RheingoldRiver brings match reports and interviews from the LCS floor

After Dignitas's victory over Team Solo Mid, I spoke with their midlaner Scarra.

Rhein: After a fairly long day, how does it feel to have taken down TSM?

Scarra: Honestly, it's just whatever.  It's nice to beat TSM, they were the top team in the last split, but to be honest, we're kinda more bummed out that we lost two other games than we are glad that we beat TSM.  Once you start winning against TSM, if you put Regi on tilt or if you solo-kill Regi, it's impossible for that team to win.  And just based on their team comp—their team comp made zero sense.  And so we knew that if we just won early, we were just like, we were gonna win the game 100%, so as long as we didn't make any super glaring mistakes like we did the other game that we played.  We tried to really accelerate the lanes and just play out solo or with two people, small skirmishes, not really, really big teamfights, so we knew we had the advantage and we just slow-rolled the game to our victory.

Speaking of team comp, you had a somewhat similar team comp to the CLG game.  What made it work better against TSM?

We had Kha'zix for one, so we had another huge threat.  But the biggest thing is just, we didn't try to force teamfights.  In the CLG game, we should have won.  We were really far ahead; we just botched initiations.  We couldn't find plays; we couldn't conceptualize plays, so we lost the game because we just lacked the ability to do that.  And so we really re-evaluated ourselves after that game and decided, hey, you know, it's not working out for us to fight full 5v5s, 4v4s, so we decided to try to isolate the lanes a bit more and have each of them play it out.  To be honest, we played, what, 35 games in the last week or so.  Last two weeks, we played probably 60.  I think in probably 95% of them we're always ahead in lanes.  For some reason now, we're doing really, really well in most of our games, but when we try to close it out, we try to force too hard.  We really struggle to finish up games.  And though that's a weakness of amateur teams, for us that's a weakness also because other teams have gotten better at disengaging and reading the map, so we need to step up our game to be able to perform at a good level.

How does communication work within the team as it moves out of the laning phase?

It's always people call for objectives.  Typically, Crumbz makes all the calls in terms of shot-calling.  We all feed him information.  qt and I also make calls around the map.  I make a lot of transitional calls, like calling for people to go to one place, to go to another place, stuff like that.  And qt will just call in the middle of teamfights; he'll call for big objectives as well when he tells us he has a big item.

It's still pretty early on in the split, but how do you think that Dignitas is going to compare to other teams?

I think we'll definitely finish top 4.  We're obviously aiming for top 1, that's no question.  We wouldn't be here if we weren't aiming to be the best.  I think in terms of teams to watch out for, I honestly don't know.  I think everything just comes down to my own team's execution.  Obviously there’re good teams out there.  I think Coast's pretty good right now.  TSM's always been pretty good.  I think Vulcun's pretty good.  I think Curse is okay.  I don't know.  It's really hard to isolate problems outside of our own team right now.  We're actively working on fixing those problems, but we're running into roadblocks here and there.

Any final shoutouts?

Just shoutout to my sponsors and my fans.  It's been a rough week for all of us here, and I hope you guys can stick it through with us, because we do kinda suck right now.  But we're hoping to push through for the remainder of this week as well as the rest of the LCS summer split.

Then, after the day's games were over, I interviewed Nientonsoh, former AD Carry of Team Marn and now toplaner of Counter Logic Gaming.

Rhein: Unfortunately, the week hasn't gone quite as well as you wanted it to; but CLG's sort of 60% a new team.  So do you think that it's going okay given that?  And how is the team improving?

Nientonsoh: During the LCS super week, we've realized a lot of our mistakes and what we can improve on.  So it's promising for the future because I think that we have a lot of potential as a team.  Looking forward to improving on our mistakes and getting better overall.

What are some of those mistakes, and what are ways that you're looking to improve?

