Impaler : Team could be seeing some changes.

by Reece "SabrewoIf" Dos-Santos

We've approached the half-way point for the 2014 League Of Legends group stages and the games have lived up to their expectations providing both dominant performances and huge underdog showings. I managed to run into Matthew "Impaler" Taylor, the Jungler for EU LCS’s Supa Hot Crew at an event being hosted by my university, and I slipped in a few questions about his view on Worlds so far and what his outlook is for Supa Hot Crew.

Watching Worlds:

Have you been watching worlds and what are your impressions so far?

Impaler: I’ve watched the first few games and I think the Koreans are going to dominate. They’re on a whole new level compared to all the other teams and Samsung White have definitely proved that in their games.

Rengar: 

We've seen quite a few Rengar picks at worlds so far. As one of the best Rengar players from the west, what is your opinion on how he’s been played?

Impaler: I’m actually surprised that Rengar has been played so much, especially considering his ult got nerfed, it’s been pretty good so far. The Koreans and the Chinese have a much better grasp on the mechanics and key skills than the western teams.

Supa Hot Crew:

How has it been for the Supa Hot Crew since the end of the season, do you think you could be challenging for worlds next year?

Impaler: I’m not too sure. The team has been kinda of shaky at the moment and the line up isn't certain. We could be seeing some changes. We’re really disappointed that we messed up against Roccat, but I think we could take SK Gaming in a best of five.

Last thoughts:

Lastly who do you think is going win worlds this year?

Impaler: I think its going to be Samsung White. Player for player they’re better and much more mechanically adept than any of the other teams and their team play is unchallenged. If I had to pick a team to challenge them, I’d say Samsung Blue have a pretty good chance as they've taken games off of White and can do so here. Basically, I’d pick any Samsung team to win it this year. Personally I’m a big Dandy fan. I’ve learnt a lot from watching his play and I think if you really want to learn how to be the best at League of Legends, you need to be watching the OGN over the LCS. 

MonteCristo Criticism : Legitimate or Schadenfreude?

By Jodi 'PunkLit' McClure

The first time I saw MonteCristo, I was surprised by how fragile he appeared. He was tissue thin, like if someone sneezed on him, he would instantly crumble into a tiny pile of bone and ash. He knew League though, and he was beautiful, and those two things quickly off-set any preconceived notions I had about his size. From regular appearances on the LCS, I grew acquainted with his smoldering bedroom eyes, his perfectly chiseled features, and, more importantly...his notoriously imperious attitude. Being American (and a stalwart TSM fan,) I was quickly perturbed by his continuous bashing of NA and EU teams. Who cared about the Koreans and how much better they allegedly were than us? How dare he come into our house and run his fancy white-gloved finger across the dust. But, unfortunately, time and again, Worlds proved him right. And eventually I had to admit it was true. Somehow, we were lacking.

I don't recall at what point I stopped hating MonteCristo and starting hanging onto his words like he was Jesus, but it was probably somewhere around the start of Season Four. I found myself valuing his keen, experienced insight. He never failed in his predictions. Clearly, he was all-knowing. And even when he was delivering venomous swipes of his knife, he always remained so angelically calm and soft-spoken that the poison was practically negated. But he did like to swing that knife, frequently and sometimes cruelly, at every kid who played in the LCS. It's a habit that has caused him to have a fair share of haters, (with many a pro player among them).

So it was with a great deal of pleasure and satisfaction that his many adversaries watched CLG go down to Curse in a fast 3-0 during Playoffs, and the german term, schadenfreude, applied. Lord, they were quick to swarm social media sites and jump on Monte's ass, thrusting fingers in his face, gleefully cackling, "You said everyone else was bad, and yet, your team has failed. Where are your Korean Gods now?"

For MonteCristo, whose skin is as thick as his ego, these words have little effect. He is a consummate professional, and is fully capable of taking what he dishes out. Having bullets fired at him comes with his job and like Superman, he stands there smirking while they bounce off his chest. But for his team, whose hopes and dreams rode on his wisdom and guidance, it's was hard not to feel the sting, and I don't doubt Doublelift wasn't the only person on the team who considered retirement in the uncomfortable days that followed. So, we can't help but ponder the possibility...did MonteCristo actually fail them? 

A coach must be equal parts teacher, mentor and drill instructor, trying to find a way to bring out the best performance in each and every one of his pupils, and I don't double Monte tried to be those things. According to him, he spends hours and hours each day watching films and working with his team over Skype. But I have a quote from him that's sat on the left sidebar of this site forever. "'Potential' is bullshit. Results are the only thing that matters."   

Monte focused his coaching on changing how the team communicated and having them understand strategy at a very high level. He felt he had a better grasp of what champions were coming up and what strats were being used. Big picture tactics, as he called it. But he probably sees a much different scene gazing out his big picture window in Korea than one might see from Manhattan Beach, and it's possible that by asking his team to look out his window, he took them too far from the reality of their own. 

