Immortals’ Allorim: “I'm glad we can have bad games but we can still show up to prove ourselves”

Allorim is no stranger to jumping onto an LCS roster from Academy, and on Immortals, he’s taken his entire roster with him. 

He has hopped from team to team in his career before finding a home on Optic Gaming’s Academy roster, and has been with Immortals since October of 2019. 

In Week 3 of the Summer Split, Immortals completely swapped their LCS and Academy rosters after a 0-4 record. Allorim discusses the move and the potential Academy players have.

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Allorim plays for Immortals (Picture: lolesports) 

Congrats on the win! This is your second win on the main roster, and against a really difficult team. Talk to me about your preparation going into this match. Was it any different than the rest?

We didn’t prep for this match as much as we did for Dignitas, to be honest. Early around the week, we were just thinking, “Okay, obviously since Dignitas is our first match, that's the one we're going to prep for first,” and our practice was so bad, man, it was just…I think we lost ourselves and maybe we were a little tilted from going 0-2 the previous week after barely losing.

We were almost winning those games and I think all of us were a little discouraged, and so after the game on Friday we just had to clean ourselves up. 

Yesterday, we just kind of took it back to our basic play style because we know if we have a kind of comp that has a straightforward goal, we can pretty easily execute that against the top teams of NA, maybe barring Cloud9, but we just kind of did what we had to do. 

It’s just really straightforward gameplay. I don't think we did anything special today, we just played how we should and we didn't have a bad draft, and those two things combined it's like, “My God, we can win, who knew?”

Well, I think we can see that even in the 0-2 week, there were other issues that didn’t involve you guys running it down; you were very close to clinching wins. Tell me about the matchup between Ornn and Wukong. Ornn is quite a strong tank and Wukong has really been finding his place in the LCS now. Who typically comes out on top in a matchup like this and why, just from a general standpoint?

I think both are actually really scaling well into team fights. Ornn just happens to have more straightforward engage, while Wukong has to find more of a flank angle or has to use his flash to catch people out. 

I think in the lane, it's not bad for Ornn; in fact, I usually don't pick Wukong into Ornn, because I think Ornn has kill pressure there, but it's not that bad. Say you’re proficient on Wukong. You can easily navigate your way through the lane without having too much risk of dying and even if you die once, it's not that big of a deal. 

It’ll be a tanky Ornn, but you'll still be a pretty strong Wukong that goes after the backline. That's pretty much what BrokenBlade was going for this game. 

That being said, we were a little too far ahead and even with the good flanks he had, we were just too far ahead; we had all the drakes, we had infernal soul, so I think at the end of the day both are good scalers. I think Ornn scales a little bit better because he has the percentage health damage that helps a lot with doing damage in the late game on top of the Ornn items, especially when you have Corki and Ashe, like we did. 

We had Graves with the Black Cleaver upgrade; I’m just icing out the boys, they love it. They’re getting really strong and I'm sitting there and taking all the damage on the frontline, like, “I'll die for you guys,” and that's what we did.

Speaking of the Wukong, you were a Wukong one trick. How does it feel to see it being picked more in the LCS recently and do you plan on putting the pick on your rotation at some point?

This is a question everyone asks, even my friends: “Man, Kieran, when are you going to pull out the Wukong? You have to do it, how can you not?” I'm just sitting here; I feel like my soul is being sucked out of me. I put my Wukong soul into the Thresh lantern and it’s being sucked out of there. 

I do like Wukong, I think he's a good champion, but I know if I pick Wukong I better be doing really well that game or else I'm never going to live it down. It's got to be the right time. You’ve got to bide your time and I will do it for the people.

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Yesterday, Zven played Wukong in the bot lane. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it played there, so what do you think about that kind of role for the champ?

Senna/Wukong is really good, I think, if you can play it; if you have practice on it. I know if you play it and don’t have any practice on it, it can be really bad. 

I think it's a feast or famine thing; if you get behind, you just…you’re so sad, you're crying the whole game, but if you can actually get ahead on it, I think it's so strong and Senna/Wukong can push the advantages so easily because Wukong can just mash his E button on the enemy lane and get healed up by Senna right after the trade, so it's not even like you took damage at all. 

It’s really strong if you can play it and specifically, Lost and Treatz [on TSM Academy] display it the best out of anyone else so if you're curious about how it's supposed to be played, watch those two.

Talk to me about playing on Academy versus playing on LCS. Is there any real difference between the two leagues, or difference in preparation?

I think we go into it the same way. There's no reason you should take Academy games any less seriously, especially considering how good some of the Academy rosters are. 

People have a lot of talk about how Academy players can be in the higher bracket of LCS, and I think that's genuinely true. I think there are a lot of great players in Academy, and it's really unfortunate that not everyone's going to get their chance as soon as they should. 

People try to view Academy as a lesser league, but there are a ton of talented players, and I think if LCS players ever do go down to Academy, like they get benched, they can't take it any less seriously than LCS. These Academy players are hungry! They’re going to do things to you that you wouldn’t imagine an LCS player would do. 

People have a lot more attempts at trying things that are unique and that will catch you off-guard, so I really think that Academy is a force to be reckoned with.

Since this is the first time I’m speaking with you, I have to ask, how did it feel getting the call that your entire Academy roster was moving to the main roster? Were you pumped and ready to go or were you a little apprehensive?

I guess, for me, since I’ve done this so many times it was that, “Here we go again,” moment and I don't think anyone was that surprised. I think with the results of the other team that weren't doing very well it wasn't expected, but we knew something could come up soon, whether it was roster swaps or like it is now with an entire team change. 

I think everyone is pumped to play LCS; everybody would rather play LCS than Academy to show what we have. Everyone is willing and ready to play. I think maybe at first we were a little hesitant because it’s like, “Oh, man, they’re just throwing us in and we haven't even had any LCS practice yet”, but maybe after a day of thinking about it, we said, “Okay, let's do it. What's the worst that can happen? We'll go 0-2, and feel sorry for ourselves and then we’ll get to practice and get better”.

Now that you've been playing on the main roster for a little bit now, do you feel that it's not that “Here we go again,” and it’s something that's going to stick?

I'm glad that I'm still here, that’s all I can say. I felt like in previous times I was taken off for not much reason other than maybe I had a bad game and they're thinking, “Oh, Allorim had a bad game, guess it’s back to Academy for you, sorry, good luck next time!” 

I'm glad that we can have bad games, but we can still show up to prove ourselves; for example, the game against Dignitas was an awful game, but we came back and played better today.

You can catch Week 6 of the Summer Split on 17th July across YouTube, Twitch, and lolesports.com. Be sure to catch more League content here on GINX Esports TV.