DIG Srtty: “If we’re not actively trying, even during the offseason, to be the best […] that’s the biggest “Fuck you” [to the fans].”
Q: You said it’d be embarrassing to lose to DSG — you won, but dropped a game. Do you still feel that way after they pushed you a bit more than expected?
Srtty: I mean, obviously, no disrespect to the players. Tons of respect for DSG as an organization and everything, and I think that it sucks that they’re out so fast because of the format of Split 1, which I think is pretty bad.
But I think that I’m disappointed in us for losing Game 1, because I feel like it was reminiscent of our games versus TL — where we just had no cohesion or plan forward, and it just felt like there was no progression at all. And I mean, I’ve made an excuse to myself when we lost to TL like, “Okay, it’s TL. It’s fine.”
But then, against DSG the same thing’s happening, and that kinda sucks.
Q: What changed between Game 1 and 2? Did Rigby spank you guys into shape?
Srtty: Like not really. Rigby was actually very calm; he was basically just saying “When we want something, we need to put resources into it to get it, and that’s okay. You guys should not think that everything is going to be free.”
I don’t know exactly what he was referencing in that game because I was just Jayce with [flash burned level 1 by Ivern] and then I kinda just sat back and was weakside the entire game. So I wasn’t really a part of the group. […]
If the fights go well, they go well. If they don’t, they don’t. Either way, I’m just doing my job from that situation onwards. But, yeah, [Rigby] was pretty calm. It was really Tomo and Isles who were like “Guys guys, we have to fucking fight. Like we can’t just pussy out of everything.”
I mean, it’s totally valid. I feel the exact same way.
I feel like the reason we lost Game 1 was just because we weren’t confident or something. We weren’t willing to say “Hey, let’s go and fight these guys, because if we take the whole lot of steps to fight and then fight, when we’ve done our steps, we have a better chance to win than lose.”
Q: How do you deal with likely heading into a 2-3 month break in just one week?
Srtty: Well, I’m not taking a break. If we get knocked out, we do not deserve to take a break.
Even if we don’t get knocked out, we don’t deserve to take a break. If we’re not actively trying, even during the offseason, to be the best — if we are taking time off, after we have made mistakes, when teams that are better than us are still practicing — honestly, that’s the biggest “Fuck you” I think we could ever give to any of the fans.
So me and Tomo, I’m pretty sure, are gonna just go to Korea. We’ve talked about it. If we get knocked out, we’ll go to Korea and we’ll bootcamp, because we don’t know if we’re gonna be scrimming or not. We need to do something with the time, so we’re not sitting on our asses.
Q: What did you think of Castle today? He seemed to have your number throughout the series.
Srtty: Well, that’s sort of how the matchup goes. It’s one to three I get pushed in, then level 4-6. I need to crash that wave on that timer. It’s important for my matchup.
So I asked the team, “Where’s Ivern?,” and we’re like “We just saw him bot.” And then he shows up a minute later. So what can I do, you know? I got totally surprised.
I think Castle was the best player on DSG. I think his team also puts him on strong-side, puts his ADC on weak side and plays so that he can try and look good. And I think that he’s good, but I think that he’ll look better than he actually is, because of the resources that have been given to him. Similar to how you can swap Upset between a bottom tier LEC team, where he looks terrible, and then put him on Fnatic in a cohesive environment, and now he looks like the best ADC in Europe, or one of them.
I think it’s a simple situation where, if you’re getting funneled resources, you’re gonna look good no matter what. Castle’s definitely solid. I think his biggest strength is that he’s good at not missing CS, but he plays the jungle stud 24/7. If the enemy team has better information, he’ll just die.
I mean, exYu is kind of there 24/7 for him, the way DSG is playing right now. But [that’s] the way eXyu’s always played in Academy too, he would play really heavily around Ablazeolive, and then (at least whenever he was versus me), he’d spend a lot of time around top, make it kind of uncomfortable for me to play.
But at the end of the day, if they wanna put these resources into into that role, I think that they need to give him more of a carry role. You can’t be putting him on Udyr and Maokai when your team stops functioning when he’s a [carry].
