The Weakness of the Split Push
LCS Week Four brought two intense base-race games. Victory
came before a lot of people even realized the game was ending. The games were
split, ironically, between NA and EU. Fnatic vs. Alliance and EG vs. LMQ. In both
games the advantage seemed to be going in favor of the eventual loser. Fnatic
had a strong kill lead and they were in control of the speed of the game. EG
had been ahead in gold even after the game was over. Both Alliance and LMQ made critical
choices to swing the momentum of the game in their favor and force the enemy
into a hard decision.
First up, Fnatic against Alliance. Everyone was looking
forward to this game as a close match-up. Fnatic were the winners of the Spring Split but were looking lackluster and sloppy in their first few games this
summer. Alliance were the front-runners and despite their few losses, they looked like a powerhouse. I’d like to take
a moment to look at the lineup for each team.
Fnatic in my opinion had
the better pick/ban phase here. Banning out the popular Lee Sin jungle is
always good because he’s far and away the best right now. Jax was nice as well
because Fnatic’s comp just isn't built to handle a late game Jax (No one could
stop his split push) and Wickd has been known to pull it out.
Fnatic first-picked
Braum as soon as they saw he was left open. This was particularly surprising to
me and I’m sure Fnatic as well. What was more surprising was after Alliance made their two picks,
Twitch was still open. Rekkles had an outstandingly scary game on Twitch the
day before against SK and to leave the rat open and not pick him away from
Rekkles is either a slap in the face or stupid. To be fair though, Alliance did pick away Lucian
because of the synergy that Braum and Lucian’s passive have. Cyanide also
picked up Evelynn at the same time to go with the stealth theme. Then they
rounded it all up with a Twisted Fate and Shyvana pick-up. All around, Fnatic
built a solid team that not only was full of champs that are strong in the
meta, but also work pretty well together.
If you look closely,
Fnatic’s team is really focused on controlling the map and forcing mid game
team fights. Twisted Fate, Evelynn and Twitch can all show up on someone
without them realizing how out of position they are. Once the fight starts,
Shyvana can come flying in if needs be and Braum can protect the possibly
slightly out of position Twitch. Laning would be the weakness for Fnatic if one
would guess. Especially if you look at their match-ups.
I feel Alliance really fell behind
right from the start with their picks and bans. First of all, letting Braum
though was a bit of a mistake. It literally forced them to pick up Lucian and
let Twitch through to Rekkles. Ziggs was a nice ban, however, as was Morgana
since Nyph picked up Thresh. The early Kayle pick was actually very well-played.
Kayle has the amazing versatility of going almost anywhere (of course her
professional viability has been top and mid). This left Wickd and Froggen the
ability to trade Kayle off into whatever lane they felt would be better. She
ended up going top to handle Shyvana, with Froggen taking Leblanc with the
final pick to bully Twisted Fate early on and make sure his Level 6 ganks would
be forced with either low health or after backing to base. Elise was a pretty
standard pick, considering Evelynn and Lee Sin were off the board as of that
time, leaving her as the only standard left.
Alliance built their team around
picking people off when they tried to rotate. While Kayle was a nice flex pick,
I don’t really think she fit well with this composition. Kayle is a constant
damage mage who can make a hyper carry invulnerable for a short amount of time.
No one on her team can make a lot of use out of her ult other than herself.
Lucian should be able to kite effectively with The Culling and Relentless
Pursuit, and Froggen is all about bursting people and leaving immediately.
Invulnerability is never a bad thing to have, but it’s value on this team is
lacking compared to what some other top laners may have been able to bring. The
rest of the team, however, can grab someone and burst them down before the
enemy knows what happened to them.
Game
Now into the game. Shook on Elise starts with a pink ward
over extra pots. This is a very smart pick up from Shook. He knew he could use
the spiderlings to tank jungle minions and used the extra gold to try and track
down Evelynn. Both teams set up and protect their buffs, a much different
strategy than what had been occurring that day. In fact, we ended up with
standard lane match-ups. It’s important to note this because this is a huge win
for Alliance.
