It’s impossible not to be glued to the screen whenever G2 Esports steps foot on stage to compete.

Such a thing is only natural when you have the best and most talented team Europe ever fostered duking it out on the Summoner’s Rift. But we don’t just tune in for the top-tier play or the mechanical prowess — we tune in for the madness as well. They know they’re so much better than everyone else; they know they have the best players in each and every role, and they know they’re the heavy favorites regardless of whom they’re up against.

Supreme and utter confidence, backed up with more than enough talent and mind-blowing synergy.

Heck, they can even start the game off with a 5,000 gold deficit and, odds are, they’d still find a way to win. Well, at least that was the case throughout the majority of 2019. This season, however, is proving to be an entirely different beast.

Back when Luka “Perkz” Perković decided to swap to the bottom lane, no one could have predicted that G2 would be able to find so much success. Now sure, he’s one of the best and most talented Western mid laners in history, but playing an entirely different set of champions in a lane that has a rhythm and logic of its own is a monumental challenge, even for a player of his caliber.

Still, Perkz found his way, as Perkz often does. His reputation precedes him, and with good reason. By the end of 2019, he was definitely one of the best AD carries in the region, and his ability to go into overdrive and pop off when his team needed him the most was still as present and potent as ever.

After falling short to FunPlus Phoenix in the World Championship finals, G2 decided to go for yet another swap that caught everyone by surprise — Perkz would be going back to his mid lane kingdom, whereas Rasmus “Caps” Winther would try his hand in an entirely different role.

This was a decision that made little sense, but no one dared question it seeing how they always found a way to make things work. After all, if they couldn’t win Worlds in their previous incarnation, might as well switch things up a bit and see where it leads.

The Beginning

Once the Spring Split began, Caps definitely looked good. Heck, he looked great, even. For a brief moment in time it seemed like G2 had struck gold yet again. His ability to impact the map with Senna was spectacular (21/3/40 KDA across three games) and his team fighting prowess remained the same, although it was slightly weakened, now that he couldn’t play the champions he originally excelled at.

Once Senna was nerfed, however, he never looked quite as good.

His Aphelios was at once both passable but also mediocre. The fact that he set the record for most deaths at the fifteen minute mark against Misfits Gaming is simply mind-blowing. Now sure, we all know that Caps and “Craps” often take turns, but seeing him perform this badly was baffling even by “Craps” standards.

And it’s not just that one game either. Whenever Caps plays he looks different in-game, regardless of the opponent. He’s not relaxed, he’s getting caught out of position, and he’s far less dangerous than ever before.

The thing is, these aren’t growing pains.

This is what you get when you force a player who has merged with his previous role into unknown territory. Caps is like a fish out of water, he’s out of his comfort zone and now all of a sudden there’s this entirely different geometry that he has to maneuver and master. Not everyone has the same ability to adapt. That’s a fact. Everyone needs time, but you can tell when someone just isn’t cut out for it.

And that’s the biggest problem: the fact that this is an inherent mismatch.

The problem with Caps and bottom lane isn’t superficial, but instead goes as deep as the marrow of the bone. He’s a mid laner through and through, and every fiber of his being thinks, functions, and plays like one.

Playing AD carries, however, is an entirely different endeavor. The laning phase is different, along with your power and item spikes, you’re supposed to focus on different things in each stage of the game, your positioning throughout the game changes and you’re often put in a disadvantageous position — you’re the champion everyone tries to kill from the very get-go and yet you don’t always have the right tools to escape or the right amount of peel and protection.

For Caps, this is heresy.

He’s the kind of player who wants ultimate control, he doesn’t want to depend on anyone or to be babysat — to Caps that is a contradiction in the extreme. He wants gold, he wants experience, he wants to reach his full build ASAP and then clap as many opponents as humanly possible.

This is also intrinsically tied to his mind-blowing ability to seemingly bend the rules of the game. He’s a prodigy in every sense of the word and is well aware of his innate talents. Whenever G2 Esports needed a Hail Mary play, Caps was often the one doing the unthinkable. Blink once and you’d miss it.

As an AD carry, however, this simply isn’t possible. At least not in the way he’s used to.

Caps in the bottom lane is like a Ferrari stuck in rush hour, like a carnivorous beast locked inside a zoo. You want to have him “unlocked” as then you’ll have the biggest chance of finding success. By putting him in the bottom lane, you’re basically stripping him of his biggest strengths.

A strange outlook?

No one’s saying that Caps cannot improve. Of course he can, and he probably will. His stats aren’t even that bad. But that’s beside the point. His sheer talent and work ethic alone are enough to make him a top-tier ADC sooner or later. The biggest problem, however, is the fact that G2 Esports lost one of their biggest assets, and that’s troubling.

Without Caps’ insane playmaking, without his mechanical outplays and ingenuity this G2 Esports is nowhere near as capable as the one from 2019. This variant of the roster can still go places, but they’re not strong enough to compete with the very best teams in the world. This G2 would’ve lost to Fnatic last year in Summer; this G2 wouldn’t have gone quite as far at Worlds.

And that’s a shame. While they can always draft mages for Caps in the bottom lane (something they’re surely planning for the playoffs), that’s not exactly the solution everyone’s hoping for, but rather a band-aid fix that is not sustainable in the long run.

Do you think G2 Esports made a mistake when they put Caps as ADC? Yes, they're noticeably worse because of it 63%, 39 votes 39 votes 63% 39 votes - 63% of all votes

No, they will only get better 37%, 23 votes 23 votes 37% 23 votes - 37% of all votes Total Votes: 62 Voting is closed Poll Options are limited because JavaScript is disabled in your browser.

As a five-man line-up, G2 Esports is bound to improve over time. Their shaky play over the last couple of weeks is not a reason to sound the alarms. Not yet, at least. But it still feels like they’re missing that extra something from 2019 and that, no matter how hard they try, they’ll never reach that same level.

At least they can always swap back. Whether or not that’ll happen still remains to be seen, but it’s certainly a possibility. That’s, in a way, a great indication of their ingenuity — the fact that they can go for such a historic swap and still not lose out much in the grand scheme of things.

G2 Esports, man. Making it look easy.