Worlds' Bracket Picks : Quarterfinals

Quarterfinals Picks

by Jerrod "Thousand Eyes" Steis

• SSW vs TSM

Samsung White is just plain out scary. They dominated their group and they weren’t even satisfied with their play in the group. They know how to play the Pick/Ban phase and then control you afterwards. Dyrus’ Rumble and Bjergsen as a whole have been great throughout Worlds for TSM, but I think Samsung White would be out of their minds not to ban Rumble, as Looper hasn’t really shown a liking for Rumble. PawN vs Bjergsen is the match-up to watch, but PawN doesn’t even have to win, just not feed. I think he can manage that over the course of a five game series. TSM has been the best adapting team in Worlds, so I think they could take a game away. White will dominate otherwise.

SSW wins 3-1

• SSB vs C9

This could go either way really. Samsung Blue is a team that is cohesive beyond belief. I like to think that C9 will be smart enough to go around this and avoid teamfighting at any point, at least when it wouldn’t be obviously advantageous. Hai will be looking to play Zed, and Balls may actually avoid his Rumble, since teamfights are not what they want. Look for Ryze to be highly contested and Dade to try and shut Hai down early in every game to keep him from trying to split. Lemon and Sneaky have a hard match-up against Heart and Deft, and things could go spiraling out of control if they get a lead. Basically this series is going to come down to how well prepared C9 are for Blue. I think C9 will be able to play around Blue smarter and pull out a slim victory.

C9 wins 3-2

• SHRC vs EDG

Two Chinese teams duking it out. These games will be a bloodbath for sure. Edward Gaming had a very disappointing group stage and NaMei has been hearing criticism of choking this entire time since Group A finished and I think he’ll be sick of hearing it. He’s going to come out swinging and StarHorn will be in their sights. Not only that, but EDG is familiar with SHRC and knows how to play against them. They took two Number One finishes in the LPL for a reason, I don’t see a reason for them to lose to StarHorn now.

As far as Starhorn themselves go, they did win their group, but they really only had TSM as competition. Basically all that they had to do was get a lead and run with it. They had messy wins and against more complete teams like EDG they’re going to have those weak points exposed. Even at Worlds we’ve seen communication issues with InSec and the rest of the team. Uzi would have to carry the team hard, and I’m not sure he’d even consistently win lane against NaMei.

EDG wins 3-0

• NJWS vs OMG

Najin White Shield is an interesting team for me. I feel like they are very overrated purely because of being a Korean team. They showed how wishy washy they can be in Groups by losing hardcore to Alliance after dominating most of the games. Watch has been underwhelming, but Save and Ggoong have picked up the slack with some occasional help from Zefa. I’m not saying that Najin is a bad team, but they are most obviously the lower of the Korean team and probably the easiest to knock out.

OMG is the black sheep of China. Strong laners, good jungler, and weak ADC/Support duo. Cool has been lackluster compared to what people built him up to be. He’s made his fair share of mistakes, one of the most notable that I’ve seen was his over-tanking of tower shots in the infamous FNC vs OMG match near then. If OMG wants to win they need Cool to snap out of whatever’s been messing with him and wake up. Gogoing on the other hand has been an absolute monster and put the team on his back. His Ryze has been dominant all Worlds long, he’s shown mechanics on a champ that people don’t even think has mechanics. His KDA is easily the highest on the team. LoveLing has been hit or miss, and he can have a good impact, however I’m not sure if he can have a substantial impact all 5 games. It may depend on which Watch shows up. Overall, don’t judge OMG by their record. They made it out of the group of death for a reason.

Despite that I’m taking NJWS to win 3-2

The Mid-Game Power Spike: How Important Is It?

by Kennan French 

                                

It’s a phrase you’ve heard the analysts say dozens of times before a game starts, when they predict what strategies we’re likely to see being used. For those who are new to the concept of champion power curves, a mid-game power spike is exactly what it sounds like: a large increase in the power of a given champion relative to the other champions in the game. Power spikes usually happen after one or two key items are bought, or after a certain level is reached (to unlock an ultimate or max an ability).

The Theory

It’s simple: these spikes are so important because in most professional games, the midgame is when one team really starts to develop a lead. It’s also when the real team fighting starts, so you can see why being powerful at this time is so vital.

