Highlight Q: Do you have a fun story about the team?
Philip: Yeah, so we went to a bootcamp in Cincinnati, which isn’t very impressive. Like the whole environment and, you know, the city. Compared to the places we’ve been in, like LA is really nice. My home is pretty nice too, Vancouver. It’s kind of funny because I feel like it was still a good experience because we were all there, right? I described it as “the place is not the best, but we made it good.”
Q: Your vibes are so good you made Cincinnati fun?
Philip: Yeah. […] We got to eat noodles together at like 3 AM, watch TV together. We watched this dating reality TV show for team bonding. I don’t know if I should say the name [checks with team staff]. It was, uh, Too Hot to Handle.
Q: That was a pretty brutal 3-0, and it’s a bad question but I have to ask it. How do you feel?
Philip: Obviously, it feels pretty bad because of the way it went down and how I played. A lot of things could’ve gone differently, think it’s possible to win today. I mean, it feels pretty bad that we lost in the way we did. But, I guess, deep down, I’m quite happy for some of their players.
Q: What went wrong today in your view?
Philip: I think their top laner, Zamudo, is someone with a lot of strong comfort picks and pocket picks, they allow him to make the game hard for us. Obviously it’s credit to them for setting up the draft like that. […]
I think a lot of the things are just individually on me today, I can’t really hide form that. I need to be much more stable than what I showed today in top, especially if I’m taking these scaling tanks with Jinx. A lot of it really was individual mistakes from me, and that kind of spiraled from game to game. Game 1 wasn’t very pretty either. I’m not very comfortable with the pick, but I felt like I needed to Band-Aid the situation. I know it sounds really bad that we started out Game 1 with a draft we had to bandage, but yeah.
I think we didn’t have the best read of how the OP champions interact with each other, and that’s why we — or at least I — felt like I had to bandage the situation.
Q: Zooming out a little, what’s it been like for you since leaving LCS?
Philip: I feel like people kind of forgot about me a little, right? […]
After LCS, when I went down, my expectations for myself, everyone’s expectations of a player going for LCS to Academy, they’re expected to dominate, right? Individually, at least. And also raise their team’s performance up in the meantime. I think I can say I didn’t accomplish that when I came down, and that kind of put salt in the wound for my career.
Flyquest went through a lot of changes that year, and I didn’t really live up to the expectations with everything. I don’t think I was individually a top performer in Academy. I would say I had the capability, but a lot of external factors made it hard for me to perform at my best during Spring the next year. Team environment. […]
Thinking back to it, I was on FLY for a pretty solid amount of time, right? So, I mean, if I was on that org for that long of a time and I didn’t really keep up with, or live up to my responsibility for being a veteran, I think it was the right time for them to move on from me. And in that split Faisal was performing very well, so I think it just makes sense. After FLY, I went to FEAR, and the NACL stuff happened. I could’ve gone to some other Academy teams, but obviously …
I really had to think if I wanted to continue, right? Because the industry [is still] climbing, it’s not what it used to be. Like Chime, instantly retired after his [last] series. It just takes more thinking if you want to keep committing to this. And at that time, I felt that since it was Summer already I could give it one last shot, and I did with FEAR. I thought their players like Perry, Minui, and Shochi were a developed core, and I thought I could help them.
But i also thought that the most important thing for me was to re-establish my individual level. I definitely thought back then and still right now that — even though it didn’t look like it today — I’m still on the upper echelon of NACL top laners, right? And I just have some thigns I have to perfect right now, and improve to get to the next level. But I do think every NACL top, in the upper echelon at least, has qualities that can rival the LCS top laners.
Q: Switching more to the Americas tournament coming up, how are you feeling?
Philip: I can’t really say I know much about CBLOL, especially since it’s their Academy system, right? From an outside POV, when you think of Brazil, you’re most likely watching their Tier 1 teams. So, I don’t know much about the players in their Tier 2 system. I will say, for the LLA, their players play solo queue here, right? So a lot of people know the players and how they are on individual skills, kind of reflecting in the solo queue here.
I know more about the LLA than CBLOL teams, but obviously, I think they’ve always had so many fans, right? I feel like when I watch MSI and play-ins, it feels like the fans are their 6th man.
Q: The tournament will be in Brazil, so how do you think that “6th man” will affect you?
Philip: I think that stuff comes down to experience almost, because obviously everyone on our team has been LCS. We’ve been doing this, so I can’t help but credit [DSTL’s] players because they played better than us and they’re more new. Especially, I have a lot of respect for how Zamudo played this split, as a fresh top laner that’s the next generation below me, Srtty, Tenacity’s generation. And he’s shown up.