TLAW Spawn: “We want to play an entertaining brand of League of Legends.”
Q: That was pretty entertaining — though I know coaches don’t prize entertainment value as much as I do. How do you feel about today’s performance?
Spawn: I feel good. Honestly, I feel really good. I think Game 2 was completely unplayable, and we brought that gold lead back to even somehow. Obviously they won, Massu is a really dangerous player to give like, a 4.5k gold lead individually, or whatever we gave him. He’s just too dangerous of an individual to do that. But I say the best teams in the world when they win, it looks easy, and when they lose, it looks really, really hard to beat them. I think we honestly looked pretty hard to beat in that second game, despite how far behind our bottom lane was, so I’m super happy.
I’ve been saying [this]: We want to play an entertaining brand of League of Legends.
I think when you have the players that we have, [if I wanted] to be like, “No, we’re going to never take risks, we’re going to slow the game down, we’re going to degrade the game into just objective set-up fights,” and [try] to overcoach them, I probably shouldn’t have picked up the creative players I picked up. If that’s the way I want to play the game, I should have gone a different route.
Q: How favored did you feel going into the FlyQuest series, especially since you hadn’t scrimmed them recently? Do you also think it’s TL-LYON-C9 top 3 with everyone else really close to each other but behind those 3?
Spawn: Yeah, I mean we think the same right now. We think [the top two teams are] us and LYON. Credit to C9, they always find a way on stage — stage C9 actually elevate their game more than people would believe.
But we think it’s us and LYON right now, despite yesterday’s results. Matching up against FlyQuest, we’re pretty comfortable with them — they were one of our main scrim partners in Split 1. They have a bunch of young, talented players, but I just don’t think they have the layers to the game that some of our veterans have, so we were pretty confident we’re going to get the win.
But in saying that, they’re a team that if you give them a gold lead, they are very, very good at closing the games out. You can see that with how they go into small map routines — like if you can’t push out your other side wave, if you can’t fight them back, then they just steamroll you. They’re very, very oppressive to play against in that regard.
I was pretty confident if we just got some good early games that we’re going to win, you know, 2-0, 2-1 — doesn’t really matter. But in saying that, we definitely respect them and we had to game plan pretty specifically for them as well.
Q: If you share a playstyle, do you see flashes of TL’s earlier struggles? FLY seem to be enamored with taking every fight they can, even when they need to scale; is that an expected consequence of playing this style?
Spawn: Absolutely. It’s something we did. Like, how many games did we play like Azir on stage and we made our Azir look completely useless by just fighting every early thing and not sending Azir to a side lane? So yeah, you got to figure it out.
Some things look obvious, but then in scrims, you know, what happens is you maybe get a kill or someone doesn’t have a flash and then like you get the quick fight. And then even though you’re playing a control mage, it looks okay.
So what we went away and did this off season — I kind of spoke about it in my walk and talk — is we broke the game down into much more controllable metrics as opposed to like, “Did we win this skirmish or not?”
It was really like: “Why and how do the best teams in the world do what they do?”
I think FlyQuest is probably doing the same thing. The difference is these players have very good instincts for fighting, but I think sometimes they just miss one key piece of information.
So in that fight, they’re saying Viktor has a better base, he can teleport towards the dragon, but maybe it’s how quickly Core realizes the fight is happening and he’s there maybe one or two seconds quicker. Or they misjudged how good Jose is at Lee Sin because they haven’t played against something like that in a while.
But in saying that, I do think it is the correct way to play League of Legends at the moment. If you have Gryffinn, if you have Jose, if you have Hambak, I don’t think these are players that you should be putting leashes on. You shouldn’t be trying to rein these guys in.
In the same way, if you have a jungler like XUN, as we saw at First Stand, you shouldn’t be reining him in either because these are special players that are elite at what they do. If you try and make them do something else, they lose what made them good in the first place.
Q: A lot of critiques have centered around TL’s bot lane this year. Considering how lane-dominant Yeon-CoreJJ once were, Massu-Cryogen’s repeated 2v2 kills were a shock. Did FLY do something particularly elite, or is TL’s bot lane struggling to find their footing?
Spawn: I don’t think they’re doing anything elite to be honest. Game 2, for example, we’re going to cheese gank bot lane level 3. It’s a 100% going to work, and then we just died 2-3 seconds before Jose’s there. Like you can’t make his champion run any quicker.
So I think the reality of the situation is, Core and Yeon play on the very knife’s edge of what is acceptable to play. Sometimes they tip over and it looks bad, and sometimes they don’t and it looks really, really good.
I think, you know, the Ashe-Seraphine game is a great example of what it looks like: [Yeon was] putting himself in situations as Ashe that are quite dangerous, but when he lives on 20% HP and is able to continue the amount of DPS he has, it looks pretty special.
I think coaching players like Yeon and Core is about coaching when it’s the right time to play the way that they want to play, and when it’s the time to give.
I don’t know if you guys remember the game against Sentinels when Rahel completely carried the game versus Ezreal. There needed to be like an off switch, like somewhere in that game, where Yeon is like, “I cannot be the target of this Vi-Kai’Sa combo. I need to make sure I play a little bit more respectfully. I need to call the Kai’Sa move so Morgan stops dying on sides. This is the time to give.” But there just wasn’t — it was a go, go, go mentality.
In the past, that’s what Yeon’s done really well. He’s a very aggressive player, but when he’s the target, he knows he’s the target and backs off accordingly. I think that, you know, we just gotta get back there.
But he has a huge chip on his shoulder at the moment — I think he wants to play really well, so he’s putting himself in a situation where, if he does play well, he’ll win. And, obviously, they didn’t play well in Game 2, so they lost.
But I think the Varus game was pretty exceptional, I think the Ashe-Seraphine game was exceptional. Across the board, I’m happy with them today, but it’s something we’re going to keep looking at.
Q: Given the discussion about playstyle, do you think teams like SEN and FLY, playing fast, can challenge a team like LYON, or are their fundamentals too good?
Spawn: I think the fundamentals in LYON are too good. They just don’t lose to that playstyle very often. We need to be very careful when we play against them.
I don’t think it is always the best playstyle. I think it depends on your players.
What I will say about the mess underneath the top two is like — I don’t actually think it’s a mess. I think C9 is very clearly better than the other teams, and I think Shopify is very clearly worse than the other teams at the moment. And then I think the other teams in the middle are very good teams.
It’s really fun to scrim right now. I look at my scrim calendar and it’s like, challenging day, challenging day, challenging day. Each team gives you something different to practice. DSG for example, their bottom lane plays so well and they play around them well. Then you play Sentinels, and Hambak is such a wildcard and you get something completely different.
So we’re doing a lot of coach meetings, a lot of player meetings to get specific things out of practice. I’d say it’s a very good time to be part of the league.
*Editor’s Note: Interview conducted after FLY/TL, before DIG/SR*
Q: Interesting — you also see DIG as stronger than expectations?
Spawn: I mean, let’s talk about DIG just for a second, right? Photon, FBI, and Ignar are just good players. At different points in their careers, they’ve been top one or top two in their role.
Palafox and eXyu are doing work right now, Palafox is getting better. eXyu is still a bit shaky, but they have three good players and two players trying to elevate, so they’re not a bad roster at all.
Across the board, these teams are just good teams.
Q: You mentioned DSG’s bot lane being strong — that’s about teamfighting right? Not as a laning duo.
Spawn: Yeah, I would agree they’re probably weaker in lane, but I think they’re just good teamfighters.
When you play against different people, it becomes clear. Sajed is very aggressive—he just goes in on bad timers sometimes. I think there was a playoff game where he flashed in on mid wave and threw the entire game.
So he does stuff like that, but I think teamfighting-wise he’s a very good carry.
Transcription assistance from @sakaruii
Header Image Credit: Riot Games
