A recent feature by the Overwatch League tells the story of one of the league’s most popular stars, “Big Boss” Kim ‘Pine’ Do-hyeon.
One of the DPS players for New York Excelsior, Pine made a massive impact on the league early on despite not even being a starting player.
With a highly-specialized skillset and high-risk, high-reward play style, Pine was mostly used as a substitute DPS player for certain maps by the Excelsior, who instead opted for the stability and flexibility of Park ‘Saebyeolbe’ Jong-ryeol and Kim ‘Libero’ Hae-seong for the majority of their games.
When Pine was on form, however, he produced some of the most epic plays of the entire league, a walking highlight reel with the likes of McCree and Widowmaker. In Stage 1 he was only consistently fielded for Control maps, but when he did come out he dominated the game, earning the nickname “Big Boss Pine”.
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Pine hasn’t always been so charmed, however, and in a look back on his road to earning the title he touched on the struggles he had prior to becoming a professional player, and the depression he fell into during Stage 2 of the league, for which he was almost entirely absent.
The New York Excelsior were eliminated in the semi-finals of the Overwatch League Season One playoffs by Philadelphia Fusion, a surprising upset based on regular season form. Despite falling short in the playoffs, the Excelsior were the league’s pre-eminent team for almost the entirety of the first season, and will undoubtedly be favorites going into Season Two.