After a fight for a chance at Worlds in playoffs, the Dignitas League of Legends squad heads into the LTA North off-season with new goals and challenges. We talked with Frank ‘Tomo’ Lam, sitting down to discuss the more casual and relaxed side of League of Legends.

Tomo on stage in Week 2 of the third split of LTA North (Image Credit: LTA North Flickr)

So, under normal circumstances, we usually focus on the happenings in the League, our current standings, and whatnot. But let’s go into other aspects of league, like the Arena game mode that’s become sort of semi-permanent now. How much Arena have you played?

Tomo: I played a decent amount [of Arena]. If I had time before scrims, I would play Arena to warm up. Arena is a quick game mode, you can just play if you're like, you don't have enough time for a full League game, or if you're like I've played too much Rift today I want to play some Arena, just like fight people. I played a decent amount of Arena.

Yeah it's a pretty good blend of casual fun and fighting with tft mechanics like augments. What kind of champs do you pick?

Tomo: I always pick Bravery, I don't know what champ I get, but it's good to expand my knowledge on other champs.

(laughs) Me too, although I've had to play Yuumi Nautilus once...

Tomo: Honestly, that sounds kinda good. I feel like every time there's a Yuumi in Arena, it always does well for some reason. I feel like supports in general in Arena are overtuned, because they either highroll an augment that like does damage when you're healing people, or they get like the puppeteer thing where if you hit enough times, the enemy will hit their teammate. I dunno, it feels pretty annoying to play against from my experience.

Oh yeah, there are definitely some interesting changes especially around enchanters. I think Soraka in particular had some of the biggest Arena buffs.

Tomo: Yeah, I think Soraka and Karma are so annoying. Even Sona, so annoying to play against.

Let's say you can have any item or Augment turned into an item from Arena into the live game. Which item or Augment would you want, and why?

Tomo: I would just say items, I think... let's see, a lot of the items are old Mythic items that were good before. Runecarver as an item, I think that's how you call it, I think that's a new item to Arena. That item seems so fun to use, especially if you have champs with stacking damage over time effects, it always procs, and does so much damage. Although that might be too overpowered in the actual game. The easy answer to me would be to just bring back Galeforce into the actual game, because it gives immobile ADCs the chance to outplay certain champs.

Oh yeah, Galeforce is definitely something people would want back, although I think it warped threat range a lot especially with things like Jhin 4th shot.

Tomo: Yeah, Jhin 4th shot, Lucian Nami Galeforce Electrocute combo, it was true that it was pretty unhealthy on certain champs.

Off the top of your head, what's the biggest monstrosity you've seen so far in Arena. Say was it something you've hit from augments, a teammate, another team, and what did they do?

Tomo: I mean, ok, maybe I'm not creative enough, but I feel like I never get like, the super OP Augments and item combinations, but always the enemy team has something like, Lux has the healing shielding augment that does burn damage when you heal/shield, and something that makes the heal/shield crit, and it's just super annoying where they just have a 500 shield every second, and they're just killing me. It's just ridiculous, I think enchanters are just broken in arena from my experience.

I think I've tried like high attack speed Kalista, where every time you autoattack, you would just like teleport, because you have so much attack speed.

That one's funny too, especially if you hit like Dashing which makes her insta-blink.

Tomo: Yeah, something like that, because you're instantly teleporting because the game isn't registering how fast you're attacking or something.

I've seen a number of current and former pros in the game around that time when people are done for ranked climbing and just want to take a break by... playing more league. Nothing really says arena fun like the entire C9 squad on different teams. Ok, heck, even yesterday I ran into Spica who was smashing me with a perma CC Lissandra/Xerath team. So let's say, hypothetically, Riot does a pro Arena game. Who do you think would be the best pros, let’s say, within NA, at it?

Tomo: I mean, I played Arena with quite a lot of people, I would say Quid is definitely like one of the better Arena players, because he has a high mastery on a lot of different Champions, not just like mid laners. He's good at playing multiple roles. Pros that are proficient at other roles beside the main ones would be the best in Arena because they would be able to play like weird stuff, and make it work, you know? Yeah, I mostly play with Quid, so I can't say for other pros.

ARAMs and Solo Queue, are they valuable?

So we have to have something more on topic to esports. Recently Jojopyun had a big quote that blew up. It was something like he stopped playing Solo Queue for the last three months, and just played ARAMs. How important do you think Solo Queue is relative to say your scrims and on-stage games? Do you think there may be like habits formed in Solo Queue that might even negatively affect a player's performance in pro?

Tomo: “Besides just like the ping from scrims to Solo Queue, I think Solo Queue is kind of like a different game, where if you play Competitive, people are going to just laneswap on you. You can't really just play for lane, you have to play for the map. But in Solo Queue, nobody really laneswaps, everyone is focused on their own plays, people are less coordinated, so you can definitely form bad habits if you're too invested into Solo Queue. Also for me, since I play ADC, in Solo Queue there's a lot of like Enchanter players on the server. A lot of Sona, Janna, Seraphine, Lulu - champs that you probably won't see often in competitive play - so I don't get the most optimal practice, I would say. I'm not too sure if ARAMs are helpful, I don't really play too many ARAMS, so I wouldn't be able to say.

(Laughs) I swear of the multiple pros I've talked to, they all have a hatred towards Sona being kinda popular in NA.

Tomo: OK, I don't think Sona is a bad Champion, it's just not good practice, like I think Sona is actually a strong champ, but you can't make it work, or it's difficult to make it work in Competitive, but in Solo Queue you can get away with a lot of things, so she's definitely stronger in Solo Queue.

Yeah, I think the last time they put Sona in a carry role with like Taric in pro, was it?

Tomo: I think so. I used to enjoy playing Sona/Taric. I used to play that back in the day in Solo Queue because it was actually strong. But I think since then, they've nerfed her numbers, so she can't actually be an Ability Power carry, she has to go more supportive. Also League was just a different game, back in the days, so I don't think you can get away with playing stuff like that these days.

Yeah and Taric, especially, they love to hit since he's usually like the main culprit of funneling comps that they don't like.

Tomo: Yeah, exactly.

We thank Tomo for his time discussing League with us. Check out his socials here:

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