Two More Legends: Welcome Kellar and Wonderfuls

September 11 2019

With the addition of Kellar and Wonderfuls our second Apex Legends roster is now complete! They will be joining Mendokusaii and Cali in forming a 4 man squad where one player will rotate between playing and coaching depending on the circumstances. We are tremendously excited to see them in action at the upcoming Preseason Invitational which takes place in only two days, on September 13th, which is a massive 80 team tournament with teams from around the world gathering in Krakow, Poland.

The trio of Kellars, Wonderfuls, and Mendo have been competitors and friends for a long time, with all of them competing against each other in Overwatch before making the switch to Apex Legends. Competitive success has always been Team Liquid's number one priority and after speaking to each of these players and learning that they share this vision we know they are destined to achieve great things in Apex Legends.

Don't just take our word for it though, we interviewed both Kellar and Wonderfuls so you can get to know them better yourself!

Get To Know Kellar

Coming from Overwatch, how did your time playing competitively in that game help you when you made the switch to Apex Legends?

My Overwatch career helped me because Apex and Overwatch are very similar in a lot of ways where the way the game plays with tempo and the way you have to work as a team, those two factors are super similar. The whole game, Apex Legends, is based around tempo and how much damage you put out and how much damage you’ve taken and that’s some of the basic stuff, the first stuff you learn in Overwatch.

You guys found the Pathfinder glitch with the double Zipline and Apex originally had bunny hopping, did it take you a while to get used to the different movement mechanics?

Some of the mechanics with movement is similar but Apex is more of a quake-based movement with air strafing and bunny hopping and stuff like that. When I was younger I used to play older games like Quake and Enemy Territory and other quake engine games so for me it was an easy transition.

What was the primary reason you decided to join Team Liquid?

I was given an opportunity to play with Mendo, who is a really good friend and I know him from Overwatch, so it was a pretty big swing factor that I get to play Apex with one of my best friends. It’s pretty awesome that I get to do that. I’m under what I think is considered the best org in esports alongside my best friends so it was a pretty easy choice for me.

You guys are doing something quite unique by having a 4 man roster. What advantages are there with having a 4 man roster in Apex?

So yeah, we have 4 players instead of 3. The advantage of that is that we have more eyes on our games. We can turn a player into a coach rather than just a player and I feel like players usually have a better understanding of the game than people who just watch it, so I feel like it’s more valuable to have someone who is equally good but can also watch the game. So like, Cali and Mendo can swap in and out depending on the circumstances. It’s helpful for Mendo too because if there is any event that he can’t make it to then Cali can step in and take his spot and vice-versa for anybody else.

What was the biggest reason you started to play Apex competitively?

Basically Overwatch for me, the direction it was going in just wasn’t that fun anymore. Apex came out and it was a new BR that started taking off. I saw a lot of my friends started playing it so I started playing it and I really enjoyed it, so I wanted to see if I could go pro in it and that worked out!

What’s a favourite moment for you in your esports career?

I think my favourite part of my entire esports career would be travelling and meeting everybody and putting a face to names because most of our job is online so you don’t really get that interaction person to person. Being able to do that is amazing and really cool and it’s worth all the time I spent inside. *laughs*

What’s one of your favourite places that you’ve traveled to?

Probably Taiwan, Taiwan was super super cool. I went there for an Overwatch tournament and it was really fun, it was a really fun event and I got to meet a lot of people.

What direction do you want to see Apex Legends go in competitively?

I would like to see region based tournaments, I think some smaller tournaments, like 20 team tournaments rather than the big number tournaments we're seeing now. I’d like to have a circuit eventually for each region that we can plan around. Near towards the end of each circuit for each region we could have a Worlds playoff sort of thing where five teams from each region could play against each other.

Why the smaller amount of teams?

I think it would just be a bit more competitive that way if you make it region based and then you wouldn’t have these big tournaments where they seem to be a bit messy for like travel for everybody and PC’s for 80 teams which is really hard. So I’d say having it smaller and region based would be easier for EA and any other tournament organizers as well as the players. It also makes it easier when you are practicing because you practice against the same 20 teams but when you play in an 80 team tournament there’s a lot of varying factors, like you never know which teams are going to land on you.

It would also help to know where people are so you can loot properly and not worry about needing to split up loot, especially if you don’t get good loot in the first place.

Yeah exactly, the loot system right now is kind of bad.

Do you have any ideas for how they could make it better?

I feel like they should make it so if you loot let's say slums or any small city size or name size place on the map you should be able to come out of it with a good amount of meds, armor, stuff like that. You shouldn’t have to loot half the map and come out of it with one blue armor, two whites, and practically no meds because you’ve been fighting the whole time because the map is also slightly small with how many people are on the map. There are a lot of adjustments that need to be made, it’s not really just the loot which is what makes it so difficult to change.

What do you think about the potential for different game modes like we saw with solo’s being played competitively if they are brought back?

I think they do. I think instead of taking something like that away I think solo’s should just be in the game because it’s just a nice thing to hop on and be able to play, especially if you can’t find two other people to play with because I know a lot of people don’t like playing with two randoms. I think they could do something like Fortnite where they just throw in random modes and have people play them and I think Apex should do that a lot more because it makes the game refreshing and fun in different ways. And then if it’s a super popular LTM mode they could possibly look into making it a permanent fixture or competitive mode which I think that would be really cool.