  

Opinions on Reddit and Twitter seem to vary. There is the more base, raw emotion of 'He talked shit about other teams, he deserves it,' to the reasoned, 'He's not a bad coach but he needs to spend more time with his team,' to the extremely forgiving, 'He can only do so much. It's up to the players to perform.' But the truth probably lies somewhere between all these. Dexter admitted stress was an issue, and expressed nothing but relief when their playoff game was over. It's possible that by taking the team to Korea, Monte put his boys too far into the center of our cross hairs at a time when they needed less stress, not more.

At the end of the day, at least for now, we can only speculate. MonteCristo once said, "There's nothing that effects me in eSports more than whether CLG wins or loses," but the repercussions from this - their most devastating loss - still remain to be seen.

Rift of Representation?

By Jerrod "Thousand Eyes" Steis 

League of Legends is home to a diverse set of creatures. There’s normal run of the mill human warriors, sure. But there’s also yordles, who differ greatly from male to female. Then you’ve got people who were regular humans that obtained amazing abilities, like Annie or Brand. Finally, there’s a lot of champions who are the only one of their kind that are in the League (Here’s looking at you Skarner). One thing that pops into my head every now and again though, is how under-represented a lot of real-world groups of people are, or maybe even worse, how some are stereotyped and myths are perpetuated. Maybe this is just because of my great exposure to how these groups have fought for their rights, but there’s some obvious and some less than obvious stereotypes and media perpetuation going on in League.

First off, let me preface everything here with this. I’m not saying we have to or should go back to change anything about these champs design wise or lore wise. I just am trying to point out some patterns I’ve seen in Riot’s design strategy. I love most of Riot’s ideas for champions, and they have put out some really unique characters. I feel that Riot could really be the company to break some molds that gaming has been keeping set in stone though. They have the talent and the willingness to take those kinds of risks, and they've proven before that they want to break though a lot of previous barriers that have been held by the gaming market as a whole. This is not a bashing on Riot, every media outlet is guilty of a lot of these issues, it’s a request more than anything.

I guess the first thing we could look at is one that is pretty easily agreed upon by most people. There are almost no black champions in the game. Of the 65 or so human(depending on how determine human) champions, we have a total of 2 distinctive black champions, about 3%. To be honest, this is pretty humbling when you look at the numbers. Compare this to world numbers which are about 15%. To get that same number in League champs, you’d have to change eight champions from whatever they identify as to black. What’s even funnier is that Karma’s ethnicity was argued about for a long time until Riot officially came out and said she was black.  And remember, that is before we even look at other identities, like Asian, Indian, etc. Plus the entirety of the LGBT community and their representation that they deserve, which is a whole other topic to cover. I’ve focused on one race, but that isn't to say that the same logic can’t be applied to all demographics. When Lucian was about to be released, everyone was rejoicing that there would finally be a black champ in LoL, but I found it was about 50-50 on who was aware of Karma’s race and who wasn't.

League is supposed to take place in a fantasy world, and I get that. However, it’s pretty apparent that in this world the dominant (in numbers) ethnicity is still caucasian, even despite all of these new species that exist like yordles. A great argument against this, I’ve heard, is that we don’t know about a lot of champs. I’ll admit that some champs that we either don’t know or can’t identify could fall into more unique racial categories, but at that point if they aren’t immediately recognizable, we fall into the same issue as Karma, but worse. At least with Karma it was somewhat noticeable that her skin was darker, not to say that dark skin is the end all-be all for identifying as black. If, for some reason, there is no way, besides Riot coming out and stating that we have a champion from a non-caucasian race, it almost seems like it’s being hidden from us. I think Karma and Lucian are awesome steps, but if/when a new champ is announced and the biggest impact that it has on the player base is the fact that they’re black, there’s a bigger core issue to address.

While identity is an issue that was surprisingly pretty well agreed upon, I want to move on to a topic that I’m sure I’ll get a lot of flak for. Oversexualization of the women in the game. Look, I get it, I’m a guy, beautiful women are great! But if every female champion that comes out has to be gorgeous, do you really think there isn't a problem? There’s definite tropes to be filled here. Ahri is a good example of one that I am 100% perfectly okay with. Her lore is that she charms men and lures them. She is “supposed” to be attractive and sexy. If she didn't have revealing clothing and stereotypical attractive traits, there’d be a big disconnect with her character. Ahri is fine to me, but then you look at a champion like Katarina or Janna. They have even MORE revealing clothing, but how does that fit their character? Maybe I’ll buy Katarina needing to be mobile, but in that case why not give her something more flexible than armor elsewhere. Of course there’s the one everyone knows and jokes about, Sona. Her breasts are huge, and because of that it’s a big point to her visual identity, but they have literally no reason to be lore-wise or for gameplay readability. Then when you put some skins on top of that, you mess with some characters that weren't sexualised, Leona and Riven are the first examples that come to mind.

