Die Gruppenphase der World Finals ist bereits zur Hälfte vorbei. Trotz ihres schlechten Abschneidens beim Allstar-Tournament, schlagen sich die Europäer bisher recht gut. Fnatic und Gambit stehen in Gruppe B jeweils 3-1 und belegen damit die ersten beiden Plätze. Das dritte europäische Team, die Lemondogs, haben noch Startschwierigkeiten und liegen momentan mit drei Niederlagen und einem Sieg auf dem vierten Platz ihrer Gruppe. Es ist daher nur allzu verständlich, dass die Spieler gerade wenig Zeit für Interviews haben, doch glücklicherweise hat sich Marcel ‚dexter‘ Feldkamp noch vor der Abreise nach Amerika die Zeit genommen, uns ein Interview zu geben. In diesem Interview findet ihr Information zu dexter, den Lemondogs und die Meinung eines professionellen Junglers über League of Legends im Patch 3.11.
escene: Hi Dexter! Thank you for taking the time to do an interview with us just days away from the World Finals. Would you mind to introduce yourself to our readers shortly?
Marcel ‚Dexter1‘ Feldkamp: Hey, Im Marcel ‚dexter‘ Feldkamp from Germany and 21 years old. Currently Im playing for Team LemonDogs in the european LCS on the jungle position.
Although your teammates and you have gathered at least some experience in professional League of Legends, it has only been three months since your team started to compete in the LCS, fighting against the best teams in Europe week after week. How did you manage to secure an impressive first place in your first (regular) LCS-Season?
We just practiced harder than any other team when we played LCS. Most teams were just playing 4-5 hours a day and didnt really look into the other regions in order to see whats good and what champions are played while we played more than 8 hours a day. We studied different playstyles from different regions and always were a step ahead of everone else in our region at that time. The patch where double AP was played was really good for us and fit our playstyle perfectly. After we had 1-2 successfull weeks with it people started picking it up again and some european teams are not that great at using AP champions at the toplane.
With the World Finals drawing closer and closer, did you change anything about your training-schedule? Are you testing completely new strategies and champions?
We always envolve ourselves and test new champions and strategies but for the most part we were just tuning our own playstyle a bit and try to be in our comfortzone with championpicks. We really enjoy the assasin-meta in midlane and its the best way to play the game at the moment.
Aside from the Lemondogs, which team do you think will have the best chances of winning the World Finals? What do you think about the weaknesses and strengths of the other competitors?
I can’t really say anything about other regions, what weaknesses and strengths they have because I didn’t play them yet. Fnatic is looking strong at the moment but I think that SKT1 will have by far the best chances of winning the S3 Worlds because they seem to be unstoppable in everything they do at the current patch. Their objective control is flawless, their shotcalling is extremly on point and they have really good teamfighting synergy.
„It doesn’t matter how you play as long as you get the better champions.“ Would you agree with this statement made by many casual players right now? Or do you think that the playstyle still matters the most? Are there even huge differences in playstyle across the regions?
Playstyle is everything, every champion can be viable with a certain playstyle. You can envolve team compositions around every champion in the game but in competitive play you build team comps around the strongest champions. On some champions you need over 100 games in order to understand every matchup and the mechanics in every possible scenario so I guess its a mixture of both.
Are there champions that you’d love to play, but don’t feel comfortable picking in the LCS because they don’t fit the metagame or are outclassed?
I feel there are alot of unconventional picks that don’t really fit the meta but could work if the team envolves around those champions. A great example would be inSec, he made Zed and KhaZix „viable“ and pretty much took the farm he missed in the jungle from his toplaner and became a threat. I think I would love to play Sejuani and I feel she is a really good champion and offers alot to the team but it gets outclassed early game too hard. At the highest level you need to be able to play a champion that applies or reliefs pressure from lanes in order to to prevent the enemy jungler from snowballing the map with vision control. The way how the game works at the moment is really snowbally and one missplay in early game can easily lose you the game.
At the moment there are two dominant styles of jungling, which both have its upsides and downsides. On the one hand we have gank-heavy junglers, on the other hand there are the more passive farm-centred-junglers. Do you think one style has the definite upper hand at the moment, and if so, could you give us an insight on your thought process behind it?
This is a hard question and really depends on what the team needs from a jungler. If you have incredibly good laner that can stay in lane even when being at a disadvantage in a 1on1 matchup and you can afford to just farm up and be a threat from the jungle then it might be good. But if you pair this talent on sololanes with a gank-heavy style it gets even more effective and devastating for the enemy team to deal with. Passive farm-centred-junglers are okay but the best teams definitely use a really early game oriented champion that can snowball lanes / jungle in order to get the advantage for their carries and later on in the game you pretty much end up being a second support anyway.
What is your opinion on hyper-aggressive counter-jungling in combination with powerful laners? Is there any chance we could see a team contesting every jungle camp while continuously applying pressure on all lanes, so that a counterjungle-centric jungler would be able to shine?
I really like how Diamondprox plays this out. Most people dont even realize that he is probably one of the most aggresive jungler in the world with his playstyle, he is very calculated about things. He doesn’t gank as effective as other jungler but has a really good sense for decision making. If he sees the enemy jungler somewhere ganking a lane or walking through a ward he instantly thinks about counterjungling possibilities and usually is very good at controlling both sides of the jungle. If his lanes are not losing too hard due to the pressure of ganking junglers then it usually starts snowballing in his favor and he can control the flaw of the game. Anyway, teams became better and I don’t even think that there is a possibility that you can outpressure every 3 lanes while the jungler focuses on counterjungling without one team outclassing the other team extremly heavy skill-wise.
At last we’d like to ask you something about your personal wishes for League of Legends: If you could change one thing about this game, be it whatever you like, what would you do? You may choose anything from a skin for your favorite champion to the removal of Teemo.
I really hope that they implement more unique mechanics in League, the game is really straight-forward in terms of interesting game mechanics like champion skills and I often like to point out that other moba games have cool ideas that could be implemented in League aswell in the near future.
Thank you very much for the interview. Do you want to send a final message to your fans and sponsors?
Thanks to everyone who believed in us at the start and of course to everyone else who just started to like us as a team during the Summer split. I hope we will represent europe well at the S3 worlds and perform to our maximum potential as a 3 month old team.
You can find dexter on Twitter and Facebook
Photos provided by Riot Games | Interviewers: Tim „timmeyontour“ & Tim“iSnax“
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