RheingoldRiver brings match reports and interviews from the LCS floor

With excellent overviews of each match and interviews with the expert summoners involved, RheingoldRiver brings fantastic insight into the NA Spring Playoffs that enthralled millions as part of the League of Legends Championship Series event this past weekend.

RheingoldRiver is a valued member of the terrific LolKing community; the site for all of your League of Legends tools, guides and information. You can also find additional, regular LoL insights at Rhein’s own blog, right here.

After a very strong 2-0 victory on Friday, Quantic took on current LCS team Complexity in a best-of-five series.  Picking a roster of five very strong individual champions, Complexity took a very early lead with LemonNation barely surviving a Jarvan IV gank in midlane and turning the gank for first blood onto Lautemortis.  Complexity came back for one kill off a pr0lly Destiny to botlane, but it would be their only kill of the game, as Quantic thwarted every Complexity aggression attempt, exerted complete jungle control, and just decimated the towers of the blue team.  Complexity survived for a bit longer than Team Astral Poke had the day before, but Quantic took a 22-minute uncontested baron and then pushed the nexus and won the game by 24 minutes.

Whether it was because they banned out Hai's Zed mid or just because they knew more what to expect, Complexity looked a bit stronger in game 2, but they still could not compare to the power of Quantic.  The challenger team had perfect dragon control the entire game, with their fourth dragon at 23 minutes, and though this time they gave up 4 kills, their overall pressure was something that Complexity again had no answer for.  Quantic over and over again sent people midlane and then had their side-lane split-pushers join up to the midlane with great coordination to pick up kill after kill.  And again, Quantic took baron and then pushed the nexus, this time at the 26-minute mark.

In game 3, Complexity needed to win or they would be removed from the LCS.  They were able to win the very first fight of the game in toplane despite a Meteos countergank, but shortly after, Balls defeated Nickwu's Jayce in a 1v1 in the bottom lane.  Quantic continued through the rest of laning looking strong, but the game wasn't completely sealed until about 18 minutes, when Quantic took Dragon, aced Complexity for only Balls falling to pr0lly, and then rotated up to Baron, securing the buff for all five members of their team.  They had a slight misstep in botlane, with a dive that only went 2 for 2, but it was a "misstep" that was still in their favor, because they took the inhibitor turret for it, and then it was simple for them to push the base, winning the game by the 28-minute mark.

I talked with Hai, Quantic's midlaner, after their 5-0 sweep though the weekend.

Rhein: How does it feel, having 5-0'd all of your games?

Hai: It feels great!  It's much better than losing, I'll say that much.  And to 5-0 them, it's just like, we're not trash, I guess.

Is that what you expected?

Before the games happened, I wasn't thinking about the scores, cause I just want to take it one game at a time.  Last LCS, I figured we were going to 3-0, and that didn't turn out, so this way I just went in level-headed and humble and was expecting anything to happen, so I wasn't predicting scores or anything.

In an interview you did with Optimus Tom beforehand, you said that you thought that all the paths through were equally difficult.  Do you still stand by that, you think that you would have had the same result against any of the teams?

I'm not sure, because Complexity has been scrimming against Dignitas and CLG recently, and they've been getting much better.  So I'm not entirely sure how the game could have gone, because each team plays differently.  We could have won or we could have lost as well, and it's just today we made a pull through.  I still stand by my statement of saying it's probably equally hard, and that there's no easy road.

You've made it in the LCS, and you're going to be fighting all of the LCS teams.  What teams are you concerned about?

We're not really afraid of any of the teams, we always take it like this is just another team, whether it's TSM or just a random challenger team.  We always take every team seriously; we just put them on the same skill level.  Regardless of whether they're better or not, we just treat them the same way.  So we're not really worried about either team, we're just gonna go there and do what we do.

You were one of the only two players on your team to play more than 2 champions across the 5 games; you all had very similar picks.  Can you talk about that a bit?

