Maru "MaSa" Kim, the 21-year old Terran playing for Team eLevate, has seen a lot of success in the Canadian scene. True to form, MaSa recently defeated Marc-Olivier"desRow" Proulx, Sasha "Scarlett" Hostyn and Alex "Neeb" Sunderhaft (twice) on the way to a first place victory at Kings of the North.
We caught up with MaSa to chat about his recent tournament performances and how he feels about the Legacy of the Void meta.
You just joined Team eLevate, how is that working out for you? They have lots of players in other games, but you’re their only SC2 player.
Its good. Considering I was on ROOT Gaming, which is a lot of players, I didn’t really do team-oriented stuff, like, in-house practice and stuff, so there’s no difference there. Because I’m the only player on eLevate, I think they’re doing better for me, so that’s nice.
A few weeks back you played in the WCS Winter Championship in Poland, where you beat Harstem and then lost to Snute. How did you feel playing at a major tournament?
Really, really nervous. I remember against Snute I was really nervous and I couldn’t raise my depots, so I got wrecked. I was kind of getting a mental breakdown there.
But in the second game I brought it back, because I was playing really well and I smashed him. Third and fourth game, the nervousness and the pressure hit me again, so I couldn’t play at my best.
It's always a problem. But it is getting better, I believe, as I'm doing better in results.
What do you think of the state of balance for Terran and the game in general right now?
It just sucks how... I get that they don’t want M-M-M [Marine, Marauder and Medivacs] for the entire game, so they buffed the shit out of Ultralisks. But still, that forces you to mass Ghosts, so the late-game becomes really dumb. That’s what I don’t like.
What tournaments are you looking forward to now?
DreamHack: Austin, and hopefully I can qualify for the Spring Championship.
Player-wise, who do you think is going to be a rising star this year?
Neeb is already there, and aside from him I don’t know.
If you had to be a unit in another player’s army, what you unit would you be and which player would it be?
Unit would be the Ultralisk, and I would be in Snute’s army, because he builds a shit-ton of Queens, so he’s going to save me the entire game.
Christian Paas-Lang is an eSports journalist from Toronto who would probably just be a Zergling in Snute's army. You can follow him on Twitter.
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