I was on a 40 hour trip with barely no sleep and one last 5 hour layover so decided to write a subjective POV of mine for this year. hope you guys enjoy the read and have a good laugh in meanwhile :D



SPRING SPLIT - G2 IS GOING TO WIN THE WHOLE THING AGAIN
After last years devastating worlds, we stayed together, striving for greatness in 2017, all of us knew we had it in us.
Spring split started, we went undefetead til loss against Roccat the king slayers in week 10.
We had to face the new refined animal style fnatic in semi finals, after their cheese failed they just crumbled and lost, leaving us to face UOL in finals. After watching the MSF/UOL series I thought UOL was quite bad and we would have no problems against them, was more scared of FNC personally. THIRD consecutive title

MSI - REDEMPTION OF THE FALLEN

MSI was great, everything about it was great. Our practice, the country, food, fans

our scrims in beginning were kinda meh as I felt we were a bit weaker than other teams in term of teamplay and macro. We started improving superfast and at the end of MSI only games we could drop even in scrims was against SKT. Our bo1 performance, however, was quite bad, we had so many bad early games, we got hardcore stomped by WE 2-0, and even made fun of by SKT in the last day before game vs TSM. i was kinda depressed after the 2nd bo1 against SKT as I felt like enemies were trolling and we still couldn't win. then the game against TSM, the classic go for late G2 comp and Expect's "BELIEVE MEE, JAYYYYSUUUUUUUUUH " moment, we knew we were stil in the tournament !

Next game FW crashed TSM's dreams (once again at Worlds now xD) and gave us 3rd seed, FW got 4th, so we got to dodge SKT before finals (FW's are europes best brother)


I was a little bit worried for WE series because jesper and mithy were praising their botlane a lot from scrims

I was sure as long as we prepared and showed up stronger in early games we would have good chance of winning, everyone predicted WE to smash us (xD!)

ended up not even seeing their botlane in any of the games, i cant even remember what champs they played

the series ended 3-1 as perksusual, I was the one inting it in game 3 anyways so it doesnt end too fast, the series ended up being easier than finals vs UOL
I could see our clear improvements from day to day and groupstage to semi finals



then final boss, Bo5 vs SKT (my all time favorite)
The reason why this series is my favorite even though we lost is just the team atmosphere in the series was so joyful
felt like the burden of the world was relieved of our shoulders, we were just humans that were fighting titans in order to overcome them and become gods themselves
We were making jokes more than usual before game, playing with absolutely 0 regrets and fear.
The first game was really close, we failed to snowball.. second game was known as G2's lane kingdom (every lane got a solo kill within 1 minute time span.. ) we kinda stomped them. game 3 was really close aswell because of Jesper's sick aimbot on ashe, Faker was magnet for the arrows , game 4 was kinda a stomp sadly, you could see we were the worse team afterall.
Fun fact was that I slept 4 hours on the day because I couldn't fall asleep. thankfully Weldon's presentations taught me that if you've had a good sleep 6/7 days in the week it wouldnt affect your performance, gave me false confidence boost but I could see how my focus was falling off after the first 2 games.. maybe if I had slept 8 hours we would end up winning the whole thing :D

But being so close and "challenging the gods" right couple of months after going 1-5 and losing to 2 wildcards in group ;) was quite an improvement



SUMMER SPLIT - FNATIC HYPE, SLUMP OF G2 (OH IS G2 GOING TO ACTUALLY LOSE THE SPLIT SUMMER SPLIT)
At the beginning of summer split, we had 0 practice on new patch but also almost no break, played champs from the MSI patch, with horrible drafts and also the innovation of rift herald, which we didnt know What to do about for couple of weeks (When is it good to take it, how to take it, how to use it, laneswaps etc)


I think major reason of our "underperforming" or how you wanna call it is due to burnout


Everyone was playing only lane champs and we lost 3 series to the teams we have never lost before ( MSF; UOL; FNC) , even before RR started we knew something was terribly wrong, we adressed some problems but it was too late to fix for RR, after RR we had a long in debt team talk, and started sacrificing ourselves for each other more again, in and outside of the game. we started becoming more and more of a team

We kept on improving bla bla bla bla,



PLAYOFFS
Before playoffs there was a patch as usual, and we had a week to prepare for it same as did Splyce. think our preparation and read on the patch was OK, not quite the most optimal but I remember I told mithy if we win the series against splyce I promise him we would win the split again, I wasn't really shaking or nervous but I just made quite bad mistakes and literally inted in game 4, maybe my subconcious was so scared of losing in quarters that it affected me, I remember game 5 when we were losing I was re assuring my team "dont worry guys we can win" but what I was doing was mostly re assuring myself, because I was slowly losing hope xDD, thanks to some sick ali combos and cassio ults we managed to stay and in the end win the game.

