With the win, New York completed a perfect 7–0 stage. Prior to their quarterfinal playoff match, New York transferred Hong "ArK" Yeon-jun, who had played less than 30 minutes for NYXL in the entirety of Stage 1, to Washington Justice. Although New York went undefeated in Stage 1, the Vancouver Titans completed the same feat but with a better map differential, so NYXL was awarded the second seed in the Stage 1 Playoffs. Excelsior faced the seventh-seeded Seoul Dynasty in the Stage 1 Quarterfinals on March 21. With strong performances by the Dynasty's main tank Hwang "Marve1" Min-seo and off-tank Kim "Zunba" Joon-hyeok, New York quickly lost the first map Ilios. The Dynasty then substituted four of their players and proceeded to take map two Hollywood, putting NYXL down 0–2 going into halftime. Map three was played on Volskaya Industries. The map went to overtime rounds, as both teams completed the map on their attacks; needing the map win to avoid losing the match, NYXL off-tank Kim "MekO" Tae-hong clutched out well-timed D.Va self-destruct in the final moments of the match to secure the map win and close the gap to a 1–2 match score. Seoul was able to complete the fourth map, Rialto, on their attack; NYXL needed to do the same or else they would lose the match. New York pushed their attack past the second point with over four minutes to spare, but was consistently pushed back by Seoul. In their final chance to complete the match, New York's Jeong "Nenne" Yeon-kwan on Zarya whiffed his Graviton Surge ultimate attempting to catch Choi "Michelle" Min-hyuk on Sombra, who had his EMP ultimate ready. The failed ultimate proved to be the deciding factor for the fight, as Seoul won the team fight, and NYXL was defeated 1–3. New York began Stage 2 with a match against the Philadelphia Fusion, who had eliminated NYXL in the semifinals of the 2018 playoffs. The match saw the debut of "Overwatch"'s newest hero Baptiste in OWL. After taking both points on the first map Lijiang Tower, New York dominated the match, sweeping the Fusion 4–0. New York next took on the Shanghai Dragons two days later. NYXL continued running the standard 3-tank, 3-support meta composition, while the Dragons attempted less standard compositions throughout the match.