Speaking of Leona, I will give Riot credit. A lot of credit actually. While they could have just gone the route any other company would and made every girl attractive and “hot,” they took time to make deep characters that didn't rely on that as an attention grabber. Leona is a strong, armored warrior that just dives deep on to you. None of her armor is overly accentuated to bring out her breasts unnecessarily. Another great example is Kayle. She’s an awesome angel that wrecks you with her sword and she’s covered in armor from head to toe. Nothing about her screams “Hey I’m a woman, look at me I’m female!” I’d really love to see Riot designers explore this idea more so we can get a more diverse champion pool in terms of female looks.

However, there’s a  bit of a back-peddle because while Leona was one of the only champs to not get sexualized, they gave her a skin that put her in a bikini. I don’t think the issue here is that they gave her a skin that is revealing, but more that she was one of the only female who they had left be as an individual strong woman with no strings attached. Compare this to the male demographic of League. You have your manly, strong, and handsome knights in Garen, J4, etc. Your scary insane people like Ziggs and Shaco. Even your ugly champs (Urgot). The body types that males have differ from big and beefy, to chubby, and everything in between. Almost all of the non-Yordle women have the same body type. Athletic to thin build and accentuated breasts. Skin showing is usually the case as well, but not necessary.

Imagine if some of the guys would have overly huge junk and it was accentuated in their armor. It’d look ridiculous. (Although a Draven skin with that would be great) It’s just a fact that almost all of the women in the game have some kind of skin, whether it’s classic or not, that makes their body and the fact that they’re women overly obvious just for eye candy. Meanwhile, there are few guys in the same situation. Varus, Lee Sin, and Tryndamere are shirtless, and there are a few skins that do this like Pool Party Graves. However, the vast majority of males are untouched as far as revealing skins. Meanwhile, some female champs only have “sexy” skins. There’s no fair representation. Sometimes, the best skins are the ones that don’t do this. One of my personal favorites is Redeemed Riven. She looks badass and ready kill and she’s completely covered in armor. I personally dislike Battle Bunny because it makes Riven into something she’s not meant to be. It takes away from her strength and resolve.

Once again, I’m not saying that we need to go back and try and “fix” champions that are overly sexy. Sometimes it’s a role that needs filling. Champs like Ahri and Miss Fortune are good examples, but they almost get washed out by the sheer amount of sexualization that is going on. I’m just asking for some even distribution. Make some “sexy” and revealing male skins and champs, and make some nasty scary looking females. Make a champion with a deep and definitive background that doesn't follow the same guidelines every other media outlet has set out. Create a multitude of genders, races, etc. The possibility is there and some champions have proven it. Leona and Kayle are great and they don’t need to have revealing skins because on their own they’re deep enough characters as is. Break the mold more Riot, because you’ve done a great job so far, but you can do so much more.

Intimacy has its Price : The Big Booth Debate

Booths vs. No Booths

By Jerrod "Thousand Eyes" Steis

            Recently the big stink going around the LCS circuit is over the implementation, or lack thereof, of soundproof booths. Anyone who watches LCS today will see the players are in an open air environment and are fully visible to fans. This was to promote intimacy between fans and players, just like almost any other sport. However, LoL, and E-sports in general, aren't like other sports. There’s a lot of deception and trickery as well as other things that need to be hidden from the opposing team. Most sports remedy this by having a playbook or sidelines where these plans are relayed out to the field. Imagine, in football, if the audience told the other team what play they were running. That’s the best analogy for what the LCS is dealing with at the moment.

            Riot’s always run a thin line between having the audience feel engaged with the game, and the audience actually being part of the game. The LCS is run in an open atmosphere where players and spectators see things at almost the same time. Riot has admitted there is a slight delay, but even still, players know the delay. Players wear sound-proof headsets and small earbuds that go underneath. These headsets don’t completely block out all sound, but they at least do something to keep players from hearing anything from the audience that might change the outcome of the game. However, even if they can’t make out specific words, cheers alone can be enough to understand what's occurred. Let’s look at what the crowd generally cheers for in the LCS:

·         Wards

·         Towers

·         Dragons

·         Barons

·         Kills

·         Steals of any kind

            Of all of these, the only ones that aren’t always visible to both teams are Dragons and Barons. Based on positioning  of the enemy it can be pretty simple to make out what was done and have an almost exact timer for it if the audience is heard. Krepo has even come out himself to say that players are well aware of both the crowd and the delay that they’re seeing.

This set up has recently come under fire as Complexity’s ADC ROBERTxLEE stated on his stream that there was a point in his match against Curse where he wasn't sure what was being said on the comms. This wasn't an issue with headsets not working properly either. The sound that was being heard was coming through his teammates mics. Riot absolutely needs to address this issue. Communication between teammates in a game as cooperative as LoL is paramount. Most of the time, plays happen in League because the other team didn't work as a cohesive unit for one reason or another. If this persists and happens again, it could easily swing the outcome of a game, and consequently a season, if it occurs at the right (or in this case wrong) time.

