This week Rogue’s performance was uneven, to say the least. The struggle against Origen starting from the draft was clearly evident. Losing to Origen required a strong performance for Rogue to salvage the week and go 1-1. Luckily they were able to and here is a look at how.
Courtesy of Origen
This draft is highly suspect from Rogue, their bans in this game are perfectly acceptable for red side on this patch. However, when we shift gears to look at their picks for the first rotation of their draft, that is where problems arise. The blind pick of Sett when Origen had already shown Syndra, who in and of herself is difficult for Sett to deal with. This was a massive mistake from Rogue here.
Following the pick of Sett, they grabbed Miss Fortune and Leona, a solid bot lane, but one that operates on a firm timer. Origen responded with Nautlius and Gragas, more crowd control and disengage to essentially make Sett useless in terms of team fighting in this game.
In the second phase of draft, Origen picked up Tristana and Aatrox, while Rogue countered with Olaf and Azir. Both are fine picks in a vacuum, but picking with what was already selected makes this game a win early or not win at all scenario for Rogue.
The first few minutes of the game passed by uneventfully, the interesting bit was Rogue opting into vertical jungling. Considering Olaf was the jungler, the bot lane of Miss Fortune and Leona had to be the go-to lane. Origen secures first blood on Larssen with an excellent flash body slam play from Xerxe. Xerxe dominated the early game on the Gragas, his pathing and gank presence far exceeded what Inspired could do on the Olaf.
Inspired did secure the first two drakes of the game for Rogue. Alphari solo killed Finn as he did not back off after Alphari teleported back into lane with item advantage. Shortly after this, Vander and Hans Sama were caught overextending by Xerxe leading to another kill for Origen. Rogue did secure a nice pick onto Destiny giving them a bit of life in this game.
As the transition to mid-game occurred, Rogue was already down a significant amount of gold. At this point, the game was already lost for Rogue barring them securing dragon soul or Origen misplaying. Origen took a few more towers, growing the gold lead to four thousand by the twenty-minute mark.
Credit to Rogue as just before dragon soul spawned at 22 minutes, they went for an engage with Sett. They didn’t have the damage to finish off anyone on top of the engage not being the cleanest. Origen did not have any pressure on them to quickly close out this game. Origen used a flank engage from Xerxe that lead to them getting the baron shortly thereafter. They were able to end the game on this.
Courtesy of Team Vitality
After losing to Origen, Rogue needed to bounce back to go 1-1. For this matchup, Rogue went with a much better line up securing themselves Senna, Braum and Jarvan IV in the first phase of the draft.
In the second phase, they grabbed Ornn and Azir. This gave Inspired a lot of lanes to plan around with good scaling options across the board. There was one weakness which was that the mid-game damage was not great from this lineup. Vitality countered with Camille, Elise, Pantheon, Ezreal and Rakan. Vitality’s composition was set up to punish the weakness of Rogue’s comp, however, if they missed their window it was over for Vitality.
Jactroll on the Rakan started off the game with a cheeky level one engage onto Larssen to blow his flash. However, Larssen avoided punishment of this despite the deadly combination of Pantheon and Elise. Instead, Vitality spent significant time going after Finn in the top lane.
Finn, to his credit, did a fantastic job absorbing this pressure, even getting a solo kill later on. Inspired was on the bot side of the map while Vitality started up the Rift Herald and could do nothing to respond to it. Finn was able to outplay a three-man dive from Vitality. Larssen and Inspired rotated up to defend Finn and turn the attempted play from Vitality around. Finn exemplified the uneven week from Rogue by getting a solo kill and being solo killed in the same week.
Rogue did an excellent job of punishing the Pantheon pick in the mid-game consistently catching him out in rotations or with the Ornn horn. Rogue maintained drake control and took herald as well. Larssen almost had a frame perfect cleanse, into an instant flash and ultimate. This was in response to a three-man rotation from Vitality trying to pick him off.
Vitality continued to try for aggressive plays which they deserve a ton of credit for. However, they did not have the gold or the items to contest Rogue at this point. They secured a few picks, but used many cooldowns to do so, leading to Rogue cleaning them up and forcing them out to secure drake soul.
The attempt from Rogue to start a cheeky two-man baron, while good and interesting, was a little too much to take on. Rogue waited for a few minutes and got a nice pick and then secured baron at 27 minutes. Camille had been trying to do work in a side lane the entire game. Rogue pushed with baron as it was too much for Vitality. Rogue secured double inhibitors before Vitality pulled the trigger to fight. At that point, it was far too late. Rogue won the fight and ended the game right around 30 minutes.
An uneven week from Rogue this go-around is not what they were hoping for. However, the loss against Origen derives more from the draft they selected than from their individual play. It handcuffed Inspired giving him limited options to try to make plays, while Xerxe held all the cards. The bounce-back performance against Vitality was much better. Fans will have to see if Rogue can continue the form they had in this game against the likes of G2.
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