One.PoinT Week: Interview with Bastien “SuperPlouk” Klau

In our last entry into One.PoinT week, we sat down with a player who has been around since the earliest days of the game – literally. SuperPlouk has been playing Overwatch since before most of us knew the game existed – and will be around for some time yet. His performance on One.PoinT has been a bright spot in a series of good runs on teams like Luminosity and Eagle Gaming, where he’s shown himself as one of the most consistent main tanks in European history. We sat down to talk about his extensive story, and recorded the conversation below. Enjoy!

Introduce yourself! Who are you, SuperPlouk, and where are you from? What’s your history in Overwatch?

I’ve been playing Overwatch since day one of closed beta, months before the game even came out. I haven’t stopped or taken any vacations yet. I went pro when I got picked up by Luminosity Gaming back in November 2016 – so I’ve played at a competitive level for a while now.

I’m going to touch on that later, but first I wanted to ask about your name. Where did “SuperPlouk” come from?

So plouk is a French word, and it’s pretty much a word used to talk about someone who doesn’t wear nice clothes.

[Editor’s Note: “plouk” can roughly translate to “peasant” or “yokel”, a lower-class person who probably wears lower-quality clothing by extension, in line with SP’s translation.]

It’s a French word, and it made a lot of French people laugh at me, because my name basically translates to SuperPeasant. My name actually comes from when I started playing League [of Legends]. A friend introduced me to League of Legends and I thought it would be a bad game, so I wanted to use the name plouk, but it was already taken. So it asked me if I would prefer SuperPlouk, so I went with Superplouk and played League for four years. I’ve kept the name ever since.

So I want to go back to those rosters you talked about. You’ve played on a lot of impressive pre-OWL teams like Sydioda, which had players like Baud and Pipou, and LG Loyal, where you played with top EU talent like Hidan and SPREE. What is your favorite memory or playing on those old teams?

Whenever we would qualify for playoffs and stage tournaments – that’s always my best memory with them. When you play in an intense final, it’s a great feeling to play on stage. It’s actually amazing.

Another name I failed to mention there, that I shouldn’t have forgotten, is Hqrdest. You two have played together on a variety of teams, including that first squad, Sydioda. Do you two basically read each others’ minds at this point?

SuperPlouk in his Sydioda jersey. SP joined the team in September of 2016, and left before the end of the year. Photo: Winston’s Lab

I would say yes. We met when the game got released, I think around June 2016. Ranked was not available yet, so I was playing Quick Play where I met Hayko and Hqrdest, who both played with me on Sydioda. I was playing solo, and they found out that I was playing tank. They wanted to go pro playing this game, and they were looking for French tanks and supports because they were both playing DPS – though Hayko is an off-tank now.

That’s how we met each other, and then we went through a lot of rosters together before I went to NA [for Luminosity Gaming]. When I went back to EU, he was playing for LDLC, and then he went to Gamers Origin. When I was coming back from NA, I was just getting back into the EU scene, so I didn’t really know where to go. That was the only time I didn’t play with Hqrdest. We met each other again at the start of Eagle Gaming’s run, when I started trying out for the team. It’s not like we always wanted to stay together, it just happened by chance. It just worked out that way. We’ve always ended up together, ever since I came back from NA.

Eagle Gaming, speaking of, did really well before things kind of… exploded. What’s a message you would give to Contenders players to help them avoid going through what Eagle Gaming’s players have had to go through lately?

I would say you need to have proof of content. When we went to Eagle Gaming, our motivation for going there was that it would be a French society. Since it was all French, it felt like there was some security, because if there was a problem, we could take it to court. For example, Rogue players like NiCo or Knoxxx had a lot of problems with Rogue before coming to Eagle [since it wasn’t an all-French organization]. We knew it was going be a French society and that there were French rights and laws and all of that stuff, so that helped us feel more secure. And now that they’ve made their mistakes, we’re in court with Eagle – or at least, whatever is left of Eagle.

You are still trying to get that sorted out through the legal system?

Yes, that’s what we’re doing right now. I don’t know too much, but I do know that I’m going into court with Eagle.

Has your life gotten more difficult since you left Eagle because of all this? Or did you have savings set aside/support from other people? Did you have to balance out all that drama while still trying to go pro?

I have a little savings, but I’m also still living with my parents, so I am still helping them financially as well. I’m sustaining myself and supporting them so I can live with them without them getting mad or anything. That little savings helps, but I know for some of the players it has been really hard. Some of them had apartments and still have to pay bills. I don’t have to, so I’m kind of okay, but there have still been a lot of problems.

I want to talk about your Head Coach, Curryshot. He and I talked a lot about EU in his interview, and he made a comment that he believes that the region is ahead in its understanding of the meta right now. Do you agree?

Yeah, I would agree. When I look at NA Contenders, sometimes I feel like they don’t know what they’re doing. I would say we’re ahead [in that regard]. When we play in scrims, there are a lot of mind games, because we all know what to do. When I look at EU Contenders matches, we can see that in EU – you feel the mind games being played. In NA, though, they’re playing comps they don’t actually know how to use. Well, some of them do, but most don’t.