Ideas have been passed around for a while now, and the most readily accepted one is the implementation of booths. Booths have been used in many E-sports games. Starcraft and Dota usually use booths for their events for the exact reason that people are clamoring for them now. They do a better job at keeping sound out of players hearing range than headsets alone. In fact, OGN, the Korean LoL league, uses both of them

The only issue here is the possibility of these booths being little to no use in terms of effectiveness. People have argued that considering the strength of the headsets used, the diminishing returns of adding a booth are almost non-existent. The headsets used in the LCS are approved for use near jet engines, meaning that if sound gets through them, theoretically, a booth isn’t going to do much to stop it. The other issue comes with vibrations.

Obviously sound comes from vibrations, and at events like the LCS there’s not only a lot of sound, but a lot of other things that can cause vibrations as well. (e.g. feet stomping, inflatable noise makers, etc.) Booths and headsets do nothing to stop this and it can cause all of the issues that come with sounds. For large scale crowds, there really is no effective way to keep things from being heard outside of playing from a remote area, and Riot will do anything to keep that from happening.

The normal LCS crowd has a few hundred people. According to most, albeit self-proclaimed, sound experts, vibrations shouldn't be an issue routinely faced in the LCS. World’s may be another issue, but normal games leading up to the world playoffs should see at least some effectiveness from booths.

There’s also been the argument of money. To be honest, it’s hard to get a grasp on which side of the argument is really true here. It’s more an issue of conflicting information rather than one side being right or wrong. I’ve seen reports of the LCS making Riot tons of money, and I’ve seen other information that says the LCS actually loses money in exchange for further advertising the game. There’s no official information straight from Riot so I can’t actually confirm which side is correct. This is in addition to varying booth prices. Depending on how high tech Riot would get if they decided on booths, the prices could go from a few hundred each or into the thousands. If it’s true that the LCS doesn't make money, it’s easy to see how Riot could refrain from putting more money into booths.

Personally, I find myself siding with putting booths on stage. Riot has always prided themselves on keeping player/audience interaction high, but at this point there are enough other ways for players to interact that the negatives outweigh the positives. Even if they decide against booths, there needs to be some kind of statement as to why or what Riot intends to do. There’s no reason to not comment on this considering the amount of backlash that has occurred. Fans need to at least hear a reason and keeping quiet about this will only increase the controversy as people make up their own reasons.

Reaction Time : What Is It...And How Can You Improve It?

by Jodi "PunkLit" McClure

An enemy jungler jumps out at you from the bushes unexpected. You activate your shield and hit him with a stun a split second later, before backing under your turret. Reaction time, that tiny interval between stimulus and response, needs to be extremely fast in pro gamers. Your brain has to make a nearly instantaneous assessment so you can act accordingly. It differs a bit from reflexes, which are involuntary or instinctive movements you make without conscious thought. With reaction time, you need to have a high capacity for strategic thinking.

For visual based stimuli, it's possible to decrease your reaction time with three weeks of practice, and the effects of practice last for at least three weeks, so continual practice should keep your reaction time at its trainable best. In fact, there are plenty of gaming sites online (like Aim400kg) with programs specifically made to help you hone your aim, speed and accuracy.     

Gamers (and everyone else) tend to react more quickly to auditory queues than visual ones, because an auditory stimulus only takes 10 msec to reach the brain, but a visual stimulus takes 20-40 msec. You probably don't even realize how much you rely on auditory clues in League until you play the game with no sound.  Then, you're stuck watching out for things you normally listened for, like the sound of Varus drawing back his bow or Zac preparing to jump.   

Training alone won't help you with speed, though. Age and sex are both strong factors in how quickly you react, both instinctively and intentionally. While most people tend to believe it is teens who have the fastest reaction time, repeated studies have found the optimal age for reaction time is in your mid to late twenties. Ditto with reflexes. It's also interesting to note that men have slightly faster reaction times than women, a disadvantage not reduced by practice or training. Perhaps this in part explains why natural-born female gamers haven't breached the highest levels of pro-dom.

Another important factor affecting reaction time is 'arousal,' or your state of attention, including muscular readiness. Reaction time is fastest with an intermediate level of arousal, and lessens when the player is too relaxed or tense. A good night's rest is essential to performance, as is the experienced calm of a confident player. Plus, in the cool air of the LCS studios, the hand warmers we see players gripping before their games helps to both stimulate and loosen the finger muscles for maximum flexibility. Visual fatigue also plays a part, although the jury is still out on the effectiveness of Gunnars and other gaming glasses.

Despite most of us not worrying about our own execution on a scientific scale, video game players in general still have faster reaction times than their peers (up to 25% faster.) Gaming also improves a players perception, attention and probabilistic inference (aka decision making), and can enhance the players skills and performance both in and out of game - a fact the US Military (and Sci-fi writers) take full advantage of. (Ender's Game, anyone?)     

