DAMWON Gaming departed on the morning of the 28th (KST) to participate in the 2019 LoL World Championship. Coach Kim Jeong-soo showed confidence by saying, “This year’s LCK will be strong.”

First, coach Kim explained the current condition of the team. “We did have some time to prepare, but there was Chuseok (Korean national thanksgiving holiday) and other schedules, so we weren’t able to practice that much. I think we had about 6-7 days of practice. We’ll be preparing more properly in Berlin.”

He also clarified the reason DAMWON Gaming did not include Lee “Flame” Ho-jong in the 7-man roster. “Many people think that there were visa issues due to his age, but it’s not that. I would have to say that it’s for a better team atmosphere. Flame has a strong will to play in the games. He was often depressed when he wasn’t able to play during the season. That’s natural as a player, but during Worlds, we were worried if Flame gets depressed, it might affect the whole team, so he was excluded from the roster.”

DAMWON will be playing against Royal Youth (TCL) and Flamengo eSports in the Play-ins. “I did look up VODs of their matches, but the analysis posted by a user on Inven was really detailed. Honestly, it was a big help. I printed that out for reference. Actually, the patch changed a lot so we don’t have enough information on other teams. Rather than analyzing other teams, we need to find the meta that suits us best.” 

Coach Kim continued with the 9.19 patch. “Although many things have changed, it hasn’t changed that victory or defeat gets decided in the early game. To talk about champions, I think Pantheon would have a very high pick/ban rate. There’s a high chance that he’ll become a must-ban champion.”

About the European meta, he said, “I think the European players would play a lot of non-ADC champions. However, we shouldn’t fall into their pace and make mistakes in our own picks during the draft. I think we would be utilizing ADCs more. We haven’t had enough research with the non-ADC champions. If we think there’s a good champion while we train in Berlin, we may use it.” 

It didn’t matter to coach Kim which group they would be placed in the Group Stage. “I think all groups in Worlds are the same. The top four seeds are equally divided. If the Group Stage is difficult, quarters and semis are also difficult. It doesn’t matter whether we go to Group B or D.”

Lastly, he left a message to the DAMWON fans. “Our goal is to reach the semifinals. I think LCK teams will have high ranks. It may be thinking too early, but I’m expecting to have positive results unless we meet another LCK team. People say that G2 is really strong, but I’m not too worried about them. I’d like to share many things with the LCK teams during the tournament. Obviously, we would need to keep an eye on other regions’ metas. The EU and NA metas are quite different from us, but if we arrive there and scrim other teams, we’ll find out in no time. Even if they try to hide it, we can still see.”