Piglet

Chae Gwang-jin, more commonly know as his in-game name, Piglet, is a world renowned ADC, currently competing with Clutch Gaming. Piglet started his competitive career in 2013, despite being one of the game’s early veterans, he has only signed with three organizations, SK Telecom T1, Team Curse (who later became Team Liquid) and Clutch Gaming.

© Riot Games

Rookie becoming a legend

Piglet began his competitive career as a rookie player for SK Telecom T1 K alongside Faker, Bengi, Impact and PoohManDu. While the team had only been created at the end of 2012, they quickly gained traction in the competitive Korean League of Legends scene. Coming in with half of their roster being filled with fairly unknown players being picked from solo queue, the team surprised many with their top three finish in the OLYMPUS Champions Spring 2013. Carrying their strong momentum, the team went to take Korea’s first seed spot for Worlds by winning the HOT6iX Champions Summer 2013.

Entering the world stage, spectators were once again skeptical regarding SKT, however, wary of their first seed position as Korea’s top team. That said, as the team plowed through groups with a 7-1 record, the “Korean hype train” was headed by Riot caster, Montecristo. 2013 was the year where SKT demonstrated the difference between them and other teams, and subsequently, Korea against the world. This was also the time where Piglet gained his recognition, with impeccable mechanics and aggression. SKT later went on to dominate the rest of the tournament, going 3-0 in the finals to take out the title as the 2013 world champions.

Downfall of a champion

Coming in to 2014, SKT were still extremely strong. However, their local opponents in Korea had immense improvements. This was evident with the team’s dip in performance, finishing 5-8th place in both the Spring and Summer Split of the Champions series. Faced with their poor performance early in the year, their only option to land a spot to Worlds was in their face off against Samsung White, which they unfortunately lost 0-3.

Given poor results, SKT were forced to search for new players, leading to the departure of Piglet. Surprising many fans, Piglet accepted a offer by Team Curse to join their team and subsequently move to North America. Coming to NA, Piglet completely dominated solo queue and had impeccable individual performance. However, the combination of under performing teammates and a lack of communication held Piglet back from being a champion in NA. This circumstance repeated itself when Team Curse rebranded to Team Liquid, who then constantly transferred Piglet back and fourth from their main team and academy team. Eventually, this drastically burnt Piglet out, with the overall lower quality talent compared to Korea and the lack of opportunity to battle international teams, Piglet’s performance fell.