FLY Inspired: “I have been in NA for a while […] 70% of the time I’m hearing some complete bullsh*t.”
Q: What do you think about the Split 3 format? Is it too boring for you?
Inspired: I mean, it’s a bit weird the whole first three weeks, like, irrelevant. I don’t really understand this. I guess it’s for seeding for playoffs that we start in the upper bracket, and the other teams start in the lower bracket. Before the split, I knew that the split has to be short, right, because it’s already kinda late in the year. So this split should be pretty fast, in order to fit in Worlds and everything before the—
Q: And the extra playoffs with Brazil.
Inspired: Yeah, exactly, and the extra playoffs. So this split had to have some sort of format that is pretty quick, and I see that we are going straight up into playoff bracket after three weeks, which is really fast. But yeah, the three weeks feel kinda irrelevant. But I mean, honestly, it’s a decent way to like, make a seeding in three weeks. I think it’s kinda hard differently to decide who starts in the upper bracket and who starts in the lower bracket just in three weeks. So, I mean, it’s fine.
Q: Dhokla is set to become a 6th man on 100 Thieves. According to River, Sniper has been losing confidence, and rookies can collapse when they’re bombarded with too much feedback and need to improve on so many aspects. What you think of that, and what do you think you did differently to help rookies like Massu, Busio, Jojopyun, or Danny?
Inspired: I mean, first of all, I am myself, so my feedback is probably already better. I don’t know if they have any competent person to give feedback to a rookie player. I would say maybe River, but first of all, River probably doesn’t care that much. He’s also Korean, so his English is probably not that good. And I don’t really know if he’s competent enough. I think he’s a pretty good jungler, like, he understands his job and he played competitive for a long time. It seems like he’s the player that is playing the game in that team.
But I don’t know if he’s someone that can teach his top laner how to play the game — because playing the game means actually doing stuff. And Sniper sometimes overplays, sometimes he doesn’t really do much. And it just seems like he doesn’t really know what is the issue, because, I mean, the game is kinda complicated if you don’t have anyone that actually understands it well.
And I don’t think that there’s any person like that on 100 Thieves that actually understands the game well. So I don’t know who can he get feedback from. I assume when he gets feedback from his teammates or his coaching staff, some of the feedback might be actually useful, and a lot of it might also be very irrelevant. And, it’s pretty hard as a rookie to know which feedback they are giving me is irrelevant and which one is actually correct.
Because I have been in NA for a while, and there [are] a lot of people, players, analysts that are giving opinions about their play. And there is like, 70% of the time where I’m hearing some complete bullsh*t, and I’d rather not speak than flame the person. Or even sometimes the coaches give me really stupid ideas, even here on FlyQuest. And I’m like, “Guys, what are you saying? That will never work.” And, sometimes they also give useful feedback and then I’m like, “Actually, that makes sense. Yeah. Maybe that will be the the play.”
And I assume Sniper is the person that is like, “Oh, okay. I will do this. Okay. I will do this. Okay. I will do this,” whenever anyone tells him any feedback. It’s hard to learn then because you’re learning everything. You learn some good things, some bad things, and then it’s hard to know what’s correct with it. And then at some point, you start overthinking every single decision you make, and I can see why he would lose confidence.
So it’s for sure not easy to be a rookie, join a league, and instantly be really good, especially if you don’t have that — if you are, like, not insane. I think some players are really insane, and they come in, and they instantly have a good view on the game. But some of them need to learn that. And if you don’t have a good person to learn it from, I think it’s just really tough.
Q: Who do you think can play the game in NA then?
Inspired: I think CoreJJ, Impact, they both really understand the game well. I think from Cloud9, Zven understands the game well. I think Vulcan also. I never really looked at — like, I don’t really know the other three. Thanatos seems like a guy that really understands the game well. Loki, Blaber, I’m not sure. I think they are pretty decent, but I don’t know if they’re people that will be able to teach [their] teammates, because both of them make sometimes mistakes that I don’t really understand too much. So I would say [those] three from Cloud9 and the duo from Team Liquid.
Other than that, looking through the teams, I don’t really know. When I watch Hena play, I think he really understands the game, but he’s Korean that probably doesn’t speak much English. So I don’t think he’s saying anything to his teammates or trying to improve the team. Hmm… Yeah. I think River probably is the person like that. But as I said, he’s also Korean, probably doesn’t care that much. He’s also in NA for a while. So it’s hard to play on a weak team where you have to carry the games, and on top of that, improve your teammates’ play.
