Beyond Gaming Liang: “We still have room to improve, especially in planning and coordination”

Thanks for the interview after your games today, Liang. I hope that the team is enjoying their stay in Iceland.

Liang: The weather in Iceland is a bit too dry, I really feel like we need some makeup or lotion. For the first part, adjusting was quite hard since there are so many differences between Iceland and Taiwan, our home country.

Unfortunately, Beyond lost their only game yesterday. How did the team prepare going into this second day?

Liang: I think for yesterday’s game, we made more mistakes. In terms of all around ability we just have some differences with our normal performances. We just did not perform very well so we made some adjustments and adaptations. We will just try to play normally with our own macro for today’s matches, so I think because of that we were able to get the win.

What do you think about the general strength of your play-in group? Are any teams stronger or weaker than you may have initially anticipated?

Liang: I think the teams ended up being similar to our predictions. It feels like in our group, group B, we all have similar strength unlike the other group. I think all the teams have their own abilities but if we just focus on our own plays and performance we will be able to win.

In game one against Cloud9, you locked in Lilia top. Can you tell me a bit about this pick and how it played into the Malphite?

Liang: I think because we already had Graves, it felt like Lilia and Graves both acted as a flex in the current meta. Also facing Malphite, we can just make super good use of our flex picks and just use top Lilia so I can have lane priority. I was able to push the lane and get some advantage in the laning phase. In the late game we just made some mistakes, so I just cannot snowball my own advantage to help my teammates to win the game.

It felt like Beyond was able to keep up by punishing Cloud9’s overaggression, but why do you think this game was ultimately a loss?

Liang: I think the overall strategy for the game against Cloud9 felt like we were the ones creating the advantage, but because the opposing team had the Malphite they could perform very well in the actual team fights.

For me, I got some advantages in the laning phase but it was still a very hard situation. We didn’t have a lot of vision so it was hard to explore all of the map or to roam. Also, because Cloud9 got some of the neutral objectives and at that time it was hard to make cross map trades. In the midgame, we tended to skirmish around midlane to try and get some leads.

Did the team feel a lot of pressure going into the next game against Unicorns of Love considering that neither team had found a win yet at Worlds?

Liang: We definitely felt a lot of pressure on our shoulders before the second game. We knew that if we couldn’t win that there was a chance that we just had to go back home. We just calmed down before the game and thought about how we could try to play the game better and lessen our mistakes. So with that, I felt like we had a very positive possibility to win the game.

Beyond Gaming are on the board as they take down the @UnicornsOfLove! #Worlds2021 pic.twitter.com/5K77vikZXS

— LoL Esports (@lolesports) October 6, 2021

Against Unicorns, it felt like everything went right for Beyond. What do you think facilitated this great start?

Liang: Today’s game against Unicorns will be the turning point for us, so we have to keep trying our best for tomorrow’s game and potentially the tie-breakers.

Reflecting back on the two games today, how would you rate the team’s performance and yours personally?

Liang: I think I would rate my own performance 70 out of 100, but in terms of the whole team’s performance we still have room to improve, especially in planning and coordination. Still, I would give the team a 50 out of 100.

After today, how do you feel about Beyond’s chances to get out of Play-Ins and into the Group Stage?

Liang: It is still hard for me to say whether I am confident or not, I think it all depends on tomorrow’s match up. If we can just get a win in tomorrow’s best-of-one it will help us build our confidence a lot and maybe after that we will have a very likely chance to get to Groups.

Thank you again for the interview and good luck in the rest of the tournament, Liang!

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Image Credit: Riot Games / Beyond Gaming