"The Whole Year Was Quite a Disaster" — Mikyx on SK's Season, His Regrets and Future
Photo Credit: Riot Games
The year is over for SK Gaming. A final loss to KC ends their playoff hopes and closes out a season Mihael "Mikyx" Mehle himself calls a disaster. The veteran support sat down with RFT.GG for a debrief — on what went wrong, the roster he built, his own drive after years of success, Europe's international chances, and the off-season ahead.
The year is over for SK, far from the results you wanted. How are you feeling?
It feels pretty sh*t. The whole year was quite a disaster, so it doesn't feel terrible — from today's result specifically it wasn't really unexpected. We've not been very good throughout the whole year and they've been pretty good. It was kind of a close game too, which is why it sucks — Game one we got stomped, but , and game three we had some things prepared, so maybe it was winnable.
Do you feel you show the better version of SK against the top teams? Looking back, you've looked more competitive against the likes of G2, MKOI, NAVI than against teams like Heretics. How do you explain being more competitive against the best?
I think it's because those teams underestimate us, so they maybe take it a bit too loose. But in game one today, it wasn't that close — we got stomped from the early game. And against Vitality, game two, we just got stomped with not much to do. I guess the other games were a bit closer, like the G2 ones. But I don't really consider NAVI a top team.
I'd only consider Vitality, G2 and KC as actual good teams from my experience.
Not MKOI?
I mean, they were good but not against us — against us they decided they wanted to lose.
What do you think went wrong this split specifically? Was the travel from SK's office to Berlin something that affected your split overall?
It definitely wasn't helpful, because you lose out on scrim days — we usually had maybe two scrim days a week, which wasn't optimal. I was hoping we'd do well in Winter, because we played Winter from Berlin, so if we did well we could just stay in Berlin. Since that didn't work, we thought we might as well try the travelling thing. It was for sure a bit annoying, and I think we could have used it more efficiently. By the end it was awkward — some people went by plane, some went by car, public transport is always annoying with delays. If we didn't have to do it, maybe we could have made playoffs, but I don't think it would amount to much more than that. So I don't think that's really the reason. Overall we just weren't great individually, and I think we weren't pushing ourselves to get better all the time.
Around the halfway point, we were kind of just like 'yeah, we suck,' and no one really tried extra hard to make us better.
What were your expectations when you joined SK? Did you genuinely believe this team had the potential to be one of the best by the end of the year?
Yeah, I thought we were going to be at least top three. I thought only G2 and KC would be better than us by the end of the year, because they're very good players who play well together. I expected a lot more from us.
And I expected that if we weren't great from the start, we'd put in extra effort to get back into it — because it could be the last year or split some of us ever play.
That's probably the case for some of us if we don't succeed, which now might well happen. But even that wasn't enough of a motivator to try extra hard.When we were bad, we were kind of just like 'oh, we're bad, that's so sad,' and then we stayed bad. We tried some stuff, but it wasn't really working.
Last year you told DonJake, when he was kind of making fun of you about pushing to play with LIDER, to ask you again in a year. Now that the year is over — was it, in the end, a bad decision?
I think it was a bad decision for this year. But for a Fnatic-style year, just one split, I think it would make more sense to at least give it a try. LIDER and Razork are very similar, so I think they'd get along well, and I think our games would be a bit more stable with Wunder. But we'll never know.
It was definitely a regret for that start of the year, yeah.
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Do you feel it's a personal regret — that if you'd built a more standard roster around you, this team might have had more chances to grow into a playoff or top-three team?
No, I don't think so. Looking at the other options, I didn't really feel there was anyone who'd be better. For me it was more about flipping it and trying to see if it would work, because the alternatives just wouldn't be great — maybe we'd make playoffs and finish sixth or something and then lose. I wasn't really in it for that. I was just hoping we'd flip it and be very good individually, work well together and improve together — but that wasn't the case. If I didn't have the knowledge I have now and went back to the start of the year, I'd probably do the same again. But now that I know, I probably wouldn't.
Your thoughts on this year for Europe as a whole? We've seen KC and G2 consistently challenge the best in the world. Has the LEC competition been better this year, and do you think EU has good chances at Worlds?
I think the competition is probably better than last year. Some teams made good changes, and the top teams play a lot more cohesively. For internationals, the chances are higher than other years, that's for sure. I don't know if it's going to be enough to win the whole thing, but deep runs are definitely possible — like we saw in the other tournaments, the other regions aren't that unstoppable.
I could see a European team getting to Worlds' quarters very easily, maybe semis, but I'm not sure about more than that, because the other teams are also pretty decent.
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After all these years playing in the league, going through off-seasons and different teams, do you still have the same drive to give the game your everything, and to keep growing as a player, as you had in the early days?
Maybe not like the first days. Back then everything was a lot more new, so it was a lot more exciting to learn everything new. Now it's a lot about repeating stuff, so it can get a bit boring. And on top of that, especially if you're losing, it can be a lot more frustrating. Myself, I also have higher expectations, so when you lose and play bad, you feel like — I put my whole life into this and I'm dogsh*t.
Even when I started, I had a pretty good first split and thought 'it's only going to go up from here.' Then it went down a little, I was kind of at the bottom, then went up again.
For me, it's very motivating to have the whole team in it together, trying their best to win — even if it's not good enough.
For example at Excel, even though we weren't great, I felt like everyone tried their best to win in their own way, and it was fun because people didn't expect us to win. It was fun, even though we lost in the end.
But at least in the last two years, I didn't feel the same drive from the team perspective — everyone kind of did their own thing, their own separate stuff, and it didn't amount to much.
Photo Credit: Riot Games
Last question — what's next for you? Your contract, like every other player's, runs out this year. Do you have any idea whether you'd want to stay with SK, explore opportunities, or even do something else?
For me it's the same as every year — I just want to join whatever team I think has the highest chances of winning. If that's SK, that's SK but I'm not too sure about it, we'll see. I'm just looking to see what gives me the higher chance of winning, and I'll do that.
So you confirm Mikyx will be available for offers on the market this off-season?
Yeah, I guess so — once my contract runs out of course laugh.
