Support Lanes 101: Itemization Choices

by Jerrod "Thousand Eyes" Steis

So last time we talked about picking a support to synergize with your ADC and counter the opponent. If you missed that one you can catch up on it here. Now I’d like to go over another integral part of any position in League, your item choices. Learning how to itemize in-game and, more importantly, learning how to adapt your build paths is one of the biggest steps in turning from an average player into an above average player in my opinion. The only things I’d consider higher are macro game details and warding, things I’ll go over later on.

So many times I see people that build items purely because it’s following directions on the suggested build or from a high tier player rather than actually putting thought into why they’re building that item and what it actually accomplishes for them. Take some time to really think about what you get for each item. One of the biggest parts of being a support is managing your itemization because your gold income is a lot lower than anyone else on your team. Your items not only have to be effective, but also cost efficient. Sure that Warmog’s is awesome to help tank, but by the time you get that finished, you’re so far behind in terms of stats and helpfulness, you’re a liability to your team.

So without further ado...Let’s get into it!

Starting Choices

On almost any support you have a choice of one of 3 starting items. Relic Shield, Ancient Coin, and Spellthief’s Edge. There are a few caveats to this, but we’ll cover that later.

Relic Shield: This is a no-brainer for anyone tanky. It gives health and lets you “steal” minions from your ADC and share the gold at the cost of a charge, which comes back every 60 seconds, and you can hold up to 2.

Your auto attacks will execute any minion under 200 health and heal you and the closest person to you for 40 health (A large amount in the early game) as well as giving them the gold. It’s important to note that only melee attacks will trigger the execute, however, if you kill a minion in any way shape or form and have a charge you will proc the gold and health transfer. Save your charges for Cannon minions as they give the most gold per kill.

The charges take a long time to build up until you upgrade it, so building it into its older brother, Targon’s Brace, is important to do early. Once you do that charges stack up twice as fast and you can hold 3 instead of 2. Targon’s also adds more health and health regen on top of all of this for 500 gold.

Your final item in this line is Face of the Mountain (FotM). In addition to more health, charges, CDR, and health regen, you get a nice shield to place on an ally that explodes after a set amount of time, even if the shield was destroyed. There’s multiple ways to use this shield. One, and probably the most obvious one is to place it on your ADC if they get dove. This keeps them alive as the shield scales on your health, and the damage it deals scales on 100% AD (In comparison to 30% AP) of the person you place it on. Second, you can use the shield on your assassin as they dive in, giving them more damage, especially if AD, and a little extra tankiness. Yasuo and Zed are prime candidates. Finally, and one of my favorites, baiting a fight by running in and using the shield as the enemy chases you down. So many times I’ve fooled the enemy into death by waiting for them to blow a cooldown on me only to shield the killing damage and walk off, leaving them defenseless.

This item is especially great for supports like Leona and Braum since they scale well with health and also lack any innate sustain. This lets you zone out the enemy and take some poke while also being able to keep yourself healthy in the process. If you’re really good you can feign like you’re going to go in and just take a minion instead, leaving your opponent to wonder when you’re actually going to be aggressive. Finally, using both charges on the first wave lets you shove and get a quick level 2, which as we learned last time is a huge advantage, and you’ll still have a charge ready by the time the first Cannon minion comes around.

Spellthief’s Edge: Just like tanks love Relic Shield, magey supports love Spellthief’s Edge. This item encourages being as obnoxious as possible in lane. Poke the enemy and receive gold for it. There’s a lot less going on here as far as stipulations, as long as you haven’t taken a minion recently and have a charge, you’re able to either auto attack or hit a spell and get extra gold. Be careful though, you can easily get caught out trying to poke and give your enemy a lot of gold in return.

Spellthief’s is very powerful in the early levels and can help zone out the enemy hard. If you’re running a long range auto attack support, like Zyra or Annie, take advantage and poke out the enemy. Biggest mistake I see in terms of this though is, DO NOT TANK MINIONS TO GET THIS POKE OFF. I’m guilty of this too, but attacking the enemy only to take return damage and minion aggro means you lose the trade. If you have to move past minions to attack the enemy, it’s not worth it. Wait until the enemy ADC goes to last hit and time your attack in unison with theirs. If they attack a minion they can’t attack you, at least not without blowing a spell or chasing you.

