After having a mild off-season with their roster still intact, unlike the war like turmoil going on in the rest of the league, 100T are looking forward to bounce back and solidify their position heading into the Summer Split, and possibly proceed further into the playoffs this time around than before. With a hot split from Ssumday and a promising talent in Ryoma, 100T seem to have a decent chance going into the split although their success lies entirely in their efforts. Esports Heaven sat down with coach Zikz and got to talk on a smorgasbord of topics ranging from Ssumday, Ryoma's improvement, the latest patch 10.12 to the top 3 teams for Summer Split, TSM's coaching staff, and Volibear as well as Fiddlesticks within the current meta.   This was a calmer off-season for your team in terms of roster changes and whatnot. So, was everything pretty mellow for the off-season for you guys? Yeah, for the most part. We spent a lot of time finding more growth with the pieces we already have rather than making any big changes. We set some pretty solid goals for our players during the off-season and they made solid strides on reaching those goals to make us a better team overall before we come back to the split.   One of the better things we witnessed from last split was Ssumday just "f*****g" smashing heads. It seemed like he got more and more agency and resources from the team. Was this a conscious decision from everyone on the team? How did this work out? We’re a pretty open and honest team. I guess if there’s something that is very obvious to the team, we don’t try to hide it. For example, if Ssumday is our most consistent carry, then our team is very vocal and say, “I think Ssumday is playing the best right now, so we should give him the most agency to get him ahead so that he can really flex his advantage over other top laners”. I think we acknowledged that at some point in the team, but it’s not like it was the only way we needed to play as a team. We kind of recognized how our team needs to grow in the meantime while we were using Ssumday’s strengths.   Another big surprise was Ryoma. I was super down on him at the beginning of the Summer Split, and then he ended showing up as the split progressed. So how has his development been going so far? Initially I think it kind of makes sense if people were down on him because they didn’t see much out of him but internally we were pretty trusting in his ability to improve because a lot of the reason why we picked him up is because of the intangibles. He has insane work ethic, takes feedback well, and understands how to improve himself without coaching. He’s got a really solid thought process on how to improve a situation through problem solving. These were things we picked up on that were big metrics for his success and as time went on, everyone saw the improvement which came from those intangibles From our side, it wasn’t a surprise that he was popping off towards the end of the split and I’m sure he will do the same and pop off even harder this split.   I think even more so than before that the mid/jungle 2v2 is probably still going to be very important, but given the positives with invades because of the xp changes, how important do you think this is going to be for the meta? I think mid-jungle is always a very important synergy to have within your team. That was one of the main things we wanted Meteos and Ryoma to work on. They set out this off-season to make sure they were one of the stronger duos because they saw how important it was, modeling a little bit after C9 in a sense, they put a lot of emphasis on using mid-jungle to aggressively destroy the enemy jungler while pressuring the side lanes and being vocal. This was something we looked to improve on during the off-season and they’ve made strides on it.

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I don’t know if you’ve kept up with the recent patch, but 10.12 patch notes were just released. Although that’s not going to be what you’re playing on this week, I think it’s going to be a big factor because there’s a lot of huge changes in it. One thing is, Ghost was buffed to where you get the move-speed instantly and it’s extended if you get a kill/assist. Then you have Unflinching to where you get 10% tenacity. What do you think about some of these changes? I haven’t read too much into the recent patch notes, other than hearing about the Ghost rework. It’s kind of interesting because it’s like every champion randomly became Aatrox because they get this huge move-speed buff. My initial thoughts is that maybe it could be really OP? I don’t see people picking it up over Flash? Maybe I could be wrong on this. I think maybe mid lane mages could use this to kite people, but I’m interested to see how things pan out.   Let me get your top 3 team predictions heading into the 2020 Summer Split, aside from 100 Thieves. Top 3 teams would probably be Cloud9, probably FlyQuest, and I’m not sure, third is a toss-up. My gut feeling would be TSM, I think they can improve, they have a lower starting point because they rebuilt, so we probably won’t see a lot of their power initially, sort of like TL, but I think their ceiling is pretty high and if managed well, they can definitely place top 3.   Speaking of which, what are your thoughts on the TSM coaching side of things, because it seems their coaching structure is a little wonky right now. What’s your take on this? Hmm. Yeah, I’m not sure. I think, from my experience, there were a lot of cooks in the kitchen, a lot of people on staff not fully knowing what their job or role was, just things in general being unclear and not out in the open. Things weren’t open and honest as much as I wanted them to be. That is something I really like and something I felt existed in 2019 Spring Split, but not 2019 Summer Split.   I finally want to get your thoughts on Fiddlesticks and Volibear in the current meta. I think Fiddlesticks has some potential, but I think Volibear is somewhat of a troll champion. He’s the epitome of a stat-check champion. There’s no crazy outplay potential (laughs). If the stats make sense, then the play works. The champion seems too straightforward, whereas Fiddlesticks has good outplay potential, good playmaking, but could get invaded early and not having too much early game power.   Some other people were also talking about how it’s difficult to draft for Fiddlesticks because you have an AP champion in the jungle. Yeah, that’s another factor for sure. ___ Izento has been a writer for the LoL scene since Season 7, and has been playing the game since Season 1. Follow him on Twitter at @ggIzento for more League content. Image courtesy of Riot Games For more LoL content, check out our LoL section