Pre-Worlds Part 2: Breaking down OGN Champs Finals G4!!

In my last article I talked about imploring you all to find a way to watch Game 4 of the OGN Champions final. It really was a great game of League of Legends and really showcased the talent of the Korean juggernaut at the moment. The Korean teams seem to really understand something at a higher level than the other regions and the amount of teamwork and planning that goes into picking their comps and how they play them is unsurpassed by other regions. Regardless of the team thought and planning, the standout for this game has to go to the eventual MVP for the game in KaKAO on the surprise pick Nocturne.

The game actually started quite bumpy with a remake that needed to happen after the 3rd set of picks, once KT Arrows picked Nunu and Fizz the casters knew that there was a remake needed. However, even before this there was a bit of surprise, giving DADE Kassadin in the first pick, which, despite his essay of nerfs, is still dangerous in the late game. However, this did create a really good piece of bait for KT Arrows as they were able to land Kog'maw for Arrow, which had easily been his best champion throughout the whole tournament, and the ever-popular Maokai in the top lane for ssumday. This then led into the new-meta bottom of Twitch/Zilean for SSG Blue Deft and Heart, and then into the surprise Nocturne pick for KaKAO. This was then finished with a surprise Kayle pick for Acorn which is questionable at best with her recent nerfs and the expected Yasuo pick for KTA Rookie.

So just to give you the entire list of picks to set the scene: we have KT Arrows with: Maokai, Nocturne, Yasuo, Kog'maw and Morgana and Samsung Galaxy Blue with: Kayle, Rengar, Kassadin, Twitch and Zilean. Basically a pick comp versus a team fight comp. This puts KTA in a bit of an awkward situation because if they don't play a little safe early and then really capitalize on their power-spikes mid-game then the game can just unravel very quickly and they will be taken over by the skirmishing and pick-potential of Samsung Blue. Even as the game begins DoA and MonteCristo were talking about how the team fights would be "explosive" and they really broke down how the team fights needed to play out for both sides (at about 2 min game time).

Apparently the teams agreed as there was a 4 man dive by Samsung Blue at the 3:40 mark as they attempted to cut off ssumday's Maokai and really had him pinned down if it wasn't for the just-in-time appearance of Hatchani's Morgana and KaKAO's Nocturne. KT then regroups and uses a very well timed teleport that sets up a 3 on 1 gank onto Deft's Twitch which, after a long chase, ends in KaKAO getting the first blood onto said Twitch. This just goes to show you what KT Arrows do so well, which is early pressure. They understand how pushing the waves and keeping pressure down on your lane can setup these small engagements that can give your team the advantage. They setup a sneaky play into a bush with no vision that allowed a 3 on 2 that DADE was not able to respond to since he was being pushed in early on Kassadin by Rookie's Yasuo. They take this advantage and lack of summoners and turn it into another gank onto Heart's Zilean and basically have Samsung's ADCarry/Support (I would say bot lane but a double switch in this case made it the top lane) lane shut down at 8 minutes. The one caveat of this is that Acorn and DADE have been farming extremely well and have managed to keep SSG in the game despite being down 500 gold.

KT Arrows after this start seem to be lost as for what to do as they sit on their lead for a while and just reset and farm for a bit which isn't the correct thing for their comp to do (at this point) as they need to keep pressing their advantage or the next move on the wrong side of the map means a free Dragon. This comes to fruition at 15:45 as Hatchani and ssumday setup a gank onto Acorn, which they do get and then book it across the map to try to stop the counter-dragon. However, a mistiming on ssumday's teleport and the movement speed of Kassadin make KT split their focus and the pick-nature and skirmishing of the Samsung Galaxy comp take advantage of the trickling-in of the KT Arrows and turn the fight on its head for a 4 for 1 plus dragon going to Samsung Galaxy Blue. This really sets the KT Arrows far behind and the gold lead has vanished and turned into a 3k gold lead at 18 minutes. This could mean the end of the game for the Arrows unless they find the right engagement to get back into it. Which they do! Ten seconds later! As Samsung's DADE's Kassadin and Spirit's Rengar try to press their advantage a bit too hard and setup picks in the Arrows jungle, however, they choose a bad target in KaKAO's Nocturne who had just a bit too much escape in his Q + flash and Rookie's Yasuo is right in position to get a Q + Exhaust that turns the fight and turns into a 3 for 1 plus a two turrets for KT Arrows that puts them right back into the game. It should be noticed that the main reason that KT was able to capitalize on this fight was that Zilean and Kayle's ultimates were on cool down here, so them taking another fight so soon was really an error on the part of Samsung Blue as they had no way to escape from ssumday's Maokai.

