Schalke 04 stunned the LEC by sweeping Fnatic with a 3-0 scoreline. We were able to sit down with support Dino “LIMIT” Tot after the match.
Your opponents, Fnatic, were notoriously aggressive during the regular season. How did Schalke prepare for this matchup?
“We told ourselves to not give in to Fnatic’s fiesta playstyle. Just take it slow and take a deep breath after every kill made either by us or them and play slow. We joked that Fnatic would get bored and engage on us and we just had to be in a position where if they did this, we can push on sidelanes and make them lose CS. Even if they really, really want to kill us, like they did to me in game one especially, I’m just going to laugh it off and look at the map and see them lose mid just to kill me.”
Your first two games were incredibly dominant as you got early leads across the map, what do you think facilitated these starts?
“We were obviously prepared for them. Both of these games Fnatic prioritized early drakes which we don’t consider to be the most important thing on the map. Every drake they took we just traded for herald and basically every time we got herald ,they lost a mid tower. Playing Twisted Fate with your tower down must be such a tilting experience. We just made it important for us to trade whenever we can and those ended up being in our favor.”
3 0 without alistar
— Dino (@S04LIMIT) April 2, 2021
Schalke 04 managed to keep pace with Fnatic and match their aggression. Do you think this speaks to Schalke’s teamfight prowess?
“I think it’s both. Let’s say there’s a 1-minute before drake fight, we just let them jump in and we kite back slowly and re-engage and save our cooldowns. I think it’s something every team does, we just do it a bit better since we’re more coordinated than the average team.”
Schalke really seems to excel with hard engage junglers. Is this just the meta or something Schalke particularly executes well on?
“It’s the meta for sure, Udyr, Hecarim, and Volibear are just kings of the jungle right now. They are picked by basically every single team for good reason. It also happens to be that we work better with them. I guess it goes in our favor more than Fnatic. Selfmade is really not a player who plays picks like this, he plays it because it’s strong but he definitely prefers Graves and Nidalee.”
If you spend one week in the office with Broken Blade, in 7 days you’ll get 7 different picks.
One thing I’ve appreciated about Schalke in playoffs is how much you’ve experimented in toplane. Has it just been your collective faith in Broken Blade that has inspired these picks?
“For sure. If you spend one week in the office with Broken Blade, in 7 days you’ll get 7 different picks. Every time I come into the office I hear ‘X is broken, we need to play it’. Like Dylan is losing his mind, but sometimes it just looks good, an example being the Darius. We obviously trust him, Broken Blade is a great player. I know that he wouldn’t say stuff like this to waste our time or practice. When he has a good idea and comes to the coach with a thought out process that examples why it’s good, then why not.”
Fnatic’s botlane was heralded in the regular season as one of the strongest 2v2s in the LEC, but you and Neon absolutely dismantled them. What specifically about this matchup allowed you to get these advantages?
“We scouted Fnatic and knew what they wanted to do. When they drafted Twisted Fate and Lee Sin in game two, we could feel them coming bot even if we couldn’t see them. So our objective was just not to die. We fought back obviously, but we also understood that they wanted to get their botlane ahead since that’s how they won most games. We just focused on getting good picks that we could survive on and shut Fnatic down.”
Nein Mann.
Ich will noch nicht geh’n.
Ich will noch’n bisschen #LEC Playoffs schau’n!
Komm schon alter, ist doch noch nicht so spät.
Lass uns noch n bisschen Playoffs schau’n! #S04WIN pic.twitter.com/vvmDdnLz6p
— Schalke 04 Esports (@S04Esports) April 2, 2021
You guys went into game three with confidence, particularly seen through Gilius’ early drake steal. Were you guys just that sure you were going to take the series since momentum was clearly in your favor?
“That play was sort of a miscommunication from us. Of course it was really clutch that Gilius stole it, but we should have also Q’ed in there and played it a bit better. I will say that our ego was a bit too much since we were riding that wave. When we were sitting in the room after game two, we were calm and relaxed because we knew Fnatic was super tilted since that’s just the reputation that they have. We started being more proactive than game one and two but we could basically just let Fnatic win the game for us by just punishing them.”
In the later part of the regular season, we weren’t even sure if Schalke were going to make it to playoffs but of course you guys finished top four and have made waves in playoffs. Being one of the new additions, did you see this potential in Schalke roster?
“When I first joined, I knew that Abbedagge and Gillius were a really strong duo. Just look at the Miracle Run, that doesn’t happen by accident. Performing when it matters the most is a really big deal. Then we put Broken Blade on the roster, who has suited us so well since he has so many picks that he wants to play. Top, mid, and bot all just trade who’s going to carry the game, that’s why I really like this team.”
Rogue is clearly a good team, you don’t finish second by accident.
Schalke 04 will face off against Rogue in your next series, do you have any initial thoughts about this matchup?
“Rogue is clearly a good team, you don’t finish second by accident. They are a good, strong team that has a great reputation, but you also have to give us our credit. I would say we are definitely the underdogs going into this series given Rogue’s reputation, but being the underdog isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Also read:
- SK TynX: “It’s our first split and we did okay, it can only go up from here”
- MAD Humanoid: “Teamfighting is currently the meta and it certainly is one of our strengths”
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