FLY Busio: “We still have more creative champs, but you don’t just force it for the sake of creativity”

Q: Feels like a tough loss, how are you holding up?

Busio: Definitely as a team, we showed a lot, but I do think I made a handful of mistakes that really could have changed the game. So I’m a bit sad about that. […]

For example, in the last game, [we lost lane] because I didn’t Q the Leona E in lane. That was the main one there. And then, in the Alistar game – in just some team fighting things – I need to do a better job of playing versus their comp, because obviously we can’t just straight up front-to-back.

You know, they have the Braum and the stronger DPS carries. But at the same time, we have a Viego reset comp, so we need to get a kill. And we do have the juice to kill, like, one person, even a front liner like Braum. It’s just the way we went about it. We didn’t always do the right thing together.

For example, something you can do is Phase Rush Alistar’s combo in once, kite out – Braum has no shield. And on the next one, I flash combo and get the other reset. Something like that. If I had that in mind, and more about how to set up good things for my Viego or not – […] because sometimes we’re going too hard for resets – then we would have won. So that’s a team comp understanding thing on my end.

And then, the Kalista-Renata one, we did pick a lane that we knew was gonna be hard, but we have tactics that can make it more playable. And we just didn’t execute them well enough, including myself [and also] just as a bot duo, me and Massu together.

Q: There was a lot of criticism of supposedly “less creative” drafts from FLY today. Thoughts?

Busio: Yeah. I mean, we still have more creative champs, but you don’t just force it for the sake of creativity, you know? You pick it when it’s good. And we believe we’re a strong team, so we can win even with standard comps; we don’t need to cheese our way to wins. But, definitely, if we have practice on a champion that they don’t really understand as well as we do, that’s an advantage.

But you can’t just force those situations, you know? Or maybe you can, but we believe we’re a good team, so we don’t need to. We’re not forcing cheese all of the time in scrims just for the sake of cheese. 

We’re just trying to be a good team. And as you can see, it’s close. We can definitely be winning these games, just with a few key changes. Even just on one hand, if one person played better, we probably could’ve won today, you know? So that means we’re pretty close, for sure.

Q: What do you think of G2 as a team? Have you watched them closely at MSI?

Busio: I haven’t been watching all their games in detail, but it should be an easier match than today for sure, especially that now we have this VOD to look at and improve.

And this was our first stage game in this tournament, so I’m definitely confident we can beat G2 if we have a good day or just play well in general. You know, if we have a bad day, we might lose, but I think if we’re playing well, we will win against G2.

Q: Do you have a score prediction?

Busio: No. I don’t have one of those. But, also, you said their series versus GenG looked less competitive. But GenG also is a team that is much more clean and methodical, but a lot less on the fighting. So it’s a very different style than AL, I would say. 

Q: How far do you feel as a support/bot lane duo from the best LCK/LPL players?

Busio: I think it just depends. For example, today, I noticed their vision control. […] As a team, how they were controlling space when they had prio and stuff was very, very nice. Like, they were pink warding all the defensive ward spots and just stuff like that. They were choking out very well.

So I think in that aspect, I will watch this and have ways to go. And then also, small things about team fights. But at the same time, I think me and Massu had a lot of good lane situations today – […] every game but… I guess, no, just two games.

[Games] 1 and 3, I think we had really good lane situations in a matchup where we shouldn’t have such good lane situations. Even our first trades in the most recent Ziggs-Nautilus game, we were already in a good spot. So I think our laning is pretty internationally competitive.

Q: Any highlight stories with the team in Vancouver?

Busio: I mean, we’ve been eating a lot of the hotel food just because it’s convenient. It’s good.

Something to note about boot camps that you guys might not know about is, you’re boot camping in a hotel, and you have 7–8 PCs in a relatively small room. The ACs are not designed to handle that. Plus, the 10 people in the room – the body heat is crazy, plus the PCs.

So our room is just, like, cooking. It’s just casually 78 degrees at the lowest. After a five-game scrim set, me and Bwipo were like, “Guys, we need to go outside. We cannot be in this hotel any longer. We need some fresh air. It’s so mega hot in here.”

So then we just found some Chinese food, and we walked, like, 30 minutes to go eat. And it was a pretty nice team experience.

Q: Were you thinking about the crowd support? Could you feel the NA home crowd? Because they were chanting FlyQuest, I don’t know if you could hear it. 

Busio: Yeah. I mean, there was definitely some cheering that I could notice, but I didn’t really feel it too much. It didn’t really play into my subconscious at all. 

But I will say our advantage of being here is that we didn’t have jet lag. So that’s really nice.

Q: So there’s these scrim rumors that you guys are making T1 bow down and stuff —

Busio: *laughs* Where did you hear that?!

Q: The streets are saying it.

Busio: I’m just curious.

Q: It was on Twitter or something — regardless, based on your scrims/stage games, where do you evaluate your strength as a team?

Busio: I don’t know. It’s hard to say because […] I don’t have the experience. Like, there’s no way to know. Nobody can know. It really just depends on how we play the day of, you know? Today, for example. I’m telling you, a couple small [changes], and we could have won.

But, of course, AL is probably saying the same thing to themselves, you know? But, seriously, very small things make the difference in the game. 

So I think we can beat anyone, but we’re also not guaranteed to beat anyone. We still need to be playing well. It just depends.

Q: Thoughts on tomorrow’s matchups? KOI vs. BLG and CFO vs. T1.

Busio: I think KOI vs. BLG can be pretty close. […] Closer than [us vs. AL] most definitely. I don’t think BLG is as clean as some of the other Eastern teams, at least from what I’ve seen. I haven’t watched all their games the whole split, [though] of course.

I think that one can be close. I don’t really have a prediction — I could see KOI winning; I wouldn’t be absolutely shocked. But I do think BLG is still favored a little bit.

I could give it a 3-1 or 3-2 BLG, something like that.

And then CFO vs. T1? I mean, I’m inclined to say T1, but you can’t sleep on CFO either. And, also, T1’s a very feeling-based team. They don’t look that clean, they just have a bunch of [inaudible] players.

Q: Did you know Quad and Keria met up and Quad didn’t tell him that you’re a big fan?

Busio: I mean, I was there. I was walking by to go — what was I doing? We just wanted to look at the spa and the hot tub. I forgot what we were doing. And yeah, Quad ran on the treadmill for like… 5 minutes with Keria. They were just chit chatting, I guess […] They were vibing.