In professional League of Legends, the road to the top will always be filled with bumps, roadblocks, and detours. This is especially true in Europe, where every team has worked themselves to the bone to improve enough to represent their region at the World Championship this year.
Only one team could wear the regular season crown and automatically lock in a spot at Worlds, though. This split, it was Rogue who reigned supreme. The squad ended the 2020 LEC Summer Split with an impressive 13-5 record, led by great team play and some breakout seasons from their fiery young players.
When Larssen joined the interview, he was all smiles after locking in the No. 1 spot in Europe. Their path to Worlds had been confirmed and it was finally time for his team to step back and relish the moment.
He said it “[felt] good to be stress-free and just be happy” after winning a season that saw multiple teams rise up and challenge the top teams of the league. Rogue’s resurgence came after spending more than a year as a middle-of-the-pack squad, but their improvements stemmed from a ton of grinding.
“I was really sad last year because we could have reached [Worlds], but we obviously lost in playoffs against Schalke,” Larssen said. “My focus ever since that loss was to reach playoffs. So, it’s like one year of hard work and just focus paying off, [and] it feels really good.”
Larssen also said he started to play with a ton of confidence this year, especially after the addition of star AD carry Hans Sama. The talented marksman taught him how to play with tempo and speed, which helped push Rogue’s strong early game advantage into wins.
In fact, Rogue were the LEC’s best early game team. They had the highest gold difference at 15 minutes, the highest first-to-three-towers rate, and were a top two team in multiple objective control stats, like dragon control, Baron control rate, and jungle control. Larssen also had the highest KDA of any LEC mid laner, with some of the best early-game stats in his role.
“The biggest thing for me is that we have really high confidence now playing as a top team,” Larssen said. “I didn’t have that before. I didn’t come in and think that I’m going to stomp them, but now I come into the game and I’m just confident that I will be better than the enemies, every game.”
