Winding down after two weeks of relegation prep, Danny 'Shiphtur' Le from our NA LCS squad takes some time to debrief. From his own picks to his mentality at game five, we get inside Shiphtur's head looking towards the Summer Split.

This is just after you guys secured your spot again in the LCS. I’m here to talk to you about all the stuff going on, your match and what’s going on a little bit later before the Summer Split. How’ve you guys been doing? Have you been relaxing since the victory?

Shiphtur: After our victory we’ve just kind of been vegging out. I feel so brain dead, I think everyone else does too. Once we got home we just fell on the floor and laid there for a good thirty minutes, went out to eat, went into a food coma. A whole lot of R&R.

When you and KiWiKiD were questioned by Dash on the analyst desk you guys both mentioned that most of the prep was picks and bans, stuff like that, but it was also mostly focused on Azingy and getting him comfortable.

Shiphtur: Azingy is our newest player, he has no competitive experience at all. He has a little bit of Challenger experience, but that’s nothing compared to LCS level experience. So we’re just making sure he knew when to differentiate from Solo Queue habits from competitive level, 2v1 swaps and all that. Everyone in the Challenger scene pretty much does everything wrong and that’s pretty much why they’re a Challenger team and not an LCS team. A lot of it is just making sure he knew what to do, when to be at places at the right time and just making sure he’s comfortable playing on LAN instead of online.

Do you have any examples or stories specifically?

Shiphtur: It was just a lot of practice to be honest. If you’re playing Solo Queue you’re usually practicing the wrong things like every hour you’re playing. If you’re playing in scrims you’re in an environment where you’re supposed to be doing the right things instead of just fooling around, doing these yolo plays, uncalculated risks, and it was just making sure he understood that.

When you guys are scrimming, I know it’s talked about a lot in the LCS that if you’re scrimming that you go into with a strat and you try to do that strat. Sometimes it doesn’t work out and you’ll just surrender the game and start over again. When you guys were preparing would you go for the long haul? How specifically did you scrim?

Shiphtur: We were practicing for two weeks. The first week if things went wrong level one then we’d just, you know, remake if we got aced level one or something. Then for the past week we tried to simulate a best of five format where we woke up at the same time as our relegation match at 10 a.m. So we played a best of five straight up, we tried to win that best of five as if it was a real match. No remakes, just trying to win the series.

Let’s talk about the specific matches. Up against Fusion, you guys must’ve been under a lot of pressure once it got to game five. What were you guys talking about backstage and figuring out?

Shiphtur: I mean, I didn’t really care, I’m pretty used to relegation, this is my third time in relegation. I was like, whatever about it. I imagine it’s pretty stressful getting to game five playing for your job, but once you get to game five it’s a mental reset. We were up 2-0, morale is getting low as we get to the fifth game, so you’ve just gotta reset, it’s 0-0 again. Just don’t mess up.

Let’s talk about your picks specifically. You brought Ziggs back, you had an Ahri game, a Kassadin and a LeBlanc. What made you bring Ziggs back?

Shiphtur: Ziggs kind of got buffed a few patches ago, I think. His Q mana cost got reduced or something like that. The meta shifted towards these long range tanky meta stuff, like AOE mages are really shining. Ziggs is kind of the king of AOE mages and wave clear and also the introduction of Luden’s, it’s a really good item on Ziggs because he doesn’t have that many high AP ratios. Luden’s is really good on champions poke oriented and Ziggs doesn’t have any AP ratios, so it’s perfect for him to come back. Also, Ziggs is just a champion you can’t throw on. He’s so straightforward as to what you’re supposed to do to win games. You wave clear, you push towers, get objectives super easily. Honestly he’s just the relegation god champ, you just can’t mess up on him.

I noticed a lot of the bans also centered around LeBlanc. Why was she a contested pick in the picks and bans?

Shiphtur: We banned LeBland mainly because she’s probably the best playmaking mid you can play right now. Huhi played a lot of LeBlanc in the Challenger playoffs or something like that and second it’s his most played in Solo Queue. So we banned it away from him because he’s probably their biggest threat on the team, I feel. LeBlanc was also a very good pick against Ziggs, it’s one of his hardest counters, so we just kind of picked around Ziggs. Then once he started getting banned, that’s why you saw LeBlanc unbanned in game five.

And then why Ahri and Kassadin?

Shiphtur: He picked Zed, and that’s a pretty decent matchup for Ahri. It’s mostly skill but I was pretty confident playing Ahri. I did mess up early game with that 3v1 top lane, but I think Rumble is just OP so that’s why we banned it next game anyway.

