MrRallez: “NiP could have been a top 4 team if they had passed Promotions…”
MrRallez is no stranger to the competitive scene. Making his mark as one of the best Graves and Urgot players during Season 2, it was a bit later that he started garnering the attention of the crowd as a substitute AD Carry for NiP.
The interview was conducted on 03.05.2014.
I.) Supa Hot Crew during the Spring split:
Greetings Rasmus! First off, congratulations on keeping your spot and entering the Summer Split of the LCS. The last four months have been rather tough for the Crew and that was visible from the team’s performance. What was the biggest struggle during the Spring split?
Our biggest struggle was to transform our solo queue play style and mentality into playing as a team with more focus around objectives rather than chasing kills or that we have to win our lanes really hard, to be able to win games. We are still kinda playing like that, since we had to do a swap with our mid laner. But i would say that we did a good progress, which showed in our relegation matches.
Despite the steady bottom four placement, the roster change seemed to ‘awaken’ the Crew and Selfie’s good debut on LeBlanc did return the 6th place hope for the team. How did the Pole become a member of the Crew and what made him stand out among other candidates?
Getting Selfie into our team, gave us a lot more motivation and we kinda knew at this point that going to relegation was a big chance, and we felt that we would get way more prepared with him. We knew that the swap wouldn't make any difference in the short term and we didn't expect to see any big results as soon as the swap happened
During the regular split, the team won at least one game against every other competitor. Do you see this as simple coincidence or are there situations where the Crew is better than any other EU team?
Our team was quite a hit or miss as we didn't have any practice before getting into LCS. So we relied a lot on winning the lanes and start snowballing from that, and then it felt like the teams had to play a game or two against us before they realized what to do to counter it, which is one of the reasons why we had great success in the early weeks.
II.) Supa Hot Crew prior and during relegation
How was the team spirit post week 11?
Our team spirit was fine, we knew when we made the swap with mid laners that it was very likely for us to get relegated.
Describe the practice schedule prior to the Promotion Tournament and the motives behind the choice of Cloud 9 Eclipse as an opponent.
We pretty much practiced 6-7 hours everyday and looked at replays of our games if needed, and then 3-4 days before our match we decided on our picks and bans. We picked C9 instead of NiP because we felt that C9 was kinda a mirror of us. Their laning phases and mid was their strongest point just like us, but the difference is that we had more than 2 weeks of practice together and we had way more experience
In your opinion, how integral was k0u to Cloud 9’s pre-Promotion Tournament success in the Challenger scene?
I think k0u was a big factor to C9 success, as far as i know he was the main shot caller and he was carrying a lot of their games. But I think Santorin did a really good job against us, even though he only had 2 weeks of practice with his team.
We saw a completely new Crew against Cloud 9. Despite the latter being fan favourites (76% in the lolesports.com votes), an exemplary performance from nearly everyone on SHC crushed their hopes with a sound 3-0. Did people overestimate C9 or did you guys specifically counter their style?
Maybe they overestimated us. But it seemed like they had a lot of nerves as well. On the other hand ,the nerves didn't really effect our game play, we would still play like we used to, with taking some risky plays like baron and tower dives. Also it seemed like C9 weren't playing to win, but rather go even at best. Which made them play a lot more passive even though they had several chances to make plays.
Hjärnan and Voidle have been Solo queue Challenger dominators this season, not dropping out of the top 10 spots for quite awhile now. In the Promotion games however, you and Migxa made quick work of them. Are they not as good as stats and rating make them out to be?
Hjarnan and Voidle are really good online. But offline it seemed like Voidle had hard times dealing with his nerves, which resulted in a lot of questionable deaths. But online Voidle is a beast! Hjarnan played fairly decent vs us. He couldn't really do much in any of games.
III.) The Future of Supa Hot Crew
YoungBuck recently claimed the top 8 teams in Europe are already in the LCS. Do you agree with this statement and how do you see the Crew matching up to the Summer Split competition after the ‘trial’ Spring period is over?
