Seismic Activity: Challenger Summer Week 1
Welcome to the 2015 Summer Challenger Series!
Last Split, we covered a lot of the meta-bending picks from the strange and wild world that is the Challenger Series. This week we'll be taking a look at an elemental change in the support position and the ascension of the original Shurima slayer in mid lane.
Rock Solid Support
With the rise of tanky initiating champions like Alistar pulverizing the bot lane meta, Overclockers UK's support Marek "Libik" Kręgiel has gotten creative with his champion pool. In the opening match of the Split against Gamers2, Libik used his pocket support Malphite pick to catch the enemy off guard. "That surprise in important matches is really good, and then [in game] my opponent can't calculate everything that well like they could against standard picks," explains Libik.
Libik paired his Shard of the Monolith pick with Pawel "Celaver" Koprianiuk's Urgot in the AD carry role. While this combination definitely isn't winning any beauty pageants, they displayed a unique talent for hunting down Jesse "Jesiz" Le's Kalista. Urgot is known for being one of the few strong lane counters to Kalista, as his auto-locked Acid Hunters are able to reign fiery green damage all over the bobbing and weaving spear thrower. When combined with the slow from Malphite's Seismic Shard, also a targeted ability, Urgot can rest easy knowing he'll be able to spew out as many Q's as inhumanly possible.
While the off-meta choice did not result in a victory, the initiating capabilities of Malphite's Unstoppable Force reaped benefits throughout the early and mid-game, propelling Overclockers to a 5-0 kill lead with a 4K gold advantage at 15 minutes. "His ultimate is broken," says Libik, "I think it's better than Annie's Flash plus Ultimate, and you can do this every 90 seconds." Were it not for a faulty Baron attempt by Overclockers, it could have been a landslide victory for the rock solid support.
Rite of the Mid lane
Over in North America we saw Imagine get off to a 2-0 start against Vortex as Michael "Wolfe" Taylor brought Xerath back in style down mid. With the Cinderhulk meta largely putting assassins out of business, mid lane has been dominated by ranged-poke champions such as Azir, AP Kog'Maw, and Varus. Despite fitting this meta like a glove, Xerath has seen very little professional play. According to Wolfe, the reason for this is pretty straight forward. "He's hard and his kit is one-hundred percent skill shots. I consider his ult to be the hardest ability to land [all 3 shots] in the game."
According to Wolfe, the first game against Kassadin is an easier match-up, given that Kassadin is a melee assassin making him susceptible to early game harass. The second match against Kog'Maw, is a little more challenging. "Early game Xerath has the control because of his longer harass, and more abilities to harass...after level 11 though, Kog starts to outscale Xerath in long fights."
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Given that Vortex locked in two late-game hypercarries in Jinx and Kog'Maw, Imagine doubled-down on their mid game poke with the Xerath/Corki combination. Eventually though, late game Kog would be able to out-poke both of these champions combined. Luckily for Imagine, Wolfe's a crack shot with Rite of the Arcane, and according to him his Xerath still holds the upper-hand, even late. "The reason I still prefer Xerath into the matchup is because the Xerath ult can chunk out the Kog before anything happens...when you hit all three it's a huge amount of damage."
You can catch all of this season's Challenger Series action right here on Lolesports, and if you missed any of the matches from Week 1 they are available on our spoiler free VODs page.
