DSG Ido: “I appreciate most [that] everyone is just bought in.”

Q: You kind of screwed me over in fantasy, so what’s going on with that?

Ido: Sorry, I’m not taking people’s fantasy into account. I need to work on that.

Q: Thank you. It’d really help the fans.

Ido: Yeah, just let me know what you need. I got you. […]

Yeah. [Last year was] basically the same [as fantasy football] — if you have a player who’s going to play versus like the New Orleans Saints, you just put them in because they’re going to score a hundred.

Q: Where are you evaluating the strength of this roster right now? Where do you see its trajectory?

Ido: Yeah, I think right now, top six I think is pretty agreeable. We could comfortably put ourselves there — but I’m not really too caught up on where we stack up now.

I didn’t make this roster to try to compete in Split 1. I don’t think it really matters that much.

But the goal is definitely to shoot up around Split 2 or even later into the year; try to compete for some international spots. And I think we can definitely do it. We’re making a lot of improvements right now — we haven’t had very many scrims. This is like Week 2 for us.

KryRa’s still been on his 100 ping. We bring in Kisno for the match. He’s been helping out a lot, so not too worried about the rest of the year.

Q: What does that mean? You’re scrimming with KryRa still on 100 ping? Or is it all scrims with Kisno?

Ido: Yeah, we don’t scrim with Kisno. 

Q: Wait, what? Does he watch scrims?

Ido: Sometimes if he wants.

Q: So this was all without Kisno scrimming at all?

Ido: *Laughs* I mean … Kisno’s a good player. I think Kisno should get some LCS looks for sure.

But yeah, like I was saying, for the long term, we’re going to do really well. I don’t see the need to […] put in Kisno and let’s try to get as many wins as we can in Split 1. I’d rather start building up my structure with KryRa.

And Kisno’s great — it’s not an easy position to get. Granted, we give him two blocks the day before [we play], just so that he can play the comps that we think we’re gonna play on stage that day; so he doesn’t have literally zero practice.

I think it’s 3 right now — his total games in scrims.

Q: Total game- sorry, you said two blocks. You mean two games?

Ido: Yeah, two games. Like-

Q: WHAT?

Ido: Yeah, for the scrim schedule, it’s usually 5 game blocks, and the Fearless resets after Game 3 — so [the day before we play], he’ll get the last two games in the block and we just force […] the stage draft we intend to play.

He gets practice [on those champions], he knows what he’s gonna play. It’s not like he shows up to the LCS Arena and, like, he doesn’t know what the fuck’s going on. But yeah, we’re just scrimming with KryRa.

Q: How has the team started to fit together?

Ido: What I appreciate most about the team is [the feeling that] everyone is just bought in. Everyone just wants to learn.

We had a discussion in scrims the other day [where] we just couldn’t come to an agreement. But finally, one player is just, “Okay, I will do what you want.”

Normally, that can come across as sarcastic, like, “Fine, we’ll just do what you want then. Whatever.” And then they don’t actually intend to, right?

But I’ve seen it multiple times now. People are willing to concede, people are willing to sacrifice, and it’s different people each time — myself included. There’s draft things I don’t necessarily agree with, and I’ll concede. We’ll try it out.

I just think everyone’s really bought in. It really helps that Callme is actually a little bit more of a leader than people might know.

He does a decent amount of shotcalling in-game, he has a lot of draft opinions. He’s really involved — he’s not just a passenger. He really cares about improving himself and improving his fit in the team. That’s been coming through well for him.

Q: How’s his English?

Ido: It’s good. He can communicate in game. He can communicate in review.

Sometimes you need to give him a second to, like, think of the right word to say, or you need to repeat yourself. But even that’s not actually that common. So yeah, his English is good.

I don’t think it’s to the level of Castle, but he can definitely communicate completely fine.

Q: What’s your plan for the year, assuming you don’t make First Stand? Korean bootcamp in the break, maybe through the Americas Cup?

Ido: Nah, I mean, to be completely honest, like we probably don’t have the resources to go bootcamp anywhere.

Q: Well, you can win a bootcamp through the Americas Cup, right?

Ido: Oh, for sure. If we get that, all expenses paid, of course, we would take that.

But let’s say we get fourth or something, and we don’t go to First Stand, or we don’t qualify for the bootcamp. I think what I learned a lot last year, probably my biggest mistake towards the end of the last year was [about burnout]. We were really high off taking C9 to Game 5 and we were super motivated.

We’re like, “Oh my god, we’re going to smash promotion tournament. We just need to keep it up. We’re gonna keep scrimming. Let’s take [like] two days off between C9 and the promotion tournament.”

That was a big mistake.

Q: Why?

Ido: Cause then we were just scrimming basically indefinitely; we didn’t even know the dates yet. That burnt us out really hard.

I don’t know how long the break is between Split 1 and Split 2, but I do intend to be a little bit more reserved. I guess when it comes to how hard we’re practicing, I really believe that it’s important for people to get some amount of rest, get some amount of break, because these guys are just grinding games 12 hours a day — truthfully it’s not healthy and it’s not sustainable.

If I can even give them a week off, I think that’s way more valuable than fitting in an extra week of scrims.

Q: It feels like we have some teams — like FLY, TL, and DSG — that play with high mechanics (hands) and then teams that play with macro (brain) — DIG, C9 maybe. Do those categories resonate with you?

Ido: I think, maybe, I don’t necessarily agree with the division that you have right now. But I think if we call back to last year with 100T, they were going down 3k early-to-mid-game. And then they just have a miracle teamfight […] but even teamfighting can be taught.

It’s obviously not as easy, but teamfighting concepts — how to set up a team fight, how to reevaluate a team fight once it’s begun, [how to] make good decisions after — even stuff like that can be taught.

That gap can be bridged. I think there are definitely teams that are more mechanically talented than others innately, but I don’t think it becomes a division like that. […]

Mechanics… you really have to break down what “mechanics” is. How quickly can you react to things? How quickly can you adjust your mouse to a misclick? How accurate can that first click be?

Mechanics are — if we’re talking about what pure mechanics really are — like really nitty-gritty. And I don’t think most people refer to mechanics [that way].

If you teach a team better team fighting and you teach an individual better team fighting mentality, it’s going to look like they have much better mechanics. But like really, it’s not mechanics like that. That’s bridging that gap.

Header Image Credit: Riot Games