When we pick champions, we pick them by the level of strength.  Not only are they our comfort champions, they're also overpowered champions.  So the difference between each game was, certain games my champions were banned, so I had to pick a different one, but their champions were left open so they just picked it.  What we play is what we consider OP, and there's no reason to change what works.  If it works the first game, we imagine it will work the second game, so we're not gonna change anything unless it doesn't work.  And even if it doesn't work, we'll probably just do the same thing.

Say Riot balances the game perfectly tomorrow.  What's your team comp?

We'd probably pick the same champions because they are our comfort picks at the moment.  But I'm sure we could adapt and pick other ones, and find out what we like the best.

What would be your midlaner?

I'd still pick Zed.  That champion's the best thing that happened to this game.  It's so fun to play.  I have a great time with it, I play well with it, and it happens to be overpowered, so why not play him.

You did a Red Elixir start on Zed.  With the nerf, it's a lot less of a common start.  When do you pick it?

The only reason I go Red Elixir is that there's no other start that would be as good.  You could go Rejuvenation Bead and pots and a ward, but that's not our play style.  Our play style is to just go HAM and go aggressive, and I can't do that with Rejuvenation Bead.  With a Fort pot, I will win the lane.  Even though I spent 350 gold to start it, I will win the lane because of that item, and that's what we all want to do.  So I probably wouldn't buy anything else, even after the nerf.

If Red Elixir had been nerfed, but the change to HP pots hadn't happened, what would you open with?

You could go 9 health pots and 2 wards, and you could play as aggressive, but the fact that my support 5 wards at level 1 in half of the games, I don't need to buy wards.  So I'd probably still buy Fort pot, because that item is really good for what it gives.

In a lot of the games, it looked like you were doing a textbook example of how to have perfect map control in League of Legends.  One example was the play in the second game where you rotated up to midlane from bot perfectly in time to pick up a double kill.  How long in advance do you plan plays like this?

We normally just make the enemy team react to what we do, and when they react to it we counter-react to it.  So when they were fighting mid, I said oh hey, I'm going up for this.  Normally, if you watch the Asian scene, whenever a fight happens half of the team will head over there.  So whenever my team's fighting, wherever I am, I'm going to start heading there, whether they need me or not, so that I can either clean up or help push, because if we won the fight and they're running away we can take the turret.  So I just came to clean up, and that's what my job is.

When an objective is about to respawn, when do you start to call timers for that?

Normally we have the timer in the chat, but we won't start prepping it for about a minute before.  We'll be like, "Dragon is spawning in a minute.  Please go buy.  Please be ready to fight this."  We probably won't plan 2 minutes ahead, that's too much, probably just a minute ahead and just let everyone plan to buy their items and come to the fight.

You sound very confident about the NA scene right now.  If you were to go play in OGN right now, how well do you think you would do?

We wouldn't win, I'll tell you that much.  We'd do okay, but I don't think we would win.  If it was a best of 16, we'd make top 8 possibly, so I have no idea.  They're very good over there, mechanically, and the way they play is better than us.  We're just trying to copy them; we don't necessarily do it perfectly.  I'm sure we could hold our own against a few teams, but if we're playing Najin Sword or something I'm pretty sure we'd lose.  But we're going to play more so that we can actually play them in the future.

Name one midlaner from each region that you're the most scared to fight against.

For America, the best one I'd say is Reginald by far.  I'm not necessarily afraid to play against him because it's really fun for me, but I'd definitely say he's the best.  For Europe, I'd probably say Alex Ich.  His mechanics are phenomenal, and his understanding of the game...he knows when to roam and when to push, so I'd probably be afraid of him.  In Korea, Faker has been getting a lot of recognition for being a god, so I'd probably have to watch out for him too, with his LeBlanc play.  And in China, I think it's just Toyz and the guy on IG, Zitai.  Those are the two best in China, so I'd have to watch out for them.

Any final shoutouts?

Thanks for the interview, first off.  And feel free to follow @hai_l9, and thanks to our sponsors Alienware, SteelSeries, and AverMedia for everything they've done.