Blogs
Interview with MVP Cloud 9 HyperX Balls
So far, Cloud 9 has dominated the NA LCS Summer Split by going 13-2 after 5 weeks. With their only losses to CLG and Vulcun, Cloud 9 is definitely the team to beat. I got a chance to talk with week 5 MVP Cloud 9 HyperX Balls about his team's dominance.
How has Cloud 9 changed now that Jack is the owner and Alex Penn is your analyst?
Balls: Well, Hai usually did everything like managing scrims sponsors and stuff, but now that Jack is our manager and Alex is our analyst, it helped Hai become less stressful or made his life easier of having to worrying about that stuff and can now focus and just playing and getting better. Jack helps us get the right materials we need to play and just overall made it easier for us to concentrate on LoL. Alex gives us information on all the other international teams of what comps they run, champs they play, and their runes/masteries. It lets us try out many different things and change it into our play style.
The team has said that they copy the Korean meta, and adapt to that play style. Do you think you would be able to beat a Korean team at their own strategy?
Balls: Even though we use the same strats that the Korean's use like 1 vs 2 fast push or same FOTM champs, we still have different mechanics and probably runes/masteries that the Korean's use. If you have better mechanics and can kill the other laner, it can pretty much change the flow of the game. Right now, I can't tell how we would do against them since we have different play styles, but I'm pretty sure the Korean's won't fall for their own strat and will know how to defend against it, so we can't really tell that we can beat them unless we play against a Korean team and learn from it from experience.
Did you expect such a big fan following, and the "Cloud 9 hype train" after qualifying in the Summer Promotion? And now that you guys have been sitting at first place for a while, have you seen your fan base increase even further?
Balls: I don't think we expected so much fans or the hype train after qualifying for the Summer Promotion and we were all surprised by the amount of fans we had during MLG Anaheim. It was crazy how before MLG Dallas only few people would recognize us and then MLG Anaheim there was probably over 500 asking for autographs and pictures with us. Sitting at first place, I think that's part of it that our fan base keeps increasing, but coming into the super week 5-0 and our personality also helped increase our fan base.
After losing to Vulcun at MLG Anaheim, how did you prepare for your next meeting, and ultimately the victory?
Balls: I think after losing to Vulcun we were angry from the fact that we could've won, but a misclick ruined the whole game for us. We all talked about the game at our house and we didn't really bring the topic up about the throw since he already knew what happened, but instead we looked at what we did early game, picks/ban, and how we could've made that game a lot easier for us because even though we came back from that game, it could've been cleaner. Our next game against Vulcun, we actually still got destroyed early game and admitted defeat, but somehow we managed to hold the ground with them because we weren't mad at all from getting stomped and actually focused enough to come back and win the game.
You guys went from always ending games early, to being able to hold out and win late game. What areas would you say you can improve as a team now?
Balls: I think our biggest problem right now is dominating the early game like we used to against better teams. We've been struggling a few times from dying or just that we could've done a better lvl one to control the map better. We just need to figure out clearly how to open up better and study what the enemy team might do early game.
As your team favors objective based play, would you say that you are the most coordinated team right now? Are you always on the same page with your teammates, or is there often miscommunication?
Balls: We pretty much have a clear idea of what we want to do most of the time and we have a dedicated shot caller for all the objectives that we want to do or take. We just trust each other when someone makes the call and follow it through most of the time, but we also have the ultimate decision of our own safety when doing it. We are on the same page most of the time, and in scrims we tend to argue on calls or plays that we make, but that's what helps us get better. There has been some miscommunication at some point in our games, but its not that much compare to I guess other teams in the LCS.
With the current laneswap meta, and your and Hai's overlapping champion pool, where does your play style differ to his, or do you both essentially play the same role on the team?
Balls: I think we our play style is pretty similar because we both are really aggressive in our lane and would probably die going for kills most of the time rather then being passive and worry about dying to the other laner. Since we both can go anywhere, I think that helps us confuse the enemies sometimes in a way that they don't know what the lanes are and lets us surprise them.
When you pick a champion, do you always know who will be playing it, or can you make a last minute change?
Balls: Most of the time during drafting, we already have everything prepared beforehand on what we are going to play against the other team. The only thing that will change our team composition is if the enemy team brings out something that caught us off guard which makes us rethink at that moment what we really want to play or use against them.
What is the relationship of your team like? Are you guys strictly business, or do you have relaxed friendships with your team?
Balls: Were all pretty much friends when we are at home and playing either solo queue on League or doing other stuff that we have in common, but when we are playing as a team, we are teammates over friends because this is still our job and we don't want to be biased when someone does bad and we talk about our plays. I think overall we are just friendly as a team and troll each other a lot.
Since you've moved out of your parents place, to living with the people you work with, do you think you've matured? What's daily life like with your teammates?
Balls: I think moving to a new place by myself helped me become more mature since I actually do chores or whatever they tell me to do now. I'm also learning a lot of stuff while in the house that I don't really do at my house and pretty much also not being lazy. Life in the house is pretty much for us waking up to eat, scrim, break time and scrim again. During my break I usually use it to run to the gym also and I think that its awesome since I couldn't do this at my house since there wasn't a gym nearby that I could run too.
After playing so much League of Legends for so long, can you say that the game is still fun for you?
Balls: Yeah, playing League would never get boring because I just like how competitive it is and that there is so many things you can theorycraft about. Its also something that I'm good at and brings a good feeling after winning a ranked game or just winning a match overall.
Would you like to give any shout-outs?
Balls: Shoutout to our sponsors Astro, Cooler Master, Kingston Hyperx, IBuypower, Lolclass, and crunchyroll. And you can follow me on twitter @C9Balls.