On the final week of Spring split Roscoe caught up with NA LCS veteran William 'Scarra' Li for an interview about his current place in the League community and his thoughts on NA LCS as it continues to unfold.

Hey guys, Roscoe here with Scarra. The last time I talked to you was when you decided to retire.

Scarra: Yeah, that was a long time ago, maybe a year or year and a half ago?

You went from DIG to CLG coach, what have you been up to since then?

Scarra: After CLG coaching I was in NA Challenger for a month or two playing on CLG black but it ended with us just not making it. Our ADC, which is the current CLG ADC Stixxay got banned for toxicity and we couldn’t gel well enough within a week or two to qualify for the NACS. After that it left kind of a bad taste in my mouth for the challenger scene so I decided to go forward and create content through streaming and youtube and stuff like that. At the moment I’m still doing the streaming and content creation and I’m kinda looking towards something else that I can’t really talk about.

You’re here day two of week nine of LCS. You decided to show up and watch the DIG vs CLG game, your two old flames. What was that like for you?

Scarra: It’s just awful. They talked about it while I was there, when DIG first entered into LCS they were second seed. After the next split they were third seed. Then they were fourth then relegated and now their tenth. It’s just been a drop off of DIG quality since then. I don’t really blame the players. It seems like they’ve never found a team that gels well together. Individually they might be good but when I look at teams like CLG which don’t even need individual skill to win, they can just win through rotational play. This is a team that’s second in the league and very few people would say anyone relative to their position in NA is best except maybe support. With that in mind they are still able to be second in league and that says a lot about what I think of individual strength over better team play.

Talking about players, when you’ve got all these new individuals coming in you being the “old guard”, what’s it like seeing all this new blood coming into league and populating these teams?

Scarra: I think it’s good. There was a perpetuated notion that there wasn’t a lot of skilled players in NA. A lot of people thought that was really overblown but I don’t think it was as overblown as people think. The problem is the talent that people were looking for need to be trained. I think a combination of experienced players and younger blood makes for a really good team. The younger blood is able to reexamine any preconceived notions the older people have as well as drive them because they're usually the ones with the most motivation on the team and they can help push that onto the other players. The experienced players are there to control the younger “hot blooded” players and teach them in terms of teamplay. Until the second or third season there wasn’t a good understanding of what makes a good team and all of this isn’t including coaching staff or anything else, just the players themselves. Ever since then, especially in the challenger scene they have developed a lot with all these coaches becoming more and more experienced and players with more experience going down to challenger and working with younger blood to better foster talent.

Now that we are at the end of the split, are you going to go to finals?

Scarra: Yes for sure. I’m going to be at Pax East and finals so I’m going to be flying weekend through weekend essentially. It’s gonna be pretty bad.

Who would you put as your top two picks for the finals in Vegas?

Scarra: I have no idea. It’s between TL, CLG and Immortals. I know TL is coming in really hot and are coming in confident in their ability to win. CLG has some of the best teamwork. Immortals is just a great team, Reignover and Huni are amazing players that have conquered Europe and essentially conquered NA and the team works really well together. Top two are gonna be… I don’t even know. I give it to CLG because I worked with them but it’s gonna be tough. Separating the top three is hard because I don’t know how well any of them will function in a best of series because it’s about adapting and I don’t have any experience in the normal season. Best of threes are starting next season so I can’t tell how well teams will adapt. I think CLG can adapt pretty well and they won last split and still have the same core of people that’s why I’d like to give it to them, but TL and Immortals are still looking very good.

Any last shout outs you’d like to have at the end of the interview, anyone you want to say hi to?

Scarra: Honestly, maybe I should just pull a Lemon and say no… hahaha. I don’t know, I always try to give a shout out to my fans however many are still left because I’m no longer super relevant in the scene because I’m no longer coaching or playing. I have had ideas about going back to either of those but so far I am undecided. So at the moment I am happy streaming and I hope you guys can watch.



Certainly a lot of insight I’ve gotten from this interview, thank you so much man. Be sure to follow us on Twitter and Facebook and subscribe to our Youtube channel and we will see you next split.