Alliance had a team made of
people who were strong laners/dueling champs. If Fnatic had forced a lane swap
and given free farm to Twitch and later on let Shyvana get some after lanes had
pushed, they would have been able to avoid most fights until they hit their mid
to late game spike. Alliance would have had to force
picks and make themselves vulnerable.
When I saw the composition and how the lanes had worked out
to be standard, I had expected Shook to try and make an early gank and play off
the advantage all of the laners had. Shook never even attempted a gank until
late in the game, and even then he wasn't successful. At the 5:00 mark, there had been almost no immediate action in the game.
Alliance’s passiveness was making them lose
before they even fought. Even worse, Soaz’s Shyvana was outfarming Wickd on
Kayle. It was only a slight lead, but the fact that Kayle hadn't dominated that
lane was a bad sign.
Thirty seconds later, Cyanide made the first gank at
bottom lane. YellOwStaR jumped forward on Braum and got a quick start on his
passive onto Thresh. Twitch followed up and Evelynn showed herself right after.
Nyph flashed backwards to try and escape, but the sudden pressure was too
unexpected. He went down and Tabzz escaped. Rekkles was already 1/0/0. A minute
afterwards, Evelynn goes bot one more time in the same fashion. Still no pinks
bought by Nyph and there’s a similar outcome. This time Wickd on Kayle tries to
turn things around with a teleport to a ward, but they get nothing from it and
run off. Twitch gets another kill.
At a quick glance you’d say Rekkles is already way ahead,
but if you would look at CS at this time, Tabzz’s Lucian was up 25 creeps. So
if we assume a 400 gold first blood plus a second kill at 300, Rekkles has 700
gold extra. However, take an average of 22 gold per CS and Lucian makes up 550
of that gold, putting Rekkles up only 150 - not even enough for a
non-consumable item. The fact that Lucian was that far ahead in CS was huge in
keeping him in the game. If they had been even, Rekkles most likely would have
run away with the game.
There’s a lull in the action until 9:00. Fnatic coordinates a
tower dive on Kayle in top. The combination of Evelynn, TF's ult, and Shyvana
is enough to overpower Wickd’s ult and they take a clean kill with Soaz’s
Dragon’s Descent being used to escape the tower aggro. This was a well-played gank
which led to Fnatic taking the first tower. However, Alliance realized how many
members were in the top lane, and took dragon right afterwards, unknown to
Fnatic. Despite Fnatic completely controlling the game and making all of the
early moves, they’re only ahead by 1k gold.
At 12:15, Fnatic make a bold
move and pull a 5-man gank bottom using both TF's ult and Shyvana teleport. The
gank is successful in gaining a kill on Thresh for Shyvana, but with all of the
resources used, Kayle is able to free farm top. Fnatic split up afterwards, and
while sitting in the bottom mid brush, Evelynn is caught out. After a small tussle,
Shook’s Elise takes the kill. He is chased down by Xpeke directly afterwards,
making it an even trade. Of course, an even trade is better for a team that is
behind. It seemed like Fnatic wanted to take the dragon, but they didn’t
realize Alliance already took it.
While trying to siege mid around the 14:40 mark, Nyph tosses out a hook and hits Shyvana. At first it
seems Alliance just wants to poke at
her for a bit, but they keep poking into a full engage. After spending so
much time and energy on Shyvana they have no abilities to use on anyone else
when Fnatic tower dives. Cyanide gets a revenge kill on Elise, and Lucian is
chased out through the jungle by Braum and Twitch. With a quick flash, Rekkles
takes the kill. Alliance did, however, keep
their tower up through all of this.
16:00 in, Alliance take the second dragon.
At this point Fnatic have improved their lead, but only to 2k gold. Considering
the amount of pressure they’ve been flaunting and control they had, most people
would have assumed they were far ahead, but Alliance’s dragons and CS on
Lucian were keeping them in the game.
