LEAGUE OF LEGENDS 2015 SEASON
Hello! Time for a quick League of Legends World Championships
Still here? Then let"s proceed:
First up was Origen versus SKT – the weaker of the two European sides against the dominant Korean team.
Game one was Origen"s best performance. Starting with the pick & ban phase, a big problem at the moment is that the blue side gets first pick, so if you leave danger champions in the set – characters who are strong và hard lớn counter – they"ll just get snapped up. There are two who get banned out in pretty much every trò chơi as a result (Gangplank & Mordekaiser) but others have emerged as worries during the quarter-finals such as the catfish Tahm Kench & the little mage Lulu. There are also only two đứng đầu tier picks still in the competition for the jungle role, so if you ban the stronger one (Elise) you now risk giving the blue team the remaining top tier jungler.
Origen did something interesting here, committing to getting rid of both the đứng top tier junglers & trusting SKT would ban out the Mordekaiser and Gangplank which they did along with Tahm Kench. Origen removed Lulu last. The result was that SKT still got a bunch of comfort picks – Fiora for their đứng top laner, Marin, & Azir for their mid, Easyhoon (who had swapped in for Faker for the first two games) – but Origen knew they couldn"t just ban SKT out of the game & thus it looked lượt thích they were going with counter-picks khổng lồ try & stymie their opponents.
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Origen spent the start of the game making good calls & taking advantage of opportunities. It"s probably best exemplified by the fact they were able khổng lồ take down an unwarded Baron (i.e. SKT couldn"t see what was happening as they didn"t have vision wards in the area) at 23 minutes. But you can địa chỉ cửa hàng in another stat as well – Origen were the first team to take down a second tier turret against SKT. That"s both a point about how strong SKT have been so far và a point about Origen"s accomplishments relative to lớn the other SKT opponents.
It wasn"t enough, though, và despite showing SKT to lớn be fallible (they definitely are and their play isn"t flawless, just dominant and with better execution), Origen couldn"t beat SKT. The Korean side kept their composure, their team composition scaled well into the later trò chơi (i.e. Their team lineup didn"t have a drop off in nguồn as the game went longer), vision around the Baron increased after that initial sneaky play and prevented a repeat performance, và some itemisation choices, combined with Marin"s Fiora nibbling at other lanes helped SKT claw back that victory.
Neither of the remaining games matched that first one in terms of the performances Origen turned in. They felt like a team on tilt and at various points you"d just watch their players trickle into a fight, getting picked off one by one in their determination to pull a kill or an objective out of a multideath situation rather than disengaging & regrouping. As a result the final score came in at 3-0 và SKT continued their undefeated run through the tournament.
Much as I"d say Origen did challenge SKT at the start of the series, I"d also say it didn"t feel like SKT were forced lớn reveal much of anything about backup plans or pocket picks. But as a team who only formed this year Origen did phenomenally khổng lồ get to lớn the semi-finals from the Challenger league. I really hope they stay as a unit because I want khổng lồ see what they accomplish next time around.
On Sunday the second EU vs South Korea matchup took place in the size of Fnatic against KOO Tigers. I"d say most people expected a Fnatic victory, myself included. The variation seemed more in terms of the number of games it would take the EU đứng top seed lớn achieve their win.
Unfortunately for the EU spectators at the Brussels venue the matches paid no heed to the predicted narrative and KOO took the semi-final 3-0.
I"ll go into a little more detail in a moment but to lớn give you an idea of how the games played out in spirit, it felt roughly as follows:
Fnatic were going to lớn a dinner party. Their nemesis, KOO Tigers, would also be at that dinner party. Fnatic had spent all week rehearsing withering put-downs & the perfect responses to insults – working to reverse engineer instances of l"esprit d"escalier so as to ACTUALLY have those ripostes in their arsenal, ready lớn fling out lớn devastating effect.
They arrived at the dinner party, shrugged off their stole và headed for the dining room, all fabulousness and pre-planned caustic retorts. But after a promising soup course performance, they proceeded khổng lồ overreact lớn perceived slights và picked fruitless arguments before having khổng lồ leave on tài khoản of KOO dominating conversations and, uh, destroying Fnatic"s coffee pot? LOOK THIS METAPHOR GOT OUT OF HAND.
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The point I"m getting at is that Fnatic made enough mistakes which KOO could punish that they lost their early lead. From then on Fnatic often seemed really eager to engage but without the discipline khổng lồ ensure they were picking the right battles. Maybe I should have just said that instead. Fnatic"s semi-final trajectory actually ended up similar to Origen"s, particularly in terms of the edge of desperation which crept into their play after a promising start was shut down.
They had some great moments in the second game, actually – they had lost all but one tower in their base, two inhibitors had respawned but the third was still down and thus the bottom lane was being pressured by minions. Fnatic headed to lớn the Baron pit and forced KOO khổng lồ pause their Baron attempt, moved in and started one of their own, scoring the Baron buff and escaping with one kill on either team. The buff helped save their base as well as aiding Fnatic with some extra maps pressure and objectives (you can watch from the 52 minute mark on the YouTube đoạn phim below, 36 minutes on the in-game clock). There was no margin for error though & a disastrous fight around the Baron pit took out four of Fnatic, leaving KOO miễn phí to pulverise the remains of the base.
I don"t want to talk about game 3.
Side note: If you"ve been keeping up with the champions being played, you might have been a little surprised lớn see a character called Zac suddenly appearing as a jungler for KOO. He hadn"t been played at all at Worlds this time around but the bouncy Flubber-esque champ did a lot of work for the Tigers. His Elastic Slingshot ability let him dash to a target location doing damage và knocking nearby enemies into the air while his ultimate, Let"s Bounce! giao dịch damage and has a knock back effect as well as a slow. Controlled by KOO"s Hojin, Zac brought disruption, initiation & utility lớn their fights.
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And so it"s a Korea vs Korea final as Riot decamp to Berlin. I"m now wondering how much pressure KOO can apply khổng lồ SKT. I"ve underestimated them during this tournament so I"m not going khổng lồ make predictions (yet). I"m just hoping to lớn see them force SKT out of their comfort zone. Maybe the knockout stages will see their first 5v5? Or maybe SKT will get an undefeated run & become the first organisation to lớn hoist the Summoner"s Cup for a second time.
