LYON Berserker: “Don’t get pressured. Play normal. Casual. I just show what I do in practice.”
Q: How are you? You look tired.
Berserker: The light is so bright. My eyes are tired, I’m not tired.
Q: NA!!!!
Berserker: Yeah! NA!! *Laughs*
Q: It feels like I’ve seen you laugh and smile way more this year than last year, and 2024 on C9. Seems like you’re really enjoying yourself these days.
Berserker: I realized that last year, you need to focus on stage, but the more important thing is having the… I don’t know the word in English, but don’t get pressured. Play normal. Casual. I just show what I do in practice, so yeah. I’m not getting any pressure now, and I can just show my play. That’s it.
Q: How are you feeling about your tournament so far? You’ve been hard carrying and smurfing except for the few random errors like Trist on mid or the Bard ult at Elder — are you happy with how you’ve done, or is it more annoying to have a few important dumb positional errors?
Berserker: I do think that I improved a lot at macro and I do think that I showed that versus BLG.
But maybe I [focused] too much on what we should do mid, that I didn’t care too much about my position. I mean I didn’t know that Camille was gonna flank like that, but we were talking about Taliyah wanting to base at the time. When I played Tristana Game 1, we already got the natural control so I did think that we should contest this mid wave and try to save our vision.
I was the only person who contested mid lane. K’Sante was behind me, and Shen was in the bush, Lee Sin was marking J4 and then Taliyah just based. I do think that I need to be positioning better and be tracking where the Camille was [in that game], I guess.
Q: I’m surprised. I feel like it’s a much healthier mindset than I hear from some players — you’re not as angry at yourself.
Berserker: It’s not hard to fix that problem, to be honest. Just… *laughs* You can just click back one time! It’s during Taliyah base so … if I think that I can fix it easily, then yeah, I don’t really care that I made a mistake on stage. I do think that I can play better next time.
Q: Some people have said that you play less aggressively against top ADCs, maybe because you know how good they are and you respect them — maybe a little too much. Do you feel that’s the case sometimes?
Berserker: I’m not sure [about] playing aggressive, but I’m just playing the game. If they give the angle, I’m just going. Not sure. I guess I didn’t play that aggressive. Especially Game 1, when we got the fourth drake. J4 and Ryze were trying to catch Taliyah, I could jump on Ryze’s head with exhaust. Maybe I could just burn his flash, or keep chasing. But I didn’t know where Jayce was.
I don’t know. Maybe? I’m not sure to be honest.
Q: I think people just see you dominate — and sometimes clipfarm — in NA, where you also sometimes int for extra-aggressive plays, and it looks different from FST and MSI.
Berserker: Well, I mean, it’s MSI. When I play [versus LPL and LCK teams], they don’t make the same teamfight positioning mistakes, you know what I mean? In NA, sometimes they make mistakes and when I play a hyper carry ADC like Yunara-Lulu or something, I can just go, right? But especially this meta, I’m playing just mages. Ziggs, Ezreal.
I guess I could do that in the Tristana game, [but even then] I’m not sure I could play more aggressively.
Q: If you end up facing T1, what’s your goal? Obviously you shouldn’t expect to 3-0, but is a win reasonable?
Berserker: Our goal should be to win vs T1, I think. But realistically, T1 is a really good team. For me, I just want to play the game, not losing in 10-15 minutes or something. At least I want teamfighting, and then if they’re just better and we lose, that’s fair enough. But if we don’t do anything and wait to lose, I might hate that. I want to show that we can beat [the LCK/LPL] teams. So that’s my goal, I guess.
Q: You know how people call C9 Tactical “Eddie”? Who’s better, NA Eddie or Vietnam Eddie?
Berserker: I mean… I don’t know. *Laughs* I only played TSW Eddie today, and I haven’t played versus Tactical for a while, so it’s hard to say.
Q: Any final message for NA or LYON fans?
Berserker: We made top four and I’m really happy about that. I really appreciate that you guys keep cheering for us. We will try our best against T1 or G2 next game. Hopefully you wish for us [to win]. Thank you.
Transcription assistance from @midjglsynergy
Header Image Credit: Riot Games
