After a good start in the LCS, Elements have seen themselves losing three games in a row.
And according to Henrik ”Froggen” Hansen, the team is hard at work trying to solve their issues.
– Our biggest weakness is the pick and ban phase which we’re trying to improve all of the time, the mid laner says.

Henrik ”Froggen” Hansen and his teammates in Elements started off their LCS season by losing against newly recruited ADC Martin ”Rekkles” Larsson’s former team Fnatic. After that, they seemed to have come into their own as they claimed four straight wins. But reality caught up with them during the third week of the split and last week they lost against both H2K and Gambit Gaming, leaving them with a 4-4 record.
– Our performance this season is better than our start last season so it’s not too bad, but we obviously still wanted to be first by now. We have a lot of problems we have to fix so our coach and manager is trying really hard to help us with everything. Our problems started way before this week. We’ve tried to work on them for a couple of weeks now and it’s slowly getting better. There’s a few changes but we have a lot of work to do and we’re just really slow at picking up the pace compared to the other teams, Froggen says.

What kind of problems have you been working on?

– Communication is one of the issues. We talked about it after the first week. And we changed our communication, the way we do it, a bit. So it will mainly be Nyph calling and I’ll try to keep somewhat control with less talking because we had a lot of issues with everyone talking and we kinda want to not do that, so now it’s only him. We’re still working on that, and that’s gonna be a long work in progress but it’s improving every week. That’s just one of the problems.

And the other problems?

– For the actual gameplay it’s not anything specific because we all really know the game. It’s mainly after the laning phase, how to play out the game and what we have to do at certain times. It’s basically just a lot of small things. Our biggest weakness is the pick and ban phase which we’re trying to improve all of the time. We’re basically changing that every week still, it’s just really weird because we think something is really strong and we don’t see the weakness of it and then we end up losing a game or two.

”Usually just a long and boring game”

Froggen talks about how, outside of the game against H2K, their losses have still been pretty evenly played games and the reason behind that.
– I think it’s mainly how we play out the games, we play really slow and when the enemy has the lead they often have some problems closing out the game. And it’s the same for us because there isn’t a lot of kills in our game and it isn’t very explosive, so it’s just a long and boring game usually. I think that’s just how we play the game.

Is it perhaps a weakness for you sometimes, to play the games so slowly?

– Yeah, just because you have your style of playing doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good. Before you even get to your style there’s a laning phase and right now we don’t really have a lot of playmakers. If you look at our team last year we had Tabzz instead of Rekkles and he’s more of a playmaker. I remember in one of the games against Fnatic when Tabzz was playing Kog’Maw and Rekkles was playing Vayne and it was basically Tabzz shot calling the entire game because he knew what to do. That kind of thing we don’t really have anymore. But I think we’re trying to work more as a team right now. The problem is what we have to do as a team, because our team fights are actually decent most of the time so we got that going for us. Mostly we lose because we take bad decisions and end up in a bad situation.

Do you notice any other differences in your play since you switched Tabzz for Rekkles?

– It’s hard to say, because we do have the same problems like when Tabzz was in the team. Our botlane is more passive now than with Tabzz, I actually think that’s the biggest difference. But both of them listen to the team and follow the team so it’s pretty similar I would say.

Compared to other seasons, what do you think about the meta in season 5 so far?

– I feel there’s a good mix this season, because the entire third season was based on assassins and season four was a lot about team fighting. You could win a game if you were good at team fighting, you didn’t have to do anything else. Season five is a good mix. If  you want to snowball and be really good at assassins you can do that and win the game but on the other hand you could go for a team fighting composition and win. Both options are viable.

”I always have a lot of self criticism”

And what do you think about the EU LCS and your opponents so far this season?

– Right now the EU scene is pretty even, it’s really only SK and Fnatic winning easily. Outside of that it’s very even and everyone can win from week to week. It really just depends on how good their practice goes the week before.

Regarding your own performance this season, what are your thoughts? Are you pleased or have you had a lot of self criticism?

– I always have a lot of self criticism about my play and the way I want to improve, but compared to other seasons I’m actually still doing good in all the games. But I don’t look so much at how I play but more on how I affect my teammates by calling, if i talk to much talk to little, the way i say things and what I’m focusing on too. There’s much more than just playing the game.
– But just by playing the game I think i’ve done good so far and have had a big influence in our wins. I’m just trying to focus more on the bigger picture than just individual performance.

With week five approaching, what do you have to do to break this losing streak?

– We just try to focus on what we can improve and we take it from there, one game at a time to see how strong we are by the time we’re gonna play the game. We are obviously gonna have to start winning some games again.

Note: This interview was done before the news that Wickd is being benched and replaced by Kev1n.