In the opening game of day 22 of the 2022 LCK Summer split, Gen.G defeated Liiv SANDBOX 2-0. Han “Peanut” Wang-ho, the Gen.G jungler, demonstrated his hallmark pick, Poppy, in game 1 and a surprise pick, Morgana, in game 2, to help his team win.
After the game, there was an interview between Inven and Peanut.
Summary of the interview between Inven Global and Peanut
Thoughts on capturing 1st place in the standings once again with tonight’s victory?
Peanut: The standings are always changing, but I’m not too concerned about it. Whatever happens, we have to beat T1 to secure first place in the standings, so it doesn’t really matter until we beat T1. For now, I’m just happy we won 2-0.
How do you evaluate the team’s performance tonight? It seemed like Liiv SANDBOX put up one hell of a fight.
Peanut: We were definitely not playing well in game 1. We weren’t making calls and missed a lot of things inside the game. We were able to pull ourselves together in the mid-late game and were able to gain advantages. I knew the game was over when we killed Gangplank early and blew Poppy’s Flash and killed her near the Raptor camp.
Game 1 was very neck to neck until the end when both teams looked like they were close to finishing each other’s Nexus off.
Peanut: When we were charging their Nexus, I thought that we’d win if Ruler just finished the game. However, when they charged into our base, I knew we could defend our Nexus.
Ruler got his 2,000th LCK kill in game 2. During the broadcast interview, he said he asked the team for kills.
Peanut: I don’t know if it’s because of that milestone, but he kept asking for them even when he was fed. He’s a bot laner, so I just thought he was being a bot laner.
Even with Hexflash being disabled, you still played Poppy in game 1. How come?
Peanut: Without it, I think I was only able to make 6-70% of the plays I could make on Poppy. Still, Poppy’s presence proved to be tricky for the enemy, so I felt she can still work.
Tell me about the Morgana jungle in game 2.
Peanut: Recently, Poppy’s has been banned quite often. People are starting to realize how good she is, so I had to find a new champion. During MSI last year, I practiced a lot of Morgana and Rumble due to them being meta picks, and I had a really good win rate on them. I was confident on Morgana, so I felt comfortable talking about it with the team, and she’s not that hard to play as well. I thought she was good when I used her during practice.
According to your solo queue history, you experimented with various keystones, such as First Strike, Dark Harvest, and Predator. Why did you choose to go with Dark Harvest tonight?
Peanut: At first, I heard that she takes First Strike, but I thought it was really bad. Even if I landed my skillshots, I couldn’t make gold off it. That’s why I discarded it. So it came down to Dark Harvest or Predator; I think the nerfs to Predator in the early games really made it terrible. Morgana’s a champion that lacks the extra 2% damage in her kit, so I wanted to fill that gap with Dark Harvest.
There’s a lot of praise on Gen.G’s drafts these days.
Peanut: I think I could actually count just how many bad drafts we had with my fingers this season. The Summer split’s the same. Also, after our loss to T1, we group up to discuss the draft for a lot longer. It’s not like we didn’t discuss drafts, but we now spend more time talking about it.
Although Gen.G lost once to T1, the team’s still performing very well. Thoughts?
Peanut: Our practice process has definitely gotten more stable, and I think we’re performing much better. While I think we’re performing better overall, we can’t make the same mistakes as we did in game 1, where there were gaps in our communication.