The reason I pointed these fights out is that these fights in the first 20 minutes give us the rest of the game as every fight taken and every objective revolved around this. The teams really needed to pay attention to when each others ultimates were up and needed to have a way to deal with the chase potential and follow-up of each other’s teams. On one hand Samsung has the kite-and chase potential of Twitch and Kassadin combined with the revive of Zilean and can make them turn fights around by a simple miss-timing of an ability of a miss-focus of KT's damage. However, KT has the ability of Nocturne, Yasuo, and Maokai to clean up a small skirmish and still get an advantage off a "bloody" fight and really both teams understanding of this and their ability to adapt is really showcased the remainder of the game. The fight at 20:45 and even the chase turned into dragon fight at 22:55 really show you how well these teams understand these priorities and what they are willing to do in order to give themselves even the smallest advantage that might tip the gold lead back into their favor.

I really want to keep breaking the game down further but I think I would be going into way too much detail and the article would be too long (again =P). Remember I only covered 25 min of gameplay and 3 team fights and the game keeps going for at least 10 more min and at least 3 more teamfights. Please, really, watch the game and listen to what DoA and MonteCristo are saying as they do a phenomenal job of pointing out what is important and why. Needless to say the phrase "my head is exploding" comes to mind when watching this game.

You can find links to the videos on Twitch here: http://www.twitch.tv/ongamenet or on DailyMotion by searching for: OGN KT Arrows vs Samsung Blue. Also remember all the upcoming matches for OGN Worlds qualifiers that will be coming up as talked about in my last blog!

Next I will be switching gears to the EU side of things! See you again in a few days!

Pre-Worlds Part 1: Clearing up the Korean Confusion!

This past weekend we saw a few of the qualifiers for worlds in a couple different regions. As of now, we officially know 6 of the 16 teams who have qualified and we have regional champions for three regions. While the rest of the League world holds its collective breath and waits for the results; we, as fans, can take a while to reflect on the story lines of the past two weeks and really delve into the why and the how of some team’s journeys. Specifically, we will take a look at the Korean scene shake-up and the new dominate force in EU!

First, let us clear up a bit of the confusion on the Korean scene since they are the region to watch and the likely favorite to win Worlds. The one team we do know that made it is Samsung Galaxy Blue, not surprisingly. Based on the Korean Circuit point system; Samsung Blue, as long as they made finals, were guaranteed to go. Regardless of the outcome of the final match; they were the first one qualified and the results of the final 4 could only affect the number 2 seed, which is also based on circuit points. Yes, despite the fact that Samsung Blue fell to KT Arrows 3-2 in the final, they are still the number 1 seed and are going to Worlds. The second seed, as discussed, also comes from circuit points and was slated to be given to Samsung White as soon as they made top 4 of Champions. However, SKT T1 K battled back in the NLB competition in Korea and managed to sneak in just enough points to tie Samsung White. This means that there will be a one-time tie breaker between Samsung Galaxy White and SKT T1 K to determine the 2^nd overall seed. This was announced by Korea’s caster DoA that the match will be on the 27^th. The expected winner is, as expected, Samsung White as they had been a close second in the entirety of OGN Champions Summer and only fell in the finals to their sister team in Samsung Galaxy Blue. However, with the KT Arrows beating Blue in a fantastic best of 5, many are speculating on their chances of doing so and wondering if White will be able to succeed where their counterparts failed.