If you want to be a pro gamer, training to improve your reaction time and reflexes could be vital to your success, and good old-fashioned practice really does help in this regard. Try out online training games to improve your click speed / aim, and make sure you are playing at your awake, attentive and confident best. Don't play when you're tired or tense, or when you've just woken up and your body isn't functioning yet. (And remember to fine tune your computer settings, because latency is the one reaction time killer you can't do much else about.)  

Ref: 

A Literature Review on Reaction Times by Robert J. Kosinski Clemson University

Improved Probabilistic Inference as a General Learning Mechanism with Action Video Games  by C. Shawn Green, Alexandre Pouget and Daphne Bavelier

Military uses video games for training troops by Mathias Ask

---

EU LCS Thursday Preview:

by Silje

Copenhagen Wolves vs Fnatic

The Wolves showed off some good plays to an appreciative audience at Wembley last week. YoungBuck led his team to one of their best games vs Alliance, and ended up generating an impressive 12/3/5 on Irelia. Unfortunately, the game turned into a loss for the Wolves after Airwaks stepped on one of Froggen's Nidalee traps on the way to baron. Fnatic, on the other hand, won their first game against Gambit's substitutes. It was a well-played match from Fnatic's side, and as veterans within the LCS, they had an advantage over Gambit the entire game. Not a surprising win - but a good one. Fnatic's game on Day 2 was entertaining and tense. Millenium, with their gank-comp, set the pace of the game and took the early lead. Fnatic's Cyanide did a good job kicking Millenium out of position in team fights, and when Millenium got a bit overconfident, Fnatic punished them for it. Millenium still won, though, thanks to their map awareness and control, plus strong late game performances by Twitch and LeBlanc. But all in all, Fnatic showed some good plays despite the loss.

Based on last week's performances, this game should be intense and entertaining. Personally, my featured match-up will be SoaZ and YoungBuck in the top lane. SoaZ has shown that he can play a huge variety of top laners, from Renekton to Lulu to Shyvana and Trundle. Nothing seems to stop that guy from picking any champion. He knows how to play them all. YoungBuck on the other hand, leans towards tanky/bruiser top laners. He's had some games on Vladimir, but without much luck.  Renekton, Shyvana, Irelia and Trundle are all champions he is capable of playing. His last week's Irelia was huge.

Alliance vs Millenium

Millenium beat Fnatic, and lost to ROCCAT last week. That was, for me, somehow a surprise. I was expecting Fnatic to keep up their good play and win against Millenium. This game just shows how even the EU region is. Every team can beat each other. Their win against Fnatic was thanks to their gank/pick comp and their good late-game map control. LeBlanc and Twitch are also so strong late game that they can molest any opponents in their way. Kottenx proved that he is a good Evelynn and should not be underrated as a jungler. Alliance, on the other hand, won both of their games last week. They secured a convincing win against SK, who is known for their weaker early game. The match against the Copenhagen Wolves didn't turn out to be as one-sided as you would expect, looking at the standings.  The Wolves put up a good fight  - and one of their best games so far this split. Alliance had trouble with Youngbuck's impressive performance, and (with a little help from that Nid trap) they were fortunate to take the win.  

Alliance is currently showing dominance in the EU LCS. They have solid laners, as well as strong team play. Millenium has a lot of adept individual players who can carry games, e.g. Kerp on LeBlanc and Creaton on Twitch. It will be interesting to watch what kind of game these teams put up, and who will be the team choosing the pace. My featured match-up will be in the jungle. Both Kottenx and Shook have a wide variety of champions in their pools. Shook's Lee Sin-play is well-known throughout the community, and Kottenx is scary good on Evelynn. Kottenx had big shoes to fill as a replacement for Araneae but, he is, in my opinion, living up to the role he was given. 

Supa Hot Crew vs Gambit

In Supa Hot Crew's game vs the Copenhagen Wolves, they suffered in the early-mid stages of the game. It seemed like the Wolves might win when they managed to push SHC into their base, but Mimer, with his 13/2/5  Kayle, kept that from happening. Mimer scored a triple on the Wolves as they attempted to take SHC's middle inhibitor, successfully stopping their advance. Woolite tried to backdoor them, but Mimer went back to save the base, allowing SHC to secure the win.  Supa Hot Crew vs SK Gaming was a funny match. SHC's Selfie tried to play Nocturne mid against Jesiz's Kassadin and it didn't work out the way they intended. With solid play from SK Gaming, SHC suffered a loss. Gambit's core roster could not participate in London due to visa issues, and yet NiQ and the team's last minute substitutes did a decent job. NiQ's Nidalee was simply Godlike. I think that is a champion you should keep away from him in the future. Gambit lost both their games, but with a team that consisted mainly of solo-queue players, they weren't bad at all. They made some amazing plays.

