VIT Fleshy: "I've Always Been Trying to Be the Best Support for My ADC — Not the Best in the League"
Photo Credit: Riot Games
In week 6 of the LEC Spring Split, Team Vitality secured a win over Fnatic that confirmed their place in the top four and the upper bracket of playoffs, with only one defeat on the regular season. Only KC can still take the top spot from them this weekend. Support Kadir "Fleshy" Kemiksiz — who has quietly been one of the most improved players since his arrival — sat down with RFT.GG right after the win to talk about the red lines, the enchanter adaptation, and what it's like playing alongside Caliste, Jopa and Carzzy.
How are you feeling?
I'm better. After the first game, much better. Feels good to win.
You guys played an insane split. How do you explain such a progression?
In the beginning we played the weaker teams and we were focused on a lot of things, we also played better in officials than in scrims kind of. But we had some rules, some lines that we don't cross. I think it's just the team play and people being more focused and try-harding, and this has been consistent on stage.
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What are those red lines — do you have an example?
It's not like a full red line, but there are some things.
Because everybody in this team is just a clutch player — that's the biggest advantage we have, in teamfights everybody is showing up most of the time.
The red line is the little things that make the enemy team much better in the game, things we usually do in scrims but don't do on stage. We talk about this, we review it, and then we try to not do it anymore. Things like recalling on a ward while knowing it. It's the little ones that make you lose time and slow down the game.
If you don't make it to MSI or even win the split — given how dominant you've been — would that be a disappointment?
Regular season is kind of... I don't want to say fake, but it's kind of fake. The top teams — G2 for example — they were tired, so it's normal for them to rest a bit during the split, and when they make the playoffs they don't really care about who they face. So it's mostly about us being in form and progressing throughout the split. It's not like we think we are so clearly the best team because we're 8-1. We are a really good team, but we still have a lot of things to make automatic — some things are spontaneous, sometimes we show up, sometimes we don't. There are a lot of things we need to be more disciplined on. We don’t really care of the 8-1 regular season. I'd rather go to playoffs and show up there than go 8-1 in the regular season and losing in playoffs.
Bard has been your most played champion this split and you're unbeaten on it. Is it your best champion?
I would say that, but after the third week or so we focused on playing other champions and I didn't really practice it as much. Maybe I dropped a bit. Lately I felt like I didn't show up as well on it. There are a lot of things I can do better, I know this.
Lately, solo queue was so bad that we couldn't really practice on our champions — especially me and Lyncas, who benefit a lot from playing solo queue.
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The other guys maybe aren't as affected, but for us it matters. It was the end of the old patch and now it's a new one. We're trying to play more, but the scrims and solo queue haven't been very productive yet. We'll be in better shape. You need to climb to play better players, and then you just get better.
Pad told me one of the things he was most proud of with you was your adaptation to the enchanter meta. Was that your biggest challenge this year?
In my eyes it wasn't, to be honest. I always thought I could play it — it's just that maybe other supports on the good teams were getting hyped for playing these champions, and I never said or showed that I could as well. I adapted well, I played a lot of games on enchanters, I practiced a lot.
Six months ago everybody thought I was an engage support who couldn't even play Lulu — that's what the stats showed, and maybe what I was saying as well at the time. But now I play kind of everything.
It's a really good thing for the team, and for best-of-five formats it's necessary — otherwise you literally don't have a champion to pick sometimes.
Was there a specific adaptation moment or was it more natural?
It wasn't really natural. It was a mental thing for me — if I think playing Seraphine is hard, maybe I avoid picking her and go for more comfortable champions instead. But when I started playing these champions I realised it's actually not that hard and I can manage it. You just need to understand that it's not like a champion that can jump around walls and go sneaky places — you need to be careful about yourself and be in a position where you can help other people. After understanding that mindset it was easy. Moving around the map is different depending on the champion, but with enchanters most of the time you just want to be in good conditions to peel and play the map as best you can.
Since coming back from NA you've played with some of the best ADCs in the region — Caliste, Jopa, and now Carzzy. Only positives, or do you sometimes feel like you live in their shadow or have less of a say?
I think there are both sides. Because when you play with these ADCs, there is no such thing as living in their shadow. If you play a bad game you are in front of everybody's eyes and everybody will notice.
So either you adapt and play well and work hard for it, or you'll be bad — in front of everybody's eyes.
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Living in the ADC shadow is kind of fake I might say. Even if it's the support role, it doesn't exist. Your ADC needs you 90% of the laning phase, and if you do one thing wrong — especially in this enchanter meta — you can't really make a mistake, otherwise the lane is instantly over. But there are positive things I learned from each of them and I keep applying. It's just evolving — playing with different people, learning their habits, how they talk, how they want to play. The support role is a full adaptation role.
Most of my career I've been trying to be the best support for my ADC instead of trying to be the best support in the league.
Now that you've played with all three of them — biggest quality and biggest weakness for each?
Jopa — when we were playing together, he was a full team player. Now he's more selfish, and I think that makes him better. That was his weakness. But it can also be a strength sometimes, because people don't expect him to go somewhere and help the team. I think he reads the timings better now.
Caliste — when we were playing together in the LFL, he was a guy who could easily get tilted sometimes. And I think he improved on that a lot over the years. When he started playing LEC maybe it never happened — I wasn't there. But in the LFL it was something we had to be mindful of, we had to adapt and make the ADC happy. That's the adaptation. But I think he's much better now — I saw him say he worked on it a lot and he evolved a lot as a player.
Photo Credit: Michał Konkol/Riot Games
Carzzy is a different kind of ADC — not an NPC ADC who doesn't talk and just works on mechanics. He talks about the game a lot. Carzzy's biggest strength is that he's aware of most things happening on the map, like 95% of the time. He looks at the minimap a lot, and he understands the enemy psychology. That's the strongest thing I can say about him. The weak side — maybe he's too much of a team player. Since I joined, we've mostly been holding back the dives and plays we have out of respect. And I think that's how Carzzy sees his role too — that you have to hold back sometimes. That might show up in stats like farm, kills, plates. But he doesn't really care about that, which is actually a good thing — most ADCs are very attached to stats, and he's not.
