In League of Legends , the Dane Rasmus “Caps” Winther (23) has recently been on an unusual run with the champion Nautilus. He plays the support champ in the midlane and has had much success: In SoloQ, he has a win rate of 92%, having already won 2 games with him at the MSI tournament. Now, allegedly, the biggest midlaners in the world, like Faker, are practicing the pick to showcase it at the MSI tournament.
What kind of champ is Nautilus?
- Nautilus, “the Titan of the Depths,” is actually a relatively cumbersome supporter who runs around with a huge anchor.
- With his ability Q, he can throw out his anchor: If he hits an opponent, he pulls the opponent towards him and throws himself at them. If he only hits terrain, Nautilus pulls himself towards the ground.
- Normally, Nautilus is played as a supporter on the bot lane, where he stays close to his ADC, absorbs damage, and sets up kills. In the hands of a weak supporter, Nautilus is an immobile punching bag who constantly dies, but in the hands of a master, he appears as strong as a tuna – and they are known to be able to kill lions (via youtube).
What’s going on with the midlane? In 2019, the Chinese team “FunPlus Phoenix” played an outstanding tournament at the Worlds and became world champions. In the final, they defeated Caps with G2.
The Chinese team had the standout player of the tournament in the midlane with “Doinb”, who was known for playing “crazy picks”.
Doinb was able to collect many kills with offensive champs but could also play defensive champs like Nautilus and act as a setup for his brilliant jungle partner Tian, who would then play more offensively.
This is so unusual because in the midlane, mages and assassins are usually played. Defensive characters or supporters belong in the top lane, jungle, or bot lane – just not in the midlane, where usually “the killers” of a team play.
In 2023, Caps is now copying this style from 2019 and is enormously successful:
- Caps plays Nautilus as a mage and builds the champ in such a way that he lowers the magic resistance of opponents (via dexerto)
- His jungler Yike plays an AP carry like Nidalee, who deals even more damage when Nautilus weakens the opponents and sets them up
A supporter as a midlaner – Caps gets 30 assists in 2 games
How is he being successful with that? Caps has already dominated the solo queue in Europe with Nautilus as a pick. Out of 12 games as Nautilus, he won 11 – a win rate of 92%.
Now at the international MSI tournament, Caps has played “Nautilus Midlane” in 2 games and has garnered an incredible number of assists with the champ. In Match 1, Caps went 1-3-20, in Game 2 1-3-10.
In both cases, Nautilus operates like before with FunPlus Phoenix: Nautilus is the assist generator, his jungler gets the kills.
Doinb has already noticed this. He sees it as a homage to himself and his playing style from before and says that when he is no longer playing professionally, he would like to train G2. They remind him of the good old days.
A fantastic play by Caps:
“I taught him everything!”
This is how his supporter comments: The supporter of G2, Mikyx, says that they have now trained with Nautilus and oriented themselves towards Doinb and his 2019 World Championship. Nautilus recently received buffs, Caps is dominating with him and the pick has worked in scrims.
In all modesty, Mikyx completely takes the credit for Caps’ current success with Nautilus. Caps initially struggled quite a bit, but he then showed Caps how to play Nautilus correctly, he says with a smile, and now it works.
What consequences does that have? As Dexerto reports, some midlaners who will be playing at MSI have actually been caught training with Nautilus. Among them are Nisqy, Yagao, and even Faker himself.
Perhaps Caps has managed to set a strong trend all on his own here.
By the way, from the old G2 team of 2019, only Caps and Mikyx are still around, and even that has a strange reason:
