The Game Haus’ Thomas Baker sat down with Phreak to discuss Worlds 2022 ahead of Day 2’s Semifinals matchup Gen.G versus DRX. The veteran caster commented about his favorite to win the World Championship. Phreak also spoke on takeaways following the event, champion presence and itemization, and hosting in North America. Here are the key points.
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Gen.G is Phreak’s Favorite to Win the Title
“Ultimately, yesterday’s series [JDG v. T1] had a gigantic canyon in the bot lane. Both Guma and Keria played really, really well. People talk about Guma because he dealt the most damage every single game, so it’s easy to focus on him, but the two of them are very good. You look at the LPL, Hope and Missing were fairly average as players, and across Worlds were fairly average as well, but now you’re against the top four teams in the World. So guess what? You’re now far worse than your opponents. So yeah, to me, the bot canyon was too much to overcome. And then you have Ruler. So guess what? Pretty sure he’s going to be okay against your bot lane. A lot of the problems that JDG had, Gen.G won’t.”
This Worlds Result is Nothing New to Phreak
“I think the stack ranking has not changed in a long time, and is unlikely to. It’s cool to see the LCK and LPL go back and forth, that’s really cool. We’ve had three of the last four World Champions out of the LPL. Most of the recent MSIs–I don’t have it off the top of my head, the count–I think only T1 from Korea has won MSI and it’s a bunch of LPL teams doing it. Over the last few years, it’s definitely been the LPL on top, but these teams have been trading blows.
In terms of depth, since 2014, one LCK team has ever failed out of groups. It turns out their talent pool is at least really deep every year, outside of Gen.G screwing up that one time. It turns out that league is really good, and the top half of the league is exceptionally skilled, constantly making quarterfinals…
The LCS has made one Semi ever, right? Our place is very obvious where it is. You might need to have one team really come through and play well. I think EG could have been that team if they had their full roster. I think Kaori did fine considering the circumstances. That was kind of our best hope, to be honest.
LEC, I don’t know. Rogue nearly won their group. It would have been an easier fight. Maybe they would have been able to do what DRX did and beat EDG. Maybe that road is different and we are looking at Rogue playing today, if they won the tiebreaker.”
Phreak Has Oblivion Orb Opinions
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">KEEP RUSHING OBLIVION ORB 1ST ITEM GUYS IT'S VERY GOOD YEAH!! :) <a href="https://t.co/WmiDsmGrZ3">https://t.co/WmiDsmGrZ3</a></p>— LS (@LSXYZ9) <a href="https://twitter.com/LSXYZ9/status/1576314844961452032?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 1, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>“The funny thing about Oblivion Orb stats, to my understanding, is the little grievous wounds tool tip does not count regen reduced, Second Wind healing reduced, and Doran’s Shield healing reduced. So even if you are playing Viktor-Sylas, where Sylas won’t keep W-ing you in pretty much any of the matchups…it’s only on the tooltip counting W healing blocked. But it is actually blocking, when you hit an E on him, well for 2 seconds your base health regen has been cut by a quarter, so I automatically get a couple extra health this way…
There’s a whole bunch that is not tracked on the tool tip…It’s such a minor optimization. But it’s been such a vitriolic thing. It’s like ‘hey, turn out this item is actually better than your tool tip is telling you, so it’s not really horrible.’ Overall, giving my thoughts on buying Oblivion Orb, I think it makes sense to do it in a melee-melee matchup where Sylas is maxing W and you really care about that one. Otherwise, in general, the best way to get grievous wounds on a team is on a support that doesn’t really care as much about power spikes.”
Phreak Loves the NA Crowd
“Certainly, it’s really fun being with the audience and whatnot. Covid shutting everything down made it a very lonely experience, LCS either in our bedrooms at home in online setup, or even in studio with no audience yet. It’s absolutely great being with an audience. Absolutely a ton of fun. Today I’ll be doing crowd interactions off-stream during commercial breaks. I’ll be the one being like ‘let’s do a dance party, let’s be cringe together.’ That’ll be really fun.”
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