Geposted von Kayde,
High expecations were put onto Elements when they entered the summer split and yet, the team only managed to get to the bottom third in the rankings. We talked to Marcel "dexter" Feldkamp, jungler of Elements, and looked at a career with ups and downs. When Lemondogs placed first in the regular split back in Season 3, no one seemed to doubt the underdogs anymore - with a record of 18-10, Lemondogs placed far from the powerhouses such as Fnatic and Gambit Gaming. However, the team was not meant to stay together for long: Despite the second place during the summer playoffs in 2013, Tabzz, Mithy, Nukeduck, Zorozero and Dexter parted ways.

Marcel “dexter” Feldkamp belongs to the few European junglers, who ventured a transfer to North America after experiencing a rising career in Europe. Expectations were high towards the German jungler, as he was meant to be the solution for CLG’s internal struggle and transfers from Germany to North American were not common in Season 3. This was back in 2013. Roughly two years later, dexter returned to Germany with quite a few experiences on his back: After CLG and a short break as a free agent, dexter eventually found a new home called Elements. But even with his new team, the goal of qualifying for Worlds could not be fulfilled. What can we expect of Elements in the future? What kind of mistakes were done in this split? What did he experience during his time within and shortly after CLG? We sat down with dexter and talked about the different stages during his career in detail. You can find a German version of the interview here.

For the first question, I would like to go back in time – one year, to be precise. At that time, you finished the split together with CLG. Were you a happier person back then than you are now?
Looking back, I don’t think I was happier. The entire team atmosphere was shaky, actually it was quite bad. When I returned to Europe, I didn’t have a clue what the next steps regarding my career would be. The summer split of 2014 was a huge disappointment. I had hoped the entire team could improve throughout the split, so we would still have a chance of participating at Worlds. That didn’t work out, unfortunately. However, even if I’ve fallen in the overall ranking among players, I’m definitely happier.

Your career can be split into four stages: first your time with Lemondogs, then with CLG, followed by your time as a free agent before you ultimately ended up in Elements. How would you describe the relation between your reputation and your actual performance? Have you felt overrated at times? Are you underrated now?
The entire Lemondogs team was quite underrated. Throughout the season, we were the underdogs, even though we won every single game. Even when we entered the playoffs with a record of 18-0, people still saw as the underdogs in comparison to Fnatic and Gambit. I didn’t have a specific reputation then, because no one cared about us. When I joined CLG, the hype was justified. If you look at the results during spring split where I joined, I do believe that I was playing extremely well. Looking at the summer split however, our performance went down – my own, as well as the team’s performance. Nothing felt right. We had a new top laner and couldn’t play as a team anymore. Looking at my own expectations, I underperformed. I play to be the best but when I notice that my performance is not at a place where I’d like it to be, I’m really disappointed. Thus, I left CLG.

I improved a lot during my time as a free agent. I’ve played with every possible player in solo queue and within two, three weeks I was playing 14 hours on a daily basis. For a while, I even thought about quitting but when I was playing this much, I noticed that I can keep up with other people like Svenskeren and Amazing. I believe I’m slightly underrated ever since I’ve joined Elements. Europe has many good junglers after all – Reignover, Amazing, Svenskerren, Jankos and me. These are the top five junglers to me. There are still some other good ones, like Shook. I’m underrated mostly because of my time in CLG. Hopefully we will be able to change that in the next year.

You just named a few junglers. Would you be able to rank them?
No, I hate rankings. Everything gets taken out of context immediately, because you ask yourself: “Who’s better?” Still, you have to look at the whole picture – Reignover would be an example. Is he a good jungler because he is playing in the best European team? 80% of the players would say yes, he has a good team after all. But there are so many other factors, the meta for example. It’s really important to have a good team, especially now. The better your team, the better your jungler’s performance. He is very similar to a second support. If the team is bad, you die often – if your team is good, you will look good on paper as well. Like I said, I don’t like to rank people. Sure, I do say who’s good or bad but I don’t want to say who is better or worse.

Your time as a free agent is one of the things you’ve mentioned, you were quite motivated during that time. Recently, we had an interview with Amazing, who’s had a very similar career in comparison to yours. He came back to Europe from North America and didn’t know what to do at first and whether he would get another job. Do you have similar stories that you want to share with us? Did you receive offers that you should have accepted instead of joining Elements?
There were two, three very good offers that would have helped me from a personal standpoint. When you get those offers it’s not that easy to decide and see what the best option is. It’s always easier to say “yeah, I could have gone for that” afterwards. In that moment, however… I wouldn’t describe myself as greedy but I wanted to think through my options and didn’t want to immediately go for the first offer. I couldn’t afford to just go for the first option, even though summer split was still three, four months away. I kept waiting until I decided to take a break. Thinking back, if I had taken one of those offers, I would have probably been able to get further in my career and expand the followers I had on social networks. Probably everything would have brought me further than Elements did. Still, I’m pretty happy with the development within Elements and I like the organization. Let’s see what happens next, time will tell.

You used the word “greedy”. People often associate this with the wish for better offers in terms of salary, yet you said you play to be the best. Were you greedy for a better salary or for a better team?
Obviously money has its role in such a decision. I got offers from America and Europe. If you choose money, you go to America. However, I told myself that I definitely wanted to play to be the best and be part of a motivated team which works well together. Anything else didn’t matter to me. If you can get a good team and have a good season, you can work with it. I was greedy in a sense that I wanted to be more successful, rather than having money. I could have worked somewhere in this industry and would have had more free time and still earn the same amount of money. But I wanted to be successful, it was important to me. I wanted to prove myself once more, especially after my time in CLG. I play to be acknowledged and in this sense, I was greedy to look for a good team. You still have to work hard and start from the bottom when joining a new team, you can’t just join one and be successful.

Once again a question concerning your time as a free agent – which teams were the ones to offer you a contract?
I don’t know, whether I can make a statement about this. These teams are still in the LCS, except for one or two, which disbanded for whatever reasons. But everything was right there: a gaming house, a coach, two analysts. The entire infrastructure was given already, which was very appealing. In CLG I noticed how important having a good structure and Coach is. A Coach, who knows what he’s doing and analysts, who help you with your gameplay. You can benefit a lot from these advantages as a player, because they happen behind the scenes and help the entire team. It didn’t turn out that way though and I don’t want to give too many details.

Earlier you mentioned, that you had a desire to prove people that the rather bad image of yours isn’t justified. How do you illustrate this perception? How is it defined?
This is a difficult question to answer. Well, I don’t know how the majority of the people see me. Haters are always going to be there, of course. I’m a very self-critical person and my own criticism was to certain point of time, maybe in this split as well, a little too rough and influenced me in a negative way. Basically, I’m a perfectionist and I want everything to go smoothly. And if there’s one detail not going the way I’d like It to be, I end up disappointed, even if we win. I’m kind of prisoned in this self-criticism but I just want to be recognized and successful. That’s the reason why I play: I want to show people that I’m an important part of the team and why the team is successful.

On the next page, dexter talks about Elements' internal problems, why the organisation needs a profound change and what we can expect of Elements in the next split.

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