David "Hermes" Tu enters the interview room with a heavy sigh and his head dipped downward. He has just come from a team victory and collapses into the closest available chair.
Despite the win, he closes his eyes and shakes his head at the result. "I'm exhausted," he proclaims.
"Vision planning," Tu continues. "We need to plan ahead one or two steps forward and deny the enemy team's responses. We need to figure out how to delay the game enough to the point where the enemy's advantages were diminished. I will work with them on how to improve their vision."
The work and the learning never stops.
Hermes is the strategic coach for the Immortals League of Legends team and a large part of the team's identity in the game. He provides the third-person omniscient point of view, a narrator for the Immortals' season and professional hopes. The coaching staff is arguably the most important factor of a professional League of Legends team because of its role in shaping the growth of both the players and their successes.
Each day, Hermes discusses the team's daily, weekly and seasonal strategic direction with the rest of the staff. He talks short- and long-term goals to identify the necessary preparation for the issues within the team's play, and he gameplans for the upcoming matches and opposition. He goes over the goals of the team (development of the players, playoffs and qualification for Worlds), past issues and new skills with the players from Immortals to help their growth and hammer home good habits. This is every day for Hermes and Immortals, a daily grind.
"The biggest difficulty is getting the players to buy into my system or my solutions. It's addressing their concerns," Tu says. "Players will want to analyze and break down what they think is the problem with the team, but it could be difficult because they're playing through only one perspective and role. They do not have the luxury of stepping back to see the entire picture in order to pinpoint whether it's a symptom or an actual problem to solve."
Hermes' system is all about the environment. Instead of a focus on creating the perfect team fight, draft or specific pace-of-play, the strategy revolves around the map. He wants the Immortals to manipulate the field in its favor to increase the odds of success. It's fight prevention over tactical plays, or as Hermes labels it, "less about the minutia of how to operate a team fight."
"My stamp on the team is super-calculating, almost to the point where the players can win without forcing conflict," explains Tu. "The threat of violence is often enough. I'm very heavy on the map design and taking advantage of it. If you watch my team and their map play, it will look simple, and you'll just know that the team will get ahead. I want my team to take a stranglehold on resources and force the opposition back for free aggression. My way is the best strategy to win. The way to control resources and force the opposition into tough decisions is the way to play. It's about securing the superior position every single moment of the game. I don't like there to be chances. There are ways to manipulate the enemy team on the map so you have the highest chance during the skirmishes."
But the biggest benefit of a strategy coach like Hermes is the personal growth of the players. This is a boys' league, and it takes a teacher to curate and cultivate the player's personal evolution and maturity. Hermes is a mentor for the rookie players, a strategic sparring partner. He captures all these roles in addition to creating the game plan and identity of the team's play. While the priority is to win games, his impact will far exceed wins and losses, and the real reward will be how the Immortals' players will mature and grow as people.
The biggest challenge, though? Language barriers. With more and more foreign, non-English-speaking talent coming in, such as Immortals' new South Korean top laner Lee "Flame" Ho-jong, the inability to properly empathize or project how he's feeling continues to be an issue for Hermes. As everything goes, it's still a work in progress.
The differences between a team with players coaching themselves and a team with a staff of coaches and analysts handling the logistics is night and day. You need someone with the ability to teach and the confidence to provide their own expertise to challenge the professional players. Influence is no ordinary skill, and balance is absolutely integral for a team's evolution.
"It's absolutely necessary. There's an intrinsic flaw when a player dictates the strategic direction because it's difficult to balance," Tu proclaims. "Even if they can accurately balance the team, they'll still need to analyze outside team strategy. You need someone to balance everyone's perspectives as well as draw in their own, and the confidence to bring your own expertise. No League of Legends team can operate without a strategic mind to direct how to practice through all the ever-changing patches and game. Every organization has someone to determine how the roster plays."
That said, coaching in League of Legends is still largely unknown. It is arguably the most important job and feature in the esport, and only stands to grow.
"I don't know how the community views coaching, really. I hope that coaching, in general, takes a look at more traditional sports models, because they've been in the game far longer than we have," says Tu. "They've experimented with a wide variety of managerial structures and expertise on how coaching can help. Also, how to best use statistics and an analytical staff. There's a lot more in store for the coaching scene. A lot of coaches are developing new regimes, and over the time, the team with the best results will leak out, and we'll all learn from them."