The Practice

This all makes sense in theory, but how applicable is it to actual competitive League of Legends? Well, as it turns out, the answer is a little bit complicated. In terms of raw statistics, in Groups C and D, the team with more champions with mid-game power spikes won 52% of the time. That doesn't sound like it makes much of a difference, but the team with fewer mid-game spikes actually only won 20% of the time. These numbers may not seem to add up, but in 28% of the games, both teams had the same number of mid-game champions.

However, some games made it very clear that these champion picks are very important. In the game with the most mid-game champions, Samsung Blue’s crushing victory over LMQ, four out of Blue’s five champions all had considerable power spikes after they completed a core item or two. Sure, Blue is a better team in general, but in the other meeting of these two teams (where Blue didn't have four mid-game champions), the game was much closer.

You can actually also draw conclusions from the games in which both teams had the same number of mid-game champions. The first game between Fnatic and LMQ, for example, was decided largely because LMQ’s mid-game champions had a much greater impact than Fnatic’s did. Ackerman on Rumble went 4/0/7 and XiaoWeiXiao on Yasuo went 4/0/8, compared to sOAZ’s 0/1/3 Lulu and Cyanide’s 1/6/4 Jarvan. Fnatic’s victory over Samsung Blue happened in much the same way. Most notably, Rekkles had an impressive 8/1/5 score while Dade went 2/5/1 on Zed, one of his signature champions.

The Odd Case of KaBuM

Now, it is sometimes the case in any competition that some teams just massively outclass others. For almost the entire set of games in Group D, this was the case for KaBuM eSports. They would stand up to any team for the first few minutes of a game but fall behind before too long. This isn't to put down any team - it’s great that KaBuM made it to worlds and got to play against some of the top regions, but for the sake of analysis, let’s see what happens when we don’t include KaBuM’s losses in our sample. Not much really changes; the team with more mid-game champions still won 55% of their games.

But here’s the really fun part: KaBuM upset Alliance on the final day of the group stage. Each team had two strong mid-game power spikes: Fizz with a Lich Bane and Twitch with a Blade of the Ruined King for Fnatic, against Ahri with a Zhonya’s Hourglass and Ryze with a stacked Rod of Ages and stacking Tear of the Goddess for KaBuM. LEP was not inspiring on Ryze this game—1/3/1 at the 16-minute mark—but some unconventional itemization from Minerva’s Jinx made up for this: the second item he bought was a Hexdrinker. An item rarely seen in professional matches at all, the Hexdrinker has been almost exclusively purchased by top-lane bruisers. However, a 4/1/1 Fizz with a Lich Bane is a scary proposition for any AD carry, especially an immobile one such as Jinx. The usual response to this would be a late-game Banshee’s Veil, but Minerva wanted safety from Fizz right then—and rightly so. Hexdrinker is a much cheaper item, and gives very good protection against burst magic damage. In purchasing this item, Minerva created an artificial mid-game boost in power on a champion who traditionally has a milder version of Tristana’s U-shaped power curve: fairly strong early laning, a dip in power mid-game while farming up for items, and then an explosive late-game as she approaches a full build.

In short, the mid-game power spike is a very useful tool which can really impact the outcome of a game, but a team has to set it up starting from champion select and continuing with their itemization, and then know how to use it.

Season 4 World Championship Quarterfinals Preview : Samsung White vs Team SoloMid

by Nathasha Ng

Now that the group stage in Taiwan has come to an end, it’s time to take a look at the teams from Groups A and B that will be advancing to the quarterfinals. After a weekend full of exciting games, here are the final seedings :

With their perfect group stage, Samsung White will be advancing as the first seed of Group A into the quarterfinals to face off against North America’s Summer Champions, Team SoloMid. StarHorn Royal Club, Group B’s first seed, will battle it out with their regional opponents Edward Gaming, second seed from Group A.

Team SoloMid vs Samsung White

Samsung White are the clear favorites in this match up. They are considered by many to be the best team in the world, or second best behind their sister team Samsung Blue. This year, unlike last year where they got overconfident, they actually lived up to the hype. In the six games they have played so far, they have shown no weakness, and have easily beaten Dark Passage, AHQ and Edward Gaming to go undefeated in Group A.

