Quin ‘Raes’ Korebrits has made a bold claim — now he has found his footing in the LCS, there’s no reason he and Immortals duo Mitchell ‘Destiny’ Shaw can’t be the best bot lane in North America. “I think we can,” the Kiwi star promises.
Life in the LCS started off on the wrong foot for Raes. The New Zealander made the Los Angeles swap alongside a host of other Oceanic stars after the OPL closed.
Victor ‘FBI’ Huang, Ibrahim ‘Fudge’ Allami, and fellow Kiwi bot lane star Lawrence ‘Lost’ Hui were already known quantities in the North American league. Bot lane partner Destiny had cut his teeth in the LEC in 2020.
However, many LCS fans knew Korebrits from just one showing: Legacy’s shock Worlds run in Shanghai at the end of last year.
So, when Raes inked a two-year deal with Immortals, all eyes were on him.
Unfortunately, things started off poorly. Immortals managed just two wins in their first six, though their victories were against Team Liquid and Evil Geniuses. The main problem, Raes explained, was that they were just “not on the same page.”
“I was auto losing us games,” he told Dexerto.
“That’s all there is to it… we were never on the same page. We played really well in scrims, then we’d get on stage and it would just be so much harder.”
Raes shakes off “scared” mentality
Looking even deeper, however, there was another problem — Raes was struggling with confidence on the LCS stage. Fair enough for any ‘rookie’ in the league, yes, but for Korebrits, who has thrived off confidence, it was deciding whole games.
“I was playing not to lose, and that’s really bad; just conceding every single lane we played, playing scared, no matter what Mitch [Destiny] did, what the team did. I was playing not to go down, rather than make the enemy bleed,” the Kiwi star explained.
“That is a losing mindset. It meant every time we started to get ahead, I felt a lot of pressure to carry. I usually like that. I don’t know why things changed.”
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- Read More: Cloud9 finishes on top in LCS Spring 2021
It’s an “error” Raes feels like he’s fixed. “I’ve figured out that we just want to smash. There’s lots of matchups we try to get so we can do that… Mitch and I want to play aggressive, push advantages. I feel like I’m back to myself.”
Immortals bot lane can be “the best”
Raes tipped his hat to long-term friend and OCE teammate Destiny for helping with that slump too: “Mitch helped me a lot. He knows how I want to play, and made sure we worked to get me back there. I really do think — considering how well we play together — that we can be the best bot lane in the LCS. That’s what I want.”
Luckily, Destiny agrees completely.
The star Aussie support told Dexerto, “We definitely had a rough start, but we’ve found our footing. There’s no way that we’ll go backwards.”
“This break — while it sucks — has come at the right time,” Destiny continued. “The team can step away and figure out what went wrong for us, and reflect. I do think we’re going to go on a run in Summer. Keep an eye on us.”
LCS schedule must change, Raes says
Raes also said he hopes “something changes” in LCS scheduling.
The gruelling three-day weekends are too volatile, he claims. Fewer scrim days, and more punishing results if you read the meta wrong, means some teams can lose their chance at playoffs all together off just a single bad read. Coming into new weeks under-done is becoming the norm.
“Only being able to play 15 scrims, prepping for three teams, it’s tough,” he said. “You lose day one because of a problem, you’re probably going to lose games two and three as well. It’s such an overloaded schedule. I guess we’ll see if it changes.”
While the Immortals roster now takes a month off to reset, the top 6 prepare for playoffs; the Mid-Season Showdown begins this weekend, with just a single spot at the Mid-Season Invitational in Iceland on the line.
