Following an unexpected loss to Shopify Rebellion in the upper bracket of the LTA North Split 3 elimination phase, we sat down with Cloud 9’s co-coach Nick “Inero” Smith to talk about what went wrong in the series, who he thinks should join the Hall of Legends next, and his Ability Draft monstrosity.
Nick: We are coming from a 3-2 loss to Shopify, definitely not the result that you guys want.
Where’s your mind at? Walk me through your thoughts on this series and what went wrong.
Inero: I’m obviously pretty pissed. I’m always pissed when we lose. It is what it is.
But we already had a little post-game talk as a team… Like, it’s a shit day. We should not lose this. It’s kind of disgusting that we lost. But we deserve it for what happened.
I think everything from drafts to what we did in-game has to be way better than what it was today. Game 1 was pretty bread and butter. It’s just easy. It’s just an automatic win. Game 2, we threw it. That’s obviously not very good for us as well, too, when that happens. We’ve had that happen a bit too much. But then, as it got later through the games, I don’t think drafts are super great for us. We had to have some hope angles in drafts to be able to have them be good for us, too, which is never a good spot to be in. I think I’ve got to do better on that. And even though we got stuff that was playable and we played, it’s not necessarily something we practiced a lot, as it’s going down into that in every single case. So, I don’t know. I think other than that, we just kind of played into what SR wanted to do.
I think it’s pretty clear this team looks to constantly fight. They want to overload and fight and force fights onto you. And you have angles to just not give them that and play around it. I think we did play around it really well at the start of the series. I think it’s where we got our leads. As the game gets into the later ones, it gets a little hard to always avoid everything. You’re bound to slip up every now and then, which definitely did happen. And it gets harder depending on the champs that are in the game, opens up more angles, like, I don’t just played, they played better, they played better today, so they get it, but I’m not too worried, I think, if we ever meet this team again, it would just be a win on our part. We just have to actually, like, set up drafts well and then perform well in the game.
Nick: You were mentioning that draft got a little hard there. On the C9 podcast and Twitter, you said you’re the LeBron James of drafting 30% of the time.
Which basketball player does that make Damonte, if he’s managed to take one off of you?
Inero: He took one off of me… I don’t want to call him the Steph Curry, where he got it off of me the one time. Maybe that’s the best comparison right now. He got one off of me, congratulations, well done to him. He’s the Steph Curry of drafting 30% of the time. I don’t know if I want to be LeBron in this analogy, because it kind of goes downhill from there, but f**k.
Nick: You’re the one who did this to yourself.
Inero: Yeah, so, I don’t know. The drafts weren’t even necessarily hard, as it goes through later. It’s just getting something you’ve practiced enough of that also looks good, that also feels good to play. And that’s not really hard to always get in the case. But we spent most of this week practicing a lot of the new things. A lot of new changes to Jungle, which haven’t popped up in these games yet, of course. It was all pretty standard across the board. New champions getting buffed, getting names. Those didn’t pop up as much as they did in scrims, obviously, so a little bit less practice on what’s actually going to happen. We still did it, but not as much as the other stuff and trying to figure out like ‘Oh, is Viego OP? Is this champ OP now? Is this lane? And that type of stuff, you know?
Nick: Okay. I’ve got a couple of questions that have nothing to do with the series. Number one is, we’ve had our two most recent inductees to the Hall of Legends. We’ve got Faker. We’ve got Uzi.
Who do you think’s third? If you have to pick, who’s that third inductee to the Hall of Legends?
Inero: I guess they said it’s not going to be from Europe, or it’s not going to be set in a specific region. It would be cool if Bjergsen were put into it or something like that. That’d be kind of cool. He’s kind of the GOAT in this region. It’s pretty big. Even like Doublelift, Bjergsen, Caps, anything like that. It’d be kind of cool and interesting just to see someone that’s not an LCK or LPL player.
Nick: I’m personally holding out hope on Doublelift or Bjergsen. I think they’ve got the popular appeal to still manage to get in there. I had a fun conversation with Eyla last week, in which he was talking about how he wishes that LoL had ability drafts like DOTA did, where you go in and you select one ability from different heroes to make something.
If you could cook up: Passive, Q, W, E, R, any champ, what kind of monstrosity would you make an ability draft?
Inero: I’m trying to think of the most toxic combination of things.
Nick: I think Ambessa’s passive is pretty nasty.
Inero: Yeah, it’s pretty nasty. I’m thinking more of how I can put an Annie stun on a different champion. Yeah, I’m thinking Annie’s passive, just to be cringe. We also just lost to Annie, so let’s put that one on there. Can you imagine Annie, but you have Ryze’s Q. You know what? Actually, just give Annie passive, and then Ryze Q, so it resets when I use other spells. And then f**k it, just all of Ryze’s other abilities.
Nick: You could take Cassio E is probably really nasty with Annie passive and Ryze Q.
Inero: True. My E would reset my Q. That would be chill. Okay, so we’ll go Annie passive, Ryze Q. I’ll take Ryze… Ryze W won’t work without Ryze E, so Pantheon W instead, for fun. F**k it, we’re going melee range then Cassio E. And then for ulti… What would be a good ultimate for this s**t? Olaf’s ultimate. We’re not getting CC’d. We’re getting permanent CC… enjoy this. I’ll just be spamming you. By the time my stun ends, another one is coming. We’ll do that.
Nick: That’s awesome. The last question is about big news on the horizon…WASD is coming to League. There’s been a lot of talk about this, particularly in how it functions right now with high-attack-speed AD carries.
Do you have any thoughts on WASD coming to League? Or the potential upsides or downsides that that has for pro play?
Inero: Yeah. I mean, I think everyone can see that it’ll be pretty crazy for AD carries, I think. Depending on how it works. I don’t know exactly how everything will work with it. [It] should be crazy for AD carries.
I don’t think I’ll pivot to it. I’m too damn old. I don’t want to… I don’t even want to try. I’ll stick to the old-fashioned way.
I’ll just be the old man, doing my thing. I like the fact that they’re trying to do new stuff to try to bring in new players or make it feel more familiar for new people to get in. It’s cool. But I don’t think I’ll adopt it, personally.