Furthermore, based on the outcome of the game on the 27^th, there will be an additional contest to see who the 3^rd overall seed from Korea is which is a battle between the remaining 3-6 overall seeds in Korea, currently this list includes: SKT T1 K, KT Rollster Arrows, KT Rollster Bullets, and Najin White Shield. These teams will play a series of games on the 28^th, 29^th, and 30^th. The 28^th will feature the first match between KT Bullets and Najin White shield. The winner of this will then play KT Arrows and the winner of that will play the loser of SKT T1 K and Samsung White for the final spot. At the end of Champions Summer MonteCristo and DoA were speculating that based on their performance against Samsung Blue that KT Arrows will be favored in all of their matches, however, they will have to win two best of 5’s against (likely) Najin White Shield and SKT T1 K. Yes, that means that there is a chance that the defending Worlds Champion SKT T1 K might not even get a chance to defend their title (What a difference a year makes!!). For now, we all sit and wait in anticipation for the 27^th when we know who the second seed will be. It is good to note that the games will be on the new patch in 4.14 so it is entirely possible that one team is better at this patch than the last as we have seen in many other regions. Despite this, we have 4 very exciting days of League coming up for Korea.

If you did not get to watch I implore you find a way to get the games from OGN finals as their system is (in my opinion) so much better than we do it in NA and EU. They do best of 5s all through the finals, with games 1-4 being standard draft pick and game 5 being a blind pick game. While game 5 was very exciting getting to see mirror Maokai matches in the top lane, mirror Yasuo matches in the mid lane, and mirror Allistar support matches in the bottom lane it was still an extremely tight game and was back and forth for a good 20 minutes before KT took their advantage and really ran away with it. However, this is not the best highlight of the night. The real game to watch was game 4 as KT showcased not only confidence in their start jungler KaKAO to play what he thinks is best in a given situation, but also managed to come back against a late-game Kassadin and pull out a win. Stay tuned for part 2 of this article and I will have a short write-up of the highlights of the win.

That is it for today! I hope the shorter articles will encourage you all to read more and hopefully I will be posting every 2-4 days!

Also don't forget about the NA regionals this weekend! Friday will be the NA qualifier teams and Sat/Sun will be the first few matches for the NA LCS finals!
You can find the stream here: http://www.twitch.tv/riotgames
And you can find the schedule here:  http://na.lolesports.com/schedule/2014-08-18

Thank you for reading!

Week 11: Digging Through as Many Issues as I Can!

Recently, I have been extremely busy, and I apologize for this. Life comes first, writing is my dream, and getting to sit around all day and talk about League of Legends is something I someday wish to be able to do. Until then, I will tirelessly pour my thoughts into this blog until maybe someone reads it (ha!).

Either way, there has been a lot going on, and I am going to write this article in a bit more of a free-form style, talking briefly about as many topics concerning LOL as I can, and what has happened over the last few weeks; giving, as always, the fan's perspective.

ON TSM replacing Gleeb with Lustboy:

I think no one was surprised when this announcement came out. We are all familiar with the idea that Locodoco knows a lot of Korean professional players, Gleeb was performing "fine" but nothing stellar, and TSM for the first time is/was facing the idea that they might not be going to worlds. It came as no surprise that when former CJ Blaze player Lustboy said he was done in Korea that Reginald was at the front of the fan-boy line anxiously waving his hand in the air saying "pick me, pick me" (or rather, come to TSM). Either way, it is a good replacement that will definitely improve the team but it was done at a really poor time. Getting a new player on a team two weeks before playoffs seems in some ways like season-suicide. The team will need to overcome a barrage of issues including: language, communication, play style, synergy, calls and champion pools in order to really get Lustboy into the TSM culture and into their winning ways. Despite the change and a decent 3-3 record of TSM post-Lustboy it still appears that Wildturtle and Lustboy have yet to really win their lane and have been pulled through by good mid/jungle play or strong pushing from the top lane. This will be a story to watch and TSM may yet win worlds but in reality I believe Reginald is still looking at next season being "his season". There is still some speculation as to whether Gleeb was replaced solely because of his play and I find this idea very hard to believe. Reginald is not the type of person to give up on a player no matter how good or bad they are. If this were the case he would not have dropped Xpecial in the first place nor would he have benched himself or allowed TheOddOne to step down. I guarantee that there was some other kind of "team issue" that was at play here and this was somewhat confirmed by Locodoco's vlog. I am not nearly close enough to TSM or Locodoco to actually know what this reason was but I guarantee that it had to do with more than, only, play.

