“Sometimes you just gotta make the best plays” DRX MaKo talks about making risky plays and clutches
At VCT Pacific Week 5, DRX took down the second seed GenG in a best of three series. Despite the close series, DRX prevailed, retaining their title as the best team in VCT Pacific. After the game, Strafe interviewed Kim “MaKo” Myeong-Gwan. In an exclusive one-on-one interview, DRX MaKo talks about his clutches, the team’s performance and more.
Q. Congratulations on your win. You only have four more wins to go, How are you feeling?
DRX MaKo: “As I expected this week was the toughest match we had. And looking at the schedule I feel we will have an easier time”
Q. What are your thoughts on the team's performance?
DRX MaKo: “For today, We performed worse than we anticipated. We missed a lot of calls, there were fights we lost, on fracture we could not support our IGL Stax a lot and it led to a map loss. Overall we are still doing good”
Q. We saw a lot of shorty-smoke action in the game today, Is this the new meta?
DRX MaKo: “During VCT LOCK//IN back in February, we scrimmed against Team Liquid and all the players from TL were using these shortys inside the smoke and a lot of them were hitting us so we thought it is a really good strategy and we should really use it”
Q. Compared to earlier times, DRX has been using Judge a lot, what changed and what are your thoughts on the weapon?
DRX MaKo: “I saw BuZz our Jett player use it a lot so I thought oh it’s a pretty good weapon and he also used it and it was the only weapon for me to use and it yielded great results. I knew it was a pretty good weapon and this was the time it became a staple for us”
Q. You had a flawless first half on Haven but in the second half it seemed GenG might run away with the map. What was going wrong there?
DRX MaKo: “After we lost the pistol, they just snowballed it and we couldn’t stop their momentum for a bit. I wouldn’t say nothing went wrong it is just that we couldn’t stop the snowball until we finally won”
Q. We finally saw the Double-duelist from DRX today. While it did not work as expected can we still expect to see more of it?
DRX MaKo: “We are a team that tries multiple compositions so I can’t guarantee that we’d be using double-duelist compositions in the future. That said, we might use it again next week, can’t say”
Q. You are a great clutch player. How do you take critical decisions which might not fall in your favor?
DRX MaKo: “First of all, I am pretty stoic and calm by nature. Sometimes you just gotta make the best play and I am always calm during those plays making them work really well”
Q. Bind will be returning next week. What are your thoughts on the map switch?
DRX MaKo: “I don’t think it impacts us deeply as Bind is a map we had played before and so I think we just pick it up where we left off. We already saw the changes and we think we can get used to them really quickly. But I don’t think it will be a problem for us.”
Q. We haven’t seen Gekko from the DRX or Pacific teams a lot. What are your thoughts on the agent?
DRX MaKo: “I think Gekko is a subliminal agent at best. I am not sure if it’s good or bad. That said, DRX always tries all the agents and tries to find a composition. We can’t say that we will be trying to
use the agent at this stage, But that being said, if we come up with a perfect strategy with the agent we will use it. But at the moment it seems subpar”
Q. Do you think Riot should make changes to the meta mid-season?
DRX MaKo: “Looking at the history of Riot Games, these changes do happen. I personally don’t like it, DRX doesn’t like it. With the map changing mid-season. It is also kinda unfair to other teams that they do this. But it’s not a surprise that they do this, they do this in other games.“
Q. What do you think DRX needs to work on to get the first International trophy?
DRX MaKo: “There is no secret, no know-how. We just have to keep doing what we have been doing. Don’t underestimate the opponents and I think eventually we will lift the trophy”
DRX will have easier opponents in the upcoming weeks. With the win over GenG, DRX has already secured playoffs and are in contention to finish the season without dropping a series. They will face RRQ and DFM in the upcoming weeks and will be looking to secure the wins and the first place.
Week 6 of VCT Pacific returns on 29th April. Follow VCT Pacific's Twitter for all the updates regarding VCT Pacific.