Week 5 of the League of Legends European Championship has just ended with G2 Esports placed at 1st. They’ve never left the top spot, but they’ve had to share it with other teams who also have seven wins and three losses.
What happened to 2019 G2? G2 Esports is a premier team in the LEC, who was number one last year, and went all the way to the 2019 League of Legends World Championship Finals against FunPlex Phoenix. They beat SKT Gaming at MSI 2019 and also at Worlds, with the same roster they have right now. But there was one change: Luka “PERKZ” Perkovic and Rasmus “Caps” Winther switched roles, trading ADC and Mid lane.
Looking at Caps up to Week 5, it’s a good place to assess Caps’ play, champions, advantages and mistakes.
Champion Pool – 70% Win Rate
Aphelios – 50% Win Rate
Aphelios, the latest ADC to enter the champion pool, is the main pick of Caps this split. All throughout the LEC, bot lane players have been picking Aphelios as a go to champion.
Caps has played four games with Aphelios against Team Vitality, Rogue Gaming, Misfits Gaming and FC Schalke 04.. The results from these games include two wins against Vitality and Rogue and two losses against Misfits Gaming and Schalke.
Aphelios is a high damage champion but not a high mobility one. He lacks a third ability in exchange for five types of weapons and effects and an ultimate that does a lot of team battle damage. Give up an escape ability for CC (crowd control), ranged and Heimerdinger turret damage? For a Mid lane player, this came with certain downfalls.
Senna – 100% Win Rate
On Senna, another new marksman, Caps has played three games and won each of them. Played against MAD Lions, Origen Gaming and Fnatic, a win each.
Senna has a slow auto attack rate, but a fast scaling range and a cooldown reduction method on her Piercing Darkness (Q). The point is, Senna can play safe from the back and heal/poke during the laning phase. But Senna cannot make plays in the early game. Even if she lands her Last Embrace (W), she needs Support help to get a kill. During the rest of the game, Senna is a back-line champion who supports with her poke and her Q, that ends up doing a great deal of damage when ADC oriented items are built.
Miss Fortune – 50% Win Rate
Only in Week 5 did Caps play Miss Fortune, perhaps to avoid making the double losses he was at fault for in Week 4. The entire team changed up their draft to play safer and responsibly. Miss Fortune, after Senna and Aphelios were slightly nerfed in Patch 10.3, came back to active play.
Right now her Make It Rain (E) does an effective amount of slow, enough to make plays or assist in additional CC (crowd control). Her Bullet Time (R) has always been strong, being a high kill rate ability or for very effective zoning capability. For Caps, this might be easy for him to work with since Miss Fortune is reliant on her ultimate and her CC to make plays, like most mid lane champions work.
Xayah – 100% Win Rate
There was just one game where he played Xayah instead of Senna or Aphelios, back in Week 1, and that’s because Mihael “Mikyx” Mehle was playing Rakan. He was able to play Xayah properly. Like using Featherstorm (R) to dodge crucial skillshots and take advantage of the Rakan synergy.
Xayah hasn’t been played much so far, but that’s because other champs were better in the meta. But she’s not bad at all, and other teams in the LEC play her when they also have a Rakan. She’s always been a good marksman champion due to her CC capability with Bladecaller (E) and the damage + range she has with her auto attacks.
Team Style
Caps is very aggressive throughout the game. When he played mid lane, this was great because mid laners need to put in pressure early and level up quickly so they can leave their lane. After all, mid laners are meant to roam the map after a certain point in the game, and they dictate when the mid game starts. ADC players do not have that much responsibility, since the whole point is for them to buy damage items and deal damage to the enemy team during team battles.
Caps is good at being a damage dealer, which is why he was a great Mid laner. G2 is known for making plays when plays aren’t meant to happen or being very committed in getting kills to push their macro strategy, Caps fits in well. So does Aphelios and Senna, the two champs he has played the most. Both are very high damage. Aphelios with certain guns being high attack speed damage or ranged damage and Senna having a scaling poke based attack style that deals a ton by late game. Both are also high in utility, Aphelios has CC in his kit and the five guns make for a flexible play style. Senna has her area-of-effect root and her self-sustain healing ability. These both work well for Caps since he can play by himself late game.
Errors
The problem with Aphelios is that he needs a support system that can feed him kills. In the case of Mikyx, he already does a great job at setting up picks, but in order to ensure a lead Caps needs more. Caps plays up front in the lane and over-estimates his pressure, likely stemming from him Mid lane play style.
As seen against MSF and S04, a Rakan is enough to defeat Caps’ Aphelios. He already plays up front, he feels like he can take solo trades, and that’s enough for the enemy Rakan to find a Grand Entrance (W) and disable Aphelios long enough to get a kill. The end.
Even if it isn’t on Aphelios, there’s his tendency to over-commit to a play. He will dive the tower to get a kill, and it may not get him killed, but another G2 player might. The over-commit and the overstep both let enemy support players land a shot onto Caps easily. His reasoning makes sense, but he doesn’t back off when he’s losing lane enough to make sense.
Jankos on Double Duty
In order to keep Caps fed, Marcin “Jankos” Jankowski has to roam between top and bot lane, and that is the weakness with Caps. Since Caps has mainly picked champions that need support from ganks in the early game to work, this means all of G2’s strategies need to revolve around Caps and Jankos working together. Their synergy is great, but the issue is that Jankos also has to play a lot to help Martin “Wunder” Hansen too. The constant roaming from top to bottom means the opposite team can track Jankos on the map and then make plays in the opposite lane as Jankos.
Wunder can handle himself longer, so it’s not too risky for the strategy. But it’s necessary, as Senna and Aphelios are amazing after this early game buffer, but if Jankos gets caught out or cannot make bot lane ganks, then Caps has to wait longer to make influential plays.
Is Craps Back?
Caps isn’t exactly a bad ADC player, though. Until Week 4, he made no fatal errors and the whole team worked great together. On the other hand, they were making plays that were new to the league and once the other teams learned, they were able to work to counter it. Week 4 may have just been that moment. It looks like Week 5 was the week they tried to play more seriously, but it sort of works and sort of doesn’t for G2. Week 6 showed that these players play best when they aren’t putting their heads down and working, but actually when they’re just playing Solo Queue on stage. They like having fun, and Caps is no different.
For more on G2 Esports content or other LoL esports content, check out Mani’s other articles here. Find Mani on Twitter.
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