Rekkles: "Creo que soy uno de los mejores ADC que hay"

El AD Carry de Fnatic, reflexiona, en uno de sus clásicos posts en Facebook, sobre el Campeonato Mundial que está a punto de terminar en China este fin de semana, la experiencia de un equipo que consiguió llegar a los cuartos de final tras luchar en el playin y pelear por remontar un resultado muy negativo en la primera semana de grupos y clasificarse para la fase final.

Hey guys (&girls)!
With pre-Worlds and Worlds behind us, let's take a look back at how it all went down.
(pre-Worlds)
KLG: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5q_PbsPaWdk | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxlbxu8FF84
YG: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUAOdLj5blw | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oitantJ7vQk
HKA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8WvCGL7KHU | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6e2ufdHVmo | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7L0h9WOEE4
(Worlds)
GAM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5grmasNa15c | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZN7UfzENKoQ | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLF0xsgrVMY
IMT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pABtWCKsLGc | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPUyLtw0zqk | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoV52Ylz-vE&t
LZ: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnE1nwyPIVk | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUhafghUzGc
RNG: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWa-j8K40_s | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJcJplAEC5I | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wErENW6v-6E | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pg6x6CD-cvA
The last time you heard from me was after we qualified to pre-Worlds (https://www.facebook.com/Rekkles1/photos/a.221566851307936.53516.139581659506456/1079509622180317/?type=3&theater) so I'll start from there. If memory serves me right, we played against H2K on the 10th of September and flew out to Korea on the 11th. Riot demanded all teams participating in pre-Worlds to be present on the 19th in Wuhan so that gave us about a week of time to prepare, managed to grab Master's and a couple of Scrims before we headed out.

Once we arrived in China we were occupied around the clock. If it wasn't Solo Queue or Scrims, it was content obligations (Legends in Action or Eyes on Worlds) or stage preparation (opening cermony reherseals and peripherals check). We played our first games of pre-Worlds against KLG / YG on the 25th / 26th along with a qualification bo5 against HKA for Worlds on the 28th. I think we showcased a solid Fnatic, similar to the one you saw during our last games in Europe which is why it was all the more dissapointing when we dropped the ball during week 1 of Worlds once we made it. Before we dive into that I would like to apologize for our performance against YG, we had a dissagreement previous to going on stage which left multiple players (especially myself) unfocused on what was next. We took away KLG's chances of making it further and for that I'm sorry.

Onto the 0-3, I think we put to much focus on our opponents and lost track of ourselves. It showed in all of our games, especially the first one against GAM. We tried to adapt to their laneswap and meta instead of just playing what worked so well for us before. I think this was something that haunted us throughout the entire tournament, including week 2. So what worked in week 2, but not in week 1? I think the biggest difference between week 2 and week 1 was our attitude. In week 1 we were playing not to lose, scared of what would happen if we were to do so. Meanwhile in week 2 we gave it our all, regardless of results. My biggest regret of these last couple of weeks is that we weren't able to bring that with us into the Quarterfinals against RNG, especially after seeing that we were the ones to dictate the games. For now though, back to week 1. We opened the tournament against GAM on the 5th of October along with IMT on the 6th and LZ on the 8th. After the GAM loss we decided that next time we face them we'll force 2v2 / 1v1 / 1v1 by either invading lvl 1 and getting deepwards like you used to do back in the day or pushing out and swapping back as soon as possible. Obviously it was hard to know if they were even gonna pull it off to begin with so it's understandable we didn't have this talk beforehand, but it helped a lot with trying to play our game and not theirs in week 2. As for the LZ game, they were on a different level than us so it didn't come as a surprise that we lost the way we did. The only thing I thought twice about was allowing the IMT game shape the way I approached the LZ one. I've always battled result-fixation, more so during big games and tournaments and at Worlds it struck me worse than ever before. In 2014 and 2015 I wanted to win, but this time around I wanted to WIN. I honestly can't find a good way to explain this feeling in words, but maybe some of you can either relate or understand where I'm coming from. Last but not least, the IMT game. This is probably the game that people with remember the most when Rekkles and 2017 is mentioned together, which saddens me. I think I had one of my best years to date where I solved many of my longer standing issues and even if new ones arrised, moved forward. I've looked over the specific situation on multiple occasions and I can no longer see the player that I used to be, regardless of it being a good play or a bad one.

After we finished the first week, there wasn't much hope left within the team. A longer talk took place where everyone explained their feelings in regards of the past week and what we could possibly to do get some wins on the board during week 2. Getting out of groups wasn't much of a topic, until the actual day of play. We mainly spoke about how we would avoid going 0-6 and what would be the best course of action from there and then. One of the changes we made was playing more personal picks rather than what the meta suggested. For example, we dropped Varus and added Twitch / Sivir along with Tristana / Xayah who we're already in place. It suited me much better as I excel in the later stages of the game, rather than the early ones. Since we played on the 8th (last day of week 1) and 12th (first day of week 2) we didn't have much time to make any majors adjustments, but we did have enough to figure out a better way to go about playing against these teams. We reminded eachother how to approach GAM's laneswaps, talked about the importance of Xmithie in IMT and how we could last more than 20 minutes against LZ.

