The start of Season 2 of the Overwatch League has been a surprise to many of us, especially to some of the bigger teams. However, all of this gives fans more reasons to support them. Los Angeles Valiant have been the example of a bad hit by the current meta, but with a group of players as skilled as them, in no time they will bounce back to the top of the leaderboards.
Who are these skilled players? To get to know them better and to see where they came from before the Overwatch League, this last piece covering LA Valiant’s players will have a look at their support lines, as their DPS and Tanks have already been covered.
Custa
Name: Scott “Custa” Kennedy
Birthday: November 22, 1993
Country: Australia
Jersey Number: 10
Twitter: @Custa
Twitch: custa
The team’s specialized main support player and Mercy specialist. Heroes he favors more while playing include Mercy, Moira, Ana and Lucio. Originally signed to the Dallas Fuel, he was traded to the LA Valiant in exchange for Benjamin “uNKOE” Chevasson right before the start of Stage 3 of the Inaugural Season.
His interest in esports started early in his life after watching a StarCraft tournament while studying in university. He was astounded by the ability to play on a stage, be part of a team and become famous, all while doing something that he loved. When he first saw the trailer and the first beta for Overwatch, he knew that this was going to be his opportunity to get into professional gaming, so he swiftly moved to Toronto to start a new life with savings that he had to start his journey.
His professional career started with the team Code7, where he played on weekly tournaments only. He participated in three ESL Community Cups, all of which he won, as well as six Gosu Gamer Weeklies with very varied results. After almost two months on the team, he decided to make a change and move over to Nubris. With them, he continued his trend of playing in weekly competitions, but also expanded to minor tournaments like the iBUYPOWER Invitational 2016, where they reached quarterfinals.
When Overwatch esports started bringing in more attention and big esports names started creating teams for the competition, all of Nubris’ players got signed by Fnatic. After this change, Custa’s career started to flourish. During 2016, in all tournaments that Fnatic participated, they never got a result lower than fourth place. Even in major events like Dreamhack Winter 2016, Overwatch Open and Major League Gaming Vegas 2016 the team never ceased to impress.
The start of 2017 had rough results for the squad and Fnatic ended up disbanding. As a result, Custa moved over to Arc 6 to fill in Donald “Dahun” Leigh’s spot, as he had recently left the team. With his new team he played two tournaments, BEAT Invitation Season 2 and the HulkTastic Cup, where he placed third and first respectively. After a long career of grinding and carrying a plethora of experience, he achieved a place in the Dallas Fuel roster and secured his spot on the Overwatch League.
Highlights:
KariV
Name: Young-seo “KariV” Park
Birthday: January 8, 1998
Country: South Korea
Jersey Number: 99
Twitter: @KariV
Twitch: kariv2
He first fell in love with Overwatch during the open beta. His parents even supported him to pursue a career in the game professionally. Thanks to this, he decided to join team Mighty AOD. He was part of this squad for almost a year, a time he used to participate in various different competitions. From minors like the Nexus Cup 2016 and 2017, in which they reached the grand finals and semifinals respectively, to major tournaments like Overwatch APEX Challengers Seasons 2 and 3, where he achieved third place in both.
With Overwatch League getting close he decided it was time to step it up a notch if wanted to be a part of it. To achieve his objective, he joined Immortals. While being on the team, he played on Overwatch Contenders Season 0, where they had a rough start on the first qualifier. They did, however, bring it back for the second qualifier, where they got first place. They kept this momentum as they won first place on the competition, only dropping five maps in the process. For Contenders Season 1, the story was a little different. They finished with a sixth place position. These results were enough to get him a place on the LA Valiant.
Highlights:
IZaYaKI
Name: Min-chul “IZaYaKI” Kim
Birthday: February 22, 2000
Country: South Korea
Jersey Number: 22
Twitter: @IZaYaKI_ow
Twitch: izayaki_ow
La Valiant’s Zenyatta specialist. His preferred Hero pool is composed of Zenyatta and Ana. He joined the team during Stage 3 of the Inaugural Season.
We first learned of him in Korea, playing under a different battletag, Need. He was part of team KNC Vmax, which always competed in big tournaments. Unfortunately, due to chance or bad luck, they never got any outstanding results, mostly due to the teams they had to play against very early in these competitions. For example, on the Davich Overwatch Amateur League, they were matched against team 백수6 as their first game. They were eliminated in that same round and team 백수6 would end up taking the championship. For Open Division Season 1 qualifiers in Korea, they went through Group G without breaking a sweat. But once again luck wasn’t on their side, and on the first round of playoffs they faced off against Bucheon NPlus, who at the end would score second place.
He switched teams over to Foxes and with them, he participated in Overwatch Contenders Season 1 Korea. On the same note, they were eliminated in the first round of qualifiers due to some unlucky matchups again and facing against X6 Gaming, the team that took the trophy home at the end of the season. Even with all of this happening, his skill had always been showing, and even though they were eliminated quickly, he was considered one of the best Zenyattas in Contenders. All of this allowed him to earn his place in the LA Valiant.
Highlights:
No highlight reel available online.
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