Doxy: "My long-term goal is to make it to Worlds"
Top-laner of our League of Legends roster, Rafael "Doxy" Adl Zarabi gave big interview to the Esports News UK.
Сan you start by introducing yourself please, can you tell us about your history in LoL and esports, how you got into it?
Hey, my name is Rafael Adl Zarabi, I go under the nickname "Doxy" and I have played competitively for almost two years. I started back in summer 2015 where I got really high on the solo queue ladder. I was rank 34 I think at the time, I remember being right below Alphari who at the time was rank 33.
Back then everything was much more primitive I would say. There wasn't that many big orgs and wildcard regions were kinda non-existent compared to today. where they are getting a lot of imports, including Koreans.
Anyways, I got added on the League client and asked to play on Carpe Diem who at the time were competing in Starladdertv which later on got acknowledged by Riot and is now called LCL.
I played the Summer Split there with nothing else on my mind than just getting people to know about me, just putting myself out there in the scene. And it was a good first step. After the split I left and played a little bit in DDH (Spanish league), but left already after a month or so.
In spring 2016 I joined Vega Squadron, but left after a few weeks to make a team for open qualifier. We had a good roster actually (Doxy, Xerxe, F1natyx, Gabano, AoD) and also had Moo (ex Gambit manager, Roccat analyst) and Leviathan (ex Gambit coach) helping us out. But we disbanded already after a month and when the open qualifier was near so I was teamless.
In summer 2016 I played for Navi in the LCL but lost 2-3 in the semifinals to Vega, whom the next day went on to getting themselves reverse sweeped by ANX, who then went to Worlds and managed to get out of groups.
In 2017 Virtus.Pro (VP) bought a slot in LCL and was invited to play a cup in Saint Petersburg. I got asked to join and I brought the jungler Sezzer with me for the cup. We lost to Vega in the semi-finals 2-0. That leads us to where I am now, I played with VP for the 2017 Spring Split of LCL and we won the split and headed to MSI in Sao Paulo, but had a poor performance there and didn't make it out of groups.
Congrats on winning the LCL Spring playoffs. when you look back on MSI 2017, was there anything you would have liked to have done differently? what did you learn from MSI?
When we won the LCL split I still could not believe that we were going to Brazil in MSI. Even a few weeks after it I was still saying "guyss we are going to Braziiiiiil" and literally could not believe it. I am really happy we made it, but for our performance and having represented the CIS region (who are used to M19 (former ANX) playing really well internationally, for that I am really ashamed of myself.
We could have practised more and prepared better for sure. For me individually, I am really ashamed of how I played at MSI. I am not sure what happened, I was not nervous, but something definitely happened and I was playing poorly on those days. For that I apologize to the whole region, but yeah it was nonetheless a good experience.
Are you happy with how Virtus.pro have performed in the LCL since joining in december 2016? Can i also ask what are your other longer-term aims and ambitions as a player?
I joined LCL in spring with winning the split and going to MSI in mind, I promised myself that and anything else would have been a disappointment.
My long-term goal is to make it to Worlds, I also want to in the future to play in EU LCS.