Our picking phase could be improved.  Myself especially, my champion pool can be improved a lot so I can handle more situations a lot easier.  Shot calling—we can have more concise shot calling more.  Because right now, basically all 5 people are making calls when we could just have one or two people making concise calls.  Everyone could just follow those, so we're gonna do that.  And besides that, teamwork of course, since we're a new team.  And those are the main things.

For you yourself, switching teams and switching roles also---how difficult is it to do that?

It's kinda difficult joining a new team and also playing as a new role.  Because you don't want to do badly on a team, and when you're in a new role, you're going to do badly.  So it kinda sucks in that sense, but you just have to put in a lot more work than you would on your normal role, like I have to learn all the new champions, all the new matchups, how to play, how to build, what to do in this situation, and stuff like that.  So it's just a lot of time that it takes to learn a new role.

What champions are you starting to want to play in toplane?

Pretty much all the champions in the game, I want to play in toplane.  I think a lot more champions are viable than are currently played, so I'm gonna be scouting those champions out, maybe showing them in LCS.

Could we see a dual-ADC composition from CLG?

Potentially we'll see a dual-ADC composition from CLG.  Maybe have a Vayne top, not on Doublelift.  We'll see, we'll see.

Communication is something you brought up.  Over the course of a game that lasts as long as the past two did, how does the communication change, and how do you maintain your calm?

Generally, during long games—or just all types of games, there's not any blaming during the game.  There might be a bit after the game, especially after losses, but during the game there's no, "oh you should have done this better" or "you suck" or stuff like that.  But generally, when games reach the mid-to-late-game point, we have one to two people making the calls, or we try to do that and then we just all follow suit and just hope their calls are good and we can win the game from that.

What teams are you trying to look out for the most?

I'd say we're looking out for TSM and Cloud 9 the most of any teams.  Thankfully we're not playing them the first super week, so we have time to improve to play them, but they seem to be the most dominant teams.  Both teams are all good individually, and then they're also the best mid-to-late game.  They have the best decision making, objective control of all the LCS teams.  So they're just really strong.

Personally, what are your goals that you want to achieve before you face CLG and Cloud 9?

I just want to be good enough to go against Dyrus and Balls.  They're both very good toplaners, so I want to be able to put up a challenge against them, I don't want to just get crushed.  Just want to improve a lot.

Do you want to go 1v2 more often because you're so new to toplane?

I prefer going 1v1 because I feel like I learn a lot more from going against the talented toplaners that are way more experienced and can understand the matchups a lot more.  Generally a 1v2 is just you run from the tower when the jungler comes, and you just try to kill creeps.  It's not really that difficult.  So I feel like I learn a lot more from 1v1ing, so I prefer doing that.

In the game that you had against Dignitas, you started at a pretty massive disadvantage because of the first blood.  How do you try to come back from that?

Basically, I was just forced to miss a ton of creeps.  I could not trade with Kennen at all because he started with 5 health pots and a Doran's blade.  With a Doran's blade start Kennen already beats Elise at the start, and he had 5 health pots so I couldn't trade with him at all.  They were also rotating pinks between Zac and him so I couldn't do anything in that lane.  I just did my best to not die so he didn't snowball any further and I just tried to catch up past that point, and I did a decent job at that.

It seems like as a team you do start to do better as the game goes on longer. Is that a strength of your late game or a weakness of your early game?

It's a bit of both.  Generally, I've always been pretty good in teamfights but my laning phase wasn't the best.  And playing a new role in a new lane, toplaners especially punish you for mistakes really hard, so whenever I make a mistake, however small it is, they can just punish me for it.  So I'd say my shortcomings in play in lane matter a lot more than teamfights late game.

Any shoutouts you want to make?

Same old shoutouts.  Shoutouts to my family, friends, and all the fans.  Thank you guys for following me and supporting me.  And my sponsors,  Azubu, XMG, Razer, iBuyPower, and our new sponsor, NZXT, who are giving us custom cases for our new iBuyPower computers.