Clutch Gaming has claimed a win over veteran NA LCS team, CLG.

With placing 3rd place alongside Team Liquid, Clutch Gaming has proven beyond doubt that they are a formidable team. LirA, Febiven, and Apollo have all been stepping up in the past few games to gain Clutch Gaming some much needed wins to secure playoffs. On top of all these talented players, Solo has been playing under the radar undetected until today’s game.

Solo showing how strong Sion is in the top lane, the memory of Sion ulting twice in a teamfight is still fresh on everyone’s mind. After the game against CLG, Inven Global interviewed CG’s top laner, Solo. Let’s see what Solo has to say about patch 8.4, Sion, and Mark/Jatt’s top lane chart rankings.

¤ How do you feel about your win today?

It is hard to feel too bad about a win. However, I don’t think it was our best performance. I believe we could do a lot better. I think it is just bittersweet.


¤ Clutch Gaming has been performing exceptionally well for the past few games. However at the start of the split, Clutch Gaming was not viewed too highly. If you had to name one reason your team has improved up to this point, what would it be?

Since we had such bad losses in the beginning, the team became much more alert. When a team starts to struggle, they either crumble or turn things around. It is kind of like a wake up call, and I think we got ours pretty early in the season. So now, we are just reaping the rewards from that. Clutch gaming is now headed in the right direction.

¤ To talk a little bit about the match up against Darshan. How was the match up against him as Sion vs Gnar and Darshan as a top laner?

Darshan is obviously a really talented guy, and he has been around the scene for a really long time. In regards to match ups against him or other veteran players, they always try to bully you and play a bit bold. The veterans will try to make you uncomfortable in lane. Especially for me since I don’t have much experience, it gets tough for me when Darshan plays aggro. Overall, I think he played well today. Darshan tried hard to punish me but luckily I had LirA come in to help (laughs). We made it work.

¤ I don’t know if you saw before the game but there was a chart ranking the NA LCS top laners.

Yeah, I saw that (laughs). Mark did me bad (laughs).


¤ What are your thoughts on the chart ranking and where do you put yourself in the rankings for top laners in the NA LCS?

I think the League as a whole is really strong from top to bottom. I believe the difference between top laners are quite miniscule in the exception of Huni. However, I don’t think Huni’s strength is his individual talent but more so his ability in communicating with his jungler very well. Huni is able to set things up. It puts a lot of pressure on you when you know Huni is communicating well with his team. You know the jungler is pathing well to play around him.

I thought that the list (laughs) was uh… fairly accurate. I think Mark’s was a little bit wack, but Jatt’s was in a pretty good spot. I understand why people would rate me low because my laning hasn't been great. I think this is due to my stage nerves, and me playing weak laning champions. It is all just wash for me. At the end of the day, it is just arbitrary ranking.

¤ Let’s talk about the Sion pick. 2 things I wonder is, Sion’s poke in lane and his ultimate. This is because you ulted 2-3 times in the last team fight (laughs).

Oh yeah (laughs). In some way, Sion has come out of nowhere into being strong again. Sion is one of those picks that you really don’t know how it flew over the radar for so long. Similar to picks like Skarner. Sion is good right now because of the lane poke and low mana costs. On top of all this, you get 40% CDR with lv 16 and your ult is like 30 seconds (laughs). It is insane that you can ult a team fight. Wait a bit and then ult again.


¤ Since the new 8.4 patch came out a few days ago, what are your initial thoughts on the patch as a top laner?

My initial thoughts are that they nerfed all the good top laners. When you nerf all the good top laners, the status kind of stays the same in a way. It is weird to know that all the good top laners will probably have the same priority. It is still undecided how good Bone plate is going to be. There are a lot of talking points on how strong it might be. Since they changed a lot of the AP items, maybe we will see AP top laners. Maybe Lissandra will come back to the top lane. I think people are just glad to see that Gangplank is a little bit less broken (laughs). People were just sick of dealing with him every game. Overall, I think it is a good patch and a good overall direction for the game.


¤ Lastly, anything you want to say to your fans?

I want to thank everyone who supports us. It is really nice to see fans on our Discord or get messages on Twitter. I really appreciate it when people go out of their way to show support. I am looking forward to getting wins for my team and making a push for playoffs.