[Worlds 2020] Rogue Inspired: "G2 is good enough to play against every team besides DAMWON."

Oct 9, 2020

With Day 6 of the group stage complete, Group B is now decided, sending DAMWON Gaming and JD Gaming forward to the bracket stage as the first and second seed respectively. Rogue had a promising start to their Worlds run earlier in the week, but came up short in the second round-robin, finishing 0-3 on the day, bringing their record to 1-5 total.

After their conclusion, Inven spoke with Rogue jungler, Kacper "Inspired" Słoma, about the team's experience in their first Worlds. Additionally, they discussed the likely winners of Worlds and how G2 might stack up against the competition. Read the transcript of the interview below.

Your Worlds run is completed, but how was your experience?

I think it was a very nice experience, not just playing on stage, but the whole preparation, like scrimming against the Asian teams. We got to see how they play the game, it's way different than the other teams in Europe. So I learned a lot from that. And even though we didn't improve that much in the tournament, I think I improved a lot as a player and I saw a lot of new styles the team can do. So I think it was a very positive experience for me.

You said Rogue didn't perform to their full potential. So out of the six games, which ones left the most to be desired?

I think that in today's game - our second game against JDG - we had a very big lead at the beginning of the game. And I think if we just snowballed it correctly we would probably win the game, and then the whole day would go differently. So I think this game was the most sad for us.

You also mentioned that you learned and developed a lot here, and Rogue has only been an org for a couple of years. So what more can you focus on and improve?

I think we need to work on our champion pools because I think we don't really play that many champs. You can see the best teams in the world, like DWG for example, they play most of the champs, pretty much every champ in every role. So that gives them a really big advantage in the draft, while I think we couldn't play many champs that were meta at Worlds which made our drafts harder. We couldn't practice every comp. So I think we just need to work on our champion pools.

Group B had two favorites for the whole tournament, DWG and JDG. So how was it playing against them and what's different about each?

Honestly, before the tournament I was mostly reviewing the games of JDG and DAMWON, because I like those two teams the most, I felt like they were the best in the world. So it felt really sad that we got both of them in the group. I knew both were very strong teams. DWG plays around their top laner, and their bot lane does really well without any resources. Their mid and jungle focus mostly around topside, because Jang "Nuguri" Ha-gwon most of the time just wins his lane and it's easy for them to snowball off of that. And JDG plays really well with their jungle-support synergy. They roam around the map together and look for plays on the enemy jungle or to find dives on sidelanes. I think that's the difference between them.

You played in the LEC all year, and the champion was G2. Since you have so many games against G2, how would you compare them to DWG, JDG, and other tournament favorites?

I think G2 is a team that plays better in actual games than they do in scrims because I feel like they don't really feel that much pressure in the actual games. But when we are playing some scrims against some of the Asian teams, I feel like they play better in those scrims than in the actual games because they take more risks but they are a bit scared to play that way on stage, so they take it a bit slower. That said, I think DWG is the team that will win against G2 pretty easily. I think G2 is good enough to play against every team besides DAMWON. DWG should be favored against them.

What's your goal for 2021?

The goal is to win the LEC. This year we were close but we didn't manage to do it. But I'm confident in our skills that we can do it next year and then make an even better showing at Worlds than this year.