RGE Inspired: “The meta is much more focused on mechanical skill right now”

Rogue secured a tie for second place at the end of Week 3 with a 2-0 week, defeating Schalke 04 Esports and Astralis. This means they’re tied with Fnatic at 5-2 going into Week 4, where they will face SK Gaming and MAD Lions.

Picking nothing but Kindred in Week 3, Rogue’s jungler Kacper “Inspired” Słoma took time off to speak to us about his recent champion picks, thoughts on the current meta and Rogue’s matches next week.

First and foremost, thank you for accepting this interview. Congratulations on winning against Astralis, what was the plan going in against them and how did you see the game from your perspective?

Inspired: It was just a normal game for us, I’d say. We kind of expected that we’d be the better team and if we didn’t make too many mistakes and play like we always do, we’d probably just win.

If that’s the case, I’d like to ask a little bit about your game against Schalke 04 Esports. That game was also a dominant win from you guys, but Rogue picked a triple marksmen composition with Kindred jungle, Lucian mid and Varus bot lane. What was the thought process behind it and why was it good against S04?

Inspired: I’m not sure if it was ‘good’ against them, we were just picking champions and in the second rotation of picks and bans, I just felt that the best jungle pick for me here would be Kindred. I didn’t really practice it that much but I’m comfortable on the pick, and it’s good against dive compositions where you can use your ultimate to save your teammates. We just kind of came up with this composition in the flow of things, I don’t think we practiced it before extensively or anything of the sort.

Following up on Kindred, I have seen you play it in the past but currently for summer, I believe you’re the only player who’s played it in LEC. Tell us your thoughts on Kindred in the current meta, is she strong against certain meta junglers perhaps?

Inspired: I think Kindred scales really well and marksmen items are just very strong right now like Kraken Slayer, Infinity Edge, Phantom Dancer and if you’re against an AP jungler, you have Wits End. A lot of those items that most marksmen champions build are very strong so if Kindred can build them and the game goes even for her, she can just farm up and scale into the later stages of the game, effectively becoming a second bot laner. However, she’s not that strong in the early game and she does need items to start dealing damage.

In a similar vein, you’re also the first person to pick Fiddlesticks in the LEC. Is the concept of Fiddlesticks similar to Kindred where he’s not that good in the early game but he scales extremely well?

Inspired: Exactly. Both champions in Kindred and Fiddlesticks are not that strong in the early game but they have a lot of presence in the mid to late game, and they will not get outscaled by the enemy jungler. I like to play champions that have a lot of value going in the mid to late game.

On the early game point, Rogue as a team favours playing a controlled macro game and scaling into the mid-late game. But recently, the current meta seems to be more early game focused and a lot of fighting or skirmishes. How has Rogue been adapting to it and what do you think of the current meta?

Inspired: I think the game last season was just easier to play. It was just more macro focused and as a jungler you just had to play Udyr or Hecarim, full clear, and then play for tempo and snowball leads around drakes. Now there are so many champions being played in every role, there’s way bigger composition variations due to the number of viable champions. I would say the game now is much more skill based and mechanical skills matter more.

It’s also probably slightly harder to play now because we have to focus not only on the macro, but also on the micro to play your champions to the limit. The meta now is more complicated than it was last season, and that’s why everything looks a bit more shaky in some games.

Rogue as a team are good at adapting to everything, we just like to get advantages through draft in early game, don’t throw, focus on farming on every champion and so on. If we play well around that, it’s really hard for enemies to come back. I think Rogue’s style will always work regardless of the meta.

Fun question: Do you miss the Udyr and Hecarim jungle meta?

Inspired: It was actually very fun! A lot of people say that it was boring but I really loved playing Udyr. When you pick Phase Rush, you know that the enemy can NEVER catch you even if they try because even if they walk up to you, you just auto-attack them, get the Phase Rush proc and run away on something akin to 700 movement speed. You could basically do whatever you wanted since you’re nearly uncatchable. It was just fun since you could do whatever you want and never die!

With the next patch, Riot are trying to bring back split pushing such as bringing in items like Hullbreaker. Do you think the next patch will shift the meta significantly or will it remain mostly the same?

Inspired: I don’t really know, honestly, I haven’t really practiced on that patch yet. I assume there will be some changes in pro play, such as split pushing champions returning to top lane and mid lane champions that are good in the side lanes. But we’ll see.

You can play Udyr with Hullbreaker then, if you want to!

Inspired: (laughs) Yeah!

Moving onto the LEC in general, I know Rogue’s goal is to win the LEC, of course. From a close finals last season, has Rogue changed any of its processes or focuses for this season in order to win it all?

Inspired: I don’t know honestly, we’re just treating this season like every other season. We’re working hard in scrims and practice to improve as much as we can. Even if your goal is reaching the playoffs, you should practice as hard as you can, like you’re trying to win the whole tournament. You should always aim to do your best.

I spoke to Yasin “Nisqy” Dinçer previously and he mentioned the LEC summer season is currently a bit ‘weird’ with how some teams shouldn’t be winning and the like. What are your thoughts on summer so far?

Inspired: As I said before, the meta is much more focused on mechanical skill right now. Even if you’re the better team but you misplay one fight and the enemy gets the advantage, sometimes it’s hard to comeback because there are champions like Viego or Gwen, who are practically unstoppable if they’re ahead. I think that’s why some teams are winning games when in theory, they shouldn’t be able to.

Last season, I think it was more about scaling and the better team would most likely win because the game would go slow, and with nothing crazy happening, the better team would just win. But now the games are a bit crazier because of all of those melee champions being played in top and mid lane.

Next week you’ll be facing SK Gaming and MAD Lions. For SK, you’ll be facing Erik “Treatz” Wessén in the jungle. What do you think of his performances so far and roleswaps in general?

Inspired: I’m not sure if his role swap was a good idea because he was a very good support. However currently, he’s playing very well and I think him and Janik “Jenax” Bartels are the best performing players on SK. I think their biggest problem is getting ahead early in the game and then just throwing it.

Treatz as a jungler is very good but I don’t think he’s as good as Gabriël “Bwipo” Rau at the moment, because for me Bwipo is performing very well right now. Yet Treatz has definitely shown he knows what to do as a jungler despite him being very new to it.

That’s a fair assessment. On MAD Lions, what do you make of their current form right now and what do you expect from next week’s match?

Inspired: Maybe MAD Lions are a bit overworked right now since they came back from MSI 2021, and the season basically started right after without giving them much of a break, which is why they’re probably not playing at their best right now. We will see how the game will go but right now I don’t have any expectations. They should definitely be a stronger team at the end of the season.

We’ve come to the end of the interview, anything else you’d like to add? Any Udyr tips, perhaps?

Inspired: (laughs) Uh don’t pick Udyr, don’t pick him now. He’s very bad!

Thank you Inspired, I’ll make sure to pick in my games Udyr to honour you.

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