On the other hand, Team SoloMid, the fan favorites, have gone 4-2 in their group, losing to China’s StarHorn Royal Club and Europe’s SK Gaming. TSM have had mixed results so far. During group stage, they have shown dominating performances, but have also shown weaknesses, such as being unable to close games and doubtful shot calling . For example, in their last game of group stage, which could have potentially put them at a tiebreaker with Royal Club for the first seed, TSM finally lost after a bad team fight in SK’s base.

Who has the edge?

Without a doubt, Samsung White will take this series.

TSM usually wins games where they mechanically outplay their opponents, or just get ahead during laning phase, which will be almost impossible against Samsung White. First of all, everyone on White is mechanically equal or better than the players on TSM.

Samsung White’s bottom lane, Imp and Mata, are probably one of the strongest duo lanes in the world, while WildTurtle and Lustboy are still trying to build up their synergy. Dandy is also widely considered to be the best jungler right now. While Amazing has had moments of brilliance, he struggles to find consistency and efficiency on champions other than his famous Lee Sin and his reliable Elise. Dyrus has been playing phenomenally thus far at Worlds, and his Rumble is definitely a big threat, but he can easily be put on tilt. Samsung White will know that, and they will definitely try to take him out of the game by camping top, or even lane swapping and 4-man tower diving him. The only lane that could potentially go in favor of TSM is the middle lane. Bjergsen has really shown proficiency on multiple champions, from mages like Orianna and Xerath, to assassins like Syndra, Zed and Fizz. He has a wide champion pool, and could most likely hold his own against White’s Pawn.

Another thing that sways this match-up in favor of White is their tremendously-wide champion pools. For example, their ad carry Imp has played five different champions in six games: Lucian, Corki, Tristana, Vayne and Twitch. If we take a look at the top lane, Looper has also played five champions: Maokai, Ryze, Rumble, Kayle and Alistar. What’s even more impressive is that their mid laner, Pawn, has played six different champions during group stages: Talon, Katarina, Fizz, Zed, Yasuo, and Zilean. Not only are they able to bring out so many champions, they have also shown us how solid they can be on all these champions. Their wide champion pools give them the ability to play different team compositions, and use different strategies every game. The ability to adapt between games and switch up your strategy in a best of five is crucial.

This situation is scary for TSM because they will never be able to ban out Samsung White, as well as banning the ‘’OP‘’ champions, such as Nidalee and Alistar. TSM is known to do well in games where the pick and ban phase goes their way, but they struggle immensely when they are surprised by the other team’s composition, or are forced into a composition they don’t necessarily want to play. The preparation coming into this best of five will be very important. Not only do they have to prepare different team compositions for pick and ban phase, they also need to be able to adapt quickly as the series goes on. Little adaptations between games can easily be the difference between victory and defeat. Luckily for TSM, they have shown in the past that they are able to adapt throughout best of fives, and they do not let losses bring them down. For example, during the North American playoffs, they always bounced back after defeats and even though they were often a win down in the beginning, they persevered and won all their series.

While the odds are in Samsung White’s favor, it will all come down to who shows up on game day when it really matters. Anything could happen, and all the teams can beat each other on any given day, and this is what makes eSports so exciting.

Alliance Save their Worlds hopes with a Flawless Victory over Najin White Shield.

by Reece "SabrewoIf" Dos-Santos 

It had been a long time coming for Alliance but the EU Super team finally hit the pinnacle of their potential and really hit the ground running with a perfect game over the heavily favoured Najin White Shield from Korea.

Coming into this game, Najin White Shield were undefeated in Group D and easily one of the favourites for the whole tournament considering their complete domination of the Korean playoffs gauntlet - taking out KT Bullets and the heavily favoured KT Arrows alongside the Season 3 World Champions SKT T1 K. Alliance showed promise in their first game against Najin Shield but were unable to convert their early game lead into a win due to a reluctance to push hard and fast before Shield’s hyper carry protection comp began to scale into the late game. All the right components were there in Alliance’s arsenal to take down Najin Shield: strong laners, tight synergy and the ability to not get out-rotated. Unfortunately, vision control was rather lax and that lead to an eventual loss of map control and the game.

