Nubbypoohbear on upcoming MLG
eSports Central
Orbit Gaming's roster had a rocky start in it's inception, but after acquiring nFear Gaming in March, 2012 they've been on a steady rise through the Challenger Circuit rankings, currently sitting in the 9th position. Garnering a lot of attention for their skill in MLG Spring Championship 2012, they are working to secure the top 8 position in the Challenger Circuit through their performance in the upcoming MLG. We were able to have a discussion with Orbit Gaming's AP Carry, Nubbypoohbear, and ask him a few questions about the team's performance at the recent IPL Faceoff: San Francisco as well as their practice schedule for MLG: Summer Championship in Raleigh, NC.
If you'd like to catch up with Nubbypoohbear you can check out his stream or follow him on his Twitter.
If you want to keep up to date with all things MobaFire eSports, you can follow our Twitter as well.
You are sometimes labeled as a passive laner, do you feel your style is fine for the current hyper-aggressive meta? If so, what steps are you taking to do so?
Right now, I'm pretty much changing my style. At IPL I was pretty aggressive. I feel like mid-laners should really switch it up. They should go passive, they should go aggressive - in the right match ups. We used to be a passive farm team, and I used to be really aggressive and then I had to get used to passive farming. Now we're aggressive so now I have to get used to being aggressive. It is always back and forth. With the new meta, we have to be really aggressive at roaming along with being able to hit every CS mid-lane. I still need to adapt, and at IPL I really wasn't adapting.
You get quite a bit of attention for your Karthus play, but what other champions come as second nature to you, or are your comfort zone champions?
I am known for my Orianna play and Morgana. At MLG a lot of the bans were targeted at our team, mainly Morgana. Since we got Morgana we were able to win a couple games that way. Against CLG EU we won the Morgana game when we had Tristana, and Nientonsoh was able to hyper-carry and I would just CC the team and he would just pick off the team. Orianna I just love her utility and her burst. They just fit our playstyle.
How do you feel your recent IPL Faceoff games went overall?
It went horrid for us, it was definitely not a good event. We could do a lot better. We were the only team to take a game off TSM, who went on to win the tournament though. I think it was a sleep issue, we had to get up at 7 and we didn't get to eat until 12, and we barely ate at all. We had no time to eat before the game, so it was tough for us. It wasn't IPL's fault, more our fault. There were a lot of technical difficulties so the games didn't start until 10:30 or so and we were so tired after that first game, we just went all out that game and it just got worse the second game and then worse for the third game. We just had to get back to the drawing board.
How was IPL's scheduling overall? How was it to find time to eat and rest?
The scheduling was fine. You definitely need to find time to get food. They actually had a place to get food though. We had technical difficulties, we had a problem with our connections, so the games didn't start until later so we just got more and more hungry. It was rough. Thankfully Studio was able to get some food for my team, but I didn't get a chance to eat at all.
As you mentioned before, you were the only team to take a game off of TSM. You started off strong against TSM, what went wrong in the rest of that series?
We got a little distracted, we didn't talk about bans and picks. We sort of went into it blind. We had no plan, the first game we had a plan and it was a good plan, but the next few games some of us were pressured into playing champions we weren't used to. The third game I was playing Zilean, and I played really bad as Zilean. Bans and picks were the main problem, as soon as we got that switched up we'll be okay.
Orbit is currently 9th in the Challenger Circuit standings and this upcoming MLG holds a lot of weight in order to get into the top 8 to compete in PAX. Is the team feeling the pressure as MLG gets closer, or are you going to treat the event like any other?
We are changing our practice schedule. We need to scrim more and get more practice in. We used to be really good at pinpointing the team fights, everybody was afraid of our level one fights. We would always win our level one fights, always, but we never did any level one fights [at IPL]. We never really played any of our main champions, and I have no idea why - I wish I knew why. I'd say lane swaps kind of killed us, so we need to adapt to all that.
What is your view on the new popular lane swapping strategy? How do you view the new 2v1 swaps appearing in nearly every game?
It is interesting, Nientonsoh is such a strong laner and people who lane against him don't do too hot most of the time. I feel that it gets teams that aren't ready for it, like us, we weren't ready for it at that time. But now we're taking precautions so we're ready for anything at MLG. It just abuses teams like us, who aren't used to lane swapping or keeping up with the meta and anything like that.
Is that something your team will be practicing on, trying out 2v1 lanes etc.?