Which puts us at week 2, the "GAM" run. At least that's what I like to call it as it would never have been possible to begin with without them beating IMT. After their game we were up against LZ ourselves, but thanks to Levi & Co a win wasn't needed since we would still have our chances if we were to beat IMT and GAM later on. Our approach to the LZ game was to check mark our week 1 to week 2 changes and try to play late game vs late game, as they completely crushed us in early game during our first encounter. Even though it didn't net us a win, I think we had the right idea and for the first time also our own. After LZ we were up against IMT, a win would keep us alive and a loss would send us home. We knew the circumstances beforehand, but there and then it felt scarier than ever. We usually have really good mid / late games due to our lane assignements / wave control, but this time around we played like anything but ourselves and IMT controlled pretty much the entirety of the map. It eventually led to Baron and a final push, but instead of playing the macro they starting playing the micro which gave us the opening we needed. We aced them and made the call to finish, with minions pouring into our base. If we were to fail there, they would end the game themselves. I remember in the moment since I was one of the first ones to die that the OMG game from 2014 popped into my mind, but sOAZ learned his lesson and together with Jesiz got the final hits onto the Nexus. I've always been an emotional guy so when these kind of situations come around, I lose control. I will be the happiest guy in the room if it works out, and the saddest if it doesn't. Luckily for me, I didn't have to go through the latter again. When I look back at 2017, this is the moment I'll rememember. After the IMT win, we watched LZ fight for us against GAM and IMT (later on). The fact that they managed to show such strength even if the games didn't mean anything for them (at least not the IMT one), made me regret the KLG situation so much more. I know how hard it is to focus as much as you would otherwise during such circumstances, but LZ did it back to back and showed me that there's another way - 감사합니다. As for ourselves, we once again where in a do or die situation against GAM. Thanks to our lvl 1 preparation though, we managed to secure a lead early on along with standard lanes. Instead of us playing GAM's game, they played ours and we got another well needed win that resulted in tiebreakers. We opened things up against IMT and due to draft disparities / stellar play on our end we we managed to take them down once again. I don't think there's much to say about the actaul game as we had such an advantage due to Caps's Malzahar already. If I'm not mistaken he was the first one to play it during the tournament and now it's seen play in 2/4 Quarterfinals and 2/4 Semifinals. With the IMT win we had one more game to play, GAM. This is probably the game that I'm most confused about and have yet to figure out why they did what they did, but it almost worked and definitely caught us by surprise. After seeing them play 6 games of unorthodox strategies we prepared solely for another one and left uncontested S tier meta picks open. This allowed GAM to build one of the more broken teamfights compositions that you could get your hands on and almost cost us the game, but thanks to some individual outplays we managed to get out ahead and make the dream come true. Quarterfinals was a reality.

We ended up drawing RNG which I personally think was the worst one out of the 3 (SKT, RNG, WE) since both us have a similar style of play, but one team has Uzi and one doesn't. I think I'm one of the best ADC's out there, but only a few people can keep up with Uzi and I'm not one of them. Therefore I tried to make a plan for our series that wasn't gonna revolve around us with Lulu / Janna out, but RNG were one step ahead with Soraka vs Janna. We expected them to ban Janna if we banned Lulu and therefore avoid the Uzi show. Adaptation should've happened sooner, we lost the first 2 games before any changes were made and even if they perhaps weren't needed it once again felt like we were playing their game and not ours. I would've much rather lost 0-3 with immense disparity between the teams than us throwing away game 1 / game 2 before panicing and making irrational decisions in terms of draft. We shouldn't have won game 3 and definitely shouldn't have had as much chances as we did in game 4, which is why I feel such sorrow. This series was completely winnable and I wish with all my heart that would've done more. I didn't play well, I didn't make the right decisions, I didn't control my emotions - there's so many things that comes to mind which I should've done better when looking back at the 21st of October in Guangzhou, a day and place where I reached for greatness but got nothing but regret.

These last couple of weeks were some of the best and worst of my life, but I enjoyed every moment. I'm truly grateful for all the support I recieved in China. I never thought that it would be the way it was, but hearing you guys (&girls) chant 欧成 when I was going through one of the toughest moments of my life is something I will never forget. Hopefully I will be able to return one day and if not, http://weibo.com/RekklesLoL. 谢谢. I'm also extremely thankful to the rest of you. I didn't have access to Social Media during our time in China, but I've spent the last week looking over everything and seeing how you guys (&girls) were with us the whole time is truly heartwarming. Thank you.