LPL Week 5 Recap
Riot·7/14/2014, 9:57:53 PM·2 votes·723 views
Now that all eight LPL teams have faced each other once, the bottom half of the group will be looking for redemption and a way to squeeze into the playoffs, and OMG, World Elite, and Edward Gaming will be fighting to keep the top spots. This week’s results proved that not even the barely winless World Elite Academy and Young Glory can be discounted, as they both found victories against last split’s playoff teams.
We expected LGD Gaming to be real surprise upstart, but since their promising first three weeks, they have continued the fall. Though they’re holding onto fifth place, they lost four games this week to World Elite and Edward Gaming in the only two best of two matches that didn’t split even this week. Invictus Gaming continued to perplex, as they split even with both World Elite Academy and StarHorn Royal Club in the same week in which they took a game from World Elite at the IEM Shenzhen online semifinals.
OMG had a rough week with Neymar, previously known as comA, subbing in as the support and lost a game to Young Glory. As a result, World Elite and Edward Gaming now nip at their heels in the lingering tie for second place. When round two begins next week, OMG will have to contend with both World Elite and Edward Gaming, and if the instability in the support role remains, they could well lose their regular season first place: a notion that has seemed unspeakable for two splits running.
We’ve been critical of Ninja since he joined LPL, but this week he showed signs of definite improvement. His unexpected Jayce and Xerath picks gave his opponents pause and ended up out-performing his opposing laners. In fact, Ninja’s Jayce found one of two of his team’s pentakills against LGD Gaming. Ninja’s newfound strong laning phase allowed World Elite to make much more decisive plays earlier on, and some of the team’s struggles to close dissipated. With a more aggressive style, World Elite might avoid the stalled out 68 minute game that caused them to throw against OMG and be the first team to sweep a set against them for the first time all season.
NaMei
When people mention NaMei, they consider him synonymous with Twitch, but this week he showed off his Jinx: both in LPL and at the IEM semifinals. Few people in the west know how powerful NaMei can be with this pick and his Super Mega Death Rockets zipping around the map. With his aggressive style and a nearly flawless sense for timing Jinx’s skillshots, he could well be the best Jinx player in the world. Though NaMei had a less impressive performance on his signature Twitch this week, if he continues to perform with Jinx, we may very well find ourselves forgetting he plays other champions.
U
There’s a reason U’s name stands for “Unstoppable.” Even when he had an entire World Elite team Flashing after him, U was consistently able to get off a full rotation of spells. While he has stated that he hates playing Ziggs, he still stomachs the pick for his team and uses it with great flair. U performed exceptionally well, not just in Edward Gaming’s three wins this week, but in their loss to WE. It was clear WE’s members saw him as the highest priority threat, and the long game would have been over much sooner if U had gone down quietly.
OMG played a drastically different style from what they’ve been having success with this split, what with san bringing out the blue Ezreal for the first time in LPL and Cool picking up Yasuo, a champion with which he has had questionable results. Neymar, previously known as dada7, also subbed for Cloud this week. But putting too much emphasis on, as Gogoing tells it, OMG “underestimating their opponents,” would sell Young Glory’s efforts short. They predicted that OMG might try to snatch the Yasuo pick away from DianGun and came out with a strategy tailored to knocking it down. They executed it well and found a shocking win against the first place team in LPL, while keeping themselves out of an eighth place deadlock with World Elite Academy. While YG might not place in the top this split, their strategies have shown promise, and we expect improvements along the way.
While LGD Gaming had to contend with steep competition this week in the form of World Elite and Edward Gaming, they were also the only team in the LPL that failed to find a win. With all the changes LGD has made to their roster - replacing their Riven-playing top laner, Star, with 17 and bringing in a mid laner with a flair for play-making assassins - they’ve been looking more flexible and creative this split. That said, Quan is still dependent on the Lee Sin pick, and LGD had it banned against them in all four games they played. With LGD making roster changes to remove players with shallow champion pools, only Quan remains of LGD’s pick-dependent trio from last split, but it may still be costing them.