The upgrade for this item is great, although I’d argue not as immediately necessary as Relic->Targon’s. Your gold income increases, and your damage goes up, but come teamfights you’re not going to want more poke damage, you’re going to want more stats and more spells. If you’re behind, or you find you have the gold income, there’s nothing wrong with going for a Sightstone or Chalice over upgrading this item, especially if you find you’re not able to get a lot of procs off for it. Especially since the passive gold gain doesn't go up, and the damage it adds only increases by 5.

The final item in this path, Frost Queen’s claim, gives a nice boost in AP (10->50 AP) and some CDR in addition to letting you get procs off after taking minions. The active fires out a shot that explodes, does a miniscule amount of damage, and slows everyone hit by 80%. Great for chasing someone down, and even better at disengaging fights when you’re getting chased down. Do not forget this item when running, it’s instant cast and can save you and your team’s life.

Ancient Coin: Ancient Coin is in a weird spot right now, and it has to do with recent changes to it. Ancient Coin and its upgrades is meant to be the sustain line of items, in comparison to the poke and tank items we’ve gone over already. It gives mana regen flat, and some health every time an enemy minion dies in addition to gold. For more passive supports this was awesome. No need to poke, tons of sustain, and gold for just being around dead minions.

One of the simpler items in terms of gold gain and use, at least before final build. Just sit back and let the gold flow in. Upgrading leads to more health and mana regen, including health regen that doesn’t rely on minions being around, some movement speed to avoid getting caught, and one more gold per dead minion. Pretty self explanatory, keeps your sustain and gold flow moving. Upgrading this is really useful if you’re getting shoved in since you can get some nice health regen without needing to have minions die first, but similarly to Spellthief’s Edge, it’s understandable to try and get a Sightstone before upgrading if you need the wards and health immediately.

The active here is what makes this item, and honestly is the only reason you should ever build it. It gives a huge movespeed boost to you and everyone around you. This can be used in so many ways it’s crazy. In a game like League where positioning is key, especially in lower levels of play where positioning sucks, the extra movespeed can get someone where they need to be faster and save lives. Use it to engage fights, disengage fights, and during fights to reposition and regroup. Use it to quickly get to objectives.

The damn thing has a 60 second cooldown, use it a lot!

The last time I wrote about support items, this one still had 20% CDR at final build, and was one of my favorites because of this and it’s active. Well, Riot nerfed the CDR and placed some CDR in other items to compensate. While having other CDR options is always great, The fact that this item doesn’t give any type of lane dominance basically screws you in terms of trying to come out ahead in lane. You’re basically telling your opponent that you’re not going to try and do much in lane with this item over a Spellthief’s Edge.

One of my old builds I had been messing around with before was rushing this and Lucidity boots (CDR boots). This used to give me a very fast 40% CDR and I was able to cast a large amount of spells which, since supports usually rely on base values and using their abilities as much as possible, was great. Now with the CDR the same as all of the other items, it really has nothing over them outside of the great active. The other 2 items give more gold and lane presence, and have decent actives themselves. Until something is changed, this item is only going to be useful when bought fully completed.

Some off-builds that can work:

Doran’s Shield: For a while this was a preferred start for a lot of people, but with the nerfs that it received a few patches ago, it’s not worth sacrificing the gold gain for the stats it gives. It’s not bad if you’re planning on fighting hard early and often, but if you don’t get a lead immediately, you’re going to be behind on gold.

Ruby Crystal: This is actually a start I can get behind, especially on supports that don’t have a large preference on any of the gold income items, looking at you Thresh. Picking this item up lets you rush an early Sightstone, which means more wards earlier. Take control of the vision game early, once again a strategy I think is very viable in lower levels of play. You can warn someone that they’re in an unsafe position tons of times, but if they see that Jungler coming they’ll definitely back the hell up.

Doran’s Ring: This one is an old favorite of people who hate to support, but get stuck in the role. Zilean is probably the only person I could really recommend this on since he needs more mana regen, and builds a lot differently than other supports would, but even still you’re losing out on possible gold gain with this one. Basically don’t do this one, just go Spellthief’s over it.

Moving Forward (Base Items)

Ok, so you’ve got your first item and you’ve even upgraded it. Great! Where do you go from here?

Well in most cases rushing to the final build on your support line item isn’t a great choice. You’re going to need some other items in the meantime. By no means is this an end all, be all decision. Remember what I said at the start of the article? You need to analyze where your team is at and what they need and build accordingly.