Let’s transition over to a couple different things in the LCS shifting around. We’ve got Winterfox relegated by TDK, then we’ve got the movement of Hai. What do you think the Cloud 9 organization is going to be like without Hai?

Shiphtur: I’m not too sure. I don’t think their shotcalling could get super terrible, they played with Hai for a long time and they kind of got a feel of how the game is supposed to go and how the game is supposed to be handled in Hai’s perspective. So I don’t think they’ll make this drastic change in playstyle. I guess having a really strong midlane helps with the game flow. If your midlane has a lot of pressure mid, your side lanes have that much more… freedom. I think he was super underrated, I don’t know why the community hated on him so much for his mechanical skill. I thought he was actually one of the better laners, he just wasn’t flashy in his lane, he wasn’t going to solo kill you. He played it in a way that was kind of like bluffing what he wanted to do. He was very unpredictable.

Then over on Winterfox, did you expect TDK to take them down?

Shiphtur: I didn’t expect for them to lose to be honest, I think it’s kind of unfair that TDK just busted out Alex Ich. Winterfox chose TDK when Kyle was playing for them, but I read it in a reddit thread that TDK informed WFX, I’m not sure if that’s true, that they were going to use Alex Ich. But if they didn’t I think it’s kind of unfair to WFX that they just suddenly get to play against this all star midlaner. I think it was kind of lame. I’m super sad that WFX got kicked out because Altex, Pobelter, Helios, Avalon and Gleeb, I’m really close to all of them. I’m sure they can all get back into the LCS, but I hope so.

Do you think that any of them will stick together and push back in or do you think some of them might get pulled, say Pobelter to Cloud 9? Do you think they’ll stick or spread apart?

Shiphtur: It depends. I think Pobelter and Altec might get picked up by other teams, but I’m not sure about the other three. Helios might too because he’s really good. But after you get kicked out of the LCS a lot of teams decide to just break apart just because the Challenger scene is not a fun place to be once you’ve been in the LCS. It’s actually really depressing to go from LCS to the Challenger scene just because it’s just so much more prestige than the Challenger scene, it’s just super unenjoyable to play in.

Now that you guys are set for the Summer Split, you guys are on vacation for a couple weeks, when do you start scrimming?

Shiphtur: We can do whatever we want until the 18th or the 16th, somewhere around there. We’ll start practicing them but until then our coach Rico actually wants us to be out of the house to prevent burnout. Playing in the same house every day, doing the same thing, same routine does affect burnout. I’m not sure what I’ll be doing, I’ll probably be in the house for a week or two then go visit somewhere.

Let’s talk about Rico a little bit. How has he been for the past while he’s been with the team?

Shiphtur: Rico is definitely a big reason why we’ve been improving as a team. I think just having an authority figure in general in the house, it’s super easy for our scrim environment. It prevents tilting, team morale is way higher and there’s actually a direction in our scrims as opposed to before when we’d just be practicing just to practice. Every scrim now we have a goal to reach, we know what to do, there’s post-game talks. I know some teams, after they scrim, they just don’t talk and they go to the next scrim. So they repeat the same mistakes over and over, but if you do have a coach you talk about the mistake and it doesn’t happen next game. Rico definitely helps a lot, he’s really intelligent about the game and he just knows what we’re doing wrong, what we’re supposed to do and yeah, overall a lot of a help to us.

Also, it’s really hard to criticize from player to player. You know, some player is doing something wrong and someone else is doing it right, it’s almost like you’re not supposed to from player to player. It’s so hard to criticize another player’s play because they could take it the wrong way like you’re insulting them or something like that, talking bad at them. But if the coach is saying it they have to listen or it’s a bad attitude that’s bad for the team.

As you guys go into the Summer Split do you feel like, going forward, that you’ve reached a level of synergy with each other that you can jump into the Summer Split well?

Shiphtur: Definitely, I’m pretty sure we all knew that we weren’t going to do too hot this first split just because we had pretty much a new roster with three new players and some of them were still learning English. Their English wasn’t that amazing when they came here, but now, they talk a lot, they’re real sociable, they’re comfortable in talking in English with us. So coming into the next split we’ll be really open with each other and we’ll be improving a lot. I think even for at least top three. We didn’t get any points for this first split so I think to get to worlds it’ll be really hard. But we’re definitely gunning for that.

Any shoutouts?

Shiphtur: Shoutouts to our sponsors, Rico, Mylixia, all my teammates for getting us through relegations. Shoutout to our fans for sticking with us, though we kind of messed up last split and lost a lot of fans, but we’re working hard to get you guys back.

Thanks for the interview, and thanks for reading/watching!

You can watch Shiphtur's stream on Twitch, follow him @Shiphtur on Twitter and for more League content follow me @dignitas_Roscoe!