ON Alliance's on the rift behavior:

There was some controversy a few weeks ago when Alliance beat Copenhagen Wolves in a match where they began to snowball the game and ended up buildings "stacks" items against the team to finish it off. Some say that this was a show of arrogance and that Alliance was really aiming to troll the team more than anything for the crushing defeat. Again, I this could not be further from the truth so much that the manager of CW released a statement on Twitter saying how they "do not plan to take action against Alliance" and Riot followed suit by not giving Alliance so much as a slap on the wrist. The fact is that professional teams are not going to risk trolling in a game that matters and really would not so easily give up the chance for an easy win by building "troll items". The levels between the teams in the LCS is so high that many times even a single item one way or the other can mean the difference in a team fight and can tip the map the other way slowly letting the other team crawl back in. In fact, the better way to look at this is to simply understand that Alliance saw how far ahead they were and decided to try some stacking items to see if they are able to maintain a lead and close out the game faster with these. They could then use this video later on with their coach and analyst and see if it was really worth it to buy these items, seeing if they gave them the value they wanted. As a fan you need to understand, in order for teams to grow they need to try different things, sometimes the best time to do this is in a real match simply because you are ahead and it doesn't change the outcome of the game "that much". This gives you the best example of if a new idea works or not and gives you testing at the highest level of your strategy. In reality, these buys changed the game very little over going conventional builds and the correct way of handling it was done by all parties. I think we can, now, see a stark contrast to this as in the last game of the season we really got to see Alliance and Millennium go at it in a real troll game. Malphite mid, Ashe jungle, Rammus top lane...yea these things happened.

ON C9's comeback:

It seems that Cloud9 has surged in the last few weeks and were able to find their own groove and get their record back to the level their fans have come to expect. While it was a very tight race with LMQ in the end Cloud9 were able to take first place and get their bye into the playoffs. It seems with a new patch (or a few new patches, seriously Rito) Cloud9 showed why they are constantly on top and put their own Cloud9 spin on things and were able to adapt to the changes much better than most. The biggest improvements were seen in Hai and Balls as these two came storming back with strong picks, domination of their lanes, and creating a lot of space for Meteos to do what Meteos does. Realistically this is how Cloud9 needed things to go to get back to their winning ways as caster RivingtonTheThird has even talked about how C9's early game strategy with their jungle is to win their lanes, feed Meteos information, and then allow him to be Dr.Mundo (get it? go where he pleases?!?!) and just create chaos. I cannot get out of this portion of the article without talking about the triumphant return of Sneaky who, with the rest of the team, has seem to again pull a Zyra hit with Sunlight (Ahh! More League jokes!) and grow with the team becoming the most feared ADC (next to Doublelift) and really putting his team on his back. The entire carry-core from C9 really have completely turned a corner and are showing they have their eyes on the prize of getting to and winning Worlds. If C9 continues to improve at the rate they are we will be seeing them in the top2-top4 matches we were hoping for last year. The greatest thing that Cloud9 showed the NA scene is: despite your rough start, it is a long enough season that it really is anyone's game, work hard, constantly work on your mistakes, and you will improve.