Sightstone: This is a must-buy. I almost always get this item after upgrading my initial support item, or if I’m really behind, before that. Wards win games kids, and this thing will save you so much money in the long run, you may as well call it a gold income item as well. If you support and don’t think about buying this…..stop please.

I will say that upgrading this item isn’t anywhere near a priority though. The only thing you get from Ruby Sightstone is more health, and the gold you spend on adding that health is literally worth what you would pay for the health crystal itself. The only thing you actually get for your money’s worth when upgrading is an extra ward to place. This is great if you’re constantly moving around the map and dealing with sieges in multiple areas, but if you’re stalling this isn’t gonna help too much.

Use your head and decide when you need that extra ward, if you find yourself running out of wards and backing to base only to recharge the stacks on this, consider upgrading it.

Chalice of Harmony: If you’re a spammy mage, this is your item. Basically lets you disregard your mana pool and spam spells as much as you’d like. The magic resist it provides is also pretty nice, even if not ideal, since a lot of supports do magic damage and even some ADCs. Only one sensible item to upgrade to, but it’s a damn good one.

Sweeping Lens: I know this isn’t an item, but I want to talk about when to switch your trinket. I know a lot of people will sit on their yellow ward trinket for a long time. There’s no reason to keep it once you have a Sightstone, and I think it’s worthless after first back. You can buy any wards you need if you don’t have a Sightstone yet, and sweeping out the enemies vision is extremely useful.

Pink Wards: Please buy them.

Seriously though, let’s talk about the strength of pink wards and why you should always have some on hand at all times.

Pink wards have the possibility of being the most gold efficient item you purchase every game. The ward lasts until someone kills it and in the right place you can have extremely important vision and the enemy could never know. I’ll cover more on pinks in another article solely dedicated to vision wars and how to play them, but I always try and spend my pocket cash on pinks. I usually have 2 when I leave base, whether I came in with any or not. You can use them to clear vision, keep vision in an area for a long time, and even bait people out by putting them in easily clearable spots.

Here’s my philosophy on pink wards: Even if they go someplace that isn’t well traversed or they don’t last long, they give guaranteed information on where the enemy is or more importantly where they aren’t.

Boots

Sounds simple enough, boots make you faster and give some extra stuff once fully upgraded. The type of boots you buy though, especially as a support is extremely variable.

Boots of Speed: Obviously you’ll start here at some point, when you buy them is kind of a big deal though. As support your gold income is a hell of a lot lower than anyone else, so boots kind of become a second thought. You should generally have 21 points in the Utility mastery tree meaning you’ll have more movespeed inherently than other champs, but you’ll need them at some point to keep up. I’d recommend getting level 1 boots soon after your Sightstone, since that’s when you’ll start to roam around a lot more and ward areas. Getting them earlier isn’t a bad plan though, especially if there’s a Blitzcrank or someone else on the enemy side so you can dodge skillshots better.

Boots of Mobility: My go to option for upgrading boots, lets you roam around the map and ward efficiently, and by the time you are upgrading boots to 2nd level you should be doing exactly that. Plus they’re great when moving into mid-lane unexpectedly and pulling off some support ganks. Once you take tower you should strive to be where you’re most needed as quick as possible. You’ll generally be moving around the map a lot and these let you do just that. Plus they’re only 475 gold to upgrade, which is so much cheaper than all of the other boots.

Mercury’s Treads: These are always solid buys. The reason being that they are one of very few items with tenacity, which keeps you CC’d for less time. Tenacity is extremely high value in gold because of this. These are gonna be more useful on tanks and especially anyone that needs to slog through a bunch of CC laden champions in order to do their job. Usually this isn’t what you’ll be doing, but for some it can be (Leona, Alistar, etc) The magic resist they add is really just a nice bonus, and lets you buy the cheap MR item for quick resistance.

Ionian Boots of Lucidity: These used to be my favorite boots on supports. They nicely fill in that 5% CDR that you awkwardly have from your masteries, but the reason they fell out of favor was all of the changes to support items that added CDR. We now have so many items that have CDR in them that it’s hard not to hit the cap already. Plus they don’t add anything special in addition to the CDR, like Mobi boots or Merc Treads do. Overall they’re great in concept, but you can get what they give elsewhere and receive other things in addition.

