Interview with NACS Midlaner Ablazeolive On The State Of NA Midlaners
Dig Sage talks to NACS Midlaner Ablazeolive about his time with Nova and his opinion about the NACS Infrastructure.
Sage catches up with the rising NACS Midlane talent, Ablazeolive. His competitive League of Legends career started with a Team called Mentality and picked up when his talents were noticed by Nova Esports for the 2016 NACS Summer Split. During his tenure with Nova, he was a dominant talent that bolstered the roster to a 3rd/4th place finish, barely missing out on qualification for the 2017 Spring Split Promoton Tournament. We sat down with Ablazeolive to talk about his start in League of Legends, the state of NA Midlaners and what he is looking for the most when looking for a team.
Tell me a little bit about yourself. Where did you come from and where did you first hear of League of Legends?
Ablazeolive: I'm from Toronto, Canada. I have been playing League since Season 1 but started taking it seriously at the end of Season 5. I do not know where I found out about League, I just remember playing it on and off for a while.
Can you give us some pocket picks that you used to climb the NA Solo queue ladder? What got you first interested in the game and what got you to challenger?
Ablazeolive: I used to play a lot of Warcraft 3 and while playing that game it always annoyed me how my character's basic attack had varying amounts of damage. In League, your champion always does the same amount of damage regardless and that is what kept drawing me back initially.Climbing to challenger was a two-step process for me, getting to master, and getting to challenger. Getting to Master, I played a lot of Sivir. It was not until late into season 5 where I began to main mid lane and played mostly Viktor/Azir.
So what prompted the change to mid lane. Were you stuck in Masters with AD Carry as your main role?
Ablazeolive: I swapped to Mid Lane because the team that I was playing for at the time needed a Mid Laner.
Speaking of competitive, where did your competitive career start? Would you have remained at AD had they not needed a Mid laner?
Ablazeolive: My competitive career started on a team called Mentality. We played in a popular tournament called HTC Ascension where we got unlucky with the group draw and got placed in a stacked group with the top 4 teams attending in our group. This meant we did not make it out of groups. Since I was a dual main Mid/ADC I may have still ended up as a mid laner, but it's impossible to know for sure.
Do you have any qualities that make your play style different because you also mained AD Carry before?
Ablazeolive: Not anything specific, the most impactful thing it did was just create a better understanding for the role in general, and a deeper knowledge-base for me to call back to.
So when you joined Nova Esports for the Summer Split of NACS, were you using this knowledge to help other players like your bot lane?
Ablazeolive: Not really, they knew more about bottom lane than I did. It was more I understood it slightly better than some of the other non-bottom lane players on our team.
A damage graph of Nova Esports against Apex Pride during the NACS Summer Split. Taken from Ablazeolive's twitter.
So you are a very young player. How did your parents react to your choice to pursue League as a career?
Ablazeolive: They were very supportive, they knew for a long time how much I wanted to become a pro so they were not very surprised when I said that I was becoming one.
Why do you believe that NA Mids are having trouble breaking into the NA LCS contrary to the EU LCS where EU Mids are rated highly? How do you feel this issue gets resolved?
Ablazeolive: I think EU mids are better simply because they have more people, more chances for stars to shine. Plus since NA prefers to import mid laners over most other roles NA mids tend to get played down a lot. I don't think NA Mids are bad I just think since most teams use their import slot on a mid laner they get taken out of the spotlight easier.
So how do you feel about the new import rule that changes the residency ruling to 4 years? Do you think it can spark more NA mids to break into the LCS?
Ablazeolive: I think that for more NA mids to break through people need to use their import slots on a different role. Increasing the length of time for people to gain residency will probably not change how many NA mids break through.
You have displayed great mechanical skill in the most recent NACS Summer Split. What would you say you need to improve on the most in order to break LCS?
Ablazeolive: Thank you, If I had to pinpoint the one thing I need to improve on the most it would be consistency. I can see a very clear difference when I'm playing well and when I'm playing badly, and when I am playing badly everything I do gets a lot worse.
Do you believe that this mental fortitude to not tilt can be learned on your own or do you believe a sports psychologist or great coaching will yield better results?
Ablazeolive: It is not tilt that makes me play bad, usually it is different on a day by day basis that starts from game 1. Some days I play amazing, some days I play terrible. However, I do think that a sports psychologist would help. Watching TSM: Legends, the players said that Weldon could put them "in the zone" which is what I think would help me and I considered reaching out to Weldon to ask him about this but decided against it as I did not have his email and did not think he would respond to a twitter DM.
What is something that you would like to see your new team do that Nova was not able to provide or meet? In other words, would a performance coach be the biggest reason you join a team? Or is it something else?
Ablazeolive: I think that Nova was very good all around management wise, the biggest problem was how the team meshed. To me that means having a person like Weldon around to help us better mesh together, however hopefully on my next team we will have better team cohesion so we do not need that archetype as badly, but I do think that it can only be a positive thing having a sports psychologist around to help.
Last question, what is the biggest thing that drives you to continue playing League of Legends?
Ablazeolive: It is my favourite game, that's why I will always continue playing it.
I would like to give a thanks to Ablazeolive for this interview. We wish you the best in your path towards the NA LCS.
