LFL, League of Talents [3/8] — Potent : « I really believe in my potential »
Cet article est aussi disponible en français.
Photo Credit: LFL
A former rank-1 streamer who turned pro in 2023, Potent has wasted no time positioning himself as one of the LFL's most ambitious top laners. Just before LFL Spring playoffs, the Vitality.Bee top laner sat down with RFT.GG to talk through his pivot from streaming to pro play, the team's tough Winter and bounce-back Spring, his relationship with Vitality's main top laner Naak Nako and the very firm timeline he's set himself for breaking into LEC.
You used to be a streamer, and it was actually working out for you. When did you tell yourself: OK, I want to go pro?
In 2023, I'd just hit rank 1 and I had no new objectives. I was wondering: am I going to do rank 1 again? I wasn't sure what to do. So I thought, maybe I'll try to make the jump to pro play. It was a dream I'd had since I was a kid, but circumstances and difficulties had stopped me from doing it — that's why I became a streamer. Once I hit rank 1, I told myself: maybe I can still do it.
Loading comments...
Was it a complicated choice? It meant putting your streaming career aside.
It was complicated, and it was a sacrifice — because I was actually living better off stream. Not crazy money, but better than I would from pro play. That said, joining Joblife gave me a minimum salary, unlike some low Division 2 teams with smaller budgets. So I was lucky on that front. But I had to sacrifice a lot of progress, a lot of the community I'd built over the years before going pro.
Doesn't that ever scare you? Any regrets so far?
No regrets. I'm not someone who spends a lot of time thinking about what I regret. Life is full of opportunities when you stay open to them — pro play, streaming, whatever. If I end my pro career, I can go back to streaming, I can do anything. So I'm never afraid.
What was the biggest in-game challenge in that transition? Diversifying your champion pool? Going from solo queue to 5v5?
The 5v5 part. Building team-play habits and developing the right automatisms. Automatisms drive a huge part of your gameplay — and I had a lot of them that worked in solo queue but were bad in pro play. They were good for grabbing one more kill, one more side wave. In pro play, those reflexes cost you.
Would you say solo queue and 5v5 have nothing to do with each other? Two different games?
Depends on the role. Top lane actually has a lot of similarities — probably one of the roles where there are the most. But yes, there are still big changes, and it's a pretty different game in pro play.
What's the main difference you feel between the two?
Volatility. When you play pro, you play in a structured, coordinated way regardless of what the enemy does. In solo queue, sometimes you build strategies based on the enemy's mistakes, on the fact that there'll be a lot of fights, a lot of nonsense. For example, in soloQ I play Fiora ADC, I get 20 kills a game. But in pro play, if I play Fiora ADC, they're going to respect me, they'll be more careful.
I saw you played Fiora recently. Is she more open in the drafts, or is it still almost impossible to get her?
A bit more open. But I think the meta really doesn't suit her — there are so many ranged champions now, Jayce, Aurora, Anivia, Varus. It's not a Fiora meta. Fiora prefers bruisers, even tanks. So the meta isn't great for her.
Press The Attack doesn't help?
PTA isn't enough. As long as the ranged champs take their swifties first item and kite you to death, there's nothing you can do. It's terrible. Especially Aurora, Jayce, Varus. I'm sick of it.
Loading tweet...
By your second year in Division 2 with Esprit Shonen, you already looked a step ahead of other top laners. Did you feel untouchable at that point?
t's fine. I knew Division 2 wasn't a crazy level, and I was beating players who didn't have much experience or weren't very invested in the game. Now that I'm in LFL, I realise the mistakes I have. But honestly, I'm pretty confident in my level, even in LFL — because I play against very good players, and even when I face LEC players in sparring or solo queue, I see their level and I think: yeah, the gap isn't that big.
When you moved up to LFL, you had several offers. What made you choose Vitality.Bee?
The project. The team, the coaching staff, the infrastructure, the fact that it's an academy team designed to develop players. That really interested me, because
My goal is obviously to make LEC, to play for the title, to compete at international events.
How do you explain the rough first split? You finished top 10. Did you expect that? I noticed there was an ADC change at the end of the first split — was that the internal read?
I didn't expect to finish top 10. I don't think anyone expected that. We expected to do better. We had a lot of problems, but saying it was all on the ADC would be wrong — that's one factor. As a team, we weren't very coordinated, we weren't on the same page, and you could see it in our gameplay. With the ADC change, things did go better, but that's not the only change that happened. People say "they performed badly with that ADC, they performed well with this one" — but there's a lot of other stuff happening in parallel.Yakkey is good and brings us a lot, but he's not the only reason for our difficult start to Winter.
What were the other things you had to work on as a team beyond the ADC?
We really worked on our fundamentals — developing automatisms and being disciplined and rigorous about them. That's something we weren't very good at in Winter — we weren't hyper-rigorous, sometimes there was nonsense here and there. Even this Spring there's been some, but a lot less. That was our biggest focus.
Loading tweet...
What are the team's objectives? Win everything, or step by step? Are some teams still uncatchable in ERL right now?
Honestly, we're a team that's going to be built layer by layer, and we're going to scale very, very strongly. Right now, we're at a stage where we can beat Solary, Galions, top teams. Of course our goal is to win everything — to win LFL, to win EMEA — and honestly, we can even go further and aim to win in Summer too. Because we scale, I think we already have the level to win now, but we'll improve even more by Summer. It'll be even better.
There's also Naak Nako in the Vitality main team, who many already consider Europe's best top laner. Do you ever ask him for advice?
Yeah, sometimes. I ask him for advice, I watch his VODs, I see what I can take from him, what I can learn. Small things like that. Obviously, it's a privilege to be at Vitality — I'm in the academy of the LEC team that has one of Europe's best top laners, if not the best. So that's lucky. There isn't a huge amount of back-and-forth, but every now and then, a few questions, it's fine.
How do you see the rest of your career? Do you have a plan? Would you go back to streaming if LEC doesn't work out in a year or two?
Honestly, the goal I set myself at the start of the year is to make LEC next year. It's a tough objective, especially since I don't think I'm performing at my max right now. But I have a lot of qualities — I just need to remove certain bad ones. My qualities can take me to a level that competes with bottom-mid LEC. I just need to remove the bad parts.
If I stay in ERL another year or two, I think I'll quit.
I'm not very young anymore, I don't have the time to stay long in the ERL system. I have other ambitions, and I think life isn't limited to just this — there are tons of things I could do. So maybe I'd go back to streaming, do little things for content, work on other entrepreneurial projects in parallel. I'm ready for anything — I have tons of ideas in my head, tons of things I could do, that I'd want to do, that I'm passionate about. For now, my energy is channelled into LoL. It could be channelled into anything.
Photo Credit: Team Vitality
Would it be a disappointment if you didn't pass through LEC before ending your career?
I think so. Because I think I'm capable of it. I think I'm capable, but even more than that, honestly. It's hard for me to talk about in detail right now, I'd need more time, but I think I'm someone with a lot of potential. I really believe in my potential — I just need to get into the right routine, the right automatisms. I can do it, but circumstances sometimes made it harder, especially during Winter and the start of Spring. I'm getting back into gear and reaching my prime — sleep, sport, mentally, how I feel in the game. I feel like I'm getting back to a level I'm happy with. If I keep that up and keep improving steadily — we have a good team, a good coaching staff, a good staff in general.
If you stay in this dynamic, you have no doubt?
Yeah, the doubt doesn't come.
If I keep it up and continue in this dynamic until Summer, the doubt doesn't even cross my mind. The LEC will then simply be the natural next step.