Ninja Tabi: These are always a game specific buy for me, even if I’m not on support. Generally they’re only really effective if the enemy has a lot of AD damage going on their team and they’re doing most of that through auto attacks. Just AD damage alone isn’t enough to validate buying these. These are a pretty rare buy for me but they have their place

Sorcerer Shoes: These are a very specific buy, basically only useful on poke supports with high damage outputs. Zyra is the only one I can think of offhand that would buy these regularly. If you’re going to run Lux support it could possibly work as well. Other boots provide more though if you’re a utility based support.

Finished Items

Here we’re gonna talk mid-late game items, basically what you could build past Sightstone, your support item, and boots. Some of these are more viable than others, and some of these may seem like good buys, but I’ll go over why they just aren’t cost efficient for most supports.

Since this is something that will be drastically different by tank or mage supports I’ll cover them in separate sections.

Mage Supports

Mikael’s Crucible: This is always my first item past the initial trinity of support items I get. Chalice alone is a great item for supports, since you’re very reliant on spamming spells, and the passive basically solves any issues with mana you’d have. Throw some CDR and tons of base mana regen on top of that and it’d be a pretty decent item.

The kicker is the active. This active basically saves your team from getting screwed. It’s a cleanse and a heal at the same time. Meaning if anyone is caught out and going to die you can save them. Plus the heal is based on % max health. Meaning it is even useful on tanks too. You can cast it on yourself, as well. Making it an amazing baiting tool.

At 2450 total cost it’s not cheap, but the components are easy enough to pick up, and useful enough that you don’t feel like you’re wasting slots till it’s finished. The active is well worth the cost though.

Twin Shadows: Another item I love for mages, and I think a severely underrated item, especially in solo queue. This thing gives a lot of AP some CDR and, most importantly, move speed. Move speed is not an easy stat to come by in League, especially outside of boots.

The active on Twin Shadows sends out two “spooky ghosts” that will look for the nearest enemy champion and make them visible as well as slowing them. A while back they added that if the ghosts don’t find a target they run back to you, and each ghost that returns reduces the cooldown of the item (which is very long at two minutes otherwise).

The active is very useful at scouting out areas, or even just showing the general direction of the enemy. Even if they don’t find anyone, they always go towards the enemy, showing their general direction.

This is another slightly pricey item at 2400, but for the amount of AP and utility you get it’s great late game when you need that extra oomph in your abilities and the ability to safely scout out areas from a distance. Definitely not needed until later on in the game though, and you should be able to scrounge up the cash by then.

Liandry’s Torment: This one kind of falls into the same category as Sorcerer's Shoes. You’ll only buy it on champions that are going to deal a significant amount of magic damage and rely on doing that damage for their job. Not gonna be a buy on someone like Nami or Janna since they don’t need penetration, and even if you wanted more damage you’d get more from getting AP and items with more utility focused passives.

Haunting Guise is cheap enough to sit on for a while and you get a nice amount of penetration when in conjunction with Sorc Shoes. Very niche item, but effective in the right use.

Now we’re looking at 2900 gold here for a completed item. Not worth it when you consider how much damage you’ll generally be doing, but there’s worse items to get for the gold.

Zhonya’s Hourglass: Speaking of items that are very useful in specific cases. Hourglass as an item is amazing, but for any support outside of Morgana or Fiddlesticks, it’s just a bad idea. Most of the time as a mage support you should be in the backline focusing on giving your teammates the heals and power to win fights. Not throwing yourself to the wolves.

Morgana and Fiddlesticks get good use out of it because they can keep their ultimates going throughout the duration of the invulnerability, no other support has an ability like that. Plus you’re gonna look to build a Needlessly Large Rod. Tell me when you get to go back to base as a support with 1600 gold to throw around.

Ardent Censer: This item has been the one I’ve built up to for mage supports. I don’t like this item. Not that the idea behind it is bad, or that it’s too expensive, but because when you compare it to other items you can get, it’s just…..lackluster.

First off let’s just look at pure stats. For 2200 total gold you get, 40 AP, 10 mana regen/5 secs, and 10% CDR. Okay, not bad. But let’s compare that to Mikael’s Crucible.

For just 250 more gold, you can get on base stats alone a lot more MR and more mana regen. No support has high enough AP ratios to make use of just 40 AP, so having the ability to crank out more spells and not dying is more important.

Now let’s look at passives. This isn't going to be as cut and dry.

Mikael’s gives a nice mana regen passive, which as long as you’re not button mashing should give you enough mana to rotate spells, and even if you do run dry you’ll get more back fast. It’s second passive is that great heal/cleanse we talk about already.

Ardent Censer gives move speed, which is a great stat, but this one is a unique passive, meaning if you get another Aether Wisp for a Twin Shadows, you’re not getting any more movement speed until you actually finish Twin Shadows, since they’re both unique.(I have been corrected on this thank you!) So I was actually wrong on that one. My fault, however, I still think you're going to get more from the actives and passives of Twin Shadows/Mikeal's for your team rather than Ardent Censer.

The shielding/healing effect is more interesting, giving attack speed to everyone you shield or heal, but you’re relegating this item to people who shield and heal right off the bat. On top of that, how many of those champs really only shield or heal one person? Taking the value of this passive down even further for those champs. Finally, and most crucially, how many champions on your team will actually make use of more attack speed? Extremely reducing the effectiveness. Why wouldn't you spend 250 more gold for a much more useful passive in saving people? If you want the AP and movement speed, get a Twin Shadows, since it’s double the AP and the movement speed isn't unique.

In short, Ardent Censer is an item that’s stuck in between being a support item and an offensive item and it really doesn't accomplish either very well when compared with other items. It could possibly work will someone who shields or heals AoE, like Alistar or maybe even Karma if you're willing to pop ult for it, but the vision and utility other items have just outclass it hardcore.

Ohmwrecker: I’m not gonna spend too much time on Ohmwrecker since it has a lot of similar issues to Ardent Censer in terms of not having a clear in-game use. It gives health and a decent amount of AP. Both of these are useful for dives yes, which the passive also assists in, but you’d want health on one champion and AP on the other, it’s just a really wonky item and other items do more in the same slot.

Tank Supports

Tank supports are a bit different in that they need to build to be tanky like a solo laner, but on a fixed gold income. There’s tons of great tank items out there, but you’re not going to want to build all of them because of gold value. What you need more than anything cheap stats.

Magic Resist Options

Locket of the Iron Solari: Probably the top MR item for tanky supports, very team oriented and perfect for supports. The stats it brings are a little bit gold inefficient until you bring into account the passive or the active. The aura brings 760 gold worth of stats to each allied champion. So if you’ve got all four champions near you that aura alone brings 3040 gold worth of stats to your team.

Now the way the stacking of these items works is weird. Except for special cases, you’re not going to want more than one on a team, so it’s important to let your team know you’re building it. We’ve gone over how it’s not gold efficient in stats on its own, and needs to have at least one person to give the aura to. Well, if you’ve got two people with the item, you’ll get it stacked twice on the people who have a Locket, and only once on anyone else, making it extremely gold inefficient around small groups.

By the way, because I never see people mention this, you get the aura as well. You’re getting 40 MR not 20, and you’re also getting the health regen.The base stats look like crap for a reason, because the possible value you can get from this item is immense.

Banshee’s Veil: Probably the best high MR item you can get. A bit expensive on a support budget at 2750 total gold though. You’re getting a lot of MR and if you have no self healing mechanisms (Braum, Leona, etc) you’re always going to want this over Spirit Visage.

Banshee’s has two unique passives and one is more prominent than the other. First off we have the shield. It blocks one spell every 40 seconds you don’t take damage from enemy champions. Basically a poke shield and a counter initiation shield. Very effective against skillshot initiations like Blitzcrank’s grabs since they can already be hard to hit and now you’re adding the fact that the shield needs to be popped beforehand.

The second passive helps more against poke. It’s basically a mega version of Spectre’s Cowl’s passive. Once you take damage from an enemy champion you get 45 health regen/5 for 10 seconds. In other words, you’ll get 90 health back, which is sometimes more than the damage you took, and it will reapply every time you take damage. This thing gives you so much in one package, it’s a great item.

Spirit Visage: Now this is the other high MR item you could buy. Interestingly enough, this item is actually gold efficient without it’s passive, giving 3203 gold worth of stats for 2750. Nice!