On Gambit/EG's resurgence during Super Week:

It seems that the times you play your best are when you feel like there is no pressure. I am sure we've all been in that situation where you just want to get your win for the day and only have time for 1 or maybe 2 games and the first game is drawn out to 55 min and you still end up losing a close game and now you don't have time for that other game because you...well...need to sleep. Well, imagine that but about 6000 times more because all your fans in the audience are expecting you to get your win for the day against the best players in your region (and others in some cases, looking at you NA). Well, needless to say, that is a ton of pressure and in some cases can mean your job is on the line. Gambit and EG were the two unfortunate results of the pressure that the LCS creates and really seemed to be the two teams that cracked under the pressure the most. Their lackluster records throughout the season landed them at the bottom and had them fighting against themselves and the other teams throughout the entire season. While both teams ended 7th in their respective reason the one bright spot in both their records was definitely their performances in super week and a lot of this resurgence showed that they are not incapable of winning, but maybe just fighting through a slump. Once the pressure was off and both teams were able to re-focus and set their sights on their relegation matches they performed "light years" better. Gambit and EG were able to put together 4-1 and 4-0 records respectively and really blew away their competition. EG's Krepo even spoke to this saying that once the pressure was off the team performed much better. Krepo had even mentioned that he was very "close to retiring" in the weeks prior. He continued saying that the resurgence at end gave him a kind of "renewed faith" in the stream and made him more able to re-focus and tune-out the hate. While Krepo didn't say if he was done or not it is hard to think that EG will not keep going and come back better than ever in the next seasons. What I think we need to take from this is, teams play the best when they're prepared, focused and relaxed about their own situation, which is how we should all play. Remember the Cloud 9 article just above, anything is possible in the LCS.

ON the LMQ controversy:

There were a number of huge LMQ updates over the season from welcoming them to the LCS, to them streaming only in English, to answering interview questions in English, to Sharon being removed, and now an owner of the team leaving? Well, despite all the highlights, or low lights if you will, LMQ has remained surprisingly consistent apparently not knowing they were a first year team and just playing their own signature aggressive style and taking NA by storm. On the back of their leader and world-class top laner in Ackerman they had an amazing record in NA that took them to a 2nd place finish overall. Digressing a bit, a few weeks ago when the team announced that they will no longer be working with Sharon a lot of rumors started as to why this is. No one was really sure despite things getting leaked in Chinese on their streams and roughly translated by Reddit users. However, a few weeks after, Reddit received an extremely formal post from one of the coaches from LMQ pleading with the team and taking about how he was done with the team. It seemed rather impassioned and was explaining how he felt like the team wasn't the same that it was when they first formed. He over and over harped on the idea that the team was not the same and he would no longer be a part of it. The article didn't go into much more detail but it appeared that LMQ was going to be going into the last two weeks of the LCS coach-less and with not much support from the analysis side. Despite all this LMQ still had an amazing record and, as stated, ended up second overall securing the bye in the playoffs in front of TSM. It seems that nothing rattles the team and they are steadfast in the face of adversity no matter what that adversity looks like. LMQ is going to be a very interesting team to watch no matter what else happens and it seems like their continued success in NA will, if anything, bring up the level of play in the region.

There will be more to come but this seems like enough for now!

It has been suggested to me by a number of people now that I am writing a ton and that longer posts become very daunting for readers especially when this is supposed to be a blog-style post and I am doing it in a newspaper-article type way. To that end, I will try a new strategy in hopes to maybe attract more readers and be able to communicate with you all more and get content going more frequently. I will chop my larger posts up into smaller bits so that I can cover one example at a time. I will also make them a little less formal so that the posts don't sound quite as stuffy and this will encourage readers to keep checking back and hopefully make discussions.

As you can see, I can cover a range of topics and even just for these few issues it can turn into a very long, drawn out, and lengthy post which will make you, the reader, lose interest. Again, this is a blog by fans for fans, so let's keep it that way! The new strategy will come in soon! So I hope you enjoy the articles for now! Stay tuned for some major changes and hopefully more frequent posts!

Week 10: Work is hella-busy

Sorry folks for the absence the last few weeks. I have been trying to get time to do this but as I am just a fan and don't do this for a living (yet?!?!) I have not had time between work, girlfriend, real life obligations, and whatever else getting in the way.

There is an article coming this week. I am going to start writing it right now.

Thanks!

-Xanwind