Q: How are you feeling going into the LNG matchup?
APA: To make top 8 at Worlds, you have to be able to beat at least some of these teams in Pool 3, so I think it’s a very good litmus test to see how capable we are. Maybe we go in and get smashed, and we’re gonna be shit. Or maybe we go in and smash them and we can shoot for top 4, top 2.
Q: What do you think of the idea that TL is more than the sum of its parts?
APA: I mean, some teams just have star players. I don’t think our team does. To be honest, I wouldn’t even consider Impact or Core — whoever pops into your mind on TL as a star player, I don’t [agree]. I think we all just try to do our job at the very baseline. And then if we’re able to do well in the game, we try to impact as much as we can. If I’m winning mid, I go help jungle a little bit with extra push, UmTi helps top lane, Impact TP’s bot or something.
We call it positive cycling; positively cycling your advantage through your teammates. As much as we can — and we’re talking without the game here — [do whatever] can be positive. A roam here, a bit of vision here, etc, etc.
Q: Is dropping ego a part of that?
APA: For me, it’s actually very healthy to have good ego in the game, because there’s a lot of the game that’s very — I don’t want to say mind game, because it’s very vague, but a lot of the game is mind gaming your opponent. You know, “Did you base here? Did you ward here? Did you do this here?” etc, etc. And you can just shine as a player if you have a lot of confidence. If you don’t have any confidence, you’re just gonna back down from your fight and just slowly lose.
Q: Does that mean you’re going into the LNG matchup feeling ego? Do you have shit talk prepped?
APA: Yeah, why not [have ego]? […] I don’t know if I have any cooked up shit talk, because I don’t really know Scout. I definitely have more of a connection with jojo, Palafox. I have more of a personal connection with [LCS mids], even though we’re not really friends. So it’s hard to know what would get under Scout’s skin, because I don’t know him as a person.
Q: I take that to mean you’ll still be typing in that game?
APA: I will most definitely type this Worlds. I haven’t planned as to what I’m going to type. Maybe I don’t even type in the LNG series. Maybe I do. But I will definitely type in at least one match.
Q: Do you have a fun story from your bootcamp?
APA: We didn’t really do anything exciting. Me and UmTi got a little bit sick at the very start of the bootcamp, that was kind of cringe. For one scrim day we used a sub jungler and for another couple of days we used Roamer because I was too sick to play. So, not really a funny story but that’s what happened.
Q: What was your takeaway after losing in the finals?
APA: Overall, I don’t think anyone was ever too pressed about the minion thing, because I think we all knew that in that Game 4 we made a lot of mistakes. The way I feel about it, which I think is the sentiment of the team, is that in the upper bracket finals, we beat them and I don’t think we played that well. To what we could play, I think we played a 7 out of 10, and in the finals I think we played a 5 out of 10.
Q: Did they improve between the matches?
APA: I think any team that makes it through the lower bracket always gets a confidence boost and a slight edge of it being easier to know how you lost than it is to know what you’re bad at when you won. So there’s always that slight edge, but I don’t think they got too much better. I genuinely just don’t think we played that well on the day. I don’t think we played that well in the last 2 days we faced them, […] that’s something we talked about as a team.