It’s less health than Banshee’s and similar MR, but you’re getting CDR and flat health regen with Spirit visage. First off, let me clarify how this passive works. You get more health regen on yourself, not on or from your teammates. Self healing is the only way to make use of this. It is a very selfish item in that aspect. It won’t affect abilities that grant health, this would be something like Lulu ult or anything else that is only temporary health.

(Side note, Lulu’s ult is also not affected by Grievous Wounds.)

One thing that always bugged me was losing the passive on Spectre’s Cowl when I upgraded the item. However, because you get effectively 24 health regen per 5 if you include the passive on the 20 health regen you get, it’s actually more than the Cowl’s passive and doesn't need anything to trigger it.

Armor Options

Frozen Heart: This is a monster defensive item. It gives 100 armor, 400 mana, and 20% CDR. All for the low low price of just 2600 gold. Even without a passive this item is giving you 3433 gold worth of stats. Glacial Shroud is also a pretty nice mid game item, considering it gives you armor and CDR pretty cheap.

The aura is similar to Randuin's Omen, which we’ll look at in a bit, in that it will lower attack speed, but Frozen Heart will lower the attack speed of anyone near you. Minions, monsters, or champions. It only won’t affect Dragon or Baron. The best counter to anyone who relies on auto attacks. Which, lo and behold, is every ADC. Really nice too on supports because of the massive CDR and mana it gives. I’d always get this on someone like Braum because the amount of stats you get for this item is crazy.

Randuin’s Omen: No mana or CDR here, but a nice bunch of health. This one is gonna cost you 3000 gold though. It’s actually not gold efficient in the slightest since in total you’re only getting 500 health and 70 armor. You do get a passive and an active on it though.

First up, let’s look at the passive. This passive is completely seperate from Frozen Heart’s passive and can stack. When you get hit by an auto attack, that person’s attack speed will lower by 10%. This can be great for divers that want to get on your ADC like Tryndamere, Jax or Aatrox. Get in their way and force them to hit you. However, it’s mainly only useful on people that dive themselves since it’s hard to force someone to attack you.

The active, however, can be very useful for peeling. It slows everyone around you for a specified amount of time. It actually increases the time with more MR or armor. It’s a great way to keep people from reaching your teams backline.

Sunfire Cape: Cheaper armor basically, once again better for diving champions not peelers. The passive here is constant damage around you, but considering you’re gonna be dealing with tankier people trying to beat their way past you it’s not gonna do as much damage since that bruiser would probably have some MR built on that would negate a lot of the constant damage.

The only champion you’d want this on maybe is Leona since she’s almost always diving in on the enemy, but even then it’s an iffy buy.

Iceborn Gauntlet: I’m kind of split on this item. It’s less armor and CDR than Frozen Heart, and you’re not really getting much out of Sheen on most supports since damage dealing shouldn’t be your main priority.

That’s enough of crapping on the item though. This thing is has awesome peeling mechanic in auto attacks, I could definitely see someone like Braum or Leona or Blitzcrank building this because of their synergy with auto attacks. Blitzcrank maybe not as much, but the amount of slows you could stack on Braum could be very nasty. I’d still rather see Frozen heart, but there are worse items you could build.

Thornmail: Basically pure armor. There’s a time and place for this item, but it’s much better on solo laners since they have more slots open (no Sightstone, support item, etc.) It’s not gold efficient on its own, and the usefulness in the back line is mediocre at best. Health would be much better usually since it would mitigate both magic and physical damage.

Warmog’s Armor: Too expensive on your budget. Gotta think about your gold income before you buy, and this item even if it is good, is just way too expensive to get. Health is an awesome stat, since it’s visible to the enemy and can intimidate and will mitigate all types of damage. Focus on getting health from other items in conjunction with some MR and armor.

Remember, armor and MR can increase your effective health multiplicatively, whereas when you buy health you’re only adding on to your pool of health.

So this basically covers all the itemization I wanted to look at for supports. Obviously every game is different and you'll want to focus more on MR for some games and armor for others. This should at least explain why you buy certain items over others. Stay tuned for the next installment where I go over everything about warding!

Be sure to check out my other articles:

Support Lanes 101: How to Pick your Support

Support Lanes 101: Part 1.5: (Pocket Pick Supports)
Support Lanes 101: Warding

Support Lanes 101: To Dive or Peel
Support Lanes 101: Be the Annoyance

by Jerrod "Thousand Eyes" Steis

The End of Complexity?

