Lucas "Leaf" Loison is one of the star DPS players for the rising Overwatch team, GamersOrigin. Most notably, he has been one of the strongest Doomfists we’ve seen thus far.

GamersOrigin is currently 2-2 and is currently in 4th place in the standings. Leaf sat down and spoke candidly about his thoughts on Doomfist and how GamersOrigin’s Overwatch Contenders Season 1 battle for playoffs has been.

How are we doing this afternoon Leaf? Thanks for sitting down and talking with me today. How is the preparation going for next week's matches?

Thanks for the invitation here! Well we're playing C9 next Sunday and they are kind of hard to prepare against because of their roster changes. They have Surefour and Kragie as subs so we don't really know who we're gonna face exactly. It's still early and we're still trying the new patch but overall I think we're really motivated to get this win and work our way up to contenders playoff

Before we jump straight into Overwatch Contenders talk, I want to learn a bit more about you. What is your backstory  in games? Where does the drive to compete come from for you?

Well it all started when shootmania came out. It was my first FPS and I was like really young (around 14-15 years old) and I just feel in love with the game. The community was kind of small so you got to talk with top level player a lot. I saw that I could have some talent and I started like working a lot to get better. Sadly when I finally became decent, everyone stopped playing the game so the passion kind of faded away.

When Overwatch released, I was 20, life had changed quite a lot and I didn't want to take the game too seriously. I was scared to lose too much time on this without having like money to live from it, but anyways I started playing a lot without even realising it and 2-3 months after I was in like the top 100 or top 50 ranked player and I got picked by Gamers Origin

An FPS player from birth, it seems! Could you talk a bit about the French scene? How ingrained do you think FPS games are in the gaming culture of France? There has been quite strong French presence in the Overwatch community. Is Overwatch incredibly popular in France?

I'm kind of young and it's hard for me to understand when all the FPS fans and players are coming. We have really great CS players, we have really great fast fps players and it probably generate a lot of fans and competitive players who wants to be like them. I think french people tend to play and watch french people and that creates a big community of people. We have the chance to have a lot of casters / personalities that advertise the game and Alphacast has been doing a great job of merging together all these french player into a big community of fans

Jumping back to your team, GamersOrigin, you guys are 2-2 in Overwatch Contenders Season 1. Did you guys have any expectations coming into Contenders Season 1? Is there anything that you regret or wish you could replay a bit differently?

Hmm, that's a tough one. To be honest I re-joined the team like 4-5 days before our first match I think and scrims results were really good. We have a different playstyle than most other teams and people weren't prepared for it thinking we'll just get stomped, but it's hard to point one thing. Like, losing one map to Bazooka Puppiez really pushed us to work even more. Gigantti has been so strong in every scrims before the match so I don't think we could have done more in a 1 Week preparation time. It was probably the Oasis game vs Misfits, we tried stupid stuff and made stupid mistakes and if we would have won Oasis, we may have beat Misfits.

Speaking of, your match versus Misfits was incredibly close! That game was easily the closest that Misfits has been pushed in an official game. Could you take us back into the team atmosphere and what was going through your head during the game?

Well Oasis did not go well but we were ok with it. The king's row game was hard, I should probably have swapped, we should have take things in a different way and there was a silent after the game, everyone needed a break. I worked a lot on, like taking effective break and reset my mindset coming into next game and I think it worked pretty well both vs Gigantti and misfits. Taking a map was good but when we saw Misfits chose Dorado as 4th map, that was the beginning of the "fun" as our coach says. We were really hyped up because we had a chance to comeback, Benbest was on fire the whole map and it was really a great moment And for Ilios, well, it was YOLO time...

That was one great game! As we head into next week, I’ve herd will be transferring onto the live patch. This patch does have Doomfist’s hitboxes seeing some ‘tweaking’ among other changes. Going into new patch environment, are you expecting any odd ball composition?

I don't think C9 will have anything weird really. Grey plays a lot of Sombra, but they like to play a classic style. As for the others teams like Misfits or Team Gigantti, even us on a smaller scale, will probably have some new comps to show on specific maps.

Speaking of Doomfist, you’ve shown quite the proficiency on the character. Have you felt more resistance to your Doomfist pick now or at the beginning of the season? Do you feel like people have gotten used to playing against Doomfist?  

Well at the beginning it was Bazooka Puppiez and Singularity and the fact that they didn't have the time to prepare made it quite easy to play doomfist. But teams like Gigantti and Misfits are understanding Doomfist weaknesses and it can be really hard to play him. I think overall, I'm a strange Doomfist with a different play style so I can still surprise good teams.

Awesome, thanks again Leaf for talking with me today. Let the people know where they can find you and what's going on in the life of Leaf!

Thanks for the interview :D. You can follow me on Twitter, @GO_Leaf and my Twitch is Leaf_ow. Streaming in french but you know, gameplay is universal!

Joseph “Volamel” Franco has followed esports since the MLG’s of 2006. He started out primarily following Starcraft 2, Halo 3, and Super Smash Bros. Melee. He has transitioned from viewer to journalist and writes freelance primarily about Overwatch and League of Legends. If you would like to know more or follow his thoughts on esports you can follow him at @Volamel.

Images courtesy of Blizzard Entertainment.