” Last week, you won your match against Astralis despite a rather surprising draft. Did you expect their strategy?
I was not surprised by Pyke (taken by support Lee “JeongHoon” Jeong-hoon on Friday) as it is a player signature champion. However, it was not the best choice against our strategy. But for Draven, I was surprised because I worked with Kasper “Kobbe” Kobberup last year and while I know he can play him, he’s far from one of his main champions. In the game, he was prevented from taking advantage of stacks of his liabilities by playing around him; when we took an elimination on him at the beginning, I thought it was good. In the end, it went well for us.
Your adaptability and your strategies have contributed to your recent victories, despite some meta changes brought by the 12.14 update.
We are still working on the last update… plus what happened this Friday is that the Hexflash rune was deactivated just hours before our match. It changed everything because we played with it several times during the week. We had to think about how to adapt our strategy at the last minute. But in the end, we were able to find good champions on each role.
Your jungler Nikolay “Zanzarah” Akatov also seems to fit the general strategy well at the moment.
His champion pool is actually very good for this update. We have a lot of champions who are very good in the meta and know how to play. We haven’t been able to test them yet since he’s been able to play Poppy three times in a row, but it’s a good meta for him and I’m very happy with how it’s going.
Exactly, your opponents banned Poppy in your last match, and this is likely to continue.
Yes, I think that now we will be banned! We’ll see how it goes. In any case, it would be funny to be able to play it again…
Your collective also seems more solid, in particular since the arrival of Zanzarah in the formation of the championship.
Indeed. I think now our team is very close-knit, strongly based on unity. As Matús “Neon” Jakubcik says (team botlaner), it’s a bit like: we launch and we fall together. It’s a bit our attitude of gameplay, we don’t let our teammates down. Besides, we got a lot closer and that translates into the game: being on the same wavelength, following the same actions…
Is that something you’ve been working on despite the lineup changes along the way?
I have to give credit to my players. They do their best to work on their game, whether to improve on the collective or on their individual performances. And I have to thank my coaches who are doing a very good job. They have a very good support system in place from Misfits which makes it much easier to unlock their potential. Because thanks to that, we are comfortable and really appreciate the fact of playing together. The objective is not to obtain personal glory, but to do things together because that is what is important. It’s the victory that counts.
“The Heretics announcement definitely caused some kind of a stir”
However, the announcement of the takeover of the place of your club by Heretics could have disconcerted you and translated into your results.
The announcement of Heretics was complicated because it happened in the middle of the week, and it definitely caused a kind of commotion, not knowing what will happen after the season… But I think that as As a team, we managed to manage this well, thanks in particular to the maturity of the players. It’s not an ideal situation, but we managed to overcome it because we still have a lot to fight for: for ourselves and for others. Players and coaches are well aware of this.
How did you manage to refocus? It happened at a time when every game counted before the play offs.
We arranged a meeting the next day where we sat down together. I was able to share my perspective, as well as others, on the situation. We opened up and talked about what motivated us, why we still wanted to give it our all, and that helped a lot.
Now you come to the home stretch of this season and you are almost confirmed for the Top 6.
For the moment, we have nine victories, so we only need one more to be absolutely certain of arriving in the play-offs. But of course, our goal is to win them all! We will arrive in each match with this mentality. What matters to me is that we give everything. That’s what will satisfy me, no matter the outcome.
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