100T Quid “I didn’t think we could improve fast like this.”

100 Thieves defeat Dignitas in a nail-biting 3-2 series in the LCS this Friday, moving on to face Cloud9 in the lower bracket, and we sat down with mid laner Lim "Quid" Hyeon-seung to talk about his spicy picks and 100T's journey.

Quid was voted Player of the Series against Dignitas, with tone-setting performances on Yone and Yasuo. Esports.gg sat down with Quid to chat about his journey in North America with 100 Thieves, why he pulled out the 'Wind Brothers,' and what his hopes for the rest of playoffs are.

Esports.gg: We've just come off of a 3-2 series against Dignitas, in which you guys came back from 1-2. How are you feeling about the series? Where's your mind at?

Quid: "I thought today was going to be pretty easy, but I think they were better than last time. I thought it would be 3-1, but the game was pretty hard today. Also, they got match point first. Yeah, the game was kinda hard today."

What did it take for you guys to rally back from that match point threat? What was it like behind the scenes after you lost Game 3? How did you managed to reset and come back?

Quid: "After we lost against Smolder, we talked about Dignitas being pretty good at just slowly building up and scaling with good champions. They just like outscaling comps, so we said we'd ban Smolder. We'd prepared just a dive comp because if we can create a situation to fight, we can win every single fight against Dignitas. That's why we knew we could come back."

That high priority around Smolder in the draft that you mentioned — seems like you had Yasuo prepared since you let it through the draft. What was the process of coming up with the Yasuo pick? Was that spur of the moment or something you've practiced?

Quid: "After we won Game 4, our head coach said, 'They're going to be blue side again, and they're going to try to take Smolder and force Smolder like Game 3.' We practiced Yasuo into Smolder in scrims a lot. After Game 4, head coach said, 'Just give Smolder and let's set up for Yasuo.'"

What makes Yasuo such a good pick into Smolder in your experience? Why does this pick work?

Quid: "Yasuo can create more of a gap in gold in laning phase than it did in Game 5. Usually, when I play Yasuo into Smolder, I get a huge mid gap. But laning phase was kind of even, and also we were thinking about Rell with Yasuo and Kai'Sa or Miss Fortune, or something like that. If I can press R with Rell, we kill everybody. Yeah, Yasuo's a good pick in that situation."

I talked to Goldenglue recently, and he said that Tomo's ability to shot-call and give your roster direction in a game is a huge part of why he's clicked so well. What do you think Tomo has added to the team that's making you guys look so much better?

Quid: "We needed someone who can give confidence more because I'm not good at shot-calling. Like 'I wanna fight' or 'we should fight', or 'we can win this fight', or 'I wanna farm more.' I just follow our comms. But when Tomo wants to fight, he says, 'Let's fight' or if he doesn't want to fight, he'll call 'Play slow' or something like that. We needed someone who can control our game pace. After Tomo came to 100 Thieves, our practice has been going well, and yeah, everything went well."

So how are you feeling now, looking ahead to your gauntlet against Cloud9, FlyQuest, and Team Liquid?

Quid: "I think now we're a pretty good team. If we can focus on our job in-game, I'm pretty sure we can beat every team."

Leaving the split behind, I've been chatting with a lot of players and coaches about their thoughts on the new Fearless Draft tournament being added to the schedule next year. What do you think of Fearless Draft as a format?

Quid: "I think Fearless Draft makes the game funnier because if there is one or two good champions in the meta, people always play those champions almost every game. If I was a viewer, I think I could find that boring about draft, but I think [with] Fearless Draft, you can make a lot of different comps and styles. I think I like Fearless Draft."

Any final thoughts on the roster, your team's performance, and your future upcoming?

Quid: "When I joined this roster, I didn't think we could improve fast like this. Now, like, if we can't make good results, I'll be really sad because I know we made a lot of progress, and now we're an actually good team. So I really want to make a good result with this roster."

100 Thieves play Cloud9 for their Summer Split lives on Sept. 1. Stay tuned to esports.gg for more news and updates.