Around the OWL: San Francisco sign Striker, ZachaREEE joins Dallas Fuel

With the Free Agency window close to wrapping up, San Francisco Shock and the Boston Uprising have come to a deal that will see star DPS player Kwon “Striker” Nam-joo move to the Pacific division. This move comes as a surprise for SF Shock fans due to their mass amount of talent at the DPS role already. As of today, San Francisco have five players at their disposal for damage output roles as Striker joins a stacked lineup of Rascal, sinatraa, BabyBay and Architect to compete for game time.

Dallas Fuel have also made DPS acquisitions this week as they have now picked up Zachary “ZachaREEE” Lombardo at the Flex DPS position.

San Francisco stacking talent

San Francisco Shock have always been an ambitious team when it comes to acquiring talent. After a rocky start to the season last year, SF Shock wasted little time in making alterations to their roster as they added Jay “sinatraa” Won to the rotation once he turned of age, and utilized Dante “Danteh” Cruz extremely well after Stage One.

Even though their team started to pick up better results towards the end of the season, SF Shock were still kept out of the playoffs due to their rocky start, and this year it seems they are eager to bounce back from those harsh lessons.

After offloading Danteh to the Houston Outlaws this offseason, it seemed like SF Shock were content with their 4 man rotation at DPS, but its obvious with this striker move that the Shock are going for both quality and quantity with these roster moves. Pound for pound, one could make the argument that SF Shock have the deepest rotation of competent players at DPS, but of course only two players can make the grade with each game.

Going forward, the roster juggling for this San Francisco team will be interesting to watch, and having an overabundance of talent in the DPS position will give them much needed leverage for trade negotiations. While keeping five DPS players on the books is interesting in theory, expect the SF Shock lineup to thin out overtime as Striker competes with the rest of the platoon for game time.

Striker could easily be considered the best DPS player not on a fully Korean roster last year given his insane performances in Stage Three that carried Boston Uprising to a perfect 10-0 run. His ability on Tracer, Junkrat, Pharah and Widowmaker make him a perennial threat on most DPS heroes, and as Striker surrounds himself with more Korean teammates and a better team environment, the future is extremely bright for this 19 year old phenom.

ZachaREEE burns blue

Dallas Fuel fans have been trolled relentlessly this past week as Dallas Fuel teased a new player to be released last Friday, but the news became delayed until Monday due to the endless speculation. What was rumoured to be another top tier acquisition ended up being an investment in youth with Zachary Lombardo.

ZachaREEE enjoyed a fruitful spell on a stacked Overwatch Contenders roster last year with Fusion University. Although he was never the star pupil on the roster, ZachaREEE provided ample role playing on a variety of heroes as he was rarely the kind of player to make debilitating mistakes for his team in high-stress fights.

Although his prospect level is adequate, many fans have questioned this move noting Dallas’ lack of depth in other roles as a key problem to address. ZachaREEE was picked up for the Team USA roster at the Overwatch World Cup, but his performances against the top level OWL talent was questionable at best.

For a young player like ZachaREEE it was obvious that nerves played an issue in the quality of his performances, and those are key issues Dallas Fuel will need to work on with a young and developing player of his stature. Zachary Lombardo will be eligible to compete after January 27, when he officially becomes old enough to participate in the Overwatch League for his team.