>Neil 'PR0LLY' Hammad is the coach of H2k Gaming since December 2014. He is now in his fourth split with the team. H2k currently sits in third place in the EU LCS having Schalke 04 as their next opponent. We talked to him about the Summer Split, the Elemental Dragons and the game itself.
Summoner's Inn: Why is it that you struggle that much to win a best of two series?
Neil 'PR0LLY' Hammad: We were experimenting with how we wanted to play out the map in certain scenarios. This sounds vague, but there is a pattern of the game that you need to follow that is pretty basic. If you have teleport advantage, you normally want to play away from that teleport lane. It’s fine if you break this pattern as long as you are able to get something because it will make you unpredictable. If the enemy has teleport advantage and they gank top, you would be confused because you wouldn’t expect them to do that. This is what we have been experimenting with and now we are left in League of Legends macro play limbo where we are kind of undecided which is actually the best play.
We have tried things and had success or mixed results in scrims. We get on stage and instead of having a definitive plan of which we think is the best, we are like “Should we try this one or should we try this one?” When we watch the game afterwards, everything is clear to the players, but in game there is a certain indecisiveness. Right now we are working on getting them to think like they do outside of the game and also on the execution.
So you are confident that you’ll catch up to the top until the end of the regular season?
Everyone is going to say: “We keep improving” and stuff like that. There’s no point in trying to convince anyone that we will get better. Much rather we need the results to show it. I know that I have the abilities to coach that way. My coaching is respected and my players have high skill caps. Everything on paper works out really well. It’s a matter of if we can get along, work as a team and not get complacent or demotivated.
Many people say that EU as a region looks shaky even compared to NA. You are from America, but you coach a European team. What is your stance in this regard?
Anytime you are comparing two things, I would say one thing will be better than the other. For example when you compare apples and oranges, if you ask someone on a particular day, he will prefer apples without any particular reasons. With NA and EU I feel like there will always be one point at which someone is going to be stronger than someone else for a set amount of time. It’s not going ever to be like “Oh, these teams are equal” because no one is looking for that opinion. Someone always wants to prove that they are better than the other. So it’s not really too surprising.
NA did have three teams doing a bootcamp in Korea and practicing much earlier than Europe’s teams. It’s not surprising that they had a jump start. It’s going to show more which is the better region once the big meta shift comes in before Worlds and how teams play around that. What matters is who will be able to adapt to the Worlds meta at that time. At the moment it doesn’t matter how good you are at League of Legends. The time by the end of the split will be important. Right now, NA games are maybe more decisive than EU games, but it’s irrelevant to judge the skill levels. It doesn’t mean anything.
When Riot introduced the Elemental Dragons, a lot of people hoped for more action and skirmishes in the early and mid game because many games have been pretty stale in the beginning. Do you think that they accomplished something by bringing these new dragons into the game or is it just the same with a different appearance?
It might be too early to tell. People haven’t really abused the strengths of the dragons or they haven’t realized how to play around them. The Cloud Drake is a mistake. They are buffing him like crazy and maybe once that becomes viable, we will go back to have a more equal discussion. Right now the Infernal Drake is strong. It’s still not game ending. Normally if you’re playing a team fight composition, it’s pretty obvious that you’re going to take it, but the meta doesn’t favor straight team fight compositions at the moment. It’s either pick, split or siege. If you’re strong and you have power spikes at the time, you can fight for it and if not, you can give it up.
I think the only drake people learned how to play with is the Mountain Drake. That’s the only drake that’s dynamic enough to change the game. Once you see a team with two of them, you can no longer leisurely ward around Baron because they can take it so quickly. The Ocean Drake has the potential to be a non-factor and the Infernal Drake is similar. If you play a pick composition and you play it right, it doesn’t really matter how strong you are or how strong the enemy is. It’s more about the execution of the fight and it will be over the second it begins. The Infernal Drake won’t tip the scales. I like the Mountain Drake because there is a strategic point to it once you get it. Maybe in a while people will figure out how to abuse the Ocean Drake or the Cloud Drake and they will be more contested.
For you, as a coach, is it a good thing that there are usually not many early skirmishes or fights in the game?
I’m not that much into the early stuff just because there is too much randomness involved in my opinion. It’s not even how people play the lane aggressively or passively. A lot of these early skirmishes happen because the team that loses one didn’t recognize before that it would be bad to take the fight. I feel like these fights are happening because the level of League of Legends isn’t as high as it should be. The players are reacting a lot more emotionally than rationally. Fighting early in League of Legends is not really possible at a high level because there is going to be enough respect and intelligence in the picks and bans where you wouldn’t be picking champions that were just going to get completely rolled over. You would be picking things that cause a stalemate until a certain break point. After that point, you start fighting.
That’s more interesting to me because there is thought behind it, structure and points of improvement. If everyone can one-shot anyone, then it’s just luck who shoots first or reacts directly. I like when games have a setup time, there is strategy involved, wards are being placed and cleared. That’s something you can get really smart about and people can’t really counter it. With fighting, someone can outplay you but if you’re smart about the map, there is no level of outplay that will win it because minions and towers have a solid value that is not going to change. I like that about the game.