Finally, Fnatic get the mid tower they had been sieging at 17:15. However, after all of this time Alliance has taken Fnatic’s mid
tower low as well. Fast-forward to 21:08. Xpeke TF ults down
into bottom. A critical thing to notice here is this is 45 seconds before the
next dragon spawn. Fnatic had no timer and if they did, I doubt they would have
used TF’s ult so soon. They get no immediate kills out of it. At the same time,
right at dragon, Leblanc and Kayle get split by Braum and Evelynn. Braum
ults onto Froggen and Evelynn pops her ult on Kayle. At first, it seemed like
they were going to split targets, but right after the Braum ult, YellOwStaR
turns right around and jumps onto Cyanide. Wickd ults himself, moves over to
the red side wall and flashes over. Fnatic have control for the third dragon, but
head to bottom in order to siege the tower first. Remember, Fnatic don’t have
the timer for dragon..
This was a mistake as once again, Alliance move forward and start
dragon at 22:00. Nyph zones out Fnatic once they realize
and make their way over with a well-placed box. Kayle and Leblanc poke while
Elise and Lucian take the dragon with their better sustained damage. Alliance takes the third dragon
and as Fnatic attempts to back off, YellOwStaR moves late and is caught by a
Thresh hook. He’s low health from the small engage before and is quickly taken
out.
Here is where the magic happens. Because Alliance made a good pick and
had kept themselves in the game as far as gold is concerned, they rush mid to
take the low turret. As most of the team takes mid, Leblanc runs interference
in the jungle by wraiths, forcing Soaz and Cyanide to take a much longer route
into their base. Note that it’s only Shyvana and Evelynn though. Rekkles and
Xpeke have gone back to bottom to try and counter push.
With all five mid, Alliance are able to out shove
the strong pushers of TF and Twitch. As they take down the inhibitor tower,
Soaz sits back and Braum moves up to try and stall, but he is hooked when the
tower gets low. Once the tower is down completely, they go all in and kill
YellOwStaR once again, following up on Shyvana right after. Evelynn finally
comes in behind Alliance as they close in on the
nexus. This whole time Twitch was pushing continuously. Xpeke, on the other
hand, had second thoughts and started walking back to base. However, as Soaz
went down he changed his mind again and popped his ult to go back to push with
Twitch.
Xpeke and Rekkles back as their nexus turrets go down, but
at this point it’s too late. Alliance closed it out and won
the game with some great strategical play that set themselves up to capitalize
on Fnatic’s positioning. While this was definitely some great play by Alliance, Fnatic really
mispositioned and had split their calls in what they wanted to do. Alliance made a great play in not
only starting the dragon, but starting it from the side where they could easily
transition into the mid tower that was about to die. The fact that they kept
going was purely because of Fnatic’s misplay from there.
To avoid redundancy, I’m going to look at the pick ban phase
and only the shift for EG/LMQ.
All in all EG have a
solid team fight team, right off the bat you can tell their plan is to let Jax
get big and just sustain under tower while he split pushes. Ziggs and Lucian
have all the abilities necessary to keep their towers alive and just hold out.
I believe the Lee Sin pick was partially because of Helios’ ability to make
plays with him and to get Jax rolling early. The bans that EG focused on were
things that would either shut down Jax in top lane or basically anything that
they felt would let LMQ get a lead early. LMQ have a great ability to snowball
a lead when ahead.
LMQ built a composition based on poking out EG. It’s an
interesting concept and late game one would think EG would have the advantage,
barring some great Caitlyn Peacemakers and Nidalee spears. Braum is great for disengaging
and Shyvana is just going to tank out the Ziggs and Lucian damage, since
Shyvana can’t handle Jax late game. LMQ’s bans were similar to EG’s in that
they were attempting to ban out the strong/known champions that EG plays. Also,
Lulu and Corki would be able to clear waves, and while they did let Ziggs
through, that’s about it.
