kaSing: Habe nie bemerkt, wie einfach es mit Hjarnan war

kaSing: I never realized how easy it was with Hjarnan

Last split, Raymond 'kaSing' Tsang and Team Vitality qualified for the playoffs of the EU LCS, but unfortunately got knocked out in the first round. After two weeks, the team sits on ninth place with three draws and one loss. readmore.de got the chance to talk to the support player after the match against ROCCAT.

readmore.de: How would you sum up these first two weeks of the Summer Split?

Raymond 'kaSing' Tsang: Personally I didn’t have much time to practice with Police. He had some visa issues, so he came to Europe quite late. I probably had around three days of scrims with him. It wasn’t even efficient because he had jetlag and issues in general which was very annoying. I didn’t practice as much as I wanted because of how our environment was affected by different things. We as Vitality haven’t played much as five in the early stages of the split. Even though we tied with the opponent in three of the four matches and we lost the last one, we don’t play how we used to. We have two new members with Mightybear and the other one being Police and now Reje on the AD carry position. I think it will take time to get there like how Origen was not so good in the regular season, but in the end they were second. I still believe we can replicate something like that, but right now it will take some hard work and time to actually get better.

What went well from your perspective in these first two weeks? On which aspects of the game do you have to improve on the most?

I think regarding on what went well is that we as a team don’t want to make the same mistakes we made last split. We did really bad to pick up and adapt to the meta in the playoffs. This split we are thinking more about what the meta is right now and what we think is the best way to play it rather than trying to play against it.

What went not so well: I think we have different opinions on how to approach the game right now because when new members come into a team, they have their own idea of how to play the game and so do we. It’s all about finding the middle ground or a conclusion between us so we can actually play on the same page. I believe sometimes that is not the case and I think that’s one of the main reasons why we are not showing such a good performance at the moment.

You played the first week with Police and the second one with Reje as your AD carry. How would you describe the differences between them?

Police and Reje have completely opposite playstyles. Police likes to play really conservatively and team-oriented whereas Reje prefers to be aggressive and to go in all the time. If you look at the match against Origen, you’ll see how he facechecked against a Vladimir in the late game. It was still his first time on stage so I’m not gonna be harsh or anything on him because maybe he was nervous. It was the same for my first game. Reje has the potential to be a really good player, but I think his inexperience on stage affects him at the moment. I think it can only get better.

I played for over one year with him and I spent so much time with Hjarnan trying to perfect the way we played the lane. Of course it’s gonna suck playing with someone new. Of course they could be mechanically good, but in terms of how to play the lane, me and Hjarnan had the same idea. We always spoke about how we should play and it was really easy for me to play. I never really realized that until the stepped down because of motivation issues. Maybe he comes back one day.

Mightybear is your new jungler. He wasn’t really known before you picked him up. How did you find him and why did you decide to get him?

We wanted to look for a Korean jungler and we wanted one who can speak English. How I see it is that Koreans can be very, very good, but if they can’t really communicate with us, it’s no point since it would be pretty hard to get better on the long run. Min-soo (Mightybear) luckily can speak English decent enough, much better than the average Korean. Right now I have problems to speak with Police in English, but with Min-soo, it’s fine. He is exactly what we were searching for and he also plays really well. I think we are quite fortunate in that regard.

From what you’ve seen so far, where do you think you’ll end up after the regular season and how far could you go if you managed to reach the playoffs?

Hopefully we can be top six by the end of the regular season. That would at least make sure that we play well. In the playoffs, I don’t really know. (laughs)

I mean I hope we can reach at least the semifinals, but we will see.

The big goal is to go to Worlds again, right?

For me, I obviously want to go to Worlds. Last year, I went with H2k and we got knocked out in the group stage since we had a group with SKT and EDG. Personally, I feel like that was the cap of that team. We were already playing decent enough, but the only good teams were Fnatic and Origen. That was all. The third spot could only go to us or ROCCAT back then. Luckily we got enough points for the third place in the Spring Split and I was pretty happy about that. This year I aim to at least make it there, if not: vacation time. (laughs)

The interview was held on 10th of June, 2016.