Relyks: "The work paid off"
After defeating Swole Patrol in the ESEA MDL Season 27 final, we sat down with eUnited in-game leader Skyler "Relyks" Weaver to dicsuss his team's performance at this event and in the past months.
So you've made it back to Pro League, how does it feel?
It feels pretty good. Originally I joined this team not to be the in-game leader, but I ended up taking up the role. This is my first time doing it, so we've been kind of building from scratch, and putting in a lot of work.
We made it into ECS, which was one of our big goals, and obviously Pro League was another one, being the two main leagues. I feel like if we had not made Pro League, I mean, even if we lost this match we would have had another chance, but if we hadn't made it it would have felt like the entire season was a waste. Not only would we have been in MDL next season, but it is going to be a practice season. It is definitely a sigh of relief for us all, a weight off our shoulders that the work paid off.
The team you're with was in this position last season, but lost the games. What did it feel like in the match against Swole Patrol, were the players scared about it happening again?
I think after the first map, they still stayed pretty calm and focused and realized we're still in this, just reset don't even think about it - there's not really much to talk about anyway. So we re-focused on the second map, got off to a slow start, ended up winning it. Then on the third map, we started off pretty strong and once they started mounting their comeback, I think at the back of some of their heads they were probably worried, especially since we had a pretty big lead that we started to lose. For the most part, I think that they played very calm and controlled and they weren't letting it affect their game too much.
You're in Pro League for next season, what are your main goals for the season?
The most obvious goal is to make the LAN, to make top [six]. Short of that, we finally get to play against the rest of the top tier competition in NA, which we kind of got a taste of in ECS, but playing Premier we're playing against a lot of lower tier teams - there's some good teams in there like Torqued and Swole Patrol. I think it'll be a test to see how we stack up against the higher caliber teams - we can kind of test our mettle and see where we stand and if we're ready to play some of the rest of the world stage.
You're going to have to finish your ECS season from here against a team in North America, how confident are you with the game against Rogue with the ping issues?
I think that we're going to try to get a server where we both have decent ping, the issue is they have some players that live on the West coast of the US so they can't just play New York or something. It'll probably be pretty difficult to deal with the ping - it's a little more stressful, because we're actually in contention to make the LAN finals. Having this as our last game and playing with the ping issues, I really think we're just gonna not let it bother us that much and try our best. Hopefully we can find a server where our ping isn't that bad.
You've got a day off tomorrow and then you have Global Challenge starting, what are your main goals, and what impact do you want to make against the international teams you will be facing?
I think the core of this squad, three of them, have played against some EU teams before. I think played against Space Soldiers at the last Global Challenge. But as this five, we've never played against a European team at a tournament, so even though there's not any big teams here - there's Windigo, BIG - I think it'll give us a chance to see how our playstyle works versus European teams because a lot of them play very different. I really think it's gonna be more experience for us - this is the first LAN we've attended as a five together, so the experience will help us out.
In terms of qualifiers, you're still in contention for a couple, but you haven't pushed through to actually getting to an event yet. Are you confident you'll be able to at least another LAN this season?
I think we should be able to, right now we're in the closed qualifier for ESL One Cologne that doesn't resume until later in May. We recently just lost to LG 2-1 in the final of the DreamHack Valencia qualifier which was upsetting at first because we played all day for it, but then we realized that the Minor is at the same time as Valencia. These qualifiers are really good experience and we do get to play against other pro teams in North America like LG and compLexity and the likes, and showing that we're beating them and putting up good numbers makes me confident that we will eventually break through and make it to another event from one of these qualifiers.
You're IGLing for the first time in your career essentially, what sort of challenges are there to adapting your role to make sure you can lead your team in-game?
Even on the past few teams I've been on, my role has been thrown around and changed all the time for the benefit of the team, and now that I'm IGL I think one of the biggest challenges was figuring out what kind of calling style this team likes to play with because I kind of know how their last IGL called and I didn't want to call exactly the same, I wanted to sort of mix it up. I think it's trying to find a balance between very strong and fundamental CS and making sure all the basics are done well and also trying to change the pace and having different hyper aggressive players or to let my players have free reign to do what they want to do, if they see an opportunity or a timing, letting them take it, not sticking too hard to the default or the blueprint for the round. The most difficult thing is trying to find a balance.
Other than the Global Challenge tournament beginning tomorrow, eUnited have their final ECS matches this evening. For the Global Challenge, they find themselves in a group with Torqued, YeaH!, and Windigo.
