Hope discusses JDG’s Worlds performance, synergy with Missing

JD Gaming’s AD Carry Hope discusses JDG’s performance at Worlds, synergies with support Missing and the MSG Crowds.

JD Gaming turned heads in the Summer Split winning the Silver Dragon cup and being the LPL’s first seed heading into Worlds 2022. With an incredibly stacked roster in all lanes, JDG looks to be a title contender heading into this year’s event. Making his international debut this year is Wang “Hope” Jie who made an astonishing performance as one of the LPL’s best AD Carries.

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity. We’d like to thank Riot Games for providing translations and Iris for translating the interview.

Hope, thank you for speaking with us. Congratulations on the win versus Damwon KIA. How do you think the game went?

I will say that all my teammates had performed very well but I didn’t perform as to my expectations so I kind of feel very sorry to the fans.

This marks your Worlds debut having previously been on EDG and EDG Youth. How does it feel to be making your international debut here in North America?

Yeah, I say I felt like the crowd is so amazing. They’re cheering for us.

I definitely heard the JDG fans from the box this afternoon. I want to ask about Group B. It is a harder group with teams such as Damwon KIA, G2 Esports, and Evil Geniuses. What do you think of this group? Do you feel you’ll have a good chance to make it out?

So I will say as for the teams who will make out of this group, I will say probably us and DK. But as for the situation that you were asking, like what I think of this group, if we perform as we just like we generally do, then we can make it out of groups.

Today, you and your support Missing played Aphelios and Thresh, which is a very synergistic lane that you need a lot of practice on and synergy with your duo. How would you say your relationship is with Missing?

So as for the synergy between us, I would definitely say very well. As for the relationship between me and Missing, on stage we’re teammates and we play games together. And offstage, we always live together. Right? So definitely, we are very close to each other.

We know how powerful Aphelios has been over the last few years and we’ve been seeing him start to come back into the meta. Why do you think Aphelios is such an important pick in this particular meta?

I think Aphelios can be listed as a tier-one champion.

I want to ask about just the LPL in general. There was always a lot of pressure on the number one LPL seed to perform well at Worlds. With this being your first time at Worlds, are you feeling that pressure as a player, not only for yourself but also for your team being the number one seed from the LPL?

Yes definitely. Because we’re the first seed of the LPL, we definitely feel the pressure from everywhere. So as for how to take the pressure, we just have to practice and scrim harder and harder.

One of the things that you’re mentioning is that there is a larger crowd and a lot of them were cheering for JDG. You said the crowd is amazing, but do you feel the pressure from the crowd as well?

This is my first time to be able to play on a stage with such a big crowd offline. So I would say yeah, they’re really amazing, but I can I think I can get adapted to it after playing more matches.

As we look ahead toward the rest of the tournament, is there a particular AD Carry you’d like to face off against?

I won’t say there’s a specific AD Carry I really want to face off against but I just want to win all the games that we’re gonna have.

Before we wrap up: Worlds this year is in North America. Have you gotten a chance to explore New York City? If so what have you really enjoyed about being in North America so far?

This is the first time for me being in America but because of the pandemic, we haven’t got a chance to head out. We just stay in hotels, order takeout and have some hamburgers. Yeah, they’re delicious.

Is there a particular hamburger place you like?

I can’t really recall the name of the hamburger pace, but probably Burger King. I’m just picking a random name here.

Finally, is there anything you’d like to say to the fans of JDG?

Thank you to all the fans that keep supporting us. To be honest, in the first matchup that we had, I didn’t perform really well. So that’s kind of the story for us but we will definitely have better improvement and adjustments in the upcoming matchups.