On day 40 of the 2022 LCK Summer split, T1 defeated Nongshim RedForce 2-1 and secured a spot in round 2 of the playoffs. Despite NS showing fight in game 2, there was no upset in the series.

After the match, Choi “Zeus” Woo-je joined Inven to talk about his disappointment in his performance that day.

Zeus was brutally honest on his self-feedback:

“I played very poorly. I’m incredibly mad at myself. The Camille pick in game 1 was not only bad, but also played poorly on her. By taking Press the Attack on Renekton in game 2, I tried to pressure the enemy in lane very hard, but I couldn’t do that at all. I even died helplessly to a gank. In game 3, everything aligned for me to carry, but I couldn’t do that as well.

I actually practiced a lot of Renekton recently. I should’ve played better when he hit his power spike, but I didn’t. I couldn’t play as well as I could have. My opponents also played well, but there were things that were definitely disappointing on our end.”

On Renekton’s item build, Zeus commented,

“There’s a player on the Challenger solo queue ladder that takes Press the Attack and builds Blade of the Ruined King [BorK] into Prowler’s Claw. If that Renekton gets fed, then his damage output is insane. He can just delete the enemy bot laner, so I took reference from how he plays. I thought I could build the same way in game 2, but looking back, it may not have been so good. To be honest, the item build wasn’t the issue; the plays were. Ever since last year, I always seem to perform poorly on Renekton, so it’s a bit of a sore thumb in my career.”

However, there were some good things to take from the series for Zeus, as he added Renekton and Zac in the champions played during the Summer split. He tied with Kim “Canna” Chang-dong with 13 champions in first place.

“The fact that I had a chance to play the champions that I couldn’t on stage is a good experience in itself. There are so many champions that can be played in the top lane. The more champions I play, the more options I’ll have in the future, so I’m proactively trying to play different options in the top lane.

Zac is a very good champion when there are these prolonged, ‘wet noodle’ fights. Not only did my opponent first pick Ornn, Zac also seemed like the best option in that scenario. I practiced him quite a bit in solo queue recently, and he was really good. So I decided to try him tonight.”

On his performance on Zac in game 3, he also added,

“When there was that lane swap, I died trying to interrupt Kalista’s recall. That was when Ornn got ahead because he farmed a lot of waves. I thought that the damage was irreparable, so I decided to rotate bot lane to get our bot duo ahead. However, because of that, I fell behind in levels; I had to level E to get good engage angles, but due to such, I couldn’t find good jump angles. So I just jumped in whenever I saw potential angles.”

T1 has two matches remaining in the regular split, against Liiv SANDBOX and DWG KIA. On the matchups, he commented, 

“I think it’s more important for us to regain our form, rather than to focus on the opponents’ game plan. I recently received a lot of POG votes, so I got greedy, which led to my misplays. I’m reflecting on it, and I’ll make sure to put my team’s victory over my personal performance.”