FLY Licorice: “We’re still kinda struggling to figure out what kind of team identity is going to fit us exactly”
We spoke to FlyQuest top laner Licorice following his match against 100 Thieves, talking about team composition, identifying openings and the team synergy over at FlyQuest.
Hello, Licorice and thank you for sitting down to talk with me after your game against 100 Thieves! Going straight into the game, the early game had a very active start. Previously, Josedeodo said that FlyQuest tends to have ‘coinflip’ performances in matches with an active early game. What do you think FlyQuest did early on?
Licorice: We fell a little bit behind early off of the mid 2v2 but it felt like we were doing pretty well. I got angles to play through top which I probably shouldn’t have had since Nocturne is supposed to win the matchup but Ssumday ended up making some mistakes. I ended up having a lot of pressure in the toplane.
We were able to play for top dives and get a bunch of them off in a row, which felt really good. I think going into the mid game we had a pretty solid advantage, or at least it felt like that during the game. We just had one team fight around mid and the game kinda fell apart.
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— FlyQuest (@FlyQuest) June 20, 2021
Could you go a bit more into depth around how you guys capitalized in the toplane?
Licorice: It’s mostly just capitalizing on their lane mistakes. In their draft, they should have had three pushing lanes but it ended up that Ssumday was losing so that kinda became our pressure point to take control of the game. We just did as much as we could around toplane.
When in the draft did you guys start to anticipate this ‘three losing lanes’ situation?
Licorice: The support Ziggs pick was surprising for us in the draft. It’s not something we were prepared for going into the Kog’maw and Lulu botlane. Our assumption in the draft was that Kog’maw and Lulu were going to have a good, solid lane no matter what they picked. It turned out that as soon as 100 Thieves picked the Ziggs we didn’t have push anywhere.
After seeing bot and midlane lose out pretty early on, did you see yourself as the team’s primary win condition?
Licorice: Kind of. The way I like to play the game is that, if anyone sees an angle to make a good play, or a proactive play such as building top waves that we can dive Ssumday on or maybe a roam mid, then I want to do something with it. My team was just in a position to go top, so we went top.
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— FlyQuest (@FlyQuest) June 20, 2021
Josedeodo had a pretty big role in this composition on a pick we seldom see anymore in most drafts. Can you tell me a little bit about the decision to put him on Sejuani?
Licorice: We wanted some frontline for Kog’maw and we had melee champions in the mid and toplane, so we thought that Sejuani was a good, solid pick. It definitely made our 2v2s in toplane good. I mean, the 2v2 mid didn’t go too well but it theoretically makes the mid 2v2 pretty good, mistakes just happen. I think it was a good pick for our team composition and I think that Josedeodo is really comfortable on it as well.
Largely, Kog’maw compositions revolve around his backline damage. In a situation where Kog’maw doesn’t get his ideal start, how do you adapt?
Licorice: We felt strong enough in the game to fight around the Lee Sin, Sejuani, and Sylas core and not the Lulu or Kog’maw. I think we got some good fights off of that. We ended up not protecting Kog’maw enough in the midlane from the Nocturne and they ended up killing him. I think that we had some slight miscalculations on how we wanted to play that draft or rather how to execute on that draft. Overall, I think we did a pretty good job though.
Nocturne obviously has a strong team fight tool, but did you feel like 100 Thieves played off of him particularly well?
Licorice: Yeah, I think that Nocturne was a pretty good pick for them. It’s hard to team fight properly against him. The Ziggs especially since you can’t even see his spells on your screen before you get hit by them so that one was really tough.
Even though we lost we really felt like a team today and im feeling hopeful for tomorrow 😊
— Licorice (@Licorice) June 20, 2021
That last baron fight obviously didn’t go your way. Can you break down exactly what happened there?
Licorice: We probably should have been playing for a fight instead of a full commit on the baron, especially against Ziggs. As soon as Ziggs dropped his ultimate on the baron pit, I think with the Lee Sin kick we should have been able to secure the baron. Of course that didn’t even happen, which felt really bad. We lost the baron, and then Ziggs’ ult in the pit kinda split our whole team.
I think in hindsight, we should’ve played to turn on them instead of trying to finish the baron. In-game it looked like a good angle to try and get out. Even if Xin didn’t steal it and we got out with three people I think it still would’ve been a really good play for us. It’s just really unfortunate that absolutely everything that could have gone wrong went wrong.
FlyQuest throughout the year has had on and off results. How do you think FlyQuest can improve to be more consistent?
Licorice: We’re still kinda struggling to figure out what kind of team identity is going to fit us exactly. That is something we’re in the process of figuring out. I think today, we felt good. We felt like we were on the same page and playing as a team. We’ve definitely had games where that wasn’t the case, the Cloud9 game for example or the game versus Team Liquid even didn’t feel very connected.
I mean really, we’re just trying to make plays together. I think that is really it, just making sure we’re all playing the same game of League of Legends.
Thank you for your time, Licorice!
Also read:
- FlyQuest Josedeodo: “I think when we get more consistent then we will be a really good team”
- DIG FakeGod: “We didn’t have any practice with Akaadian as our jungler for the LCS, like not even a single game”
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