I do believe that NiP could be at least a top 4 team if they could get through relegation. I think we will be a lot better this split, as soon as we have found a new support. We know what we have to work on and fix before this split. So we should see a stronger crew this split.
Are there any plans for new signings like substitutes who could potentially rotate with people from the main roster during the Summer games?
I have no idea.
With a new split comes a new meta. Is the current state of the game favourable for the Supa Hot Crew?
The meta is both good and bad for us. The champions played in mid lane is a bit more in favor for us, while the AD champions is a bit harder to carry with. Many of the champions are very situational, since everyone is playing Irelia or Jax. All these feral flare junglers and so on, make it very hard to play an AD carry without an escape, which is one of the reasons why you see more Graves, Corki in an even bigger favor of Lucian.
Which team do you think will improve the most during the small break between splits?
Supa hot crew
What are the Crew’s goals for the upcoming Summer Split?
The goal is obviously to get to Worlds, and I think our chances are decent if we put a lot of work into it. Some of the teams in the split seems a bit weaker now because of the roster changes.
IV.) Miscellaneous questions
Your peers in the LCS consistently praise your play, but fans never seem to put you in a top 3 list. Why is that?
Because I'm a new guy, that doesn't have the biggest fan base. Also I haven't really accomplished anything compared to Rekkles, CandyPanda etc. and I would also say it has something to do with me getting 7th place as a team.
In a recent AMA, Forg1ven stated that he has a lot of trouble playing against the SHC bot lane. Besides the aggressive style, what is the secret of Rallez and Migxa?
I think its only the aggressive style. Since most botlanes take it a bit more safe and rely a lot more on their team to make plays. While me and Migxa kind of have to get out of laning phase with a big advantage to be able to win games, because every other team in LCS played way better as a team than us.
We are seeing the resurgence of Graves across all regions. Is that due to the champion buffs or the general meta changes after the new patch? In addition, which match-ups or circumstances make the cowboy a valuable pick?
Graves is a pretty good pick against almost every AD and has really high burst and a really good escape, which is the biggest reason why I play him a lot more. Because of all the new champions in the jungle with feral flare and people playing Leona, Irelia or Jax, it just makes it impossible to play Jinx/Twitch. You also see more Corki and even Ezreal because of his escape and his w makes tower pushing going even quicker and better.
During this split we saw three interesting bot lanes - SK, Alliance and Gambit. Mind giving us a quick overview of their overall strength?
I’m not really sure. But SK's duo is the best out of the three with Alliance being close second. Gambit is a solid third.
This question was asked by our good friend and Riot caster Trevor ‘Quickshot’ Henry. Mind answering?
Its because of Pågen ‘’gifler’’ and Pepsi Twist :) .
The wrap-up question will be, in good onGamers tradition, a hypothetical one. Let’s say that MrRallez suddenly got tired of LoL and became a full-time coach with unlimited funding and influence. Your job is a tricky one: you must take the best players from the three teams that did not make it through the Promotion tournament (NiP, DNL, C9E) and place them as starters on the teams that made it in, including Supa Hot Crew. What would your pick and changes be?
Since Copenhagen wolves are looking for new ad carry i would say that Woolite from Denial is the best choice.
Since We are looking for a support i would obviously pick Mithy because he is in my opinion a top 3 support in Europe.
But apart from that i think that Zorozero, nukeduck and mithy could fit into any of the teams because they are better than all the players in their roles.
- Thank you very much for your answers, Rasmus! The final words are yours.
I would like to say thanks to Supa hot crew and our Sponsors Acer and CM Storm. I would also like to give a shoutout to a guy I personally will miss a lot, Migxa - one of the funniest guys I’ve ever met. Even though things didn't always go in our favor, we always came up with the weirdest and funniest things to do.
Images courtesy of gameinfo.lol, Trevor Henry's Facebook, lolesports.com
