CLG's Wiggily: "We went into this split with the mindset that we’re a brand new team"

Roaming the jungle since 2015, Wiggily jumped around a few different teams, including Cloud9 Academy for a few months, before settling into a role on Counter Logic Gaming’s Academy team from May 2018 to June 2019. 

He was also billed as part of the main roster since August 2018, when he subbed in a few times during regular LCS games. After an abysmal Spring Split, Wiggily discusses how the team was able to bounce back.

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First off, congrats on the win! Tell me about this game because it was a little back and forth in the beginning, but it seemed that you were able to continue to find 100 Thieves’ number at any moment and capitalise on those mistakes. 

Well I think we drafted in a way that we needed some time for our composition to come online. In the early game, we just gave up some stuff because we had to just by the nature of the way the champions play out. 

I think that we just gave them what we needed and then when our champions became strong, we just started to pressure more and we picked them off a few times and capitalised on their mistakes, and the game was pretty easy after that.

Wiggily has been on CLG's main roster since 2018 (Picture: lolesports)

Talk to me about the Trundle versus Volibear matchup especially with the rework. Trundle has been played a lot this split so far as well. How does Trundle work for the entire team draft and against Volibear specifically?

Well Trundle right now is one of the strongest blinds and he fits almost every composition really well, so he has a lot of priority on him. Almost every game you'll have someone that you can get really high value on your ultimate on, so he's always going to be pretty useful no matter what the game state is, so that's why he has high priority. 

Against Volibear - I think that early-game Volibear is a lot stronger; he's just a really powerful early game champion. Before level 6, I think Volibear can just win 1v1 versus Trundle very easily, but after that in team fights, I think his ultimate counters Volibear because he has to just go in and Trundle just take all of your stats when you go in, so it's pretty straightforward that you counter him in team fights a lot of the time. 

So the matchup is favoured towards Trundle from after that point but I still Volibear is a really strong champion regardless of whether or not Trundle is in the game. I think it's definitely a really strong pick.

Do you think that it would have been different if Volibear had been flexed top lane, or do you think that it would have been the same outcome?

I think Volibear in the top lane is kind of similar in the sense that you’re really one-dimensional: you have to go in, you have to ulti in, and you have to just dive into the enemy team. 

I think it's pretty similar. Obviously in the jungle you have to build tank so I think it’s a bit better for Trundle to ulti him even in the jungle, but I think he’s good in both top and jungle because he has to do the same thing, regardless of what role he’s in.

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Last split was really rough for CLG, but now you guys are 4-2. What kind of strategies and plans have you been working on as a team to turn things around?

We just took the mindset of like, ‘We didn't have this roster at the beginning of the last split, we kind of started developing our synergy with each other and figuring out what our team identity was later than every other team’.

We went into the split with the mindset of, ‘We’re a brand new team, what happened last split doesn't really define any of us as players or us as a team’. 

And I think that was the mindset that we took into each scrim day. We started really early in scrims, we made sure that we were ahead of the curve on the other teams going into the next split, and I think we just practice really hard and made sure that we were fixing the stuff that made it difficult for us to play last split. 

I think we identified those issues and we’ve done a really good job at fixing them.

You face Cloud9 next week. Tell me about the preparations going into this matchup. Team Liquid and Golden Guardians were able to fight back a little bit; do you think that CLG can do the same and how will you try to do so?

I think that Cloud9 aren’t some unbeatable team for sure. I definitely think that they're a very good team, obviously, but without going into too much detail I guess I can just say that I definitely think we can win. 

I think that as you’ve seen other teams have taken them to pretty close games; they’ve just kind of fallen short. I think that if we get a good draft and we get what picks we want to play and we're just playing our game, I definitely think we can take a game off Cloud9. 

I don’t think they’re some unbeatable super team; they definitely have their weaknesses.

How do you feel about the matchup against Blaber specifically? What kind of weaknesses do you think you can capitalize on?

Blaber is a really good player, I think this meta definitely fits him really well. The way that they draft and play for him is really good for him. 

I definitely think he has some weaknesses; he has a bit of an over-aggression problem on some champions where you can’t play so aggressively. Obviously, Cloud9 likes to draft him on as aggressive champions as possible to negate that weakness that he has. That’s the biggest area you can target with him. 

With all that said, he’s a really good player regardless of that weakness. Obviously one-on-one I want to try to exploit that, but I think as a team, it's more important that we focus on what we can do to beat Cloud9, rather than trying to get some mind games with the enemy jungler or something like that. I think that I usually just try to what our win condition is.

So first step, ban Olaf?

[laughs] Yeah. Well, we’ll see. Maybe not. Maybe we have a plan against Olaf.

You can catch more of the Summer Split on 3rd July. You can catch it on YouTube, Twitch, and lolesports.com. Be sure to catch more League content here on GINX Esports TV.