GAMES OF THE WEEK
StarHorn Royal Club vs Invictus Gaming - Game 2 Not only did LMQ’s ackerman use this game for inspiration this week, copying Cola’s hide in the brush until the AD carry face-checks maneuver, but it also featured some of LPL’s more outrageous picks this season, including illuSion’s pocket jungle Fiddlesticks. It seems the propensity for experimentation has affected the Koreans, as Zero whipped out a support Brand, and this game was replete with back and forth fights, outrageous plays, and epic comebacks. Though illuSion’s Fiddlesticks failed to impress in the early game, he used his poor score line to consistently trade his life for Uzi’s and did his team a solid in the end. IG’s team fight targeting made up for their early game struggles, and they managed to split the set with SHRC. OMG vs Young Glory - Game 2 While OMG’s champion select phase is usually a cut above that of other Chinese teams, Young Glory had their number this time around. DianGun has picked up a reputation as a strong Yasuo player, and YG came prepared for a champion select strategy in which OMG would first pick the champion from them. YG’s anti-Yasuo composition featured a mid lane Riven to dive through Wind Wall and shut down his laning phase, double Frozen Hearts to dampen his damage output, and a lot of mobility to match his movements. Save for a catch in OMG’s red side jungle that resulted in OMG nearly acing YG from several thousand gold behind, we would go so far as to call YG’s win against the first place team in LPL one-sided. Something was wrong with OMG this week, and considering how well YG baited out the Yasuo pick and executed a strategy to punish for it, not all of it can be blamed upon a substitute. World Elite vs Edward Gaming 2 The clash for second place in LPL was a preview for the finals of IEM Shenzhen next week, and these teams couldn’t have looked closer. After Edward Gaming smashed through the first set, World Elite used an intelligent composition against EDG’s lack of peel and disengage, sometimes flashing onto U to get at his disruptive Ziggs. Though U and NaMei both had powerful laning phases and output a significant amount of damage, Clearlove failed to force out the enemy’s repositioning abilities with his Cataclysm, making NaMei and U sitting ducks for World Elite. In addition, we saw LPL’s second Xerath of the season, and Ninja proved this week that there’s more to his arsenal than just supportive mid lane picks.TOP PERFORMERS OF THE WEEK
Ninja
We’ve been critical of Ninja since he joined LPL, but this week he showed signs of definite improvement. His unexpected Jayce and Xerath picks gave his opponents pause and ended up out-performing his opposing laners. In fact, Ninja’s Jayce found one of two of his team’s pentakills against LGD Gaming. Ninja’s newfound strong laning phase allowed World Elite to make much more decisive plays earlier on, and some of the team’s struggles to close dissipated. With a more aggressive style, World Elite might avoid the stalled out 68 minute game that caused them to throw against OMG and be the first team to sweep a set against them for the first time all season.
NaMei
When people mention NaMei, they consider him synonymous with Twitch, but this week he showed off his Jinx: both in LPL and at the IEM semifinals. Few people in the west know how powerful NaMei can be with this pick and his Super Mega Death Rockets zipping around the map. With his aggressive style and a nearly flawless sense for timing Jinx’s skillshots, he could well be the best Jinx player in the world. Though NaMei had a less impressive performance on his signature Twitch this week, if he continues to perform with Jinx, we may very well find ourselves forgetting he plays other champions.
U
There’s a reason U’s name stands for “Unstoppable.” Even when he had an entire World Elite team Flashing after him, U was consistently able to get off a full rotation of spells. While he has stated that he hates playing Ziggs, he still stomachs the pick for his team and uses it with great flair. U performed exceptionally well, not just in Edward Gaming’s three wins this week, but in their loss to WE. It was clear WE’s members saw him as the highest priority threat, and the long game would have been over much sooner if U had gone down quietly.
SURPRISE OF THE WEEK
Young Glory sets a trap for OMG
OMG played a drastically different style from what they’ve been having success with this split, what with san bringing out the blue Ezreal for the first time in LPL and Cool picking up Yasuo, a champion with which he has had questionable results. Neymar, previously known as dada7, also subbed for Cloud this week. But putting too much emphasis on, as Gogoing tells it, OMG “underestimating their opponents,” would sell Young Glory’s efforts short. They predicted that OMG might try to snatch the Yasuo pick away from DianGun and came out with a strategy tailored to knocking it down. They executed it well and found a shocking win against the first place team in LPL, while keeping themselves out of an eighth place deadlock with World Elite Academy. While YG might not place in the top this split, their strategies have shown promise, and we expect improvements along the way.
DISAPPOINTMENT OF THE WEEK
LGD Gaming loses four games in a row
While LGD Gaming had to contend with steep competition this week in the form of World Elite and Edward Gaming, they were also the only team in the LPL that failed to find a win. With all the changes LGD has made to their roster - replacing their Riven-playing top laner, Star, with 17 and bringing in a mid laner with a flair for play-making assassins - they’ve been looking more flexible and creative this split. That said, Quan is still dependent on the Lee Sin pick, and LGD had it banned against them in all four games they played. With LGD making roster changes to remove players with shallow champion pools, only Quan remains of LGD’s pick-dependent trio from last split, but it may still be costing them.