CLG Wiggily: “ Last split we never really felt like a cohesive unit that clicked together; when that happens, as a jungler, it’s kind of hard to get into your groove” Izento Follow Jun 6, 2019 · 6 min read

Courtesy of Riot Games

Counter Logic Gaming ended Week 1 of the 2019 LCS Summer Split with a 1–1 record, losing against TSM but beating out 100 Thieves. This was also the debut of Ruin to North America. CLG are looking far better than their previous version of the Spring Split.

I spoke with Wiggily about Ruin, Darshan’s leadership missing, Yuumi, Sejuani in their draft, pressure on his career and being the newer player trying to dictate the early game with so many veterans on his team.

How was your off season? CLG had a pretty long off-season (laughs) so I feel like we should start there.

We had a pretty good off-season. We ended up going to Korea and when the team met Ruin we wanted to practice with him and since he had visa issues we had to go to Korea to scrim with him, get used to the way he communicated and got to know him better. The team ran around Seoul and he showed us some places, then we got to learn the LoL meta, so that was pretty fun.

You just beat 100 Thieves and Ruin put on a pretty good performance. What’s your first impression of Ruin, both in scrims and your on-stage game for the first time?

He’s really talented honestly. Just from playing with him in Korea, he’s a very skilled player individually and I think in scrims he was holding back in communication, but in our game today he definitely stepped up in terms of what he was talking about. He was very vocal in what he wanted to do and who had TP advantage. Everything felt really smooth today compared to before. Everyone knew what to do, we were all on the same page and there was only one or two times where we were kind of hesitant. Overall it was a really smooth game.

That’s kind of surprising because Darshan was known as a vocal player, so Ruin coming in and being an import, he won’t have the best English skills, so he might be a bit more quiet. How has the shotcalling or leadership system developed as Darshan is no longer with the team?

It’s definitely been a bit different. Early game Ruin is pretty quiet, moreso than with Darshan, but overall I think that’s a positive because it allows me and Biofrost to communicate more with one another and that has been where the main shift has been. Mid and late game I think Ruin’s comms have been clean and concise about what he wants to do on every champion he plays. He definitely doesn’t talk as much as Darshan but one good thing about his communication is that it’s really precise. He’ll say what he wants to do and then we’re like, “ok ok, that’s what we need to do” and we just play towards it. The main difference is that things are just cleaner, there’s less clutter.

I noticed in the draft against 100T that you guys got Yuumi. What’s your opinion on this champion because she seems very harsh in lane.

(laughs) Actually it’s funny because Stixxay was saying that he didn’t lane very well but he had Yuumi so it didn’t really matter. It’s definitely one of those champions that is really oppressive in lane and scales really well when you have a hyper carry like Sivir. First impressions were like, “ok, you kill it once and she’s out of the game”, but she’s actually really hard to kill. Yummi can attach to people, it’s not like other ranged supports; I feel like she’s a lot safer. So yeah, we just decided to first pick her because we’ve had success on her and it worked pretty well.

I also noticed that you picked Sejuani yet you didn’t have any melee on your team…

I don’t want to give up too much about draft but a lot of the times when we draft Yuumi, she doesn’t have a lot of CC outside of her ultimate and there wasn’t a lot of engage on our team so going into the draft I knew there was a need for CC and engage from other roles. I knew Sejuani was fine against Jarvan and that was what we needed with our comp.

Do you believe Sejuani is just so good overall? She’s been in quite a bit of games today, so do you think she’s good enough to pick without those positives of melee champions helping her passive?

She doesn’t really have too many hard counters. She doesn’t have very many weaknesses in her kit. She has good CC, she’s a strong duelist, good engage, her ult is really strong in general and obviously you get the added bonus of the melee champions, but overall she’s just been a strong champion for so many patches now. She even got buffed at some point. I believe she’s a strong and safe pick right now and that’s kind of what teams want when their playing in competitive play.

Now that you have this roster, people are expecting more things from CLG given that the roster looks pretty good. You as a player, a jungler that is just starting your career within the pro scene as a starter, do you feel as though you’re pressured more this Summer Split rather than in Spring Split?

I guess I would say that there’s a bit more pressure. Last split we never really felt like a cohesive unit that clicked together; when that happens, as a jungler it’s kind of hard to get into your groove. I definitely struggled a bit to find my place in the team and to figure out what I bring to them and how I fit in with all of these guys. I think because of that we didn’t have as much success as we wanted to. This split, it’s kind of like, “we made some changes and so let’s see what we can do with those changes.’’ There’s more pressure in the sense that we should be a better team now and I do believe we are. I guess there’s less pressure in that I can already feel that things make more sense to me. So in some ways there are less pressure, but in other ways there is more.

I had posed this question to another player that was kind of a rookie in Cody Sun. This is going back to the idea that you’re alluding to in finding your place within a team as a newer player. So, as far as playing with these veteran players like PowerOfEvil, Stixxay and Biofrost, these guys are somewhat legendary in their own sense. Being a jungler, how difficult is it to voice your opinion while also being a rookie and dictating the early parts of the game and having your own opinion and being assertive about it?

What you’re talking about is a big factor in why I believe I struggled a bit last split. I did come in with a bunch of veterans around me and my initial response was to just say, “ok, I’m just going to listen to them. I’m going to do what I can on my own and plug-n-play with them”. I realized somewhat early on that it wasn’t going to work and that’s not really how jungle works in general. You can’t just go along with your laner telling you to play bot side. They’re not seeing the whole map. Bot lane just sees the bot tower and sees the tower plates like, “OH, I WANT THESE PLATES”! You have to tell your side laners or mid laner, no. You have to tell them, “ hey, I need to do this first, this is bad”. Not that I didn’t know back then but it’s more that it just comes more with playing with people and telling them “this is bad”. You get used to what they call for and what they really want. I think that took me a while to adapt to, but now that I’ve played with everyone for awhile, whenever Stixxay says “just match enemy jungler”, I know what he means and I can take that and add my information to it. I think that’s been a big learning curve but I’m getting better at it every day.