The 19-year-old Pole Kacper “Inspired” Skoma is currently considered one of the best junglers in Europe in League of Legends. In an interview, he warns against playing solo queue in Europe if one wants to become a LoL pro. You don’t learn anything good there, but only get used to bad behavior patterns.
This is Inspired:
- The 19-year-old Inspired has been the jungler for the LoL team Rogue since May 2019. They have been regarded as the fresh rising team in the LEC of League of Legends in recent years and have performed outstandingly well in the last 3 split-seasons.
- Inspired is an important part of this team. He is known and feared for his play with champs like Kha’Zix and Lee Sin.
- In an interview, he now reveals how he stays so good: He hardly plays solo queue in Europe, but watches videos from the Asian pro leagues for four to five hours every day, especially from the Chinese league LPL.
Everyone wants you to gank their lane and is super toxic
Why does Inspired warn against solo queue? In an interview with Hotspawn, Inspired explains why he hardly plays solo queue (via hotspawn):
„I feel that as a jungler, it’s pretty bad to play solo queue. You just learn the wrong stuff.”
Inspired, pro jungler in LoL
He then explains that the game in solo queue is very different from competitive League of Legends:
- In solo queue, you are forced to gank as much as possible. Everyone is constantly toxic and pings the jungler to request a gank on every lane.
- This would affect the junglers and they would develop bad traits.
- As a jungler, you should rather play other roles to keep your mechanics fresh.
In general, the rule in solo queue is: “If I lose my lane, it’s not my fault, but the jungler’s who didn’t help me enough.”.
4-5 hours of videos a day, 5 hours of practice games with the team – hardly any solo queue
How does Inspired improve? He says he watches a lot of videos from the Korean league LCK and the Chinese league LPL.
Especially the teams in the LPL are extremely strong, and one can learn a lot from the Chinese players, including which champions they play. To improve, you need to watch the best players in the world. From them, you can learn more than if you engage in solo queue and other nonsense.
He watches these videos for four to five hours every day and practices in scrimmages with the team for another five hours.
The jungler as a scapegoat for the mistakes of teammates
Do others agree with this? Yes, they do. One of the other strong junglers in Europe, the Spaniard Javier “Elyoya” Batalla (Mad Lions), explains the problem from his perspective (via dotesports):
“I agree with Inspired. When you play solo queue, it’s good for mechanics, but you don’t learn much about the jungler, because your top laner does not respect the opposing jungler’s gank at minute 3. That’s the most obvious gank in the whole game, which he does not respect, and from then on the match becomes unfair. Suddenly, you are forced into 2vs2 fights as a jungler that you’re likely to lose.”
Elyoya
Elyoya apparently sees the problem in that teammates expect their jungler to make up for the mistakes they make, as they play much more risky in solo queue than what is customary in pro LoL.
When you don’t see the gank coming and go down, you scream for help from your jungler.
What’s behind this: What Inspired says is interesting because many fans expect the pros to play as much solo queue as possible. Those who don’t are somehow considered lazy.
But as Inspired suggests, playing the jungler is primarily tactical. It is important that he serves the team and plays strategically. In solo queue, such considerations are foreign to the laners.
In pro LoL, the current meta has revealed the jungler as the dominant role: It is important that he levels up, gains gold and items to dominate the endgame. If you get used to playing everywhere as the firefighter and follow no plan, but just react, this is evidently the opposite of how a pro jungler wants to act.
The Twitch streamer Tyler1 is actually a bot laner. However, he found that jungler is actually the easiest role in LoL, but is played by too many idiots. He then wanted to prove to everyone that he has what it takes to be a world-class jungler:
Streamer skips Twitch for goal in LoL – Costs him about 56,000 $ in subs
