Triple AP and other strategies from Challenger Week 2
Riot·3/3/2015, 9:25:38 PM·0 votes·10,322 views
The Challenger Series is a hotbed of new talent and unique champions testing the limits of player skill. This year, we're already seeing fresh strategies, tactics, and just plain weird picks as the next batch of contenders compete for their chance to play in the LCS. Let's take a look at a few from Week 2.
Magemageddon
Origen are no slackers when it comes to innovation and experimenting with bold new strategies, but this one might take the cake. In there win over Reason Gaming last week, Origen combined the crowd control and burst of support Veigar with the front line potential of Morgana and sniping by Xerath, and it made for one hell of a scary team fight.
Veigar support has seen appearances before, in both LCK and the LCS, but never really shone through until Daerek “Lemonnation” Hart brought him out last week. A lot of players think he’s a one trick pony and is only useful for his Event Horizon stun, but that’s not entirely true. Veigar can build whatever he wants and still do a pretty solid amount of burst due to the structure of his ultimate. Combine this with his Baleful Strike passive, in which he gains AP with every champion kill, and you’ve got a seriously scary support.
Though Origen lacked a beefy front line, which consisted of a Zhonya's-toting Morgana and Rek’Sai, they made up for it with loads of burst and crowd control. Morgana’s innate sustain and Black Shield helped her hold her own against Maokai and carried her through the laning phase. But Origen’s sights were set on the objective control aspect of the game.
Overall, this composition is a pretty brave (read: dangerous) idea. Origen scraped by with the skin of their teeth and all it would’ve taken to subvert their entire strategy was better initiation by Reason Gaming. Had they bought crucial items like Banshee’s Veil, Reason would have stymied Origen’s advance and not taken so many beatings trying to take objectives. But, in the end Origen was able to scrape by with their abundance of squishy mages leading the charge.
The Return of the Poke Comp
We all have fond memories of the poke compositions from a year ago. Nidalee with her pointy spears, Jayce's stylish Shock Blasts, and of course Varus' screams of bloody murder as he shoots projectiles to chunk down a champion's health pool. Fond memories indeed.
In Week 2, TDK brought back the original poke comp, which included Nidalee, Xerath, Jayce, Mundo, and Sona. LCK and LCS have both run poke-comp-lite comps -- using the likes of Ezreal, Sivir, and Xerath -- but we haven't seen one as hardcore as TDK did this past week. It still does have quite a few weaknesses, including the inability to poke late game, and it’s countered easily by a few key items like Banshee’s Veil. Overall it’s still a very effective strategy, assuming you keep the pressure on in the early game and destroy the nexus relatively early.
TDK has won two games in a row against TSM Darkness with this specific composition. In fact, the only difference in those two games was that they swapped Caitlyn for Varus. Poke compositions are absolutely infuriating to play against, being unable to leave the safety of the tower without losing a huge chunk of health is enough to frustrate any player. However, the solution to beating a poke comp is relatively simple. Strong engage beats poke late game. This week, TSD kept picking weak engage compositions and bit the dust because of it.
This is only the beginning of the Challenger Series, and we’ve already got two meta busting teams. Will they work their way into the LCS or fade into obscurity? We’ll find out in the next couple weeks!
