Chapter 36: Team friendship.
Thank you to Ringo for the Ko-fi!
TTC's next match was one week later. Winning one regular season match wasn't some big occasion worth celebrating, so the next day Ding-ge came to the base and woke everyone up to go downstairs and review yesterday's game.
This was Jian Rong's first time attending a real match review meeting. Even though they also held reviews for practice matches, it was always a little informal because those weren't actual competitions.
"Seventeen minutes in, right here." Ding-ge paused the game footage and pointed at the Zed on the screen, asking Jian Rong, "This is only seventeen freaking minutes in! You're almost all the way at their bot lane second turret, how did that happen? You want to push their base without even pushing the first tower??"
Before Jian Rong could say anything, he was cut off by Ding-ge again. "I know that you wanted to come here and camp their bot lane, but could you guarantee they had no sight of you? Or was it that you simply didn't care whether you could escape or not, you only wanted to kill their ADC? Did you know that you had gold on you at that time?"
Xiao Bai cleared his throat and peeked at Jian Rong, afraid that he would explode with an "are you teaching me how to play this game?".
But Jian Rong didn't.
Both of his hands rested on top of the table, and he quietly waited for the lecturing to finish before he said, "My fault."
So well-behaved that even Ding-ge was momentarily startled.
"...it's the same problem that you have in practice matches, you're too independent. You can play like that against Squid, but what about against Fighting Tiger? Or PUD? Or at Worlds in the future? You've also watched clips from the last season before, so you know how tacit the coordination is for strong teams. The mid-late game almost always uses a team fight strategy. It's very easy for them to find a gap with your one-man combat habit. Continue to improve, I will start paying attention to this habit of yours beginning from the next practice match."
Ding-ge pressed play again. The next scene was of Jian Rong successfully ganking Squid's bot lane duo from the brush and instakilling Doufu in a few seconds, not giving any face to the enemy support at all.
He should scold for the parts that needed to be scolded, but he couldn't forget to give praise where it was due either. Ding-ge nodded. "But your gameplay is top-notch. Keep maintaining this kind of state."
When reviewing, Ding-ge's habit was to meticulously comb through the recording section by section, pointing out anyone who made a mistake. Half an hour later, everyone else besides Lu Boyuan had been scolded a few times.
Jian Rong was the MVP, but he was also the one who was lectured the most.
After the first game ended, Ding-ge took a big gulp of his water to moisten his throat. He looked at Lu Boyuan and said, "This match review meeting... makes me feel like I've returned to that one meeting five years ago."
At that, Lu Boyuan chuckled but didn't say anything.
Jian Rong asked, "What happened five years ago?"
"Five years ago..." Ding-ge paused and suddenly asked, "Aren't you one of his long-time fans?"
Lu Boyuan tilted his head and looked over, only to see Jian Rong open his mouth and give a vague, low "ah" after a long pause.
"I remember that hat of yours now," Ding-ge said. "It's from the first year Xiao Lu joined the team, a piece of merch that the team was selling at the venue during the LDL finals, right?"
