TL Yeon: “I’m gonna try to get more impact out of my individual play. I don’t think I have the same impact I would like to have.”

Q: Can you talk about the SQUAD clip and champion choices behind what you play?

Yeon: Well, I think the entire clip or I’ll say the vlog is very …. like I won’t say it’s out of context, but it’s very […] edited to be a content-based thing. Very good content piece, but it was a very poor introduction to the multiple layers of conversations we had. It looks like I didn’t have a conversation about what I wanted to play, but obviously those things would have came up in the draft — […] I did say it. I didn’t have a specific thing that I wanted to do, but that’s not where I wanted to lead up to.

And, of course, I don’t care about being the carry or anything, but I will do whatever it takes to win most of the time. And based on the first game that happened, I envisioned that we would not win unless I had a strong champion in the game. When I was watching and playing the first game, I […] didn’t think we were very proactive, I would say.

So I was very worried, and I wanted to have a strong champion more than a champion I’m not familiar with. I think I would pilot the champion very solidly, but, obviously, it’s not one of my champions that I will carry a game on.

Q: Is the difference champion agency? Or scaling?

Yeon: Yeah, so I had this conversation with Core as well in the middle of the game and after the game, here and there. I was trying to do all roles at once, like utility, damage, and laning phase — but, obviously, there’s no champion that does all of that most of the time. But that’s the champion I was looking for; I don’t think a champion like that exists. I couldn’t even give an answer for what champion I want to play.

So like I said, I just wanted to play a strong agency type of champion. Well, obviously, I didn’t have a specific theory in mind. That’s why in an interview, I said that we have to look back and then see what we could’ve done better.

Q: How far out of the traditional ADC pool, like Samira/Nilah/mages, does Fearless push you? Especially trying to find those high-impact champions.

Yeon: I do think that traditional marksmen are probably better than the mages right now, for bot lane at least. I don’t think you’ll see many mages this split, unless something happens to the meta — there’s a couple mages you can play, but I don’t think it’s the go-to. I think traditional options are always gonna be better, especially with the way the objectives work. […] You need at least one person to be able to take objectives, and, that’s most of the time, [a traditional] ADC.

Q: Do you polish more champions for Fearless?

Yeon: I think it’s very important that you master all the meta champions, the top four or five champions. And then after that, you can start branching out. So I’m very confident on the top three AD carries at least — Varus, Kalista, and then the X champion, that’s preference in my opinion because those are interchangeable. And then after that, I think you can start spreading out once you get into the Game 3, 4, (or even 2 if there’s specific bans). And that’s the part where I’m playing more champions as well, especially because those champions are sometimes banned or just taken out immediately after Game 1.

Q: I assume you still expect FLY to be your main challengers for the MSI slot, right?

Yeon: It’s hard to say, especially because we play them in round 1, so we haven’t scrimmed them. It’s hard to say how they’re doing. They could be doing really well or doing really poorly. But I expect them to do well.

Q: How do you feel about that matchup on Day 1?

Yeon: Hard to say what I’m expecting, but, obviously, it’s a Bo1. It can go either way, to be honest. I won’t say we’re gonna be favorites or anything. I think it could go either way, especially the way our Bo1’s go.

Q: Speaking of the Bo1’s, how much did you think about the repeated changes (Fearless, Bo3s, etc)?

Yeon: To be honest, I didn’t really care about it. I don’t even really know the format too much. I just know that Fearless is gonna stay the entire year, so I think [we] have to treat the first split very similar to the splits 2 and 3. That’s the main thing, regardless of format — the further you go into tournaments, you have to learn how to play more champions.

Q: Do you think of yourself as best player or ADC in the league?

Yeon: I don’t think I’m the best player in the league, to be honest. I think I’m one of the top players in league. Even [the best ADC], I think Massu is a very decent and solid player. I think I just do my job most of the time; I don’t see myself as better than most people at the moment. I think I play my champions better than most players, but I won’t say I’m the best player right now, especially.

Q: So what is there for you to work on?

Yeon: I would just say I’m gonna try to get more impact out of my individual play. I don’t think I have the same impact I’d like to have.

Q: Despite not thinking of yourself as the best, you still have that 1v9 “put everything on your back” mindset, right?

Yeon: Of course, as soon as I get in the game, I think that way — but out of game, I have to practice like I’m not the best. I think it’s very important to think that way. I’ve heard the concept a lot, and I think it’s very important to actually have that, where you just play like you’re the best, but then once you’re practicing, you have actually learn.

If you think you’re the best, I don’t think you can actually learn that much. […]

Especially, I don’t think we’re the best scrimmers, so we learn a lot more in scrims more than anything else — hard to say we’re the best when we’re losing scrims, especially in the first split.

Q: Is that performance disparity confidence? Or just taking it seriously?

Yeon: In the scrims, I think our limit threshold is very high, and it’s not very good sometimes. But on stage, I think that it depends on individual performance and how our mindset is. I think, domestically, we didn’t care if we made a mistake, but I think internationally we do care if we make a mistake.

So, obviously, it’s gonna be harder to play games where we’re afraid to make the actual play that we’re doing. I said it to our teammates (or maybe our coaching staff for an interview?) at one point: Even though people were bashing a lot of our plays in Split 1, I think I was much happier then than I was at First Stand. Even though we were making 1 bad play, we would make 1 more good play in return [during LTA].

But then when we made that one bad play, we would never recover and have a good play on the international stage, which was felt very bad. […] It’s probably the higher stakes, but obviously we have to keep playing to figure it out. But, obviously I think we all know what we have to do, so we just keep trying to get it.