I think this game will depend on how much of a positive impact the junglers can make on the game. Both Diamond and Impaler possess good mechanics and gank-capabilities, and both are capable of helping their teams win, depending on who does it best. That's why my featured match-up will be in the jungle. Diamond can pull out some unconventional junglers at times, such as Xin Zhao and Udyr, but usually without much luck. Impaler has been sticking to the traditional junglers. He is doing very well with Lee Sin and Elise.

SK Gaming vs ROCCAT

SK lost last week to Alliance and beat SHC. In their game vs Alliance, their early game was a bit shaky and they didn't seem like the SK team we are used to seeing being super decisive in their play style. In their game vs SHC, on the other hand, SK showed what happens if you give them the freedom to do things at their pace. We knew it was going to be an unusual game right from the picks and bans phase. Why would SK first pick Morgana when there were so many other strong picks open? When SHC locked in the Nocturne and Jarvan IV, first picking Morgana started to make sense, and also the pick of Caitlyn instead of a Lucian or Twitch. ROCCAT won their game against Gambit's substitutes, but it  wasn't a convincing win. Their win against Millenium looked stronger. They made good plays, and it looks like they're slowly growing stronger again.

My featured match-up in this game will be in the bottom lane, as the duo of CandyPanda and nRated take on ROCCAT's VandeR and Celaver. CandyPanda's Caitlyn scored a triple kill last week against Supa Hot Crew, showing that he is able to handle a variety of champions, considering the last week's favorite picks have been mainly Twitch, Kog or Lucian. In Week 5, Celaver had the highest KDA among the ADCs, while CandyPanda had the third highest. On support, VandeR had the second highest KDA and nRated the fourth highest KDA. nRated has shown that he is a total beast on Morgana, while VandeR has proven himself as the Thresh King multiple times. Both CandyPanda and Celaver can play the likes of Twitch/Lucian/Kog, but are also able to handle other ad carries such as Cait. 

Written By Silje

Support Specific Items : Which One is Best for You?

by Jerrod "Thousand Eyes" Steis

Now more than ever there’s a bunch of great support specific items. Ancient Coin, Relic Shield, and Spellthief’s Edge are awesome items with really interesting and useful interactions all throughout each build. For some champions, like Morgana, Leona, Braum, the choices of what to build are pretty concrete. Leona and Braum have kits and themes that play them up to be extremely tanky melee champs that soak up damage in fights. Morgana and Lulu hit from afar and do deceptively large amounts of AP damage. Then you get to supports like Thresh, Nami, Soraka, and Janna. They could make use of two or sometimes all of these items. So the question becomes what do you want to build? Let’s take a look at each item and how it works with each type of play style and champion.

First we're going to look at what is probably the most general of all the support items, Ancient Coin -> Nomad's Medallion -> Talisman of Ascension.  Ancient Coin's passive gives sustain in both health and mana, with health being given as long as you're around minions that are dying. Speaking of that, you'll also get gold along with health every minion death. This is important because it's the only support item of the three that can provide gold without the use of another champion. In other words, it's easily the most consistent gold earner of the three.

This item is best synergized with a passive play style. It rewards staying in lane as long as possible and its stats reflect this. This is going to remain true all throughout the build path. This item and what it builds into are pretty much all about avoiding straight up fights and trying to outlast the opponent.

            Once you upgrade to Nomad's Medallion you gain more health and gold per minion death, 10 and 4 respectively, and a lot more mana regen. Also, you’ll start gaining gold per second passively. Upgrading this item quickly increases your gold by a large amount and hastens your acquisition of the rest of your build nicely. If you're willing to spend a bit on actual wards, you can delay Sightstone for upgrading to Medallion.

Your final item, Talisman of Ascension, will require a Forbidden Idol (2 Faerie Charms +390 g) and 585 gold. With this upgrade you get 10% more CDR for a total of 20% (Forbidden Idol gives 10%), double the health regen, some more mana regen, and an active skill on top of the same passive as Nomad's. This active skill gives a huge speed boost to you and all allies near you that decays over time.

This active ability is what makes Talisman very powerful. It can be used in a multitude of ways. The way it was initially intended to be used was as an escape, which follows what the rest of the item's stats imply. There are an endless number of different uses though. The speed boost does an awesome job at helping your team chase people down, both after a won fight or if you see someone out of position. It can also help in the middle of a losing fight. Pop it after your team gets jumped by surprise and you'll give everyone a chance to put themselves in a better spot. Finally, an underused tactic is to use it in making a move towards different objectives. Pressure mid lane and then have your team rush to top before the enemy can respond. The active for Twin Shadows really synergizes well as it gives you an engage solely through the use of items, leaving your actual abilities ready for the ensuing fight. In short, Talisman's active, just like the rest of the item, is the most versatile of the three.

So, who should you build Talisman on? Well, to be perfectly honest, Talisman works with almost any support. It may not be the optimal choice, but I dare you to name a support that gets nothing out of any part of it. Every conventional support uses mana, has health, and can benefit from CDR and a burst of speed. If you're new to support and you don't know what you should get or you're afraid to poke or go all in, build a Talisman. Your team will appreciate the extra utility you give everyone through more frequent skill uses and, of course, the active.

