DSG Srtty: “Where we are right now depends on how closely we can make stage emulate our scrims. I think we’re definitely better than DIG is.”
Q: That was a brutal series, and it felt like TL started playing a little bit “for fun.” Is that tilting, because it drags the games out?
Srtty: They didn’t tilt me at all. I don’t think that they’re playing for fun or anything on stage at any point. I think that, obviously, when you get that far ahead, especially if you’re a team that’s as good as TL and you’re a team that they think isn’t very good, they can definitely play a little more loose.
But stuff like when Yeon dies to the TP flank on top, I think the only “having fun” type of thing there is the fact that he is overstaying for a bit of gold that he might not do in a closer game. But… I don’t know, it doesn’t really bother me at all. I didn’t really think that they were playing super for-fun. But if they could have closed that cleaner, they should have done it.
Q: Of course — it’s just that, off their cameras and voice comms, they seemed really casual; they were having a lot of fun, and started playing really unstable.
Srtty: But TL is also a much faster team, so that is a fair point. I think something that you’ll find is the better teams will have voice comms that are a little more loose and a little more fun, because there are less words needed to explain what they have to do in the game.
Like for example, when I’m playing on my team, if I’m saying to do something, I’ll tell people what I need them to do for me to do this. But if you’re playing on TL, for example, you can probably just say, “I want to play for top tower,” and then everybody knows what to do — what their part is in that.
Q: I feel like you guys have been improving, but it’s been quiet because Dardoch seemingly revived DIG from total disaster and SR seems locked in for the first time all year. DSG’s definitely improving, but it feels like the other teams moved faster.
Srtty: Yeah, I mean it’s difficult — like I said this before in another interview, but the way that the team was described to me when I joined is like, after the first three weeks of Split 1, there was just no improvement for the team at all.
Basically up until the point when I joined, they said [that] everybody was completely mental-boomed and it was just really bad because they hadn’t won a game since, [Week 1] in Split 2. They won a game Week 1 and then they didn’t win the entire time. I think that sounds right.
But I think in general, the vibes have been better. They’re way better now than they were when I joined the team — it was not very good. Better than Dignitas was last year for sure.
But I think it was very obvious that everybody was struggling — I think there are a lot of things we’ve improved on, and in scrims we’re doing a lot better of us a lot of the teams. I won’t say how well we did, but I mean, I don’t even know how serious some of these teams are taking the scrims.
But yeah I think we’re doing a lot better. We smashed LYON yesterday for the entire day, so that gave us confidence going into the TL series but then … It felt like versus TL, we weren’t doing the same things that we were doing in scrims. But I think realistically, where we are right now depends on how closely we can make stage emulate our scrims. I think we’re definitely better than DIG is.
Q: Even with Dardoch?
Srtty: Yeah. I think we’re probably better than — or we can be better than — SR and SEN. And I think FLY is a bit of a toss-up, but I think that TL and LYON are definitely just better than us at the moment.
I think that we can win versus almost any team, but obviously if I thought that we couldn’t win, we probably shouldn’t be competing.
Q: Is C9 above FLY, then?
Srtty: Yeah. C9 is better than FLY, in my opinion.
Q: As we speak, DIG just slammed SR in Game 1 — and they’ve looked super promising with Dardoch. Maybe I’m just too bought into the Dardoch narrative, but I’m surprised you have them so low.
Srtty: Well, I will say that Dardoch, from scrimming DIG, is a massive improvement over eXyu. I think he’s way better for the team. I think you also have to take into account that they have what, two, or maybe three — did Ignar win LCS at one point? — so three players who have won the league before on their team.
So like, in theory, they should not be bad, when you think of that — just based on like, historic results, something like that. Not that it means anything for the future. But, I don’t know, I’ll have to wait till I see it. Like, [they don’t do] this in scrims, so I need to wait till I see it, you know?
Q: You did pretty well against Morgan, today, I’d say.
Srtty: I was winning the in lanes. Jayce into K’Sante [in Game 1] is the lane I’m expected to win, and then it was Kled-Olaf. I was Olaf Side. […] Kled’s meant to counter Olaf, but it’s not that straightforward — Morgan’s game was lost at level 5, like he couldn’t play. And then tragedies happened.
Q: As an individual, then, where would you put yourself as a top laner in the 1v1?
Srtty: If we’re talking about pure laning, I’d say I’m playing the best individually in lane right now, in scrims. Like even versus Morgan, I usually do better than he does versus me. [But] I would say the Kled game today wasn’t really … What happened in it wasn’t because of 1v1 at all. I know it’s a bit of an anomaly. because usually I find that I come out ahead of him.
Obviously Morgan is a player where his lane phase is just stable and then he’s just very good at League of Legends. I think on an individual level though, laning-wise … I don’t know if I’m the best, but I’m like top 3, probably — pretty consistently, in my opinion. But it can be hard to show sometimes; I think I play a bit worse on stage than I do in scrims as well, and I need to figure that out and play a bit better.
Q: You think that’s a pressure thing?
Srtty: I think so. I’m not sure what it is exactly, but I definitely play less loose on stage than in scrims, and I think that if I play a bit more loose, I can win a lot harder. I think like today, for example, if I was playing in scrims, Morgan would have died level 4 — I’d throw my axe, and I wouldn’t miss it. But I missed it, so that’s my excuse. I just need to play better; just play a little, like, physically tighter.
Q: Right — I’ve noticed the same. The best teams play better because they’re looser and having fun, but they’re only able to maintain that environment because they’re playing better. It’s a feedback loop.
Srtty: Well, if both players are just playing the game, the person who’s confident is going to beat the person who isn’t. I think individually at the moment, I’m pretty confident — I went in today assuming that I would beat Morgan. I assumed that I’d beat him harder than I did. And I think that if we played 10 games on stage, 9 of them I would win pretty hard, normally.
Well, it depends on what you’d consider “pretty hard,” but I come out of lane with a lead pretty consistently, I think.
Q: This next week, against DIG and SEN, you could lock playoffs with a 2-0. What’s going through your head?
Srtty: It’s really important that we can win this weekend. And at the end of the day, if we can’t win this weekend, we just didn’t deserve to go to playoffs, right? And I don’t think I’ve missed playoffs before in my career, so hopefully we don’t.
Q: What’s going wrong with SEN, from your POV? Recently, they’ve looked so much worse than everyone expected.
Srtty: Yeah, I mean, I think that the mage meta was really affecting SEN. I think Rahel was really bad at the mages, and they need him to be strong to win.
Also something that people might think about is if they’re playing mages bot lane, it eats away at DARKWINGS’s champion pool a little bit.
But I think for the most part, they have stage nerves worse than we do, for sure. I think that they play a lot better in scrims than they do on stage. So I think it will really just depend: Have they gotten over that, or not?
Header Image Credit: Riot Games
