Due to issues with his P1 athletic visa, Team EnVyUs were unable to play with newly acquired jungler Nam “LirA” Tae-woo in their first NA LCS matches of 2017 and kicked off the new year with an 0-2 record

theScore esports sat down with nV top laner Shin “Seraph” Woo-yeong after the team;s loss to Flyquest to talk about the team's first week, why they signed LirA, and his outlook on nV’s lineup this split.

How do you feel about your first performance this split?

It’s honestly super frustrating. LirA can’t play. He was in NA a couple of days ago, then went back to Korea, then he comes back to NA, so even before we couldn’t scrim with LirA for this so we’ve been using a jungle sub. Now, we play with Alex and Ninja jungle. Next week, LirA will come around Friday, so we probably can’t scrim with LirA the entire week again so we might be messed up until Week 2. So, I tried to just hold my mental and tried to keep calm.

Last split, your team was known for having an all Korean top side and an all NA bot side. This continues this split once LirA arrives. Is there any specific reason for this setup?

There’s nothing special about it. It’s more because you can only use two import slots and honestly there’s not as many resources for NA resident junglers so jungle is usually imported. Ninja is a good mid laner and over eighty percent of mid laners in LCS are imported so both mid and jungle are usually imported so I don’t think it’s super special. The special thing is only that I don’t use an import slot. It’s kind of similar to Dignitas right now I think since Keane doesn’t use a standard import slot so it just ends up being triple Korean. And compared to the other lanes I think NA has some good resources bottom lane.

Was there any reason you chose LirA specifically and what are the differences between his playstyle and Procxin’s?

There was a really long time before the start of the season so we pretty much contacted every jungler. First, I think LirA is super good even if others are thinking that he’s not top-tier in LCK — except for Peanut or bengi I think he was the best in LCK, and the whole team was thinking that. When I’ve scrimmed with him he has been the best jungler on my team since . . . ever. In skill and in attitude he’s really positive and he’s really nice.

Have you had to shift your playstyle at all in the new tank meta when previously you played more of a carry role on nV?

I don’t really care too much about the skill or style of champions, honestly I think I play well on Maokai and I’m pretty confident on tanks now. I have a lot of experience so I don’t actually care that much about the meta changes.

Moving forward, your team generally been placed towards the bottom in pre-season rankings or speculation about the split. How are you guys dealing with that as a unit and how will you improve as a team?

I think if our start was equal to other teams’, so basically LirA can play jungle LCS Week 1 and Ninja’s playing mid Week 1 it would probably still be hard until Week 2. Now that LirA is coming late, we might be late starters. Last split we were super good at the start and at the end of the season it was bad, but I think this season might the reverse, slow start and better finish. Once we really start scrimming together I think we can be top three, top four.

Emily Rand is a staff writer for theScore esports. You can follow her on Twitter.