G2 Caps on the LEC Summer picture: "I could definitely see another KC-G2 final"

At the KC Road Trip in Paris, G2 survived a scare, edging Movistar KOI 2-1 after coming from behind. RFT.GG talked with G2 mid laner Rasmus "Caps" Winther after the win to talk about a wild, wide-open meta, the early-game problem G2 keep having to claw back from, the Perkz era beginning at G2 — and Faker naming him as a future Hall of Legends inductee.

That was a very close one — a crazy series, with some weird stuff in draft, especially in game one. First, what do you make of the current meta? I found it fun at the start, but it's becoming almost unreadable for viewers with how many possibilities there are. What's your take on this very open meta?

Yeah, I think the draft is fun, honestly. Having a lot of different champions is always nice — it makes the game very different and you need to be quite quick to adapt. The supports are definitely roaming around a lot. I'm not sure how much I enjoy that as a mid laner, because usually you're the target, but yeah, I think it's fun and we'll make the best out of it.

What did you make of today's series? Did you expect it to be that close against MKOI?

I don't know if I expected it to be that close, no. We felt very confident going into the series. Game one, I was confident on the Locke, but of course it's a new champ, so it's something I didn't get to practise as much.

I've been trying it in SoloQ, but it's just banned every game, so at least I got some practice on it today. But aside from that, the other games — even game three, they were very far ahead, it kind of exploded a bit in the early game. They did a very solid job early. At the same time, early game has been a bit of a weakness for us, but we've been able to bounce back even when we fall behind, and that helps us recover games like the third one. If we manage to clean up our early game a bit and play it more stable, I think we'll be a very solid team.

At the start of the year, I felt like early game was one of your strengths — it was more in the mid game that you struggled, like that game five against KC where they came back. When did that shift happen, where you now struggle in the early game?

I think at the start of the year, and last year too, we were very focused on the early game — it made us very strong early, but it also meant we didn't really know how to play from behind. Back then, and in the winter split, when we fell behind we just kind of cracked. We didn't really have the best ways back in. Now we have way more tools to claw our way back, to fight our way back. But that also takes a lot of our focus away from the early game, and sadly we're just not able to be good enough at everything. So if we manage to improve our mid game a lot — which we've done, but there's still room — we need to find the right balance where we can be scary in the early game and also play out these mid-to-late-game situations consistently, because we still have work to do there too. It's a bit of a case of needing to choose our focus, but of course we want to be good all around the Rift.

You're back in the LEC now. Do you expect the power rankings for Summer to be roughly the same as the rest of the year — the same top three by the end of the split?

I think so.

I could definitely see another KC-G2 final, and I'd put KOI after that as well.

I have a hard time seeing GIANTX push up the extra spot, just because KOI has been performing very well, even last year. Of course, they've made some changes, so maybe those changes are what push them to the top — we didn't get to practise against them yet. But I'd say it'll probably stay somewhat similar.

There have been many changes this off-season — was there one that particularly caught your attention?

Probably the Perkz change, because it's our team. I think we mostly just look towards ourselves — we want to show a strong performance. Something we've struggled with is that,

We come back to Europe and sometimes we forget some of the macro concepts we learn playing against the LPL and LCK, and we have to relearn them every bootcamp.

We really want to make sure we keep those lessons, because otherwise we're just not going to compete at Worlds, and that's very important to us.

I don't know if you saw, but Faker said in an interview that he thought you were the most worthy player to be the next Hall of Legends inductee. Did you see it, and what was your reaction?

I mean, it's a big honour. I've been a big fan of Faker ever since he won season three Worlds; I think that's what got me into esports. So hearing that he said this is definitely a big honour, and if Riot chose me it would be an even bigger honour. I appreciate the belief he has in me, and I'm excited to meet him at Worlds.

One last word for the fans?

Just a big thank you to all the fans for supporting us. It's been back and forth in Paris the last two weeks, and it's amazing to have all the crowds supporting us and cheering for us. We're going to look to make you proud this week.