Game
4:00 in Helios ganks top and
First Bloods Ackerman’s Shyvana with a quick tower dive, but Shyvana gets a
kill in response. The kill went over to Jax though, which is exactly what they
wanted to get out of that. If Jax can split, EG will win.
At 6:45 Helios is caught out
trying to snowball Pobelter’s lead in mid. NoName and Mor had roamed to help
Nidalee, who was getting poked out. After some dancing and Pobelter being zoned
out, XiaoWeiXiao tosses a spear from the distance to get the kill. The fact
that Mor was able to roam came from how Vasilii had dominated with his Caitlyn
in lane, gaining 52 CS at this time over Altec’s 36 on Lucian.
Once we hit 10:00, we see Helios and NoName, who had been mirroring each
other all game, connect by LMQ’s red buff. While taking a pink, Helios gets
cocooned, but Pobelter was quicker on the draw - following up and as soon as
he’s free. He combos with Pobelter’s bombs to kick NoName back for the kill.
While all of this is happening, Innox and Ackerman were having a brawl, with
Innox about to die. Pobelter and Helios made the smart roam up after their kill
and gave Jax a jump out, and Ziggs cleaned up the kill on Shyvana afterwards.
At this point, EG was still down in gold from lost dragons. They had traded
this off in order to get Jax fed, which was working well.
After Jax gets a solo kill on Shyvana, EG made rotations and
took all three outer towers, pulling themselves up to a 6k gold lead. Jax,
having a Blade of the Ruined King and a Phage at this point, was becoming a late
game terror, compared to Ackerman - who had no complete items at this point. At
around 19:00, EG decides to pressure LMQ’s blue buff.
Nidalee is caught with a binding after LMQ laid down some poke. Mor jumps to
protect his mid laner and is successful, but a clutch teleport nets Jax a kill
as they disengage. Meanwhile, Helios takes down Elise back further in the
jungle. EG, up until this point, had been pressuring their lead well, and
getting their Jax fed enough to split.
And once again we come to the base race. At a whopping 46:20
total time, LMQ had taken Baron and were sieging mid lane as five. As Jax split
pushes the bottom, Lucian drops The Culling to deter LMQ off of the mid
inhibitor tower. Ziggs drops the Mega Inferno Bomb as well. Mor shields The
Culling, and the Mega Inferno Bomb does not hit many targets. This prompts LMQ
to engage, knowing they had an ultimate advantage in fight, as well as the fact
that they were baroned-up and able to tank tower because they were at late game
status. As the tower went down and the Culling ended, Braum uses his ultimate
and knocks up Pobelter. Krepo makes a mistake here and shields Altec’s Lucian (who
had a Banshee’s Veil spell shield) and not Pobelter, who receives all of the
knock up and is immediately deleted.
Altec and Krepo focus their damage on the tanky Elise, and
Helios uses his kick on Shyvana on the side of the fight and achieves nothing
with it. LMQ lost Braum in exchange for Ziggs, and is still strong enough to
win a 4v3 fight. Innox and LMQ both take inhibitors and move on to nexus
turrets. However, the crucial fact here is that Ziggs is down for EG. They have
no way to keep all of LMQ off the tower. All of their damage left is single
target. That, in addition to all of LMQ having a way to speed up their attack
speed. Jax had no way of matching their speed. He makes the mistake of trying
to teleport back to a dying tower, wasting any possibility of winning the game.
Closing
Thoughts
So what has been learned? If you’re planning on split pushing,
you have to be able to stall while your fed duelist takes towers as soon as it
turns into a base race. Even the most fed split pusher will lose out to more
bodies on the opposing team. Fnatic couldn't agree on what they wanted to do.
They floundered and let Alliance walk right into their
base. And when Fnatic called their bluff, Alliance went deep in and took
the game in the confusion. EG’s mistakes came from not pressuring with their
top laner enough. They got Jax ahead and did nothing with it while LMQ slowly
poked their way back into the game. The fact that LMQ ran a poke team was what
really won them the game, because it became a fight of who could hit
skillshots, and the last fight especially showed that LMQ was on top of that.