I was really relieved that we won, as my performance was quite bad and it was the only time in 2017 where I felt like my performance was subpar.

for semi finals against H2k I just felt a lot more confident and with ease going into matches, was super excited to play against my good friend, the reason why I felt confident was because we scrimmed H2k prior to playoffs and I believe our win record in scrim was 20 wins and 0 losses in like week and a half, I knew there was aboslutely no way we could lose to them and after we made 1 comeback play in game 1 I felt like the whole H2k team remembered our scrims and just tilted 180 degrees left ----- G2'S FIRST 3-0 (HYPE)

Finals vs MSF - Paris road show

first of all, I did not EXPECT (xDDDDDDDDD) misfits to reach the finals, i thought FNC was a lot better than them but they surprised us, I was actually a bit scared of playing vs FNC in finals because caps was the best mid I had played against in scrims, when MSF won once again I knew inside me that there was no way we could lose finals. (You have to take into consideration this is only judging by scrims, as we have not seen any FNC official games and they looked worse to us vs MSF and H2k than we expected, or maybe we just improved a lot faster in the playoff timespan, we will never know which one is it)


French crowd was awesome, even though it was even more awesome for them because they have Hans sama..

We were practicing really hard asperksusual and we finally came to the "peak of G2", hell we even managed to win 2 games with lucian, more than in the whole split (xD)

even though the series was a 3-0 I didnt feel like it was a stomp, the games were close early games, misfits didnt just FF the series they actually played well, but we made so many good calls and everyone from the team stepped up for the series.

Winning 4th split in a row was probably the best feeling, THE first western player to do so, it really made me think like I achieved something, but yet hungry for so much more

Now the emotional part... Worlds 2k17.
I felt like this was "my year", I was putting a lot of effort to become better player and better team leader, I could feel I was getting better with each month. I was not going to stop for Worlds, I thought to myself. To make sure that stayed through I informed my team I was going to go early to Korea to play soloq before we started scrimming. Then zven and mithy decided to join me too, I was delighted, felt like everyones motivation was super high, as high as mine. Our scrims were going really well, we had atleast 60% + winrate vs every team. I think at the end of korean bootcamp our scrim quality started going down, as soon as we came to china we had a team talk, quite emotional one infact. I think that was the point I realized how much I loved my teammates and how close of a group we actually are, some could say we will nurture our relationships til the end of our lives :)

I was trying superhard in soloq but then at some point just stopped trying as hard because i was legit getting inted every game ( ELOHELL ),I feel like my motvation started dropping later on at some point because of overplaying soloq, thats when I started going out for food more with teammates and walking around seoul :)

This bootcamp we were working so much on preparing various styles and champions and be ready for everything that opponents throw at us, at some point the support champion pool was reduced to only ardent, which kinda hurt us in the big picture because mithy was unleashed on melee supports, it made us and me change our play a bit as support before ardent was playing big part of roaming mid and playing together with midlaner

When I saw the group draw i thought it was a hard group but definitelly doable, maybe if we got a bit lucky we could end first even
to not go in debt in the games because I'm still emotionally hurt about us not making it out, I have some regrets about myself personally connected more to draft than anything else, I feel like I maybe let my team down in that regard in the games that we lost vs samsung

After we lost game 2 vs samsung I couldnt stop crying, I was so devastated as we all worked so hard to achieve greatness this time around.

For the game against FB, was very hard for me to stay collected but once the game started there is no feelings and emotions, only game and taking joy in what you're doing with the group of people you love and love spending time with. It might've been or it was our last game as a team and mithy reminded me of that. Mithy also knew how much I wanted to play yasuo atleast once on stage and just locked it in for me. We were losing the game but G2's mental resilience is that it's not over til the nexus falls and our nexus did not fall down that game. We made a comeback and that is maybe my hardest moment of my carrer. playing that one last game with this team..

Everyone wants to be the best, or be recognized as the best
This year I was sure that if we put our maximum effort throughout the whole year we can "make EU great again". I wanted people to see G2 as the aboslute best european team in history. Once we lost groups our chance to show that was gone too, as G2 is known to be a strong bo5 team, we prepare and adapt super well. Unfortunately this group was too hard for us and we didn't make it out. After seeing FNC and MSF go out and show outstanding performances, I realized, maybe our effort and play has not gone worthless, maybe we have actually evolved EU as a whole region the past 2 years, other teams could pick up and start challenging slowly. I'm still super sad that I couldn't be the one to represent my region but I have high hopes in Caps for his match against RNG., and also good luck to PoE in his match against SKT :D
This year's been great, as usual learning, and growth rate in a year as pro is insane compared to my school life. However, its taken a toll on my health, I yet have to find new ways of balance my life with "my job".
Now I'm going to Mont real, Canada to spend time with my sister and her family which I haven't seen for over 6 years. Im gonna take a break from league for couple of weeks, after that I'm going home to finish my exams which I started last year and then prepare for next year and grind again. I don't know anything about stream as I might not have any time spare, if it happens that I will stream I will notify you guys in advance

I have no doubt , that I will make next year for myself even more amazing, either continuing this chapter of my life or starting a new one. thanks for all fan support from all regions I visited this year, China, Europe, Brazil were all awesome. love u all <3

To end this slowly I'm gonna be taking a break from social media, focus on myself my family and friends. if any of my "esports" friends is reading this and you wanna contact me use my personal fb,skype or wapp

I don't know yet what's going to happen next year but one thing is for sure
I'm staying on G2 and "this won't ever end, cause I want more, more more gimme more"

Big thanks to G2 org, teammates and staff for making this year amazing.

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