Specific Champs to Build Talisman:

·         Nami - Her passive gives movement speed already and she excels and strengthening the speed difference between her allies and enemies. Hit all 10 players with her Ultimate and pop Talisman and you'll see what I mean.

·         Janna - once again has a passive involving movement speed. (Albeit an extremely weak one atm.) She excels at peeling people off her ADC and this gives her ADC a type of self peel on top of all that. Run a hyper-carry like Vayne, Twitch, or Kog Maw with her.

·         Thresh - This is really more just an issue of Thresh doesn't work well with any support item. He doesn't scale well with AP, he's ranged so he has a hard time using Relic Shield (I'll explain in a second), but at the same time he doesn't burn through mana or focus on sustaining out the enemy.

             Really, Relic vs. Coin start is a matter of preference. That's why you'll see some pros starting with a Ruby Crystal, so they can rush Sightstone, an item Thresh undoubtedly gets full use out of. They'll usually pick up a Coin or Shield item later on in the game. Personally I like Coin because I'm a utility hog. The more I can do to put my carries in a position to win, the better off I feel and the move speed in conjunction with CDR on Thresh's abilities feels great.

  

Relic Shield is a tank's best friend. Granting health, HP/10, and a passive that let's you "steal" minions from your ADC (don't lie, you've done it before).

For more clarification, the Relic Shield passive shares gold with the closest ally in a specified range and heals you both for a portion of your max health, at the cost of a charge which refills over time and stacks up to two charges. Additionally, if you're melee you'll get an execute passive on your auto attacks if the minion is low enough on health. If you're a ranged champion, you'll still share gold, but you have to kill minions the old fashioned way of timing it right. This execute is great because most supports have a laughable base attack damage and if you try and farm minions without it you'll run a high chance of misjudging your attack and then no one gets gold.

If you're keeping the item stacking continuously (make sure you're never sitting on full stacks) you can make a huge amount of gold off of this line. You're literally doubling the gold amount from each stack you use. Biggest issue is though, you need another ally around you to use it at all. Roaming is discouraged with this line, purely because you'll end up walking around with full stacks and never using them. Note I say discouraged, not that you should never do it. There's a time and place for everything.

Some quick notes on how the passive of this line works and how to make the most of it:

·         Try and keep one stack up for the cannon minion each time it spawns. Not only is it worth the most gold, but because the execute is based on max health, it's the easiest to proc a charge on. Even better are super minions.

·         Don't double jungle. It doesn't work on jungle creeps.

·         As long as the minion you kill is within the item's range of an ally it doesn't matter how you kill the minion. Sure the execute applies solely on melee auto attacks, but that doesn't mean you can't use abilities as well!

·         The heal can keep you and your ADC in lane a bit longer. Don't underestimate its strength.

·         This is the only item in the trio that never gets gold passively. If you’re not taking minions you’re losing money. The stats aren’t efficient until you take enough minions.

             As you upgrade, you gain more total stacks. Targon’s gives you three and Face of the Mountain has a maximum of four. These stacks will grow quicker after you upgrade to Targon’s Brace, meaning you’ll gain gold quicker after putting a bit more in. You’ll also gain more health, HP/10, and because the recipe for Face of the Mountain involves a Kindlegem, 10% CDR.

The active for Face of the Mountain really plays on to the role of a health-stacking tank. There are a lot of weird numbers here though so stick with me. The active is a shield you can place on any ally champion. The shield strength is determined by a portion of your max health. After a few seconds, the shield will pop, a la Sion (if anyone even knows what that means). The damage the shield does is based on the amount of AD the person who is being shielded has.

There are a few things that aren’t apparent with how the shield works though. For instance, rather than shielding someone else, you can shield yourself. This a great way to jump in and do your thing and try and make sure you can get out when the enemy thinks you’re dead. It’s also really clutch at saving people from any kind of damage over time (DoT). Another cool fact is that the shield can be completely taken off and the explosion will still occur. Don’t worry if you tossed it onto an assassin like Zed or Kha’Zix. The shield may die quickly, but as long as they stay alive the damage portion will still occur.

Specific Champs to build Face of the Mountain:

·         Leona - The staple champion that was a contested pick when the item came out. She tanks, she scales well with health, and she’s a good contestant to throw the shield on herself if all else fails. As long as you flex your muscles you can zone and grab all the farm you want.

·         Braum - Speaking of hotly contested picks, Braum is great for the Relic line in almost the opposite way that Leona is. Sure they both tank damage all day, but for completely different purposes. Leona dives, while Braum saves.

·         Alistar - Look at him...he’s a giant cow. Just like Thresh, Alistar can realistically build two different items. His kit can function in two styles dependant on how you play him. If you want to get in the fray and knock people around, go Relic and be the damage soaker you crave. However, if your plan is to try and just peel people off your carry and heal them whenever you need to, you’d be better off building a Talisman for the extra CDR and mana. This can be different every game, so it’s up to you to try and realize what you need here.

