Returning to Form: Phoenix1 Inori

When Rami “Inori” Charagh stepped onto the LCS quarterfinals stage in lieu of William “Meteos” Hartman, the community response was one of confused skepticism.

This is wholly understandable.

“They were 12-10 with Inori, they had a better record with Meteos,” Joshua “Jatt” Leesman said on broadcast.

Meteos has been the steadier jungler. Meteos stepped in for Inori when the Vancouver native returned home due to a family emergency. Meteos was the safer, more experienced option with a better in-game record.

And Meteos was the face that most expected to see peering over the second-to-last monitor on Phoenix1’s side of the stage.

“It feels like a lot of people are wishing for me to fail because they just want to see Meteos play, but that’s just something I have to cope with,” Inori said. “I just have to focus on what’s around me, what’s going on on my team and the people around us. It doesn’t really matter what the fans think. All that matters is my team, the support staff, and the organization.”

Phoenix1 started off the season with a strong 4-2 series record and 10-4 game record. Although Inori had his flaws, he rode a wave of high expectations headed into the split thanks to a miraculous 2-1 regular season victory over Team SoloMid in 2016 NA LCS Summer. With Rengar and Kha’Zix as top jungle picks at the start of 2017 NA LCS Spring — and the addition of veteran players Noh “Arrow” Dong-hyeon and Yoo “Ryu” Sang-ook — this was primed to be Inori’s breakout season.

Inori often struggled, however. He failed to apply early pressure for his laners at times, choosing risky jungle invades instead. When punished, his response was to keep pushing, keep pressing forward into enemy territory. His determination often meant costly losses of momentum, pressure, and map control for his team.

When the risks paid off, though, Inori was a menace, tearing opponents apart early. When they didn’t, Phoenix1 would turn to laners — specifically Arrow — to fight back in the mid and late game.

Inori has been surprisingly vocal about how conflicted he was over Meteos’ success with Phoenix1. But the words always trip on his tongue, as if he hasn’t quite found the correct way to say it.

He wanted his team to succeed, but he also wanted it to be with him.

“I’m pretty happy,” he said. “I feel like I’ve been on a pretty long slump from the break. I feel like I just started getting back to my old form and I’ve been learning a lot from Meteos and other people on my team so I think I’m only going to be better than I was before.”

When Inori answers a question, he doesn’t trail off as many players do. He doesn’t forget to say something or add it in as an aside, even if his answer in of itself takes a while to emerge. He firmly ends his sentence and looks at you expectantly, waiting for the next question.

“I think we had a lot of nerves going in because this is the first playoffs for a lot of us, the only veterans are Ryu and Arrow. We had to kind of step it up, and I think I did a better job than expected.”

From the opening moments of their first game against Dignitas, all eyes were on Inori. Part of this was due to the absence of Meteos. It was also thanks to the five of six possible first-round bans all centered around the jungle position. LeBlanc was the only ban that was not a jungle champion.

“We know that their jungler [Chaser] is their playmaker so we want to limit him to less playmaking champions, but we didn’t expect them to limit my champion pool as well.”

He smiled.

“It was just awkward. We knew he played Ivern as well and I was practicing it a few times in scrims so we thought it was a good takeaway. I wanted to prove myself on that champion again because the last time I played it I had a terrible performance so I’m glad I showed that I could play this style of champion.”

He sounds happy that they attacked him in the Game 1 draft. Although Phoenix1 continued to ban certain jungle picks away from Chaser, Dignitas did not target Inori again outside of a Game 2 Rengar ban.

Whatever you may think of Inori — the rumors, the player, the person — his persistence is admirable.

In game, this persistence has led to some of his more visible mistakes. It also helped lead him and Phoenix1 to a 3-0 sweep of Dignitas.

This persistence means that when he misses a skillshot on Graves, one so obvious that players of every skill level can see it as a major mistake, it doesn’t faze him like it would have in the past. His team regroups — in this case, top laner Derek “zig” Shao used Shen’s Stand United to keep Inori safe — and the game moved on with Arrow and bot lane partner William “Stunt” Chen pushing up the wave.

At the time of the play he was up two levels in experience over Dignitas’ Lee “Chaser” Sang-hyun. Where in the past he may have invaded or pushed beyond where his lanes could help him, he instead used a vision advantage to track Chaser and capitalize on that knowledge.

“I was expecting some cheese from Chaser but once I saw that his pathing was pretty bad I felt like I could carry these games just through early game jungle pathing, just limit his farm as much as possible and take his pressure away so my laners could be safe as possible.”

Strong laners naturally aid a jungler,and vice versa. Ryu specifically has been a great boon to Inori and the team, keeping mid pushing even when he’s not going off on LeBlanc or Orianna like he did in Games 2 and 3 of the quarterfinals. Arrow has shown new laning prowess in North America although his specialty is still teamfighting. The core of Ryu and Arrow has centered Phoenix1, while also allowing the team, and Inori, to push their own boundaries.

“A lot of times we do stupid stuff in scrims and we go for objectives we should trade and we just die for it. Coach Fly yells at us and tells us, ‘You shouldn’t be doing that.’” He laughed. “We’ve learned a lot over time and also Ryu and Arrow are experienced players. They know what they can sacrifice and still carry the game. Having their input on it helps a lot.”

Their experience will become crucial for their upcoming semifinals match against Cloud9. Inori asserted that it’s all about his team, not the head-to-head jungle matchup.

“[Contractz] is a good jungler but the game has evolved to where it’s all team-based stuff. Individual skill has not that much difference when you’re playing at the top-tier level. A lot of teams don’t give you many opportunities to completely outplay our own opponent. If we play better as a team we can definitely win.”

Earlier this split, Inori had to leave the team and return to his hometown of Vancouver, BC. This led him down a path of self-doubt and, eventually, self-discovery. Now, win or lose against Cloud9, he’s guaranteed to return to his new team after playing a big part in their qualifying victory. It’s hard to imagine that he was also a part of the Phoenix1 that had to fight their way through relegations at the end of Summer 2016 in order to keep their LCS spot.

“Going from relegations to playoffs doesn’t really happen that often so it’s pretty surreal. It’s hard to believe that we’re going to Vancouver and that I’m going to my hometown to play in front of them. I’m just super excited and I hope we can take it all the way to the finals.”

Emily Rand’s love for the 2013 KT Rolster Bullets will never die. You can follow her on Twitter @leagueofemily