Q: You’ve talked about how in EU there are more players like that, and that’s why you thought it’d be good for Jojo to go there-
Inspired: Yeah.
Q: There’s a clip of Jojopyun that went viral where he was half-joking, half-serious, saying he didn’t play solo queue too much, he was mostly playing ARAMS, and that’s why they won LEC spring split. What are your thoughts on that?
Inspired: I think Jojo is a player that can play every champion in the game pretty well, so just staying sharp mechanically [is good]. Usually team fighting was his issue — at the beginning when I played with him, he always wanted to do too much in team fights. And because of that, he just died. His problem was that he always wanted to do too much. I think he realized that now, and he’s not all over the place — in teamfights, he just needs to calm down a little bit and sometimes let his teammates do the job.
And, yeah, solo queue is good for practicing champs, but when I played with him, he didn’t have any issue with picking up new champs and playing them. I think most players have issues with that. They need a lot of practice on certain champs to become good at it. But, yeah, he’s known for picking up champs randomly and just locking them in and playing. Like with us, he was also first time-ing champs a lot, and playing them very well. I think that’s why he doesn’t really need to play solo queue.
Because in solo queue, you really need a specific play style — it sometimes might lose you games [if you want to] improve for competitive games. Because if you focus on winning solo queue, you make a lot of plays that are not really correct in competitive play where you actually have communication with your teammates, and where you just need to do your job. Most of the times in solo queue, you have to do the job of your teammates — because they’re just not as good. So you need to do your job, your teammate’s job, and carry the game, while that’s not the correct way to play in competitive games.
Q: I’m pretty sure this isn’t true, but there’s been a rumor floating around social media that you got your green card in America because you got married to a North American woman. Is this true?
Inspired: No. It’s not true.
Q: You’re not married?
Inspired: No. I have a girlfriend, and she’s Polish.
Q: People say that the only thing you like talking about is League because your face just lights up whenever you talk about League. And every other time you’re like, ‘I don’t know.’
Inspired: Yeah, I mean, I guess so. I think I like to talk a lot of about different things, when I’m with my friends or a close group, but I know the most about League. I don’t really know much about different stuff about the world. So I’m more of a listener when it comes to anything outside of League because I just wanna know stuff. But when it comes to League, I know most of the stuff, so I will speak up then. I don’t like to speak about something that I don’t know because […] I just hate it when people do that, and I hate doing it myself.
Q: I remember when LS did an interview on with you on stream, and you two just looked like you were enjoying yourself so much, just talking about League and champs and everything.
Inspired: LS has a good view on the game, I think, and, it’s always really fun to to talk with him because he gives really nice ideas. Sometimes they’re a bit exaggerated, sometimes they are pretty correct, and people don’t really use his ideas. So it’s always nice to talk to him.
And sometimes I think he just didn’t really work with the team and he doesn’t understand that sometimes players are not like robots, so they don’t do everything correctly — he just likes to look at the game more [in terms of] what should work and what shouldn’t. But sometimes the players just can’t execute certain champs or they need so much practice to learn it and stuff like that. So I think a lot of ideas that he says are correct, and some of them you just can’t really apply because it just takes too much practice. But it’s always really interesting to talk to him. And, yeah, I really like him.
Q: Do you get a lot of your creative champ picks from talking to LS? And do you have a bunch of those creative champs that you just don’t use because you don’t need them here?
Inspired: Yeah. Definitely. He always gives me ideas on what he thinks should be good, and then I just test it out and then think about if that champ actually has certain win conditions that I can use in the game. And [if] I can reliably replicate because I think that’s… the most important thing about competitive play, that certain champs have something they can replicate every game no matter what, and, they can stick to their win conditions. So, yeah, I like to test the champ and see if that’s the case with them.
Q: Any final message to FLY fans?
Inspired: Thank you guys for watching. The first games are kinda boring. I mean, maybe it’s boring to watch. It’s a bit boring to play. But the playoffs are gonna start soon, and hopefully we are not gonna choke there. And we’re gonna try our best, and then we’ll see. Maybe we’ll manage to make it worlds.
Q: ‘Maybe?’ I guess there’s only two spots.
Inspired: It’s not that easy. We have to try really hard. I think Team Liquid and Cloud9 are very strong teams, so.