This time, however, Alliance had come off the back of a very convincing win over Cloud 9 (which earned Shook a respect ban from Shield on Rammus) but clearly they did not respect him enough. Shook ran the map solo queue style, making huge plays and picking up the first three kills for Alliance and he proceeded to never let go of the stranglehold he had over Shield and the map. While Alliance destroyed ten towers and picked up fourteen kills, Najin White Shield were unable to pick up a single kill or objective, including Dragon and Baron, for themselves.  By the end of the game Alliance had amassed a 24k Gold lead and not once had the tide ever shifted in favour of Najin Shield. This was clearly a victory that was gained through hard consideration of what went wrong for them the first time, as more vision was both invested in and controlled (32 vision wards placed by Alliance compared to 16 by Najin Shield) alongside the fact that Zefa’s Tristana never had the time or the opportunity to scale up and become relevant in the game.

If this is what Alliance can pull out, it's clear that they are a team that should not be as overlooked as they were coming into this tournament. Shook and Wickd have shown that they themselves are now more than worthy of target bans towards them and should be wary of bans coming in on both Lee Sin and Irelia, but with this consideration it also frees up the possibility of Froggen, Tabzz and Nyph having bans less targeted towards them. What this victory has definitely done is changed the mind-sets of many people: Alliance is no longer just the Froggen show; it’s a true Alliance, a true super team of mechanically world class players.

Froggen built this team to challenge and overcome the best teams in the world, With this flawless victory over Najin White Shield, his team has done just that and can look forward to the possibility of doing so again. 

NWS Take Commanding Lead of Group D With Win Over Cloud 9

by Matt “It’s Pure Luck” Lee

Coming into a crucial match with group favorites NaJin White Shield, Cloud 9 knew that it wasn’t going to be easy. In a post-game interview after defeating Alliance the previous day, Meteos told Sjokz, “Hopefully we can beat KaBuM later today and going forward, maybe we will beat NaJin White Shield. I don’t know, that one seems a little bit ambitious, but number two out of the group would be good” 

It turns out Meteos wasn't far off. In stark contrast from their earlier game versus Alliance, NaJin was in control for the vast majority of this contest. It began in picks and bans where NWS threw C9 for a bit of a loop. NaJin took Syndra away from Hai and then opted to forgo their final ban as they could not agree to one. By doing so, it left one extra “stronger” champion open and forced Cloud 9 to make a decision on what champion they did not want to face. C9 opted to remove Lee Sin from Watch, and NWS came back immediately with a first pick Zed lock-in for Ggoong. Here are what the rest of the lineups for each team looked like.

NaJin White Shield (1st pick)

Zed (Ggoong) – Ryze (Save) – Thresh (GorillA) – Corki (Zefa) – Elise (watch)

Cloud 9

Tristana (Sneaky) – Kha’Zix (Meteos) - Lulu (Balls) – Nami (LemonNation) – Talon (Hai)

The first few minutes saw the lanes playing fairly aggressive against each other. Hai and Ggoong had vicious trades early on, dropping both of them to under half health before the game was three minutes old. Shortly after that occurred in mid, GorillA showed why he continues to play Thresh and often sees it banned against him. A hook onto Sneaky saw the C9 AD carry dropped under half health and the lane was suddenly in NWS's control. Meteos paid a visit bottom but without having vision of Watch, all he could do was drop a ward down in the river bush to help out Sneaky and LemonNation. The risks were too high otherwise with Sneaky so low on health.

NaJin were slightly ahead in each lane except for top at this early point in the game. To try and relieve some of the early pressure Balls was putting on Save, Watch went for a gank top and forced a flash out of Balls who promptly returned to base to buy. With his lane shoved towards his opponent’s turret and flash no longer available, Balls did not teleport back to lane and saw his previously struggling opponent take the lead in creeps.

Right as Balls returned back to lane in top, the game saw its first major skirmish. Cloud 9 were caught without any wards in the river and paid the price for it. Right when Watch was coming out of the river, GorillA made a beautiful flash flay to catch LemonNation who would attempt to flash away only to immediately be cocooned and focused down. Both top lanes began teleporting bottom at this point. Watch flashed away to escape and Sneaky attempted to rocket jump and finish him off to get a reset…only to be thwarted by Zefa’s summoner heal.

