Hello and welcome to the interview with SK-Gaming here at the 2010 WCG.
Let's start by having each player introduce themselves. Let's start with you. Tell us your name and your nick!
Hello, I am SleazyWeazy in-game. My real name is Benjamin Hiller, and my main chars are tanks.
I am Shawn Bourquin, in-game nick of Osaft22. I mostly play support.
Wai Noch Shum. Reyk.
Feel free to speak up.
I mostly play ranged carry or magic dps.
Christian Dietze. In-game I'm Zylor and I play carries or junglers.
I am Johannes Lüder and my nick in-game is Severus. I play everything that scales with AP.
Okay. Great. Let's start with a few questions from the forums.
Sensexxx asks: okay, let's start with an odd one. He asks: are there any champions you like to play unconventionally?
That is to say in some way your opponent would never expect.
I'd say no, because whatever champion we play, someone will copy our way of playing that champion.
So you're saying you can't play unconventionally because everyone copies you guys?
If it works it will be copied. If not, we stop playing it.
We do try stuff out sometimes, but we don't...
So you haven't got a Sunfire Evelynn up your sleeve?
Probably not, no.
Alright. Let's go on. Which champions do you currently feel are most dangerous to you.
Dangerous champions, hmm. Morgana for instance is a very strong champion. She can counter CC with her black shield.
Kog'Maw's W scales very well into the late game. There's more. But these two for example are very dangerous.
Would those be automatic bans for you?
Those would be worth a ban. Depends on what champions we get ourselves.
Have you had a chance to watch your fellow players / enemies?
Yes, we have been watching Hotshot's stream. We've also seen the US finals and all the videos from China and SEA we could get our hands on.
It's hard to read anything from that though.
So do you have any champions you want to ban against specific players?
We have a few thoughts. We're not quite sure. We're toying with the idea of banning Nidalee. We'll have to...
Against Hotshot, right?
We'll see about that in the group phase.
Let's get to a bunch of questions from Tisiphone. Tisiphone asks if there will be an SK Gaming stream, like there is a CLG stream.
Do you have any plans in that direction?
As far as I know we don't.
But would you be interested in something like this?
Interested, sure. I'm sure we'll figure something out. We don't know for sure yet, but a stream would be nice for the community.
And you wouldn't be worried that people might copy you even faster?
After the WCG, that's not really a concern anymore.
Before the WCG we might have taken that into consideration, but after it, why not have a stream.
Thing is, once we have replays, everyone is going to watch everyone else. There's no way around it.
Let's talk training. How much do you train?
As much as possible. This week we haven't been able to train quite as much as we wanted to, but we managed to play one, two games (a day).
And that's always your full five man premade?
It's always one of our five man premades.
We do have replacement players, and usually we just make a team whichever way we can and then play as much as possible.
What are your thoughts on solo queue? Is it useful for training for a tournament?
You'll have to ask the others.
Okay, and Tisiphone's last question...
No, no, I mean... the others here... will have to comment on that.
Oh, I'm sorry, I thought you meant the other teams.
I hardly play solo queue.
So what do you guys think, is solo queue useful?
Well, I play solo queue just for the fun of it. You just go into a game and try to win any way you can.
But it's not really good training for tournaments?
Nah, just for like a single champion. To train that. But teamplay, not so much.
And team play is more important than single player skill?
Yes.
You even said that together all of you, further proving your point.
Good! Last question from Tisiphone: if things don't go well for you pro-gamers, how do you react? Do you rage like us mere mortals?
Of course, yes. Last weekend we lost a stupid game where we had a discussion that became a little loud.
We try to reduce this behaviour to a minimum, but it always happens eventually.
There's no avoiding it. Everybody rages.
So we'll hear you scream your lungs at if something goes wrong here at the tournament?
Well it's very loud here anyway, so we'll scream freely, I expect.
Okay! We have a question from ZenPM. This is a question you may each want to answer for yourselves: which champion is hardest to play for you?
This is a very hard question to answer.
I think that every hero is hard to play in its own way, and we did share out the roles very equally in our team.
Everyone would have to tell you which is the hardest champion for them in their assigned role
And there isn't one support hero where you'd say, for me this is the hardest support hero to play?
Support I would say is defined more as a role. The champions do differ, but your role is always the same.
Map control is important. Warding is important. The hero, not so much.
Speaking of map control, I heard earlier that you're the man in charge of always knowing when the dragon spawns.
Yeah, unless we're in the middle of a very involved fight. If we are, I may sometimes forget the timestamp.
But keeping an eye on that is important?
Very important, definitely.
One last question from the forums. Surock asks: must every team composition feature a tank and a support?
You may just say “yes” if you think so.
I wouldn't say must. Should is more like it. We do like to have a tank and a supporter, and we build our setups around those.
We fill in the rest depending on those. But it's not a must. If you like, you can play no support / five dps.
If you want a solid line-up, a tank and a support do tend to fill the two most crucial roles.
This frees up the last three players to choose pretty much what they like.
Cool. A very general question now: you've arrived here last night. So far you've only seen the opening ceremonies. How are you liking it here?
It's definitely something new for us. It's great. Great atmosphere. We're really liking it.
Okay, and now: prediction time. How far will you go? What place will you end up in?
Well, it's obvious: we're in it to win it.
You think you can do that?
Yes.
That's what I like to hear. Anything else? Would you like to give a shout-out to anyone? To those who stayed in Europe maybe...
Greetings to the European community!
Well, I was thinking of Awe kek and... the other...
Pylat. Yes, they always supported us. Greetings to Pylat and Awe.
8:13: That's what I wanted to hear. Thank you very much for the interview, and best of luck in the tournament!
Thank you!