Luka “Perkz” Perković had a mixed relationship with strange picks in recent weeks.





As one of the leading stars on G2 Esports, there’s an onus on the bot laner to play outside the box in terms of his champion choices. A three-game streak on pocket pick Yasuo certainly fit the bill for excitement. But Friday’s Garen pick for Martin “Wunder” Hansen, partly crowd-funded and partly chosen by guest LEC caster Chris “PapaSmithy” Smith, maybe wasn’t the same level of “happy” that Perkz has come to expect from G2’s surprise picks.





“We [picked Garen] for the fans, and to challenge ourselves to see if we could still win like that,” Perkz said after G2’s second 1-1 weekend of the split. “Looking back at that it’s really stupid in a way, but it’s fine it happened. The game’s ended. Sometimes we have ‘happy’ games as a team, and then troll a bit once we get in-game. This time it backfired.”









Perhaps it was a blessing in disguise for the Mid-Season Invitational champions. After Team Vitality rolled over Europe’s first-place team in 29 minutes and left G2 trailing five kills to 18, Perkz and the rest of the roster called a “draft meeting” mid-weekend.





“After we lost to Vitality we had to have a draft meeting, we just talked about Fnatic’s potential composition for an hour,” he said. “Then they drafted the exact five champions we said they were going to pick, so the draft meeting went as planned. As soon as I saw the picks I thought that there were very few ways for us to lose the game.”





Garen picks aside - something that Perkz has all but confirmed we will never see again - the G2 mid turned bot lane star said this may be one of his favorite metas for mid lane. Only now he’s playing AD carry alongside Mihael “Mikyx” Mehle and stuck watching. “Mid lane before was a lot of mages, and then assassins and bruisers came at Worlds last year. Worlds meta was really fun,” he said.





“The meta has been based around mid-power since then, simply because it’s so OP right now. It was OP when I was playing it too, but back then bot lane was good as well.”





Photo via Riot Games.





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Being ‘relegated' to the bot lane hasn’t stemmed Perkz’s need to test the limits of his champion pool either. As well as the triple-Yasuo run against Splyce, Origen and SK Gaming, Perkz joined in G2’s pass-the-Pyke with a game against Vitality earlier this split.





For the most part, the newly swapped AD carry has tried to stay in his own meta where he can. It’s clear he has favorites, including Sivir (3-0) and Xayah (3-0), the latter of whom he declared “the most broken bot laner right now,” but overall he’s still learning.





Even as he admits he’s still got some level of training wheels on, Perkz’s trademark cocky nature simmers to the surface too: “We are really insane as a bot lane. I didn’t expect us to be so good.”





“It keeps surprising me how well we are playing, I think like five or six games in a row we’d get two-vs-two kills in lane,” he said. “I guess once you get experience MSI and those level of bot lanes, you can’t just become bad again. We’ve also been helped by our team looking better. When we were looking boosted last split it didn’t help that the rest of our team looked bad in those games too.





“We’re just aiming to keep improving. The key now is not to get complacent. I try to get better every day and push my limits. I would not have made the role swap if I thought I was going to be mediocre or bad as an AD, I wouldn’t have made the change.”





Photo via Riot Games.





Perkz has already proven that he has the talent to make the swap. The LEC 2019 Spring trophy that confirmed it has already been overshadowed by the MSI crown. But there’s plenty of contenders to come and take his place though, and he knows he must be ready. He can even rattle off the ones he’s been wary of - “Splyce, Schalke, Origen, Fnatic. Even Vitality will be in finals, and anything can happen with them.”





That’s not to say he expects anyone but his old rivals in the Summer final in Athens.





Fnatic may have been beaten on Saturday, but they aren’t broken. “It will always be Fnatic. Old kings versus new,” he said with a sly laugh. “That’s always going to be the most hype final, it might be a final against Fnatic where I can get my revenge for Spring finals last year. There’s no better feeling than beating Rekkles in a best of five series.”





G2 returns to the Rift this Friday against Rogue, while Fnatic looks to bounce back from their loss to the leaders the following game against eight-placed Excel Esports.