JimieN disagrees CTBC played like an ARAM game vs VCS

In Play-In: Round 1 of CTBC stomp, quickly became a back-and-forth series, which ultimately saw the Flying Oysters lose. We caught up with Tseng "JimieN" Hao-Chun to ask about being expected to win, representing the PCS as the second seed and leaving NA Academy to return to the PCS.

So you've actually played in NA before, as you played on the 100Thieves Academy team, what made you return to the PCS after this stint in NA?

JimieN: "For me, while playing in NA was a good opportunity, there was definitely a language barrier which was difficult. It created a gap between the players and it wasn't straightforward to play, so I came back to the PCS and Taiwan to make playing a lot easier and comfortable for everyone as here I can speak in my native language."

At Worlds 2023 you are the second seed for the PCS following PSG, is there pressure to do as well as they do at this event?

JimieN: "Actually I don't really feel pressure as the second seed as we aren't competing against PSG, but if we are competing against PSG then I want revenge for our match."

When you are in a matchup of PCS vs VCS – you were expected to win, does this make it harder for you to go and play the match itself?

JimieN: "I think we are still stronger than VCS. Just our individual performance was not what it should have been today. We can still beat them either way, and knowing this makes us confident in our matchups against them."

The broadcast desk said that before your 26-minute mid-lane fight, it felt like you were playing ARAM [playing solely through mid and top lane not being touched for 5min] – is this something you agree with?

JimieN: "No, our top laner Rest, prefers to play more damage-based champions and while we played a lot in mid-lane we weren't as reckless as you might be when playing ARAM."

Every match we've seen you play so far [series against DFM and TW] you have bought out a different champion pool, is this to show how deep your champ pool is or are you just enjoying playing different champs?

JimieN: "I'm not actually trying to showcase my champ pool but because of how pick/ban goes, I find I often need to go into my champ pool and get a bit creative to keep the other team on their toes."

Game 2 really didn’t seem to go in your favor, what do you think went wrong?

JimieN: "Honestly in the second game, we were a bit nervous and we had been nervous in our first game too. Everyone was very anxious and not calm enough, and that didn't help as the game began to slip away from us. We know that a part of this is that our synergy still needs some work."

Your Jayce was praised by the desk as such a strong blind pick for you – is this a pocket pick for you or a comfort champ?

JimieN: "Jayce is a champion that needs our jungler to play more support or tank based, if we go Jayce then mid and jungle are both AD and that isn't so good for the rest of our game, so although I love to play him it wasn't the right champion for this series."

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