Hey guys we're here with Matt "Matt" Elento from Team Liquid just after their week three 2-0 victories up against NRG and just now against TiP.

How are you doing man, you guys have caught your stride a little more since the beginning of the split?

Matt: Yeah I mean in general I guess this split was a rocky start but it's pretty good and like we started out 0-3 and now we're 3-3 so picking it up.



Yeah I mean like you were telling me about your gold charm there it's a bit of a lucky charm you'd say?

Matt: So I bought this gold chain I think when we were 0-3 and now we're 3-3 so 3-0 record right now.



I wanted to talk to you about your picks a bit, you on Bard I would say some of your ults were exquisite. What do you like about Bard?

Matt: I mean in general Bard is like my favourite champion, when I first started playing him yeah, it wasn't for any strategical level. I didn't think Bard was this next OP thing, I just played him because he was fun. He can stun people, ult people, portal through. It's a really fun champion but nowadays I really value his engage potential, his playmaking potential and even his laning phase isn't that bad I think he's a really good champion you can learn now and he's actually really strong.



Would you say that some of you guys your picks at least maybe for you that it's less about just picking top power picks and more about just who you like to play?

Matt: I mean yeah in general like, obviously everyone's going to have their opinions of top picks but like my opinion would be that Bard is like a very top tier support right now.

I think on both Morgana and Bard you went Thunderlord's. Some supports maybe an Alistar will go like Windspeaker's more for heals, so what is it just to lay down more damage with the Thunderlord's on support?

Matt: I mean Thunderlord's is just not a good option but it's the only option when you're support. On Bard I get 45% CDR so out of the three you can get in the tree Thunderlord's is the best, that's why I take it.



So you wouldn't go any of the other ones?

Matt: All the other ones are really bad for support, there's not really a dedicated support mastery beside Windspeaker's and I guess Bond of Stone is too but I'm talking about Morgana who has no heal so you pretty much have to take Thunderlord's.



This most recent game against TiP, you stumbled a little bit. TiP did get a little bit ahead, about 5k gold but you guys kept your heads and kept it together. What was going through your comms?

Matt: Umm yeah after we misplayed, we misplayed quite a few things leading up to them throwing, but our comms were just "Okay we shouldn't do that, let's just plan out what we're going to do in the future." Not the future but the immediate what we were going to do right now, we planned out how we were gonna teamfight, we just teamfought and we won.



In the Featurette in the beginning it was you talking about yourself and Dardoch about how you're a lot more into macro, is that what you would say kind of happened today were you planning a lot for macro after a difficult start?

Matt: In general, for League you have to make proactive plays but when you're behind it's a lot harder to make proactive plays. We were lucky to get some good teamfights after we were in a huge deficit, we ended up getting a baron and that just snowballed into our victory. In general it's really hard to make proactive plays when you're behind so when you are behind it's really hard to make macro calls. We just stuck it to farming and we just kept farming and then we made some good proactive calls and we won.

What do you think is one of the keys to playing from behind, proactively?

Matt: The key to playing from behind is just always thinking in your opponent's shoes. Like what are they going to do next? Are they going to send bot lane top? Are they going to send their Jungler top? How are we going to counter this? In that example you send everyone bot lane to try for a tower trade. It's all about thinking in your opponent's shoes and what they're gonna do so you can try and counter it with whatever trade or best option you can think of at the time.



That's good to know, my solo queue partners.

Matt: It's probably not all that useful for Solo Queue.



Sometimes a team just needs a direction, and that's all it needs.

Matt: It'd be useful for ranked 5s, although I guess it's Dynamic queue now, so when you're Dynamic 5 queue. It's good.



So next time you guys find yourself against an LCS Team in Dynamic queue, just think about what Matt would do. But next week you guys have Immortals and Team Dignitas actually, how do you feel about coming up against one of the strongest teams in NA, with Immortals.

Matt: I'm very excited, for this whole season I've been excited to play against Immortals because at the start of the season, and still now, I think Immortals is the strongest team. So if I get to play them on stage and we play as if we've played in scrims then we have a very good chance of winning. Winning against Immortals will definitely cement our team as being a top tier team.



Do you guys have anything things you've seen, maybe chinks in the armour or weaknesses you can exploit on them?

Matt: In general our strengths would be laning phase, and our macro game's getting a lot better. I mean Immortals' strengths are definitely their macro so if we just play on their terms and we can stand their level of macro we definitely can pull out a victory.



Good Luck to you, any shoutouts?

Matt: Shoutouts. I mean I definitely appreciate all my fans, the fans who watch me, the fans who come to my stream every time I'm on, I definitely only stream for them. I mean like the 50 - 100 people who always come, just cheer me on or subscribe to me. Those are the real people I stream for otherwise I don't really enjoy streaming. I definitely stream just for them.

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