Team WE Condi: 'I’m actually out of practice for stealing the baron so I’ll practice harder for the next game'

China’s Team WE had another up and down day at the 2017 Mid-Season Invitational on Day 2, splitting their games to end at a total record of 2-2. After their loss to SK Telecom T1, Yahoo Esports sat down with jungler Xiang “Condi” Renjie to talk about his team’s performance.

Yahoo Esports: Today was another 1-1 day for both you and Team WE. How do you feel about your performance?

My own performance was better than yesterday. It’s almost to where I was back in the LPL. For WE as a whole, I think that our cohesion is coming back. For tomorrow and the next few days, we should be able to perform better and better.

You did manage to get an advantage against SKT early. Were you at all surprised at the Ivern pick for Peanut, since it’s not something he’s ever played before?

I was definitely surprised that Peanut picked Ivern because he’s never used Ivern before. I also think it’s because they didn’t want us to pick Ivern because one of our strategies is to use Ivern.

We’ve seen a lot of Ivern priority in Champion Select this tournament. Why do you think Ivern is such a high-priority pick right now?

Ivern is so popular because of his crowd control and ability to protect mid or ADC especially late game. His cooldowns on his protective abilities late [game] are so short, it makes him very strong.

Your lanes appeared to be a bit more stable in getting early pushes today as opposed to Day 1. As a jungler, how important is it to have these pushing lanes from draft?

My teammates were the ones who were able to get advantages in lane. It allowed me to have a lot more resources in the jungle and more freedom so it’s actually really important.

In Game 1, you three-buffed Trick’s Nunu. Did the Nunu surprise you at all? Take me through how you took advantage of Trick in the early game.

I was definitely surprised that Trick would pick Nunu, even though he is kind of a replacement for Ivern, I think that Nunu is much less effective than Ivern and that’s why Nunu didn’t have much of an impact at all.

At the very end of Game 1, how badly did you want to dive the fountain for the Pentakill?

I did think about trying to get the Pentakill. If we had all gone in, there was no guarantee that we would have been able to kill him anyway so we just backed off.

Last year, you were known as “Son of Baron” for your Baron smite ability. Back then, Team WE would almost wait for Baron to spawn in order to win. This year you’ve been an amazing aggressive jungler early how has your growth as a jungle affected Team WE’s strategies?

Overall, Baron is still really important for a jungler. Last year we would always fall into a disadvantage so I would have to make a lot better use of Baron. This season, Baron has become less important to our strategies just because we’re a much better team. I’m actually out of practice for stealing the baron so I’ll practice harder for the next game.

Emily Rand’s love of the 2013 KT Rolster Bullets will never die. You can follow her on Twitter.