Selfmade after a bad week of practice: “If you do well in scrims, you’ll do bad in official games”

Despite facing many issues throughout the Spring split, Team Vitality have successfully started their lower-bracket playoffs journey. After defeating Excel Esports in the first round of playoffs, Selfmade sat down with Jaxon for a post-game interview, where he discussed the series and the problems that Vitality faced throughout the split.

Source: Michal Konkol/Riot Games

Yohan Markov

Congratulations on the win after this banger bo5! Can I have your thoughts on the series? And did you expect XL to come that close to you?

Selfmade

Personally, I want to start with the fact that we had a really bad week of practice. By saying bad, I mean that we really didn’t know how we wanted to approach the game. It felt like every day, we played something completely different, and we didn’t have any identity to come into this Bo5 with.

My expectation was that, obviously, we are going to win. But I thought we would give them maximum one game, not let the series go to five games. Props to Excel, because they showed us that we are still pretty bad (laughs). We need to fix a lot of things, but I am happy that we won.

Yohan Markov

You had a slow start to the series but then picked up the tempo. Why did this happen?

Selfmade

I think in the first game, we decided to give Lee Sin a shot, right? And as we can see, in these playoffs, every Lee Sin game ends up the same way. I don’t know where that comes from, but it’s such a common thing that whenever you play an official game with Lee Sin, it doesn’t look good.

After that, we realized that the game would be played safe because even in that game, we were pretty behind, and XL still couldn’t finish the game as fast as they should. We decided that we would go to the next game with a team composition that has a late-game insurance because we are better in mid-game, and we would do much better than them.

Yohan Markov

And it was mostly, Olaf difference, right?

Selfmade

I mean, if there is an Olaf angle, I am gonna call it, and I know I will do my job well. I think the champion is super underrated and, honestly, I don’t know why people don’t play it.

“I have been in the LEC for three years and from my previous experience, if you do well in scrims, it means you will do bad in official games, and this also goes the other way around.”.

Yohan Markov

Do you also think that there was a difference in experience in the series?

Selfmade

Yes, I think there was. Especially in Game 5 and mid-game. This is where the experience difference came. Also, I am not shot-calling that much, so I will just praise my teammates for that. They had better macro knowledge than their opponents, and you could see that in the game.

Yohan Markov

There have been some discussions about scrims vs stage. Are the performances that different?

Selfmade

Honestly, I have been in the LEC for three years and from my previous experience, if you do well in scrims, it means you will do bad in official games, and this also goes the other way around.

It was the same last year, MAD Lions was…. It was such a waste of time to play them [in scrims]. They were trolling, and suddenly they won two championships. It is exactly the same now with Fnatic. Maybe, it has something to do with….. possibly Humanoid (laughs).

It seems like it may be better to not get your confidence based on scrims because it usually backfires. To wrap it up, I do think that teams are playing much differently in official games compared to scrims.

“Look at this series and imagine if we played a bo1 today – We would look like a bunch of f*cking clowns, right? Because, in that first game, we looked like a bunch of f*cking clowns.”.

Yohan Markov

Then how can we apply the practice better to the stage? Maybe if we implement a Bo3 in the LEC? Surely, it’s better than the Bo1.

Selfmade

Yeah, I mean, the way Bo1 work is basically you have to do one good thing. In Bo5, if you have a good draft, you would most likely win in the other games and then the dynamic would come back and it would be different.

Look at this series and imagine if we played a bo1 today – We would look like a bunch of f*cking clowns, right? Because, in that first game, we looked like a bunch of f*cking clowns.

But since it wasn’t only a single game, we managed to win the whole series. We showed in the later games that we actually can play League of Legends better compared to the first game.

Yohan Markov

If you could go back to the beginning of the split, would you change your approach to the game in some way?

Selfmade

Okay, the problem is… We didn’t have an approach. As I told you, every day & every week we play a different League of Legends. We didn’t have an identity for the whole split. As you could see, one week we were playing some stuff like Diana, Renekton, Yasuo, blah blah.

Then, the other week, we were playing some scaling, then some Lee Sin etc. We were going for completely different drafts and at some point, we ended up being 9-9.

Thankfully, we made it to the playoffs. Now, we have to go from sixth place all the way up to the top and I think we can do it. Hopefully, the experience of our players will show up in this playoffs journey.

Yohan Markov

Next, you will be facing G2 Esports. Can you share with me your thoughts on them and the next series?

Selfmade

I think they really rely on having a strong jungle champion. I think if they don’t have one, then Jankos will just underperform. I also think that their top laner seems kinda too cocky with his picks, so hopefully, that backfires in our favor.