After the last series of the Regional Finals, our reporter Alexandre “DrPuppet” Weber had the chance to talk with G2 Esports’s support player Kim "Wadid" Bae-in about the last series of the Gauntlet against Schalke 04 and his feelings of finally being able to play in Korea again.

▲(Photo Credit by lolesports)



How are you feeling today?



Well, it feels so good, I just can’t believe that we won and we are going to worlds. Especially, since we are playing in South Korea and I can finally play in Korea.

So the Korean fans will be able to see the player Wadid, since I never played in LCK, I will finally be able to show my skill in Korea.





Where did you live in Korea?



Busan, where I think groups and quarterfinals will be played.





So I guess your goal is to get through play-ins and play in Busan right?



Yeah, I mean Busan is my hometown and the stage in Busan is only 10 minutes away from my home and if I manage to make it, it would be so cool.





Your parents must be supporting you since you are playing here in Europe, they must be happy and excited to be able to see you play there, right?

They are really happy. When I played really bad as Tahm Kench in Game 2, I remembered that my family is waiting. Because of that I reseted my mindset and played my best. My parents can’t watch me play in real life since Europe and South Korea are so far apart. They still watch the games from Korea, but they really want to come to the stadium and cheer me on and that is impossible due to the distance. So they will finally be able to see me play in person, they only know Esports because I play in the Pro scene, so it is really great.





So let’s talk a bit about the second game today. It felt like you guys came into Game 1 with a clear gameplan, play around team fights in this tanky heavy meta and seemed like Schalke had figured it out for the second game. What happened to you personally in that second game?



Personally, we didn’t expect them to go for Xayah Rakan in the bot lane. Since Vander is a very good player on Braum and Alistar we expected them to pick a tank support and not aggressive supports or playmaking supports like Rakan. We also got outscaled in team fights as well and it was hard to play based on the draft. After that, we instantly fixed it.

So we knew they play Xayah Rakan and we could adjust our draft to that. In the end, we were surprised by the Xayah and Rakan picks.





Which is very interesting because if there was one thing that Schalke did extremely well during playoffs was to constantly give the bot lane the safe matchup and play around Nukeduck. Then you guys decided to block out the mid lane and play more focused on bot lane. So what were your plans going into the third game and what were your goals as a bot lane?



We knew we would most likely have the better bot lane matchup because I think our champion pool is bigger. We also got the advantage from the draft that game, so we first looked for plays on botside so I’m free to move to mid or jungle and we are able to play around that. So it was really important that we get bot side pressure and it worked out.

We simply focused on getting a good bot lane matchup for us.



▲ (Photo Credit by DrPuppet)





Would you say that the bot lane matchup today was difficult? Do Upset and Vander deserve the hype they are getting from fans and analysts on the desk?



I feel like that Upset is the really important part, Upset really knows how to trade to the limit and is really good mechanically. This season he learned a lot about rotations so he is playing smart as well. Upset is doing really well and Vander was playing really well when he was on a team fighting or safe a champion. I was very surprised by his Rakan.

They just improved a lot. Still, I think it is more on Upset.





Actually, one thing that you and Vander usually have in common is that you both tend to play for roams and leave your bot lane partner farming safely. Was it difficult to mirror Vander’s movement or would you say that you were always a step ahead of him in this series?



The roaming part is always about pressure, so if you have bot pressure and then move you have tempo right? So it is always good even though it doesn’t work. So if he matches the pressure, they cannot get the pressure on bot lane again. So if he moves I can go back to the bot lane. So it is really important to have a good matchup bot side that enables me to roam. That’s the main part. So if you are able to invade and get some jungle camps, the scuttle crab or summoners so you can use that top side to bot side pressure instead. Which does not matter if you have already a good bot side matchup. So it was really important that we get an advantage in the draft.





One of the things I enjoyed the most watching this series, was to see your synergy with Jankos being on point again. This was something that was a little bit off by the end of the Regular split, where your timing was off sometimes and little mistakes added up in games, which often lead to the enemy team snowballing on you guys. How did you fix that in that short amount of time?



We just didn’t have an actual plan for the draft phase, because we didn’t know what were the good champions in the meta. The enemy team was banning Heimerdinger every time and other ap damage dealers were out of meta, so we needed to pick an ad damage dealer but we didn’t know what was actually good. That’s why we had a really bad matchup on botside and ended up losing the lane. When you are losing it is really hard to control the map. So we needed to figure out what is good for us and what we could play. During our break, we figured that out and we had one week in which we managed to play a lot of Solo que together and reset our mindset. My mind was exploding, I couldn’t think about the game and the champions. The break actually helped us and it worked out.





To close out the interview do you have a message to your fans, especially the Korean ones?



For the G2 Fans - Even though we had a very bad result from the summer split, they kept supporting us and it was really good that we got your support. I didn’t expect so much support since the previous G2 was always fighting for first place and were a really good team and we didn’t do that well. Somehow we also made it and that is partly due to the great fan support. So thank you.

To Korean fans - I actually have some Korean fans, because before I moved to Europe and entered the pro scene I was a high ranked Bard one trick in Korea. So I wrote a bard guide for Inven and it was the first time that I showed my name. The guide was really popular and I got some attention. I also played challenger series and some few Korean fans kept following me so I’m really happy that I’ll finally be able to show my skills to them in Korea. So Thank you so much for your support even though I’m playing in Europe, I’ll do my best for G2 Esports as well.