Team Fusion primed for Expansion Tournament takeover
Riot·11/19/2014, 7:59:56 PM·0 votes·11,057 views
Editor's Note: Interviews here were conducted before the team announced the replacement of their coach Noblesse, and the temporary substitution of Chunkyfresh for Gleebglarbu.
The players of newly formed team Fusion are familiar, but the organization itself is not. Much as its name implies, Fusion is a collaborative effort of eastern and western players, featuring veterans and stars like Nientonsoh and Maknoon. The name power and slick social media efforts were enough to catapult it into community attention just a couple months ago.
But such a sudden rise also raises questions. Who's backing this venture? What prompted their formation? And most relevantly, how likely is their success in light of the increasingly heated competition for the NA LCS expansion?
Fusion founder Alden Haight
"I've been friends with Maknoon for a while, since Season 2 Worlds," said Nien, former top laner for Counter Logic Gaming, and explained that it was the Korean top laner that initially got in contact with him. His position as Fusion's AD carry is a return to roots – he spent most of his professional career as an AD carry, starting in 2012. In both CLG and Fusion, the position switch was a matter of grabbing opportunities as they presented themselves, though the comfort of an old role is a major bonus this time.
"It's still really hard to adjust and improve, because the average skill level of all AD players have improved a lot," noted Nien. "You have to adopt new meta picks and stuff like that. It's hard, but it's nowhere near as hard as picking up a new role. But it's still a lot of work and a lot of time to catch up to everyone else."
As you might expect, the cross-cultural nature of the team does pose communication issues. Though Maknoon's broken English has endeared him to the western community in past years, having two Korean players is generally a stumbling block for any western team. Fusion's recruiting kept that in mind: mid laner Huhi, formerly of OGN Champions team Bigfile Miracle, is conveniently a polyglot.
Fusion mid laner Huhi
"I'd say Huhi is actually extremely fluent," said Nien. "There's almost no miscommunications with me and Huhi, but Maknoon is a bit less fluent." He notes that it's still an imperfect solution: high-tension situations, as is common in competition, makes it much harder to speak a non-native tongue and can cause interpretative confusion. "So there's a lot of mishaps with that, but we're getting better as well, evolving code words to make things easier for all parties."
Former coach Noblesse with current coach Magic
"Magic [Swedin] was actually the first coach that was confirmed, and I met him through that Reddit post that publicized the fact that we'd made a bid for LMQ," said Veyloris. "He's on the younger side, so I knew that he couldn't be the head coach. Initially we were like 'Okay, Magic will be in the house, and we'll need an older head coach.' And that's what ended us with Noblesse, whom Maknoon knew, and Wei, who's actually Maknoon's agent."
Wei Li was not initially intended to be part of the coaching staff, but was invited over with Maknoon to help smooth the star top laner's transition into a new environment. He quickly impressed Veyloris: "In the four days he was here, he was doing so much to help the team. He was in the room with them while they were doing scrims and even just grinding up the 5v5 ladder, and was just already giving really constructive advice and helping people not tilt. I didn't bring him here to do that; he just saw the vacuum of what needed to be done and did it."
"Basically, the coaches came together as organically as the team did," said Veyloris. Fusion recently revised their coaching hierarchy, with Wei promoted to head coach in light of his capabilities. Thus far, the three-man coaching team has been a positive experience for the players.
"It's super-helpful," claimed Nien. "When you have five players and they're scrimming all day, it's really hard to have all five motivated and passionate, and ready to discuss VODs efficiently. It's so much better when you have a coaching staff to help out."
Nien's experiences with coaches has varied wildly across the teams he's been on. Counter Logic Gaming's experiments with remote coaching especially stands in contrast. "CLG didn't have a coaching staff except for Monte, who's across the world, so it's super-hard for him to guide and lead just through Skype." OGN English caster MonteCristo's coaching term with CLG has since ended, with former Dignitas player and coach William "Scarra" Li replacing him.
Nien stressed the critical importance of a good coaching staff, pointing out the gulf between Challenger teams that have only recently adopted dedicated support staff and the top-performing Worlds teams. "Just having a group of players is so much worse than having players with coach and analyst to help out. I think as infrastructure gets better, the teams will catch up to the rest of the world. But as of right now, it's really hard for teams to commit when there's not that much gain out of the Challenger scene. As such, people don't put in as much as the world's top teams."
THE ROSTER
Top: Yoon "Maknoon" Ha-woon Jungle: Joshua "Nintendudex" Atkins Mid: Choi "Huhi"Jae-Hyun AD Carry: Zach "Nien" Malhas Support: Nicolas "Gleebglarbu" Haddad Substitutes: Keaton "Bee Sin" Cryer, Josh "Chunkyfresh" Kesrawani "We wanted five players that get along with coaches, that react well to coaching, mesh well, be very chill, and experience is a big plus," said Fusion founder Alden 'Veyloris' Haight, detailing the team's origins. "When you look at the roster that we came out with, our initial starting point was really Maknoon. The coaching staff and myself were in charge of putting together the team, we had a personal connection to Maknoon, and we were thinking 'how can we build a team around him?'
BRAIN TRUST
Fusion founder Veyloris was previously known to the community from his efforts to buy out LMQ earlier this year. Though his efforts failed then, it was not without gain. He developed the connections that eventually led to Fusion's structural backbone – not the players themselves, but the coaching staff that supports them.
