Austin "Gate" Yu is the support for Team Impulse. Replacing Xiaoweixiao in the middle lane in Season 5, Gate has since swapped to the support position in Season 6, though he's had brief stints on multiple roles this split.

Hey guys! Roscoe here with Gate after an unfortunate weekend, 0-2, against CLG and Echo Fox. Like you were saying, you expected it to be an easier weekend for you. What went wrong, you think?

Gate: My opinion in the CLG game, we actually, from my perspective, we opened the game really well. Our lane swap, CLG is infamous for doing well in the lane swap, but we were beating them at first. We got first blood as well and both waves were good for us but we made a really big team communication error and we ended up fighting at a bad place. We went 0 for 4 in a fight right after we used everything so that just destroyed the game. Then the second game today, the Echo Fox game, we got first blood but then we had a hard time communicating what we wanted to do. How we wanted to play the game. We wanted to play it fast and then... I think we just messed up some crucial fights so I think that game was a lot closer but still, I'm not really satisfied with how we played.

And you mentioned a communication mix up. What was it specifically, if you can talk about that a little more?

Gate: I don't want to go too much in detail but some people in the team have a hard time saying exactly what they want to do. Like they don't think... they don't think too far into the future and they don't know what they need from their teammates so when we do get into one of those fights it's like a free for all. Everyone's just doing their own thing and hopefully we win. And that's definitely not how you wanna play a team based game.

I did wanna touch, more specifically on, because you guys have had a bit of a rough go at it, you're 4 and 8. Tied with us (Dignitas) in the standings again although you guys have the tiebreaker now, right? I wanted to talk about mentality, on a larger scale and a smaller scale, in a game as well as in the standings, about the difficulties behind losing. How do you guys, in a game if you're far behind, how do you keep your head's cool? How do you stay in it and not get tilted? Cause sometimes it can be really hard to even come back in a game at all. How do you come back in a game?

Gate: Well actually, my personal opinion is just how the game is played, it's really easy for the game to be over quickly. If you get a big advantage from a fight, it's actually pretty hard to not get tilted because it's pretty clear what the enemy can do to just end the game. But as for keeping your mentality, it's always been the same. You have to just keep talking. You can't let the thought of "We lost this fight so we're going to lose the next", or like "Something bad happened so it's going to keep happening." You just gotta think about what you can do and keep a clear mind no matter what happens in the game.

Yeah, clear minds maybe in case they make a mistake so you can capitalize on that. In terms of larger scale when you're in the standings, like a week to week, how is that mentally for you guys? What do you to help stay on top of yourselves?

Gate: Well if you look at the standings that much, personally I think it's not that important. What's really important is that, at the end of the season, if you're going to be in playoffs, relegations, or 7th place where you just do nothing. So I think just looking at standings and thinking too much about them is in itself a bad thing because it really doesn't help you for your next game. It just puts some pressure on you to perform if your next match really affects your standings. I think the best advice for that is to not overthink it and be like "Oh, if we win this, we'll be 5th and 6th." I think it's a little too much to think about.

Better to go with a clean slate each week. And looking forward, playoffs in the next few weeks. What do you guys think you need to fix up? Because you guys haven't had the full roster. What do you think you need to do to make it to playoffs?

Gate: To be honest, playoffs... It's pretty clear what we have to do, actually. The top teams are already basically cemented, the top 4. It's just the fight between 5, 6, and 7. At least for how I see it. We just have to be better than Team Liquid in the standings. But as for improving week to week, we have to fix up just a lot of the way we play the game. How we communicate, a lot of basic things actually. But, I think it all just takes time. For me personally, I think I just need.... I'm fairly new to the support role so I just need a little more time to understand everything, especially in competitive where it's just way different than solo queue.

Yeah, completely different. In my time with Dignitas, I've found that... well, in my eyes, I'll play solo queue all the time but when I look at the way the LCS is played, it feels like it's a completely different meta that you could like never do in solo queue.

Gate: It's just that.. The main difference is... You have to think about it like this: All your opponents are practically on the same level as you. That's why they're in the LCS, right? So you really have to think of about five people at once. Instead of in solo queue where you just focus on yourself and doing whatever you want. That's the big difference between competitive and solo queue.

Really quick, specifically in the game against Echo Fox, I wanted to talk about the Kayle pick. Is that something that you guys saw coming or something that you had to adapt to on the fly?

Gate: We definitely knew that he played Kayle but, to be honest, in our eyes it's just another pick. As in, it's not particularly strong at anything or particularly good at anything. I bet he just wants to play it because he's been playing it recently. So we didn't think too much about the pick. My opinion on those surprise picks on the LCS... I don't think it's that cheesy cause it's been played before. People have seen it in the past. It's just you have to call back on your memory and remember what the champion does. It's not that we don't know what Kayle's skills are. It really just plays out differently. A different champion in a different role. It's just tricky. Surprise picks like that bring a fair amount of value in competitive just as a surprise pick cause we didn't know too much about it.

Yeah, because the champion's that are all in the meta right now, Alistar, Braum. You probably know all the different cooldowns, all the different ticks and number stats. But with Kayle, you can't quite remember all those because it's been a long time. But finishing up the interview, do you have any shoutouts or any last words you wanna give to anybody? Your fans maybe?

Gate: I think it's... It's been a weird season for sure. We started, actually, with our sub roster and we started fairly well. Then we had Seraph sub in for a few weeks. We did fairly well with him as well. We had some mixed results after a few weeks. I think definitely people don't underestimate us anymore. People give us way more respect now. It's important that we show some results back so for all the fans that have been like following us for the entire season and just cheering for us even though somethings we bring some bad results, I'd like to thank them. And then... I think it's just, in the future, people should look at these new teams and just give them some respect at the start cause honestly, I think we're doing fairly well. We're kind of a new team so I think in the future, if there's a new challenger team like this, or a new LCS team, people should just pay attention to them more.

Yeah, cut you guys a little bit more slack. But thank you so much for the interview Gate. Be sure to subscribe to the YouTube channel. Follow us on Facebook & Twitter. And see you guys next week!