On the 14th, TL took down AHQ in day 3 of the group stages in the 2019 LoL World Championship. It looked as if AHQ was going to take the victory, but with a baron steal by Jake ‘Xmithie’ Puchero and clutch saves by Jung ‘Impact’ Eon-yeong in late game teamfights, TL was able to hand AHQ their third loss in the group stages. 

The veteran ADC for Team Liquid, Peter ‘Doublelift’ Yiliang Peng joined Laure Valée in the post-game interview to share his thoughts about their victory.

It was a very back and forth game, so can you tell me about the pressure of playing in such an intense game, especially against a 0-2 team?

There wasn’t too much pressure. We had an insane early lead with an early Infernal Drake, I was 3-0, but my team started inting. It was way harder than it should’ve been. We took a risk and opened Qiyana, and if that champion can get into the back line, you just die. We told ourselves that Renekton needs to mark Qiyana and that’s when we started losing every single fight, because our super strong Renekton became very useless in fights. Every teamfight, Orianna just died instantly, but it seemed fine because Qiyana usually goes 1 for 1 on a carry. It felt like CoreJJ and I were 2 vs 4 ing their team, while Qiyana was 1 vs 3 ing. It was really bizarre, and we played poorly. Obviously, Xmithie saved the game with the Baron steal, and we should’ve traded a carry for their Qiyana in teamfights.

It also felt like AHQ was playing poorly in teamfights. Do you agree?

I’m not too sure what they did wrong in fights. I think the main mistake they were making was that everyone was running into my feathers, so if we had a bit more damage, the teamfights would’ve turned out differently. Once a champion’s dead, it means there’s one less threat. The mistakes were mostly from on our side.

On Twitter, it said that CoreJJ wasn’t able to ban rumble because of the language setting in the client. Do you think it would’ve changed the game if you did?

Maybe a little bit, but I wouldn’t say we got outdrafted because of that. It was just annoying, as it was their go-to blind pick for their top. In my opinion, Renekton is obviously less useful in teamfights, but as the game goes on, Rumble becomes more and more useless, because of random mobility in the game that allows you to get out of his abilities. 

Round 1 is complete, and TL is 2-1. What are your expectations for round 2?

If we play like that, we’re going to go 0-3 and fulfill the NA curse. I think we’re capable of playing a lot better, but I just can’t believe how bad we were playing that game. The way our team works is that on our best day, we can beat anyone, but on our worst days, we can lose to anyone. We deserved to lose that game, and we’re really frustrated with ourselves. After this interview, I’m going to go back and probably get spanked by the coaches. The goal is to definitely play better in round 2.