Team Liquid have their work cut out for them in Split 3 following the loss to LYON: we sat down with mid laner Eain “APA” Stearns to chat the team’s struggles, his goals for the split, and why he hated the aesthetic of the Noxus season.
We’ll start on the series itself. What do you think went wrong? And what do you think are the things that are sort of fixable immediately, or that you want to address going into next week that didn’t pan out for you guys this time?
APA: Um, to be honest, [I’m] not really sure. I mean, [we] just got out of the game, so I haven’t even rewatched. Some parts felt uncomfortable, but nothing was unplayable. I think we just didn’t create a lot of action, which can come down to a lack of understanding of certain champs or team comps. It wasn’t like someone just got blown out of lane and we couldn’t play the game. It was more so just understanding things. Whenever we have a loss, especially like this, we’re just going to go back and review it a lot of times, honestly. And just go from there. It obviously sucks to lose, but it’s not like soul-crushing, nothing to learn from. Yeah. A good thing about being in the regular season is that, like, you can take these losses and try to grow from them.
How was your, quote-unquote, off-season? What was the process like, especially with, obviously, you had to incorporate a new jungler into the team?
APA: After we went into the off-season of Split 2, we probably had, like, roughly a week off. Everyone mostly still played solo queue. And then we restarted scrims back up instantly during MSI. And then, I don’t know, we’ve just been scrimming since then. We’ve scrimmed all the MSI teams. Now that MSI teams are gone, we’re scrimming all of the LTA teams again. [We] didn’t really do anything notable. Just played League, scrimmed, played some more solo queue. That’s about it.
Do you feel like the recent Ziggs buff was… Purely so that you never get to play it again? Or do you think that’s just a coincidence?
APA: There was an option to play it in game one. We thought it was just a better Taliyah angle. But there was, like, an angle for us to play it in game one.
Nick: One thing I’ve been asking people, and it has nothing to do with pro play.
Riot’s been doing these themed seasons. If you got to choose, do you have a theme that you think would look cool to see Summoner’s Rift made over as? Whether that’s a skin line or a region of the world.
APA: I don’t particularly care, just nothing that’s just ugly. The Noxus one, I hate because it was just, you know, you play 1,000-plus games for four months, or probably longer, I think. It was just ugly. And then once we swapped to the Spirit Blossom one, I was like, oh, nice. It finally looks pleasant to be on the Summoner’s Rift again. So just, you know, like, I don’t care if it’s Star Guardians or Pool Party or literally anything. I don’t particularly care. Just nothing that’s… You know, red and something vibrant. Nothing dark.”
Nick: No more red cloth and black metal everywhere.
APA: Yeah, that was trash after a few months.
Nick: Yeah, I know plenty of people agree with you. Another thing sort of connected to that. I had a lot of conversations with MSI, or at MSI with a bunch of pro players, where it turns out that a lot of these pro players are big fans of the game modes that aren’t Summoner’s Rift. Faker plays a lot of Arena. I know Myrwn and Elyoya duo in Arena. JoJo basically stopped playing solo queue and just plays ARAMs, apparently. He was on stream saying that that’s why he won the split, somewhat jokingly.
And so I wanted to know, do you play any of the other modes that aren’t 5v5 Summoner’s Rift?
APA: Generally, no. Not in my free time. But if we have, you know, let’s say 30 minutes until we have a team meeting, 30 minutes until scrims. I’ll just ask, anyone in the office to play Arena. Normally, it’s me, Yuuji, and Yeon, and sometimes Impact will just play Arena when we just have a small amount of time to kill. And then we’ll play half the game and just FF, like, whenever our requirement is met.
Nick: Do you have any crazy Arena combos you’ve pulled off that have been kind of fun?
APA: “No, we do the bravery thing. We just do bravery and just hope our team comp is good. Sometimes we get really shitty team comps and we just instantly lose. But sometimes you get some good ones.”
Nick: So, I haven’t watched the banner ceremony.
Do you know who you’re playing next week? Because I don’t at this moment.
APA: No. I think it’ll probably be… I’m trying to remember how it works again. I think we’ll try to. But I think since we’re 1-1 and we took a game off of LYON who beat us, I don’t even know if we’re going to be able to choose. Because the bottom four choose the top four. But if you’re the fourth team, you have no one else to choose from except one guy. So, you just default to getting someone. So, I think we might be the fourth team or potentially the fifth team, depending on how the standings look.”
Nick: Back on the games with Lyon. Obviously, the big news for LYON is Srtty in the top lane. You know, Dignitas content creator for about a week. And then back into the LTA.
What did you think of Srtty this series? And what are your sort of thoughts generally on Srrty’s level after the last two splits and going into this one?
APA: Just okay. I don’t think he was a big standout for me in the series. Just don’t think he played terrible. But don’t think I was like ‘wow, this guy played fucking good’. [He] just played average.
Nick: What does success look like to you this split or heading towards the end of this year? What sort of bar are you aiming for to be able to be like ‘Okay, I’ve accomplished what I want for this end of the year’? Is it, like, semifinals at Worlds, you know, all the way up there? Is it winning the split? What’s the hope?
APA: I think minimum making Worlds. Ideally, winning the split. And then just anything better than doing terrible Worlds. Because both times I’ve been to Worlds, the first one was really bad. The second one was just average. Not terrible, but not great. Anything better than bombing out of Worlds, you know, making quarters, having a solid performance versus an Eastern team is probably where I would want the bar. And then for really shooting, semis or finals would be quite ideal.”
