FlyQuest’s Summer Split Nightmare: Struggling to Meet Expectations and Facing Playoff Pressure

FlyQuest entered the LCS Summer Split with great expectations following a tight third-place finish in the Spring and a supposedly improved squad with Vulcan replacing Eyla. However, their start has defied expectations in the worst ways possible, even though they still have time to turn it around. Also, League of Legends team FlyQuest was promoted as a roster at the beginning of 2023, significantly investing in becoming one of the league’s top clubs. The buzz around this group was palpable because it included players like Jeong ‘Impact’ Eon-young, Mingyi ‘Spica’ Lu, Lee ‘Prince’ Chae-hwan, and Lee ‘VicLa’ Dae-Kwang, some of the top talent in South Korea.

Even in an interview with Spica in the Spring, we talked about overseas opponents he’d like to play against and whether competition in North America was fierce enough to prepare players for playing against the greatest teams in the world. A few months later, the story has been entirely turned around. Even with the addition of Philippe ‘Vulcan’ Laflamme, one of the top support players in the LCS, the team’s Summer Split has gotten off to a disastrous start with just two weeks of play and no wins.

With a winless start to the LCS Summer Split, FlyQuest falters

The FlyQuest team’s identity in Spring was clear-cut: play around Prince. He routinely outlasted late-game hyper scalers like Aphelios and Zeri and those ADCs who were more early-game focused, including Lucian, in the context of that time’s heavily bot lane-focused meta. He has yet to be able to establish himself during the Summer Split, though. A string of surprise losses as a result of it, FlyQuest’s single lane performers generally being outclassed, and Spica’s inability to spark his team’s offense. After their sixth straight defeat, Vulcan was spotted with his head in his hands, and the team’s downward trend has supporters concerned that FlyQuest won’t be able to recover in time to compete in the Playoffs. Additionally, other organizations make fun of them.

The majority of clubs with less than 9 losses don’t advance to the playoffs. Even while it’s still possible to score 8–10, it’s relatively uncommon. Therefore, FlyQuest doesn’t have much time to determine how to win more games if they want to compete at Worlds in 2023. They discussed how the LCS walkout would have affected the Summer Split during a recent interview with Mohammed ‘Revenge’ Kaddoura. It still needs to be included in the final version of the interview. But what he said is particularly pertinent to FlyQuest’s situation:

“We have fewer days of practice merely because it’s faster, so if you’re a team struggling at this period, it’s tough to catch up to units performing well. So it’s good if your team is performing well. You bully everyone. Given EG’s good performance thus far, the split for Revenge being shorter is excellent.