Are Rogue Taking Over The LEC?
When the best team in the LEC acquired the best ADC in the region’s history, people expected flashy plays, an 18-0 regular season and a Worlds title, and yet G2 Esports aren’t even top spot having lost to an FC Schalke 04 Esports who only found their feet last Friday. In their place stands Rogue, a side which has shown consistent improvement from a disappointing tenth place finish in the first season of the LEC, to winning the regular season and heading to the World Championships in Summer 2020. It’s a couple of weeks until the two sides clash, but that hasn’t stopped players, fans and pundits putting Rogue as the overall number one team in Europe:
Rogue is probably even better than G2, I would say, at least more consistent in their play.
- Broken Blade
I, on the other hand, am yet to be convinced for a number of reasons. From the composition of their team to the manner of their wins, there’s something that doesn’t quite sit right with putting them at the top yet.
ROGUE ARE A REALLY YOUNG TEAM
Don’t get me wrong, being young is great, but a lack of experience can hold people back in any field. Andrei “Odoamne” Pascu is the oldest member of the team by roughly five years at 26 and the only other player on the roster to have won more than one game at a World Championship is Steven “Hans sama” Liv. That small amount of Worlds experience garnered by Emil “Larssen” Larsson and Kacper “Inspired” Sloma will undoubtedly benefit them when they’re against middle and low ranked sides, but I don’t believe that it will give them any sort of edge over G2 in a best of five, which ultimately is what decides the split.
TRYMBI HAS MOST OF THE ENGAGE TOOLS
Adrian “Trymbi” Trybus is the only true rookie on this Rogue side, and is responsible for a lot of their engage, which is a difficult position to put someone in without them dealing with confidence issues - Trymbi does seem to be having problems adapting to the LEC. When asked if he felt he had justified his place on the roster by beating Oskar “Vander” Bogdan’s Misfits, he said “...I don’t know, maybe he is better...” and went on to talk about the thoughts of the general public. Now heading into the hardest two weeks Rogue will face in the regular season, this is not a good sign, and that’s another reason I’m not confident in Rogue I suppose…
ROGUE DON’T PLAY TO THE META
When I think about early game, my priorities are making my in-lane opponents fall behind, getting vision and shoving when we need to get a drake. Rogue don’t particularly play to any of those objectives, and certainly not the second. Rogue invest less than any other team into utility, including control wards (they use one control ward every 60 seconds), and instead focus on clearing up a lot of enemy vision (one ward every 40 seconds or so), meaning neither side can see what they’re doing.
This issue might be compounded by the fact that Rogue lean so heavily on getting the Rift Herald to open up space on the map - on average they win in less than half an hour if they deny the other team both Heralds, but average 37 minutes in all other cases, the drakes are secondary to Rogue’s priorities. Addressing my first claim, Inspired ranks a very low seventh place for kill participation - for the main roaming player on a team this suggests that Rogue’s in-lane players are fending for themselves more than other teams.
Despite all my suggestions, teams should be absolutely terrified of Rogue right now regardless of whether the feeling is mutual or not. They’re the only unbeaten team, and if they truly are the number one team we will know very, very soon.
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Images via Riot Games