Kongdoo Panthera has a long history with Overwatch. The team has never won the grand final prize from APEX to the Seoul Cup. The team will definitely want to prove themselves to pull out a win in this unique opportunity of old faces coming back from the past.
The team stood out for their uniform choices. One notable one was their blue and white sailor outfit. It wasn’t until the APEX season 3 roster came along that the team got to the Grand Finals to face up against Lunatic-Hai. The Kongdoo Panthera team was bought out by C9 to become the Cloud9 Kongdoo. That roster then moved to the London Spitfire for the inaugural season of the Overwatch League. Meanwhile, another iteration of the c9 Kongdoo was being formed, and many of these players would also go onto the Overwatch League. After this, the Kongdoo name was shifted to Griffin. Though Kongdoo seemed to be a thing of the past, recently a Kongdoo Korean contenders team has arisen from the ashes to have the Kongdoo name in the Overwatch community again.
DPS
The Kongdoo Panthera team decided to go with the three DPS lineup. Fans will not see the original DPS pair Kim ‘Rascal’ Dongjun and Kim ‘Birdring’ Jihyeok, lovingly named Birdsical, in the DPS position. Birdring has been looking to get back into the Overwatch League with a LFT post for the upcoming season 6. Previously Birdring had been on the London Spitfire and LA Gladiators where he did perform at a high level. He has been duo-ing with Kang ‘Void’ Junwoo on stream in preparation. He seems to be having fun and practicing hard for the tournament.
Kim ‘Decay’ Jihyeok along with Choi ‘ChoiSehwan’ Sehwan are two of the current members of the Overwatch League. Both have had impressive matches on their respective teams. Though neither of them has played alongside Birdring in the past. Choisehwan and Decay both occupy a similar role with Tracer, but they bring other heroes to the table like Genji and Cassidy for the flexibility.
Tanks
Void has been one of the two tanks that are heavily associated with Kongdoo. Void has been streaming his practice with other Kongdoo duos throughout the week. This was the first look at how Void plays Ramattra. He has been playing Ramattra more with the team also Sigma-like. That means he gets his ult slower than more aggressive tanks but has stronger survivability.
One of the biggest surprises is that Baek ‘Fissure’ Chanhyung, who was Void’s main tank partner, is not taking part in this reunion. Instead, the other tank is Moon ‘Changsik’ Changsik. He was a part of the 2nd generation of Kongdoo in 2017-2018. Changsik has most notably been a part of the Korean broadcast talent for the Overwatch League. He was previously a part of the Vancouver Titans in 2021. It will be interesting to see who will start for the tank position. Though this may be Void’s last time on stage for a while as he will be going to do his mandatory military service soon.
Supports
Neither Choi ‘Bdosin’ Seungtae nor Ahn ‘Wakawaka’ Jiho, who are the supports that were with the original roster are present for this event. Instead, Son ‘Coma’ Gyueongwoo, who notably was on both Runaway and Kongdoo, but will be known as a Shanghai Dragon support player to the Overwatch League community will be stepping in. He has been playing mostly Lucio in their scrims against Runaway.
His partner will be none other than Rascal who will be flexing onto the support role. This is not unheard of for Rascal who has in the past played Bap and other support for teams. In a scrim against Runaway on Midtown Rascal was on Kiriko which was fitting his play style and he is able to farm his ultimate quite fast.
Kongdoo Panthera
The Kongdoo Panthera team has a really strong core. They are a team that is using their large potential roster to their advantage. The strength is going to be the sheer mechanical power, but whether or not all the players can synergize will be another story. Because there are so many players from different generations, they may not have gotten used to each other in such a short amount of time. They seem to be preferring a full dive composition on maps like Shambali with Tracer, Genji, Doom, Kiriko, and Lucio. Though they struggle against Zarya’s DPS at times, the isolation and pick potential is very strong.
The English broadcast will be Wolf and Achilios on the Overwatch League channels, while the Korean broadcast will be on the Korean Overwatch and Overwatch League channels. Will you be cheering for Kongdoo Panthera in the Legends Battle?
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