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Mikyx talks about playing with Rekkles, the Karma bot pick, and why we G2 will be much stronger during the playoff finals weekend
Following a surprise defeat to MAD Lions, G2 Esports have their work cut out for them in the final weekend of the League of Legends European Championship (LEC) Spring Playoffs.
Many expected G2 to dominate the LEC Playoffs but so far the reigning champions have struggled following a tight five-game series against Schalke 04 and the aforementioned 3-1 defeat at the hands of MAD last week.
For the first time since the LEC’s inception in 2019, G2 will have to fight in the semi-finals for a spot in the final but support Mihael “Mikyx” Mehle isn’t concerned about having to possibly play two best-of-five series in two consecutive days.
Speaking to Metro.co.uk, Mikyx ran us through what went wrong in the MAD series and why he is confident that the team will once again retain their title.
Commiserations on the defeat but could you talk us through the series from your perspective?
I think we didn’t play very well, as everyone could see. Our drafts were a little bit awkward, we had a pretty decent plan for the first two games with Tristana Karma.
It’s similar to how we played with Serpahine but she’s a much stronger champion than Karma. It felt like Karma is kind of similar and it worked pretty well in scrims, even in the first game it was such a free win but we threw it away. In game two we were getting picked all over the place and it was hard.
Game three I think we played pretty well and then game four was pretty close, we just screwed up in draft a little bit and then we had a top crab fight which didn’t go in our favour so Jayce got really behind as well.
Basically, we played team fights worse and the drafts were difficult but everything is fixable for next week.
Those first two drafts have been a massive talking point on social media. You said it had worked well in scrims but was it also a case of testing something in the earlier stages of the playoffs while you can?
We thought it was strong. We thought Lucian and Tristana are very strong mid-lane champions so with an enchanter support they should be able to 1v9 if we get Moonstone and Staff of Flowing Water.
So every team fight should have gone in our favour but I think a problem in the first game was that I was playing Leona which wasn’t really useful and Sylas wasn’t the greatest either. Actually, in game two I was playing Alistar with Manaflow which is usually the Gragas rune when you go Phase Rush. I didn’t have Nimbus Cloak so that game was really awkward.
Drafting wise, I think our first three picks were good we just screwed it up on four and five. I don’t think our drafts were horrible as I’ve seen a lot of people say. I think playing one damage-dealer comps is definitely risky but most of the time this one damage-dealer should get really far ahead and just be unable to die if we play around him. Then we can take every objective on the map because enchanters spike way quicker as their items are so much cheaper and our tanks should be harder to kill with the shields.
I know you said it was a bad day at the office for you guys but were you surprised with how strong MAD were?
They did play better than I expected, their bot-lane was solid. They played ok, Humanoid is usually the kind of guy that likes to run it down against us a lot so I was expecting that but he didn’t do it this time around.
Elyoya and Kaiser were playing really well, I think only Carzzy maybe had some miss-plays so he was kind of the weakest player on their team which I didn’t expect. So in a sense, they did surprise me but we knew they were a decent team. I think we were more surprised by how f***ing bad we played.
We saw on the stream that Jankos was really frustrated after the Schalke series, has that been the general mood among the team? What do you think has held G2 back from showing the usual high standards we see from you guys?
It could be a factor, I guess we were pretty tilted after Schalke because we felt like we should have closed it out 3-0 easily but then it took a long time. Then the week of scrims weren’t great either, we were losing a lot and we didn’t really know what was strong so in the end, we went for the single damage-dealer drafts which was the only thing that worked most of the time.
It’s not too bad because we also didn’t really try as hard as we could. Usually, after we lose games like this, everyone starts putting in a lot more effort and reviewing all the games we’ve played. So far, everyone has been doing their own thing after scrims, we don’t really talk much or review the games but now it’ll be more team-focussed.
Was there a reason for taking things a bit more relaxed? G2 has taken steps to avoid burnout in the past so did that factor in or are the team just confident they’ll come out on top?
Most of the time, everyone kind of assumes we’ll win no matter how much effort we put in. But when we actually lose, we’re actually like oh sh*t we’re actually not that good so let’s step it up and make sure that we’ll win next time.
When we don’t win we need to start putting in a lot more effort and usually, we manage to turn it around pretty well, in the week we have, to become a much better team.
Now you find yourselves in a new situation, going into finals weekend where you’ll have to prepare for potentially two best-of-fives in two days. How do you feel about that mammoth task?
We don’t usually mind, it’s more hype to play two series in a row. You also get momentum after you win the first one. I think most of the time you just focus on yourselves and try to prepare the best strategy you can for every situation, no matter what they pick or ban.
I think that’s the most important part, have a good first phase of the draft and then maybe expand our champion pools a little bit, play some champions that we haven’t been playing so far and then we should be fine.
Finally, a lot has changed following the departure of Perkz and the addition of Rekkles. As a top team you’ll always be looking to evolve and improve, what is different about this G2 team? And how has it been playing with Rekkles, an actual ADC main, this time around?
I guess, besides the Karma and Seraphine games we usually play a lot more standard team fighting comps whereas before we played more random stuff. With Rekkles, I usually have more free time, I don’t have to be in lane as much. He’s very self-sufficient and will always be useful in late-game team fights no matter what.
In the laning phase, we have much better wave management with Rekkles. He’s very smart with that as well as how to play match-ups. That’s the biggest difference I guess.
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