There's rarely been a better time for a Support player to shine in League of Legends than now. With the meta heavily focused on the botlane, no mistake can be allowed and only perfection is permitted. And so far this year Mihael "Mikyx" Mehle, Support player for G2, gets pretty darn close to excellence with his partner in crime PerkZ.

Last weekend Mikyx lifted the LEC Summer Split trophy in Athens, after a nailbiter of a series against FNATIC was decided in G2's favor with a healthy dose of G2 pick/ban madness: a Syndra AD Carry and a Renekton mid.

After the match had ended we sat down with the young Slovene and talked about playing mages, the synergy a Support player needs with his AD Carry, and whether or not he thinks he's the best support player in the world.

I'm just going to skip past all the "how are you feeling" parts, because obviously you're feeling amazing. I'm just going to jump to that fifth game. Tell me what happened with that AD carry pick.

Usually if our series is close and we really want to win, we'll play mages on botlane. I think they're pretty strong and [PerkZ] is really good at them. So when we picked Syndra, I knew that we would win that. Then Caps decided to play Renekton mid for the first time—we didn't play much with Renekton in scrims at all. So it was on the fly, but it was a good pick overall.

We started really well early but then we started trolling, because we were getting cocky. [Laughs] Then we almost threw the game and had to stabilize, but in the end we still got it.

You say it was on the fly, but is it an actual mindset within the team to do something quite crazy in terms of picks and bans when the series is getting close?

Yeah usually. In the game against SKT as well, for example, we knew that if we would get a mage on bot, like Syndra, that would be really free. Most botlaners don't know how to play against mages. This game as well, they were pretty clueless about how to play against Syndra, because no one really plays it besides us. It is a really good pocket pick if you really want to win.

"PerkZ can play nearly everything, which makes drafting easier for us as a team."

The mage is more PerkZ's domain, as the AD Carry. But how does having a mage AD Carry influence your game? How do you shift gears as a support player?

I feel like I don't have to do much when I play with mages. Syndra can just 2v1 the lane, she's so OP. She can out-trade any AD Carry by just using her Q [Dark Sphere] and not using auto attacks. In that sense I'm usually really happy when we have a mage because it's just really easy to play the lane for me. I don't need to shift gears much, I guess, and I can just chill more. I can look around the map more, look for roaming opportunities and know that my AD Carry is going to be fine.

You've played with many highly skilled botlane players. In what way is playing with PerkZ unique?

Well, playing mages really well. [Laughs] When I played with others, like Hans Sama, they didn't really play mages. Or rather, they weren't really meta. Hans Sama tried playing Vladimir—didn't go so well. But PerkZ can play nearly everything, which makes drafting easier for us as a team. He catches enemies off guard which is very beneficial; botlaners usually can't play new matchups very well the first time. PerkZ has a very large champion pool.

Many people might say: a good AD Carry needs a good Support player in order to shine. But to you, in order to shine, what does a good Support player need from an AD Carry?

A good AD Carry, for me, needs to follow up when I go for a play in the lane. Or whenever. They need to jump in to help as soon as possible. It's so important to be on the same page as your botlaner. I think a good AD Carry also lets you know when they need you in the lane to push out the wave, or if they need help to defend against the enemy's push. You can't be roaming at those times. Lastly, I think your AD Carry needs to just... not die? That's probably the most important for AD Carries. As long as they stay alive, I can do anything on the map.

"(...) at the Mid-Season Invitational nobody really impressed me.
I think everyone was kind of bad actually."

So communication is key there. Is that something you've nailed with PerkZ?

Not really. I think sometimes we still have a few blunders where we don't communicate as much. We think something's obvious, we assume that the other person knows what to do. We'll be on autopilot. It's better to ask, even if the person already knows. We can still improve on that one, but it's going pretty well.

This year people have discussed whether or not you're the best support player in the world. Are you the best?

Hm, recently I'm playing pretty bad League of Legends. So I'm not sure where I'd put myself currently. For Europe, I think I would say top 2. I think Hylissang is really good. Internationally I'm not sure. I don't know who's really good, because at the Mid-Season Invitational nobody really impressed me. I think everyone was kind of bad actually. I think Effort, from SKT, is pretty good. Ming, from RNG, as well. Those are the teams I want to face at Worlds, to figure out how good they actually are compared to myself.

Do you think you could beat them?

Yes, probably. I'll beat them on a good day. If I don't play like I did in the past two weeks, I'll beat Ming and Effort for sure.