FlyQuest Licorice on EG win: They couldn’t kill us even with Elder buff

FlyQuest kicked off their LCS Summer 2021 journey with a quick 2-1 record in the first three games. They managed to take down both Counter Logic Gaming and Evil Geniuses, only losing to Dignitas. An acceptable and positive start for a team looking to cement their playoffs position from that 8th place spot. An integral piece to the two FlyQuest wins was none other than former eUnited and Cloud9 top laner, Eric "Licorice" Ritchie.

The Canadian player delivered incredible performances over all three games, even if one of them was ultimately a loss. Over the course of the weekend, he led the LCS top laners in the 'Average Kills' category with 5 to his name. We got the opportunity to interview Licorice following their win over Evil Geniuses in what was a lengthy 40+ minute matchup.

Question: You came out of the laning phase with a 2-0 advantage over Sett. Despite that, it was relatively close in teamfights between you and Impact for your respective teams, which champion do you think is more effective in teamfights?

FlyQuest Licorice: I think it really it's just gonna depend on the team comps. I actually had a hard time playing teamfights this game as it is. Mainly because Samira is actually one of the few ADCs who can beat me in the 1v1. I can't just like dive straight in.

I was also playing with a poke comp with Karma and Ezreal so I couldn't just go in and start off the team fight every time. That was kind of what impact was able to do with Wukong because they had the likes of Rumble, Rakan, and Tristana jumping in like everyone. We relatively only had Samira going in deep with me, even though I know everyone tried to follow up on our engages. So I would say that in this game, it was much harder for me to be more effective than I already was.

Question: Wukong is usually more comfortable side laning and split pushing as long as you have teleport advantage. We rarely saw this happen today. Do you think the state of the game didn't really allow you to split push?

Licorice: It's hard to say without being able to watch the game back. But I think that like in mid game, we just like weren't doing a good job of playing the side lanes at all. Neither top side or bottom side for that matter. That's definitely something that I'm going to be looking into before we play Cloud9 next week.

I mean, it kind of just happened. Ideally, I want to be able to like push the side lane and teleport into fights whenever I feel like we will have a numbers advantage. It never felt like we actually had that about to happen anywhere on the map for any of the fights. Another scenario was to side lane and teleport on flank wards prior to teamfights for a good engage for my team to follow up on. Normally that's like Wukong's bread and butter.

Question: When games usually last this long, there is no real advantage between the teams except for how strong one composition scales over the other for example. What do you think closes these games out in the end?

FlyQuest Licorice: Usually, it's just like an individual play. Most of the time it is one player chunks out another player to force a reset. Or like someone missteps and gets caught out of position and a team fight is forced with the numbers advantage. There is also always the possibility of one player making some kind of super play you know? Imagine if Ezreal was to like E in, then use Flash, and land all their skill shots and like do a ton of damage or something like that.

Usually it's some kind of big play I would say in this game what actually ended is that they dove us do far near our Nexus. We fought them from the luxury of our fountain and they couldn't kill us even with Elder buff. If any of us was taken down, it would have been over.

Question: Do you usually play around dragon objectives regardless of the soul buff that gives you in a particular game? Would you see FlyQuest as an objective oriented team in general?

FlyQuest Licorice: Yeah, I believe we like dragons as a team. Something we look to play around as often as we can really. When you ultimately get the soul, it should be really helpful. Although it didn't really do much for us this game against Evil Geniuses.

Question: How much of a morale boost does winning games like this give the FlyQuest roster? How important are they for the mentality and team morale going forward throughout the LCS Summer 2021 Split.

FlyQuest Licorice: It's a really nice feeling for sure winning games that are this close. Because when you have a really tough game like this, where a lot of things go wrong, it's much more beneficial to be able to learn from it. At least now when we look back at the VODs, we know we eventually won that game. The reason why I say this is because when we dissect how we threw away a lead or took a bad fight, it makes the game really painful to go back through. So I would say that this is like a really good learning experience. And hopefully, we'll be able to take a lot from it.

Question: Currently, you sit in eighth place in the standings? Are you confident in making playoffs? Do you ever feel that is there is pressure on FlyQuest to make playoffs?

FlyQuest Licorice: I mean, one of the great things about being a team in the bottom half of the rankings is that you always have plenty to work on. I would say like pretty much everything can be worked on and improved. I think as long as we just take it a day at a time and fix the problems that are in front of us like we do in scrims but execute it on stage, then we'll definitely get to playoffs.

Question: Gwen is probably one of your most favorite champions at this point. You were deadly in FlyQuest's win against CLG with a perfect 6/0/6 score. Are we going to see it soon? Do you think she has any bad lane matchups?

FlyQuest Licorice: I hope so. I sure hope so. I'd love to play her again on stage. I think Gwen doesn't really have bad matchups at all. I think there's some things people are trying out, like playing Gangplank into her. Basically the problem with the champ is that once she gets to two items, she is just really strong. I am talking 1v5 level strong. So it's like makes it really hard to play the game.

Question: Cloud9 Fudge played her this week running teleport and ignite as his summoner spells. Do you think that's a combination of we'll see more often?

FlyQuest Licorice: Yeah, for sure. Teleport is one of the more common summoner setups that people take on her. Gwen is just really hard to catch any ways. At that point, you are kind of allowed to have that extra pressure if you want. And in certain lines it helps out a lot. For example, in that particular game he was up against Lee Sin, and ignite isn't a bad idea against the shield he puts on himself and allies with W.

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