Interview conducted by Amanda Stevens

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Jeong "NoFe" No-chul is the command tower of the ROX Tigers. After his victory over EDG, I was able to talk to him about the difficulty of preparing for the various teams at Worlds and how they plan on defeating SKT.

Amanda Stevens: EDward Gaming had to have an emergency substitution for top lane with Tong “Koro1” Yang replacing Chen “Mouse” Yu-hao. Did that change any sort of prep work that you were doing for EDG?

Jeong “NoFe” No-chul: We only watched Mouse during the group stages so we didn’t know what kind of hidden picks Koro1 might have had. So, we were worried about that. Koro1 was the sub and was not picked to come to Worlds so we were guessing that Mouse was probably the better of the two. If you looked at it technically, it was something that benefited us by having Koro1 instead of Mouse.

Amanda Stevens: When it comes to Worlds you’re constantly changing metas. You start with Group stages which has its own style of play and you’re prepping for a broad stroke of play styles, and then you have Quarters where you are prepping for one team. How do you guys adapt your prep work?

Jeong “NoFe” No-chul: No matter what the meta, is we do have to prepare for each team and we basically try to counter against a lot of the dominant players of the various teams. And for us, Smeb is our ace player so we try to focus our gameplay around him. But, it’s usually not that straightforward and you end up having to just adjust every time.

Amanda Stevens: When I was speaking to the head coach of Samsung Galaxy  he had mentioned that as soon as he saw the bracket draws, he had begun to prep Pick/Ban for H2K alongside his prep for Royal Never Give Up. Seeing as how you had SK Telecom on you side of the bracket, was it the same for you? Had you already begun preparing to play against SKT?

Jeong “NoFe” No-chul: We didn’t even think about SKT, we were just taking one match at a time. And EDG is China’s number one seed so we had to go over their team to ensure that we’d make it to the Semifinals. So, we definitely just focused on EDG for this. But, after we saw RNG vs SKT we thought “well, that’s just the usual SKT” and now we definitely need to start preparing for SKT.

Amanda Stevens: Of the lane matchups between ROX Tigers and SKT, which lane do you think is going to prove the most challenging for your players?

Jeong “NoFe” No-chul: All lanes are really hard matchups and it’s going to be intense. But, we think Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok is probably still the world’s best player so we’ll try to have a strategy to counter against Faker. Lee “Kuro” Seo-haeng has to prepare to play against Faker and this time have to beat him for us to win.

Amanda Stevens: What do you think of the format that Riot uses for Worlds where it takes place over the course of five weeks? In comparison, DotA2’s The International is an eleven day event with the same number teams participating. Do you think you’d prefer a shorter tournament?

Jeong “NoFe” No-chul: There are pros and cons to having it long or short. But, I think having it extended out to five weeks is actually better because we have a lot more time to prepare for other teams. Also, the World Championship is basically like tying the knot for the end of the season. It’s probably the most important part of the whole year so we do like the fact that it’s actually extended out so we much more time to prepare for it.

Image courtesy of Lol Esports Flickr

A special thank you to Hyojoon Lee for being my translator during this interview.