"If We Don't Make Playoffs Again, It's Been a Bit of a Failure" — Mikyx After SK's Win Over Fnatic
Photo Credit: Riot Games
SK Gaming needed this one. A 2-0 win over Fnatic keeps them alive in the playoff race, but with KC, G2 and Vitality still to come, the margin for error is gone. Mihael "Mikyx" Mehle — the player who vouched for this roster before the season — sat down with RFT.GG right after the win, honest about what hasn't worked, what he got wrong, and what's still at stake.
Big win, kept you alive in the playoff race. How are you feeling?
Feels like a big relief. The games were very chaotic and not really clean at all, so it doesn't feel as nice as it could have. But at least it's 2-0. Winning with that last draft was quite rough.
Was it a bit personal facing Fnatic today?
It was definitely a little bit personal, yeah. It's always nice to win against my past teams.
It felt a little bit more special than the other games.
Last year with Fnatic it looked like the team always played around botlane. This year you're playing way less close to your ADC, especially in the early game. What's the reason?
It's mostly just that most matchups are enchanters. So either you get pushed in or you're pushing, and whoever can move mid can go help. You don't really do much in your own lane. I think it's mostly after the laning phase — when you start going mid lane with the support and AD and playing together more. But in the laning phase, you usually just receive waves and try to move with the jungler. It depends on the draft though.
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Despite being left on his own in lane, Jopa has been looking very good — especially aggressive in the mid game. Did you expect that when you committed to him for the season?
Kind of, yeah. I wanted to play with him because I saw he could do stuff like this. I wasn't sure how he'd be on stage because everyone can play differently in tryouts or scrims compared to stage. So, I wasn’t expecting him to be as confident from the start.I think he can still be a bit more aggressive sometimes — I can still catch him doing something very scared that he wouldn't do in scrims. But for the most part he's doing quite well, playing quite solid.
What's the biggest difference you notice playing with Jopa compared to playing with Upset?
Upset was for sure a bit more vocal about how to play the game, playing around him and leading the game — he was a lot better at that. But other than that, I thinkthey have similar playstyles.
This week you looked much better than the previous ones, even in the loss against MKOI. What happened for you to align better in such a short time?
I wouldn't really say we're doing something better this week. I think with every stage game we played, we got something out of it and learned from it. On the day it kind of just depends how we play individually. We're still not the greatest as a team — we still have a lot of miscommunications and people being on different pages, which we need to work on.
Photo Credit: Wojciech Wandzel/Riot Games
Comparing it to Winter I think we're doing better, but we still do a lot of random stuff that I'm not sure how fast we can fix. Hopefully we get better at it for next week because we have some tough opponents. If we play like we did today and against MKOI, I'm not sure we're winning against the better teams. But at least we have some confidence now.
When you lose everything, it feels like whatever you do is wrong.
So this feels better now at least.
What are the main specific difficulties you're going through as a team since the start of the year?
Drafting is still a little bit difficult. We don't really align well — everyone doesn't see draft the same way, so we have to make compromises, which can be difficult. And in-game, we're just very indecisive. We're not sure if we want to fight the Drake for example. Today we were better at deciding early whether we want to contest it or not, but it still happens a lot that we're sitting there 30 seconds before Drake and then we're like, actually we can't contest, so we've just wasted time doing nothing elsewhere.
The indecisiveness and drafts are probably our main issues right now.
Even when you lose, it looks like you have strong teamfight setups. Is that where you shine the most?
I wouldn't say teamfights are a strength, but we've improved on it a lot since last split because that was our problem — we always had early leads but managed to lose every fight. The games that come to mind are the GIANTX game with Taric or the Los Ratones game, free wins that we just managed to misplay every fight. I don't think we're insane at playing fights yet, but we're better at setting up for them. Our positioning before fights is a bit better, but how we play the actual fights still needs work. It's better, but not a strength.
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Individually, do you feel as sharp as in previous years?
For myself? Not really. I think I'm playing a bit worse than in my other years.
Why is that?
I’m not sure.
I think a lot of times I'm also trying to think about what to do as a team. In past teams I didn't really have to focus too much on what we want to do collectively.
I have to think more about what we should do as a team because no one is very decisive about what plans to execute or what should happen in the game. So sometimes I'm thinking about that a bit more and not thinking about my positioning or my wards. A lot of times nowadays I end up sitting on the map with zero wards and I'm like, oh sh*t, I should have based. But yeah, that's the main thing. I don't think it's that big of a difference, but I think I can do a lot better.
Before the season you were very confident this project would work, despite everyone doubting. How do you explain you were so confident?
I had a lot higher expectations of everyone, including myself. I'm not playing at my best, and I think the rest of the team isn't playing at their highest potential either.
I thought we would be a lot better as a team because we all wanted to play together, so I assumed it would be easier to have discussions, reviews, to be aligned. But it kind of didn't turn out that way.
We have a lot of differing views and opinions, which makes it more difficult. But I think if we can get aligned on that, we could be quite good. For individual level, I thought even if people were to be bad or worse at the start, everyone would put in the work to get better individually. So far it's semi-true — I think we're not doing all the extra things we could, but we're doing a good amount, more than I could see from my other teams. But we can still do more to get better as individuals.
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So would you say the doubters have proved you wrong, or is it too early to say?
It's for sure a bit too early. But if we don't make playoffs again, then yeah, probably it's been a bit of a failure. So far, it wasn't as good as I would hope.
Knowing everyone considered this your project — 'Mikyx and friends' — do you think that may have unconsciously put more pressure on you to deliver?
Yeah, for sure. I can feel it sometimes.
For example the Irelia game, when my mid laner is 0/10 or whatever he was — I'm like: 'What was I thinking?' Sometimes I have this kind of thoughts because at the end of the day, it's on me.
So I feel bad for going through with this whole thing when games like this happen. But when we're winning it feels like — yeah, I was right. So far our wins haven't been that many, so I can't really say it's been good enough. But we'll see how we do for the rest of the split.