Would you say that some of these teams are just being stubborn, and don’t want to play GOATS because they think it’s not fun or takes no skill?

I think there are better words for it, but sort of. There are two clans, basically – people who do think GOATS is fun to play, and those who don’t. Then there some people who kind of sit in the middle. It was like that with Dive too, though, you know? People thought that dive was a real ResidentSleeper – but I don’t know if it was the actual comp, or just that the meta is stale for people. I have no idea.

SP during his time with Luminosity Gaming. Photo: OW Pro Settings

I would say it has more to do with preferences. For myself, I like playing GOATS. It’s a lot of mind games, and there’s a lot of focus on team composition and choosing the right characters at the right time on the right maps. That being said, while I like GOATS, I think there should be a middle ground where you can choose from the comps you like the most. If you like GOATS more, you can pick GOATS, or if you like dive, you can play dive. In the state of the game right now, if you play Genji and Tracer against a GOATS comp right now, you will not be able to make it work. Against a good GOATS team, there’s going to be too much response to your ults. In this regard, I’d say Brigitte is actually too strong, in my opinion.

There’s been a lot of discussion on how strong Brigitte is, yeah. Do you think she is the only thing that needs to change to open up the meta?

I think the new changes, like the damage reduction for Shield Bash, aren’t going to make GOATS less strong. I think that’s still alright though, because Tracer will have a better match up against it now. A lot of 200hp characters will have a better match up against it actually, but in a GOATS composition, Tracer is still not going to be allowed. It’s going to be very difficult to make Brigitte go away.

When I played with Eagle, we actually managed to make tank comps work before Brigitte was released. We played a lot of tanks, and then Brigitte came in, so we thought, “Maybe we should put Brigitte in the comp too, because she feels very strong – strong enough to put her in tank compositions.” It was really nice, and then the comp changed a bit when the actual team GOATS played the comp in NA, and everyone saw how strong the comp was.

I don’t think that the nerfs going on right now will make GOATS go away. I do think that in competitive games, characters like Tracer will come back – because in competitive, you’re not playing as six like you would in Contenders.

Do you think Ashe will have an impact against Goats comp or will she not really be a factor?

I have no idea at this time, because we aren’t scrimming with Ashe yet. She’s not coming to Contenders until some point in the future. If GOATS isn’t nerfed, she’s not going to come in. GOATS is actually really strong against hitscans like Mccree and Widowmaker, because you have a lot of shields and protection. So if a GOATS comp managed to reach your back line, it’s going to get really hard, and if you don’t manage to stop them before they do, it’s going to be an easy take for GOATS. The problem with hitscan heroes is that, behind the shields, it’s very hard to make the GOATS comp scared. For example, when you play MOATS comp (GOATS with a Winston instead of a Reinhardt) against close hitscans like Mccree and Ashe, you can just jump on them before you get annihilated.

Photo: Blizzard Entertainment

I think Ashe is in a place between Mccree and Widow, and I don’t think she will change much. I think that her dynamite can be stronger than any of the other hitscan heroes’s abilities against GOATS, and actually deal damage since it’s AOE, but the problem is there is still D.Va, and the fact that she can eat everything. The animation is also slow, so you need to be very quick before the D.V.A tanks it. Because of that, D.Va will never really let you throw any dynamites. D.Va is actually the reason I feel that a lot of hitscan heroes are not being played at the moment. She is also way too strong at the moment.

What message would you send to an Overwatch league scout who is not sure if he wants to look at European players. How would you convince an Overwatch league team to consider you for a tryout.

I would say, first off, that we aren’t worse than Korean or American teams. I actually feel like we aren’t behind, we’re at least at the same level. When I see Tier 3 Koreans being picked up, I look at their matches and they are playing bad GOATS. There are players that are actually very good, but get put into bad teams, and as a result they look bad. I don’t know about Korea or NA, but in EU, that’s the case a lot of times.

So you’re saying that EU players can be just as good if given the chance, basically.

Yeah, we shouldn’t be looked down at, and we’re actually on the same level as Korea and North America. I feel like in some instances, we’re better – we watch a lot of other Contenders games, and when we do, we generally think we’re doing better than the teams we’re watching. We play a lot together, we watch a lot of games, and are always finding things that we think we could do better than them.

My last question for you then is what message would you send to fans that have been watching you play since the early days or people that are just finding out about you. What would you say to them to kind of say thank you?

First, I would start by saying thank you. It’s been a long time since I started playing Overwatch. I have been on a lot of teams and seen a lot of things, so thanks for following me and joining me on my journey. I’ve been streaming a bit lately, though I don’t stream as much as I used to – sorry! Ladder games are not like they were before. When I played in NA, I was having a lot of fun, because everybody was striving for wins and were doing their best. I met a lot of nice people and it was a lot of fun too, but that’s not really the case [on ladder] anymore which is a shame. Big thanks for following me.

STAY UP TO DATE

Follow me on Twitter @thibbledork! Ask me questions, or tell me how I’m doing! 
You can also message me on Discord! (thibbledork#0282)

Featured Image Courtesy of Liquidpedia

Follow The Game Haus for more esports and sports stories!!
Twitter: TGH Esports
Facebook: The Game Haus