Team Heretics opened their LEC Summer 0-2, capped by a loss to KC — but against two of the league's best, new head coach Erlend "Nukeduck" Våtevik Holm isn't reading too much into it. RFT.GG caught up with the Heretics head coach after the defeat to talk about the confidence problem behind the losses, reuniting with Mithy, integrating a Korean bot lane, and what a good Summer looks like for a young, spiralling roster.
Overall, our level isn't high enough to deal with the strong teams — that's obvious, and that's the problem. I think we played an okay game one against KC; we didn't have that many opportunities, and it was a tough game for the team. They're good at using the mage bots, and when they use that to its full potential, in the end that makes the draft winning for them. If they execute that strategy well, it's very strong. So it was a hard game.
The second game is a bit disappointing — I think we kind of lost it because of insecurity, because we felt we needed too much to win. Even though we had very good states for everyone based on the early game — our bot did a great job in the early laning phase, they were winning, Daglas ganked mid and got a kill for Serin, and Tracyn got a kill top. So every lane was doing well, but every lane fell victim to the same thing: they tried to overplay the lane and lost. Tracyn crashed the wave top with a free base, didn't take it and started losing lane. Serin jumped into the tower and died. Bottom tried to all-in when they couldn't kill, and died too. So everyone tried to overplay, maybe because we don't feel confident we can win with the lead we had. That's something we're going to work on.
Honestly, I think we're doing better. I could definitely tell the losing streak affected the players when I first got here, because I came in pre-summer. But I believe we've gotten better, and some of the individuals especially have levelled up. So the spirits are pretty high, because they feel like we turned things around a little — at least we can feel we're improving, whereas before they were deep down in the spiral. Of course, we're now taking some official losses against strong teams, so we also have to face that reality. But the best way to deal with it is to make the team feel they're improving, do something that makes us feel we play better or have a better chance to win, and feel the growth.
That's the best feeling you can give players, to make sure they don't feel stuck or depressed. I think that's the most important thing.
Yeah, I liked the vision presented to me. They wanted to bring Mithy up — he was more of a remote assistant coach — and have me come in so we could work together again and build something at Heretics long term. That was the main selling point. And after coming here, I was very pleasantly surprised with everything. I'm very happy to be at Heretics — they have great fans, great facilities, everyone's very well taken care of. So I came for the sporting project with Mithy and building something long term, but I'm also very happy with how it turned out on that side.
First off, we're doing English lessons to keep their English better. There's definitely some friction there — there always will be when integrating them — but we're trying hard. We're focusing on it a bit later, because the team had some bigger issues first. But what you're alluding to is one of the team's current issues, so that's what we're working on now, basically in VOD review or trying to talk with them about the game.
It's definitely a work in progress — it's not something that's solved, it's one of the things we need to fix.
As a player, I can empathise with them on a gameplay level. When they speak to me about the game, they can feel that I understand how they feel inside a game, even the decisions they make based on small details. Hopefully that lets them have more trust in me — if I tell them I need them to do something, or just in general. I think that builds a good relationship, that they feel I can empathise with them.
His role is basically assistant coach, but his specialty is that he works on culture a lot — he's a bit of a hybrid. They already had him, and I needed someone here for when Mithy can't be, so he was a fit, and he can do a lot of things because he's also an ex-Challenger player and ex-head coach, so he knows the game reasonably well. His main thing is culture, but he's kind of a jack of all trades, because culture is maybe a few meetings or team activities, while the biggest part of what we're doing is game stuff, so he helps where he can. Officially speaking, I think his role is assistant coach. And how is it to work with him? It's good.
Things happened at Heretics before — I don't need to go into too much detail — but he kind of took the fall a little bit. I think we have a good relationship. When I talked to him about the potential of joining together, I could empathise with the situation: I know how it is, you can't control everything, things happen and people have to get fired if things go badly. So it's not awkward between us at all — we're good friends already, I'd say.
Obviously we're in the Summer split, so we're going to try to do what we can — but there'll be limited things we're able to do. The organisation has expectations, the players have expectations,
My own personal goal is to level up the individuals on the team and make them play respectable League of Legends — basically play as a team that people feel they can lose to.
I want to see how far we can push them. Some of them were underperforming because of the downward spiral. Serin especially was pretty weak in spring, but in winter he was pretty good, and I could tell his potential. So I'm hoping Serin can show what he can do, because I think he can. Then after summer, we'll see where it lands and what we do next. But that's not the focus — the focus is definitely to do as well as we can for Summer.
