New York Excelsior’s Pine Reflects on Becoming “The Big Boss” and Tough Times in the Overwatch League
Robert Paul for Blizzard EntertainmentA 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.
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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.
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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.
