitational will include four European rosters—Quadrant, NAVI, Aw0babobs, and JLINGZ esports—and one team each from Mexico and the ANZ region, Six Karma and Vertez. The event will run from June 2 to 4, offer $125,000 in prize money, and will be the last opportunity to earn HCS Points before the Arlington Major just four weeks later. 

With OpTic being headquartered in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, this event at DreamHack Dallas is the perfect opportunity for them to regain the top spot they strongly believe they deserve with their fellow Dallas natives, Complexity, positioning themselves to be a surprise challenger to end their year-long LAN winning streak.