What are your expectations going into the upcoming event?

Our expectations…minimum top 20 for sure but I feel like we could easily get top 5 but there’s a ton of variance due to the fact that it’s an 80 man tournament and there are teams that we have never played against and we don’t know what they are going to do. Also because it’s round by round and bracket by bracket we never know who is going to be in our game and who is going to be landing on us but we’re going to try our best to play together as a team and beat those variables.

Is there anything you’d like to say to fans and people who will be watching?

Thanks for supporting me and the boys and I hope we can show you all what we’re made of!

Get To Know Wonderfuls

As some people will probably know you played competitive in Overwatch before making the switch to Apex Legends. How did your time in Overwatch help you when you made the change?

So when I first swapped over I saw a bunch of similarities between this game and Overwatch. It’s really team based and there are characters with abilities that synergize with each other and make plays and it’s very similar to Overwatch and ulti’s. A main part of this game is how you play with your team and how you play off each other. So let’s say one person peeks so you peek as well or somebody in the back covers you if you’re healing and stuff like that. It’s about playing off each other and playing as a team. The only difference would be the BR aspects of rotations and how you get loot and the RNG that comes with that.

I guess as well the 3v3 compared to the 6v6 in Overwatch.

Yeah, it’s very common in Overwatch though where you’d have smaller fights between 3 people against 3 or 4 people, things like that would happen and it’s very similar in the way you have to work together with your team to get the win.

Why did you guys decide to go with a 4 player roster?

We decided to do this because it’s easier for us to swap players if somebody is ill or can’t make it to an event, and to have a different perspective on things we don’t see when we’re playing the game so it really helps us. The other player can look at what is happening in our game and coach us to help us figure out what we’re doing wrong and give us a different perspective.

Why did you decide to play Apex competitively?

I started to transition out of Overwatch because the way the game was evolving wasn’t as fun for me. It was more becoming a MOBA rather than an FPS and it was really shifting directions so when Apex came out I played it with a bunch of my friends and it was a lot of fun, it was something fresh and something new.

What was the primary reason you decided to play for Team Liquid?

Looking at different orgs, we had a talk with Mendo and our other teammates about different orgs and Liquid was the most prominent and just how they carried themselves as a brand and how they really wanted championship quality teams and they were always striving to win and that really gave us the perspective that Liquid was the org we wanted to go to.

What has been one of your favourite moments in your career in esports so far?

I think the highlight of my career was probably just playing around with a bunch of other people who are now my best friends and playing in tournaments in both games and just overall having a great time competing.

What direction do you want to see Apex Legends head in as an esport?

Obviously the team aspect is a huge part of this game but I want to see things like bunny hopping coming back, things that make the game mechanically challenging that will differentiate you from other people. Some people will be able to do it and some people can’t but it’ll make some people shine and give you outplay potential. Some guns are a little unbalanced like the Longbow and Disruptor Rounds, it makes the game really hard to fight in or take fights because of the damage output they do but we’ll see how Respawn transitions the game in terms of balance. They seem to have a good idea of what they want to do, they just need more feedback.

Is Respawn good about reaching out to the pros?

Yeah, Respawn is really great about reaching out to people about what we’d like to see changed. It’s one of the biggest differences between them and Blizzard.

Recently we saw solo’s come into the game, do you think that could ever become part of the competitive landscape?

Possibly, I think this game is more fit for 3v3’s and solo’s are there for more of a casual or fun game mode but it could become a thing.

You mentioned earlier the different mechanics this game offers, one of them was the double Zipline thing you guys found…

Yeah the double zip to gain momentum to go up the zip faster. It was something we were messing around with in ranked and we found, Mendo put a zipline next to another one and we were like oh holy crap this really increases the momentum and makes you go so much faster to get up high ground or anywhere you want, it’s pretty insane. I think they want to take that out, which I think is kind of a bad idea because it makes the game unique, it’s all these cool little things that people don’t know or haven’t found out that makes it feel special.

What have been some of your favourite places that you’ve visited because of your time as a competitive player?

It’s mostly stuff inside the US, so things like Las Vegas, there was a lan there in Overwatch that I forget the name of but I just want to explore new places and travel and have fun with my team and compete.

Did you know your teammates pretty well considering you’ve all come from Overwatch?

Yeah so I started my career by meeting Mendo, he was on one of the best teams in EU at the time and I was playing on a pretty unknown team and we started scrimming and he noticed potential in me and he asked me to join what would turn into FaZe in Overwatch. We started to become pretty close although things didn’t work out on that team but we stayed in touch and became great friends. Same thing with Kellar, I met him in Overwatch through scrimming and we became great friends and played a bunch of ranked together and we always had a great bond between us three and it has carried over to any other game we’ve played together.

What did you learn from your time as an Overwatch pro that has carried into Apex Legends?

I believe Overwatch was the best game in terms of teaching you the fundamentals of how to work well with other people, play with other people, and teaching mechanical skill. It’s like a jack-of-all-trades type of game that helps you transition to anything you want because the things you learn in that game are easily applicable to almost anything else.

Lastly is there anything you’d like to say to fans?

Thanks to all the fans who watch me and have supported my career. Also shoutout to this thing we have called the fellowship which is a bunch of our friends who cheer us on and I look forward to winning some championships and representing Team Liquid!