USC ESPORTS WRAP-UP #9

Heya USC Esports! Welcome back to another Esports Wrap Up! This week, we have the long awaited League of Legend’s Deep Dive with interviews from the Varsity team and a summary from their NECC match against Purdue. 

League of Legends: A Deep Dive On The Purdue Matchup

Yunjia (left) & Nutty (right)

Meet our two features from the Varsity team: Yunjia is an MFA student in the Interactive Media Game Design Program and captain of the LoL team who prefers engage tank and playmaking support. Nutty is a freshman studying Industrial and Systems Engineering who plays engage support. This weekend, I had the pleasure of talking with both of them about the Purdue game and their experience with the competitive League of Legends and the USC Esports team. 

1. What was your first thought / first feeling / first thing you did after the Purdue match? 

Yunjia: “After the game was over, I was kind of just in my seat for half an hour just looking at the screen. I VOD reviewed. I didn’t feel like eating, because I felt like the game was really really close, and Purdue was an opponent that we really needed to beat. I felt like it was really ‘可惜’ (A shame) — but it was a good story and a good plotline. But that feeling of you just staring into that results screen and seeing the ‘defeat’ on the top left and realizing it’ll be really hard to continue our journey in NECC was pretty ‘可惜.’ But what I tell my teammates is that everything that we’re doing right now is just preparation for the ultimate [CLOL and Conquest with UCLA] / and personally I think that’s more important, so we’re OK to make mistakes.”

2. What was a highlight from the match? What was a moment during the match where you were at the edge of your seat?

Yunjia: “I play support for my team, and right now the meta for support is everyone takes Unsealed Spellbook as a rune which grants us the use of multiple summoner spells. So for our game one, we lost our third dragon fight, and I think most of our team died other than me. But I had a moment where there wasn’t any vision on me and I was able to swap my summoners to smite and went in myself as support and took back the dragon! This was something personal too, because every single moment like this, I could really hear my heart pounding. I had no vision in the pit. I had no vision of the dragon. I had to blindly flash in, like I just had to get a sense of what the health bar was at. I was counting to myself, counting my heartbeats, so it was pretty intense, but it got us soul afterwards.”

3. What’s something another team member did in the match that you’d like to shout out? 

Yunjia: “Performance wise, I want to shout out our ADC, his name is Mike— Jinx. Right now our team dynamic is playing a ‘protect the ADC’ (main DPS) comp a lot, and it’s really interesting because when I first entered the team, it’s not something that I’m used to playing. I used to go to UCSC, but in Santa Cruz we had a playstyle where I’d just leave my DPS and play with the team instead. Something that I remember from the top of my head is [Mike] was very confident in the amount of damage dealt, because there were a lot of times where I thought it didn’t look like he could do the kill or make the play. During the laning phase, there was this moment where I got an engage of the enemy support and I thought that was just a trade of HP, but he kinda just flashed in, got the kill, got out, before I even noticed, like ‘what the hell?’ So that’s Mike. Another person I really like is Geneho: After the games, I feel like he was really hating himself for it, but I honestly felt like he did a great job overall in the game. As much as you think you did really bad, it’s always fixable if we’re all together in the same mindset.”

4. Who is your main? Why? 

Yunjia: “So I play support for sure. Support has been a key personality of mine since I’ve touched videogames— I’d play this role in literally every single video game: I’m the priest in RPGs, I’m a Lucio main. Being able to set up my teammates and getting them that insane play insanely is really fun to me. That might even be why I like game design: I just like people having fun, and playing support makes that happen. I’m gonna say I main Poppy. She’s able to create good plays because she’s able to throw people really far away in teamfights, I can hammer people away and make it a 5v3 and make really engaging plays, and that’s my favorite part about her.”

Nutty: “So I actually started playing support because of CoreJJ— he played on Team Liquid. He had really good roam timers and he’d roam top all the time, and he was the first support in NA to ever do that, so I was really inspired by his play. My main’s Rakan. I really enjoy playing engage supports in general, but he’s really different from traditional champions because he’s really flashy and fun to play. Engage support is when you’re the first one to initiate a fight, so you go in first and set up your team.”

5. What have you learned from playing LoL from a team-based competitive environment? As opposed to solo queuing?

Yunjia: “The difference between random players and a set few players, it goes a lot further than just the champs themselves. In solo queue, the only thing that identifies your teammates is their champion, but at USC Esports, it's about the personality they have and our team goals. For example, our marksman ADC is the center of our gameplan, so even though he might play some champion that doesn’t gain that much resource, we would follow gameplans [revolving around our players]. I would play aggressive, even though sometimes I wouldn’t if I was playing with [randoms] because I trust my teammates.”

Nutty: “For League, you learn macro or game sense on a deeper level since the games are so slow paced. Just being in competitive play, I’ve had to expand my champion pool much because of Fearless — which is as game progress you can’t play champions you played in earlier games, whereas in solo queue you can kinda just stick to two or three you’re comfortable with and climb your way through that way.”

6. What’s your favourite part of being on the USC Esports team?

Yunjia: “The reason I like playing video games is the feeling of winning and knowing that [I’m] better than my opponents— I really like competitiveness. But playing with a team is also very nice because it builds this relationship that I really like: We’re all together in this, we’re fighting together in this, we’re in this arc— ‘Anime moments’. Seeing your name on a jersey with your own name on it: I enjoy being able to represent USC, I enjoy being able to represent my school and have people cheer for me. That’s what I’m working for: That one day I’m able to step on an actual stage and have us Trojans cheer for us, and that’s why I see Conquest as something that’s just as if not more important than CLoL. And I feel like it’s really rare for someone like me to do both these things because it’s really hard to get into USC as a game designer— I get to understand a game in the competitive side of things.”

Nutty: “I think for me growing up I’ve always played football, so I’ve always been part of competition. For me, competition is much more fulfilling because everyone is working towards the same goal. It’s really exciting to see everyone working towards the same goal as you. Coming here, this was my first time being part of a League team and a lot of the other players are masters students, so I really enjoy the fact that there is a field of players of more new and more experienced players in the team— you learn a lot from them and I think everyone there are great people. / Every single week is a new game day, so it’s something that you’re always looking forward to, so being part of the Esports team for League is very exciting in that sense.”

7. Is there anything else you’d like to share in this week’s newsletter?

Yunjia: “I want to thank Joe Jacko for helping me navigate my USC application. We didn’t end up working together timing-wise, but his advice and encouragement were huge for me. Coaches and mentors like Joe make a real difference—thank you for opening doors and pushing me to USC.”