           

            The Spellthief’s item line really opened up the possible support picks. This item is made to be used by an obnoxious poking mage that harasses and whittles down their opponent in lane. This line brings you AP, mana regen, and passive gold/10. The unique passive on this item uses a charge and enhances your spells and auto attacks by putting a small amount of flat damage on them. To further drive players to poke at the enemy, every time you lane a spell or auto attack you gain a bit of gold. Both the damage and gold per auto/spell work off of charges similar to Relic Shield. Keep in mind that if you take minions at any point, the passive portion of this line will go on a cooldown.

Compared to Ancient Coin, you get less mana regen, but more damage and a way to get more gold, and in a way that’s dependant on other champions rather than minions. As you move up the line you gain more passive gold, AP, damage and gold per skill landed, and more mana regen. You won’t get as much mana regen as Coin, but you’re trading that off for more damage and the possibility of more gold gain. Once you reach Frost Queen’s Claim, along with 10% CDR from a Fiendish Codex, you get an active that shoots a bolt that explodes, causing damage and slowing any enemy caught in the blast. The damage scales per champion level and the slow is hard capped at 80% and decays over two seconds. A really nice point of fully upgrading is that the deactivation on minion kills no longer occurs. You can kill minions and still get gold and extra damage right afterwards.

Once again this active works well with the play style intended. Your role here is to sit back and poke as much as you can, meaning you don’t want to fight unless you’re the one initiating. Just like Talisman, it can be used to engage or disengage (but not as well as Talisman). In my opinion, the best way to use the active is in objective or area control. Whether you hit someone or not, it always is explodes in an AoE. If you don’t hit, you at the very least close off an area to the enemy for a little while. This can be key in obtaining or denying objectives such as Dragon, Baron, or any of the buffs on the map. The biggest difference between Talisman use and Frost Queen use is the fact that Talisman is for repositioning yourself, while Frost Queen is purely map and enemy control. You can use Talisman to position yourself and gain objective control, while Frost Queen let’s you do this from a distance.

Frost Queen’s Claim is what let usual mid lane mages run bottom lane. Champions like Syndra, Vel Koz, Kayle, Anivia (a personal favorite of mine) will benefit from the extra AP, damage on hit, and CDR. These are played as kill lanes and can be very hard to counter because they will force fights whenever possible, and they can take you down very quickly. Late game, they’re still able to scale well if they get a lot of gold from their item and possibly kills. If there’s a mage support, there’s one less spot on their team for a tank. Build tanky to survive the burst and you should be ok if you don’t give a lot of kills.

Specific Champs to build Frost Queen’s Claim:

·         Zyra - Not only will plants proc the passive gold and damage, but her auto attack range is ridiculous. She is a support that excels at hitting you from afar, both with spells and auto attacks. She scales well with AP and because she’s immobile, the slow on the Frost Queen active is very useful.

·         Morgana - The first champion we really saw building Spellthief’s. Her Tormented Soil(W) is the reason for it. The passive effect procs on every “tick” of damage, making DoT skills very useful for getting all charges off. You can lock people down with a Dark Binding(Q) and force them to take all charges with a W underneath.

·         Lulu  -Her abilities all scale well with AP now. More utility, and with the extra damage on Glitterlance(Q) she chunks people hard early and can dominate from there. The AoE slow synergizes well with her movement speed and total ability to get away from people by knocking them up with Wild Growth(R), Polymorph(Enemy W cast), speeding up with Whimsy(Self W cast) and a slow that scales with AP on Glitterlance.

·         Karma - Karma could go Talisman as well, and this is a great opportunity to once again highlight different play styles. A Karma with the Spellthief’s line will focus on chunking out her enemy with Mantra - Inner Flame (R->Q) and poking out her enemy. This makes her early game very very strong, but because of her lack of a “true” ultimate, her scaling after 6 is poor. If you go for a Talisman on Karma, you’ll focus more on her utility in her Inspire(E) shield and the movement speed and crowd control(CC) and low CDs to put her team in the best position to fight/kite.

(Bonus points if you pop Talisman, Defiance(R->E), and Sivir’s On The Hunt(R) in succession. The amount of ground you’ll cover is amazing.)

                                                      Summing it all Up

So in review, the three items have three distinct play styles. Talisman is sustaining and forcing or avoiding fights. Face of the Mountain is for tanks whether they peel or dive, you’ll want to brawl a lot with this. Finally, Frost Queen’s Claim is more for poke/area control making it hard to walk through an area, and dominating lane with constant harass. Depending on which champion you’re playing and what your play style is on top of that, you’ll build different items. Don’t feel you’re stuck building certain items. Experiment, and you may find something you like and something that works.

The Anatomy of a Base Race

by Jerrod "Thousand Eyes" Steis

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.