LPL Week 3 Preview
Riot·3/29/2014, 12:40:10 AM·0 votes·321 views
Surprises continued in the second week of LoL Pro League, with both LGD Gaming and Energy Pacemaker picking up wins against Invictus Gaming, leaving IG near the bottom of the standings. OMG and World Elite lead the pack, having played two series each without a single loss. Edward Gaming has only lost one game so far, and Royal Club picked up two games against Positive Energy: the last place team, still winless.
At the end of this series, the reign of at least one undefeated team will end. WE relies on successful synergy between jungler and mid laner to snowball games from the get-go: something that should be very familiar to fans of OMG from LPL Summer 2013. Meanwhile, OMG's duo lane of Guo "san" Jun-Liang and Yin "Allen" Le have really stepped it up to pull out wins in tight situations. A 2v2 against sukiM and Ruo might be too much for Hu "xiyang" Bin and Ouyang "bigpomelo" Wei-Qi, but World Elite's new support player, Ke "Conan" Yi, has struggled with coordinating engages with Gao "WeiXiao" Xue-Cheung. If OMG hopes to succeed where Royal and PE have failed, the key may be in baiting out Conan's overzealous Zenith Blades on Leona.
Part of LGD's success may be tied to Champion Select. Both EP and EDG banned Riven against Fu "Ly" Yang, and in the games against IG, the reason became clear. Ly was able to come back from a two level disadvantage against Liu "PDD" Mou with a first blood against his Dr. Mundo and proceeded to win 2v1 skirmishes throughout the second game. Without Riven, however, Ly's game-soloing monster was sedated. Similarly, Zhu "Quan" Yong-Quan's subjugated the map with Lee Sin in his hands, but he was unimpressive on Olaf. If WE plays Champion Select well, LGD might go down with a mere whimper. If not, they could be in for their toughest challenge yet.
A starting point in fixing IG's woes seems to lie with Chen "illuSion" Xin-Lin. Historically, he has been most successful with support style jungling: ganking repeatedly and securing early objectives. He has adapted poorly to the more popular assassin style picks like Evelynn and Kha'Zix. Despite ultimately losing, IG looked best at the beginning of their first game against EDG with illuSion's Elise frequently ganking bottom and using vision control to solo Dragon twice. If IG makes a point of picking up Elise instead of banning it, their laners should be strong enough to use whatever lead he gives them.
For future updates on 2014 LPL Spring, check out lolesports.com. Tune into the stream on March 7th 12:00AM PST for the third week of games.
DAY 1: OMG VS WORLD ELITE
When: Friday, 3/7, 3:00AM PST / 6:00AM EST We haven't drawn attention to World Elite's games in LPL Spring so far because they have been decidedly one-sided in nature. Both OMG and WE have played series against the same teams, Positive Energy and Royal Club, but OMG's efforts were closer. All four of WE's games ended within thirty minutes due in large part to their new jungler, Teng "Ruo" Yang-Tian-Xia, and mid laner, Chen "sukiM" Zhi-Yuan. This week, World Elite plays six games, and we'll get a better idea as to whether WE's victories so far have been a fluke, or if WeiXiao and company have returned to reclaim their stomping ground.
At the end of this series, the reign of at least one undefeated team will end. WE relies on successful synergy between jungler and mid laner to snowball games from the get-go: something that should be very familiar to fans of OMG from LPL Summer 2013. Meanwhile, OMG's duo lane of Guo "san" Jun-Liang and Yin "Allen" Le have really stepped it up to pull out wins in tight situations. A 2v2 against sukiM and Ruo might be too much for Hu "xiyang" Bin and Ouyang "bigpomelo" Wei-Qi, but World Elite's new support player, Ke "Conan" Yi, has struggled with coordinating engages with Gao "WeiXiao" Xue-Cheung. If OMG hopes to succeed where Royal and PE have failed, the key may be in baiting out Conan's overzealous Zenith Blades on Leona.
DAY 2: WORLD ELITE VS LGD GAMING
When: Saturday, 3/8, 12:00AM PST / 3:00AM EST WE returns to the stage again on Saturday, but this time we're more interested in how their opposition performs. LGD Gaming's performances have been somewhat inconsistent in LPL. The team that got clobbered by Energy Pacemaker in the first week vanished in Week 2, replaced by a split-pushing death squad with enough early game objective control and tower dive coordination to make Invictus Gaming fall to their knees. Depending upon which LGD shows up this week, these two games could be the most exciting matches of LPL Spring so far.
Part of LGD's success may be tied to Champion Select. Both EP and EDG banned Riven against Fu "Ly" Yang, and in the games against IG, the reason became clear. Ly was able to come back from a two level disadvantage against Liu "PDD" Mou with a first blood against his Dr. Mundo and proceeded to win 2v1 skirmishes throughout the second game. Without Riven, however, Ly's game-soloing monster was sedated. Similarly, Zhu "Quan" Yong-Quan's subjugated the map with Lee Sin in his hands, but he was unimpressive on Olaf. If WE plays Champion Select well, LGD might go down with a mere whimper. If not, they could be in for their toughest challenge yet.
DAY 3: ROYAL CLUB VS INVICTUS GAMING
When: Sunday, 3/9, 12:00AM PST / 3:00AM EST Those less enticed by WE will be pleased to know they don't have a monopoly on our featured games this weekend. Given IG's recent difficulties and the developing play of Royal's jungler, Jie "kmi" Wang, this series should be heated. Both teams fell into the trenches at the start of LPL, and these games represent an opportunity for them to start digging themselves out. Royal's bottom and top lanes have consistently fallen behind these past two weeks. As a result, Jian "Uzi" Zihao and kmi have pulled double duty in roams to keep the rest of the team viable into mid game by using Syndra and Lee Sin to great effect. IG, on the other hand, has suffered a problem of extremes. In four of six of their games, IG did everything but roll over for the enemy team, yet their tight control in the second game against EP netted them a near perfect victory.
A starting point in fixing IG's woes seems to lie with Chen "illuSion" Xin-Lin. Historically, he has been most successful with support style jungling: ganking repeatedly and securing early objectives. He has adapted poorly to the more popular assassin style picks like Evelynn and Kha'Zix. Despite ultimately losing, IG looked best at the beginning of their first game against EDG with illuSion's Elise frequently ganking bottom and using vision control to solo Dragon twice. If IG makes a point of picking up Elise instead of banning it, their laners should be strong enough to use whatever lead he gives them.
For future updates on 2014 LPL Spring, check out lolesports.com. Tune into the stream on March 7th 12:00AM PST for the third week of games.