It is definitely something you have to be used to. Every team is doing it right now, even the lower queue teams that you would never imagine doing it. Legion were so good at it, they pulled off their lane swaps really well - I have no idea how. They are a really good team. We scrimmed them a lot, they are really close to us. They had confidence in us, we had confidence in them doing well. They were pretty bummed we didn't do as well as we should have done.
You mentioned you were making changes to your practice schedule. What has the team's typical practice schedule been, especially for the upcoming MLG?
In preparation for the IPL, we really just scrimmed TPA and IG. That wasn't smart of us because we didn't keep up with the NA meta and what they were doing and what their plans were. This time I think we're just going to get ready with NA teams, whatever teams we can get accustomed to - we need to get used to what everybody else is doing and we didn't do that for IPL. A lot of teams surprised us at this past event.
Does your team have a set practice hours a day, or is it an impromptu "We are all online, lets scrim" setup?
It has pretty much been the same, the "Hey we're all online, lets just scrim". We need to change it and have a set time, for when we actually scrim. It is hard to find scrims and schedule them with everybody living in different areas, all our sleep schedules get messed up. Someone will have to get up earlier, or stay up later until 1 AM - which is rough for them. We have somebody who lives in New York and we usually play on PST.
Do you feel the western LoL scene should take on the eastern model of rigorous practice for a set amount of hours (6-8+) per day.
I feel their work ethic is amazing, and it pays off. Sure some of the teams get eliminated early, but the strategies they pull off were amazing. You can only do that with a hard practice schedule and solo queue. I feel that teams should have a set time when they should scrim and a set time when they should solo queue.
A few months ago there was a small debate within the community whether or not scrim or solo queue was better practice, what do you feel you gain most from each type of practice?
Solo queue is just to get confident. If you're able to play a champion, and you're winning the game, obviously you're going to be a lot more confident. You want to feel like you can play the champion and take it to scrims. You just get more and more confident with that champion, and then you can bust it out in actual tournaments. Because if you go into a game and you're not too sure and you haven't played the champion enough then it is obviously going to be in the back of your head "what if I mess up?" "what if I let my team down?" - so solo queue definitely helps you out with that. I'm known for my Morgana and I play countless games in solo queue with Morgana and Karthus. Karthus I don't really play in solo queue, but apparently people don't like it when I play him.
What has been the team's main focus in your practice sessions? Mechanics, champion pools, strategy? Is there a mindset that you get into before you start a scrim or is it more about the specific team you're facing?
It is not really about the team we're facing in scrims, we just kind of run whatever and we just let them play whatever they are best at in scrims - I figure if we can play whatever team comp they want to run and beat them then we're obviously doing well in our practice. Additionally we always look for a level one fight, just so we can practice our call making - focus fire and other early game strategies people might do. If you can start off with a great advantage, you can start slowly snowballing and taking the game away from them, which is something we kind of like to do. We definitely need to work on bans and picks. So now we know for practice we need to focus on building a team comp and using it against players and finding out what is good against it.
If you could pin an overall playstyle to Orbit, what would it be?
It has been back and forth. Lately it has been really aggressive. We like to have 2v2 skirmishes and 1v1s a lot. We love teamfights too. We used to run Orianna and dominate teamfights, but we kind of shifted away from that and I have no idea why we did that. We just need to start using our heads a little bit more.
Are you and the team content with that style? If not, what sort of steps might the team take to modify their fundamental style?
We are going back to how we did at MLG, pretty much, how we would run heavy teamfight comps. Basically what Curse has been doing lately, they've been busting out the Orianna, Shyvana and then the Morgana with the rest of the team comp they want to run. We are shifting back to that because that was what we were best at, and we're going to do our best to utilize the teamfights better for us. We aren't really used to teamfights anymore, we've had bad team dynamics. But we've thankfully straightened things out and we're going to get back to having stronger teamfights and more AoE based comps probably.
But I might be baiting people with this, I might change it up.
But I might be baiting people with this, I might change it up.
Any other shoutouts, or anything at all you'd like to add?
Our shoutout is to Orbit Gaming, they've been really good to us and they've been paying out the pocket to get us to all these events and they've stuck with us and had confidence in us. It is a good team, I'm very satisfied with them.
If you'd like to catch up with Nubbypoohbear you can check out his stream or follow him on his Twitter.
If you want to keep up to date with all things MobaFire eSports, you can follow our Twitter as well.
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Wow nice interview. Contains great in-depth information! |
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I agree, that's prob one of my favorite interviews so far. I remember that zil game, it's too bad he wasn't playing at his best that game. Looking forward to them again soon 
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