This turned out to be a critical mistake with Zefa and Watch, both barely escaping alive. GorillA would fall for NWS in the fight but Save was able to flash over the river wall and finish off Sneaky for a two for one in favor of NaJin. Ggoong engaged onto Hai in the river to then allow Save to escape while just surviving himself. NWS found themselves with a one thousand gold lead and even more importantly is the early game disadvantage Save had was all but gone.

The lanes looked to start to slip away from Cloud 9 a bit after all of this transpired. The creep score leads for both Save and Zefa seemed to be growing slowly but surely. The surprise was that Hai was holding his own versus Ggoong in the mid lane in a very tough matchup. He was making very good use of his ultimate on Talon to keep pressure on Ggoong so he would not have to deal with the deadly all-in from Zed.

Cloud 9 continued their attempts to shut down Save with a successful gank at ten minutes but NaJin would simply respond by taking dragon for themselves. Gorilla began to roam a bit with Watch in an attempt to make a plays elsewhere on the map as well as place deep wards in the jungle of C9. They managed to force a flash out of Hai and immediately headed into the C9 jungle as a ward spotted LemonNation heading back to lane.

In a very aggressive play, Watch and Save nearly did get a pick on LemonNation with a clever lantern gank between the inner and outer turrets. He managed to just get out alive, but once again the top lanes were teleporting down to join the fray. NaJin went a bit too deep here as they were a bit scattered during this turret dive. They managed to pick up kills on both Sneaky and Balls, but Watch and Save would be dropped in return with one of the kills going over to Hai. Gorilla just barely managed to escape with a sliver of health and for a brief moment, it looked as if Cloud 9 was still in the game.

The turning point however would come at the very next team fight. As the teams converged around middle lane, Balls was chunked down incredibly fast by Zefa and forced to back away. Unfortunately for C9, it happened at the exact moment that Sneaky and Hai went all in to try and take out GorillA. GorillA would die at the hands of Sneaky but the price paid was too steep for Cloud 9. The trinity force Corki ripped through C9 as the trio of Balls, Meteos and Hai would be killed with Sneaky barely escaping alive. A dragon would follow for the Koreans and all of the sudden the gold lead had swelled up to almost five thousand at just over sixteen minutes.

Despite the fact that NWS had a massive power spike with Corki and a substantial gold lead, C9 again took a bad fight in middle yet again. Hai was hit by a hook from GorillA and looked to be able to escape back to the turret with ease. Yet he chose to go in on what was essentially a one versus three. He would be killed by Watch who rappelled right onto him and Balls would also die shortly after. NaJin took the middle outer turret and the gold lead hit seven thousand at eighteen and a half minutes.

NWS wasted no time in flexing their muscle with the mid game power spike they had. They knew the dangers of letting a Tristana team reach the late game stage; they won themselves doing just that versus Alliance earlier in the day. Determined to not let that happen, they kept vision of the jungle in their clutches and rotated around the map taking turrets with Cloud 9 able to do nothing about it. Knowing the game was all but lost, it seemed Cloud 9 wanted to at the very least take out their frustration on Save. They managed to pick up the kill but the problem was it took four of them. NWS would gladly trade this for the top and middle inhibitor turrets and inhibitors themselves.

NaJin would have one small, final hiccup. GorillA would be caught out and killed and perhaps over confidence led to Ggoong attempting to go all in just outside of the final C9 inhibitor turret. In the end it was just a minor inconvenience for NWS as they would wait for the respawns of GorillA and Ggoong. One final brief siege led to the final inhibitor turret falling and NaJin would just rush the nexus and its turrets for a decisive twenty nine minute victory.

Game MVP

            Tough call between Save and GorillA, but GorillA is the pick here. Save did become a ticking time bomb that C9 couldn’t handle late game, but part of the reason he was able to is because Watch did not really have to help bottom out at all. GorillA missed very few hooks and the one’s he did hit early on shifted the lane in favor of NWS. I doubt he will get to play Thresh again in the second meeting between these two teams.

Questionable Decisions

            C9 seemed to have trouble grasping their win conditions in this game. They took too many bad fights in the mid game when Corki is clearly stronger than Tristana, especially once he has a Trinity Force. It’s one thing for it to happen once, but two or three times is inexcusable. They needed to be more patient and wait for Sneaky to have his Infinity Edge before trying to team fight. They played right into NaJin’s hands by repeatedly agreeing to fight instead of disengaging with Nami.