By Descend

As of October 4th, two of the players who shone the brightest on compLexity are no longer starting on the team. Robert “ROBERTxLEE” Lee has stepped down as their AD Carry to make some decisions of either competing in the 2015 LCS Season or to stream full time. He will still be on the roster as a back-up. Neil “pr0lly” Hammad, fresh out of his latest wrist surgery, has been replaced by Greyson “GoldenGlue” Gilmer. GoldenGlue has had some light in the LCS this season with a brief stint on Dignitas and has been on a few NA Challenger teams for coL Red and Coast. In my personal opinion, GoldenGlue is not an LCS-quality mid laner, while pr0lly had actually improved and was competing with the best of them. Let’s not forget when he made Shiphtur look like a weak mid in their matches against Team Coast, who had gotten relegated in the spring split of this year.

While compLexity didn't have the best split and in turn, lost their LCS slot to Team 8, their 10-18 record didn't stop them from having great games against top teams such as Cloud 9 and Curse. They had a huge fanbase that was always behind them for being the fun underdogs and they did not let up, even if it resulted in a loss. They pulled out all the tricks and made a name for themselves. The removal of their two top players right before the promotional series for the new LCS 10-team league is sure to affect them. Lets hope that this isn’t the last we see of ROBERT or pr0lly as they are very charismatic characters who show heart and play with all of it. In the meantime they are holding try outs for the AD Carry position. I would like to see the likes of Gosu trying out and possibly making the team as he is a reckless playmaker with incredible mechanics who beats even the best of NA’s ADC’s in solo queue on a regular basis.

A Quick Look: Samsung Galaxy Blue vs Cloud 9

Matt “It’s Pure Luck” Lee

Heading into the final day of games last Sunday, it seemed to be a bleak situation for Cloud 9. A loss to Alliance on day three, followed by an Alliance upset of NaJin White Shield put C9 on the ropes and needing multiple things to fall their way. Yet, what was considered nearly unthinkable happened on the final day. Alliance was defeated by the international wild card, Kabum eSports, and Cloud 9 came right back with a clutch victory over Najin White Shield to clinch a spot in the knockout stage.

It won’t get any easier for them from here on out as they meet the OGN’s top seed next in Samsung Galaxy Blue. SSB escaped the “Group of Death” with minimal damage. The only blemish was a loss to Fnatic on the first day, but they bounced back with a vengeance and won four straight games to close the group stage. Eliminating Fnatic had to be particularly sweet for Dade, as they dealt him two losses when he was on SSW (then known as Samsung Galaxy Ozone) in the group stage last year.

This will be the biggest test Cloud 9 has ever had. As terrific a player as Dade is, the biggest challenge probably lies with Sneaky and LemonNation in the bottom lane. Deft has repeatedly shown an ability to make himself relevant in games where he falls behind, something that is very tough for the AD carry position to do. If C9 manages to grab a favorable 2v2 match-up, I’d also expect SSB to lane swap on them to try and nullify this. I’d expect Sneaky to lean towards Lucian and Corki this series. Picking Tristana will play into the hands of Samsung; as strong as she is late game, opting to try and beat a team with such great late game prowess is playing with fire.

For Cloud 9 to have a shot in this series, mid game will be key. If they allow Deft/Heart to get ahead, I’m not sure how they will manage to salvage a win. SSB can be taken advantage of early game and mid game and this where C9 must strike. They are fairly passive early on as they are fine letting games go late and winning with their superior team fighting and objective control. This was evident in most of their group stage wins outside the first victory over LMQ. It often felt as if they were just sort of cruising along before they would slam their foot on the gas and take total control.

In the game Samsung dropped versus Fnatic, we may have seen the blueprint to beating OGN’s top seed. Despite being down (albeit only 4-1) in kills, Fnatic left the lane phase with a decent-sized gold lead all around courtesy of creep score discrepancies and taking two of three dragons. After setting a trap and getting multiple picks above the Samsung blue buff in the mid game, Fnatic seemed to take total control and used the team power spike of Lucian to take over the game before Kog’Maw could become a serious issue. Fnatic snowballed the game from that point and took the easy victory, showing that as great as Samsung Blue is, they are beatable. If C9 hope to pull off the upset, this is the strategy they need to employ. Considering how well versed SSB are in best of five series, it won’t be easy.

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By Matthew "It's Pure Luck" Lee

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.