Odoamne talks LEC loss, roster swaps, language barriers

Following Excel Esports’ LEC Summer opening defeat to KOI, WIN.gg spoke to top laner Andrei “Odoamne” Pascu to get his thoughts on the start, improvements during the off-season, and preventing another collapse.

WIN.gg: What are your immediate thoughts on the loss to KOI?

Odoamne: We showed some good stuff to kind of come back into that game, I believe. Obviously, we fell very, very far behind the early game, and I will need to go back and rewatch the reasoning as to why it happened. Because it felt like things weren’t really going as they usually do in our practice. I think we implemented a lot of the good things from practice, but I think we missed a lot of points. 

I feel like our vision control was kind of poor early game, and I just think that once we fell behind by so much – at around the 10-minute mark we were down four kills and I think quite significantly behind in gold – we don’t really have a lot of avenues to get back into the game. But I think we found one small hole for that. It’s hard to say without looking back at the game from an objective point of view

At that point in the game when Excel were 4-kills down, is there a part of you that started to worry that it will be another split like Winter or Spring, or are you able to shut out any thoughts like that during the game?

Short answer – no, there is no voice in the back of my head that says it’s going to be another split like this because it was only the first game of the split, and a lot of things can happen. But if it’s going to be another split like this, then so be it. We will see in three weeks whether it’s going to be another split like that or not. 

How have you found the addition of Peach to the roster?

He’s improved a lot. What helps us a lot is that he’s someone who does his own play a lot. We’re kind of all playing around him instead of the jungle playing around us like it used to be in the previous two splits in Excel. 

His English was lackluster, at the beginning, it was hard because he wasn’t really exposed to English at all. Compared to how it was maybe a month and a half ago when he first joined us, it’s a lot better. It feels like he’s integrating well. His playstyle I think, fits us pretty alright, and yeah, right now, it’s just a tough situation given the first two splits, and we just have to make the best out of it.

It’s been a while now since Hidon joined as head coach, and you’ve recently boot camped in London, do you feel he’s had the time to be able to stamp his authority on the team?

He had authority on the team from day 1, it was just that in Spring, when he came in, he didn’t really have a lot of time to work and develop himself and the team towards a vision that he has. Now he’s had a lot more time with the break between the splits and the bootcamp and everything and I think he’s done a good job at making things move in the right direction. 

It feels like there’s a lot more consistency in our gameplay, even though we just lost today. I think he’s managed to turn it around or at least left a positive mark on the team ever since he came in.

What would you say has been the biggest thing he’s changed/implemented?

I think he’s brought a lot of structure. He has a plan to practice well, and he has a lot of ideas on how to implement some things. It just feels like every day when we scrim right now, we have things to improve on – compared to before when it was a lot more chaotic. Our schedule was all over the place, and we were kind of just doing things on the fly.

Patch 13.11 has seen a lot of focus on Zeri/Yuumi, how have you found the meta on the other side of the map in top lane?

Right now, it feels like top lane is kind of the role that has to kind of be the gel to the team comp. A lot of times, especially now with enchanter meta on bot lane, you need some sort of engage or front line from somewhere, and a lot of the time, it might not be from jungle because there’s going to be a lot of bans. So it has to be from the top lane, that’s why we kind of see all over the world that top laners are kind of playing tanks, not because other champions are weaker but more so because it feels like it’s the most accessible role where you can get the things that your team comp needs.