Fusion General Manager Roston: "T1, For Many Metas, Were Better Than Us Last Year"

New year, new Fusion. Only Jae-hyeok "Carpe" Lee and General Manager Roston Yoo remain from last year's team. Four new rookies of the exciting Fusion academy team T1 as well as their head coach Hyo-jin "J1N" Cho are joining the team. With one lost son returning in Jun-ho "Fury" Kim and Min-seok "AimGod" Kwon coming in as the emotional leader, the Fusion also made sure to stack up on veterans.

We sat down with Roston to talk about how they are doing in scrims, how they came to build the team that they did, how they arrived at J1N as their head coach, the issues they faced in season 4, and more. 

Preparation, Issues, And Expectations

• Due to only six Overwatch League opponents being available to scrim against (of which you play two in the opening week and want to avoid for that reason), getting adequate practice in APAC has been challenging, especially considering Contenders teams didn’t have Alpha access

"There are so many days where we can only get one scrim block. It’s an issue I brought up to the league"

• Roston is grateful to have the Dragons in their divisions as only being able to practice against the best in the world allows you a shot at the top
• Roston wants the Fusion to be contending for a tournament title every time but their expectations this season’s after the tragedy of Alarm’s untimely passing have been levelled to a degree
• The Fusion were experimenting a little more, as were other teams. There currently isn’t a dominant team in APAC scrims
• Work ethic wise Roston thinks the fans can be proud and Roston thinks this is the season in which the Fusion win their first Overwatch League trophy

Season 5 Roster Building

• Roston doesn’t think that the Fusion had fewer resources than in previous seasons. With Carpe, Fury, and Alarm the team was already paying for top tier talent indicating that they had considerable resources allocated
• He thinks some players were extremely overvalued in the market and became a bad deal for the Fusion

• Last season’s experiences with their stranded players in Europe and what toll it takes on those on the bench led to a reconsideration of the size of the roster, keeping it a little leaner this time
• Roston often watches the POV of the Contenders teams they are scrimming against during the season to be prepared for the off-season
• A couple of young players a season are healthy for a roster as they bring fresh excitement. When sHockWave joined the Fusion, he wore his jersey every day and was excited to be on the time

DPS Line

• He thinks MN3 and Zest are underrated mainly because of their COVID problem before the Contenders Korea finals in which they were considered among the favourites
• Carpe is incredibly hard-working, but he’s also really smart as a player and his shot-calling is at an incredibly high level
• Carpe helps MN3 with micro and macro strategy ideas while MN3 pushes Carpe to keep his mechanics up
• Roston thinks Zest is very underrated and an incredibly special player

Support Line

• Roston sees a lot of potential in FiXa as a long-term prospect for Fusion. He thinks his coaching staff can help him improve a lot
• Roston acknowledges that he has heard that Aimgod wasn’t a great teammate during Overwatch League season 1 on Boston but has since changed to become a cultural leader which is the position that he now holds at the Fusion, motivating his team even outside of practice to go to the gym and take care of themselves

• Aimgod is still just as ripped living and breathing "healthy body, healthy mind"

Tank Position

• Roston recalls a conversation with KDG in which they talked about just how close Poko and Fury were in season 3 and how hard the decision was to play one over the other

"Fury brings a calming demeanour into the game"

• Roston doesn’t think Fury had a bad year at the Justice but had a hard time aligning with a very aggressive rookie in MAG
• Fury wanted to return to a Korean team to be closer to family
• Belosrea was already considered to be brought on to back up Mano last season to change up the pace. He makes friends very easily and is an incredibly hard grinder
• Considering the way balance has worked out during the alpha test, Roston thinks that the developers intend a wide variety of off and main tanks to be viable, making them believe they will require expertise from both former roles

Choosing J1N as a new Head Coach

• Roston recalls a moment from season 2 in which he attended a stress management seminar led by Dr K during which J1N (at the time Head Coach of the Guangzhou Charge) showed up with a translator to ask about an issue a player of his faced and how J1N could be a better leader and support him more

• J1N has a great reputation with former players and inhabits a similar role to Moon for Shanghai Dragons

Season 4 & Reasons For Staying In Korea For Season 5

• J1N has a great reputation with former players and inhabits a similar role to Moon for Shanghai Dragons
• The Fusion staying in Korea was just a security measure. As Philadelphia reinstated their mask mandate, it was unlikely for them to have live events
• Before the pandemics for the season 3 playoffs, the Fusion were able to turn around visas in just a couple of weeks. For season 4, it was barely possible to get any European player in at all
• Poko appeared to be the first guy to be able to come to South Korea because his process was the most advanced but the embassy closed unexpectedly
• Fusion’s scrim results were very poor with the stand-in squad

"Last year’s squad - every one of them, both the Westerners and Koreans - that’s the most proud I’ve ever been of any team I’ve ever worked with. That team went through the most adversity"

• O2, Talon, and T1 were all more worthwhile to scrim than the APAC bottom teams for large parts of the season