Q: How are you feeling against C9 and Thanatos?
Srtty: I think Thanatos is the best laning top in the LCS, and I think that he’s pretty good. He’s pretty smart. About C9 versus Dignitas, I think that it’s no secret to say that we’re the underdogs. The chances of us winning, on paper, are very low — especially after our performance vs DSG.
I’ll tell you right now, if DSG and C9 play a hundred series, they’ll never drop a game. C9 won’t ever drop a game to DSG, in my opinion, because that’s how big the gap is between the two teams. […] C9 is capable of losing to teams that are worse than them, because sometimes the players just tweak, and some of them look kind of old, and have bad hands in fights. So I think that they can drop games.
The teams that are more dominant against lower tier teams are really good at fighting. Because then they just smash them. That’s why T1 will legit dominate every single lower tier team, whereas Gen.G maybe won’t be as dominant. But then when GEN is vs T1, they normally win.
Q: Is your plan against C9 to take advantage of their worse hands then?
Srtty: Kind of. It’s weird. I don’t really know what the plan is gonna be going into it. I just know that I was putting myself into situations today, which I knew were intentionally losing, because I was thinking we’re getting something else. But I really don’t like doing this, and I want to talk to people about it. For example, I think it’s no secret that Jayce, K’sante are the two best top laners in the game right now with Ambessa slightly below. And I want to trade Jayce-K’sante, but we weren’t comfortable as a team doing it. So then he just gets to Jayce and they take a buster on 2, and there’s no answer.
I also have Vi, who has a cooldown of 2:20 [on ult], so she can’t expend it onto the Jayce — because if she does, it creates a situation where “Okay, we have to give an objective, basically, because of how long the CD is.”
If you’re left in pure isolation versus the Jayce with grasp, he’s rushing Shojin and stuff, it’s just gonna be a bad time for every top champ in the game. That’s why he has such high prio. The only reason some Korean teams, aren’t prio-ing him as high is because he can be killed. The perspective is he’s easy to die [on]. [He’s still] the best laning top in the game. So I don’t really like putting myself in that situation, but I understand that we’re getting things elsewhere — so it’s okay. But I think if it’s a better team, it’s not okay, because it’s very difficult for me to play the game in that situation, unless they make an unforced error.
Q: Do you have a message to the fans?
Srtty: I don’t really have anything groundbreaking to say. We’ll keep doing our best to improve and continue to try and do better. If FLY does the stream scrim thing, if FLY ever wants to put together a team of random bros that aren’t necessarily on a full team because it might not get approved [by their team], [LTAN] players who just want to play a scrim block plus FLY, and they wanna stream it. I’m down for that. I already said but when I said to Andrew [Barton] that I’m down.
Q: But you’re not sure if the team will approve yet? I tried to convince Rigby.
Srtty: You’re not gonna convince us. There are a lot of people inside of organizations who are saying no because, honestly, when you look at the logistics of the situation, there isn’t a lot of upside for a lot of people. There’s some, and it’s great content, but there are also a lot of downsides, and it’s difficult to convince somebody when those downsides exist and they’re easy to hop on.
I’m down just because I am biased and I weigh creating content very highly. It would be at my expense to stream scrims, by the way. If I’m playing FLY’s entire roster, there’s a higher chance I’m gonna do bad than do good, which can affect my perception and everything. It’s going to be more negative for me than positive, but I’m still down to do it. I believe that if I can help the ecosystem, I should do it. And streaming streams would do that.
Q: If you do have a long offseason or go to Korea, are you planning on streaming from Korea?
Srtty: I would love to. I mean, I wanna stream at the right now, but my computer is kind of laggy when I stream. So if you go my last VOD, I was on 80 frames in fights and stuff. So that’s why I’m not streaming even though I want to. But, during my off season, I will 100% be streaming — not gonna say every day because I get very low social battery. […] I will create content for sure.
[Editor’s note: Interview conducted Feb 1, 2025. Released Mar 26, 2025.]
