WEEK 1 OGN/LCK BRINGS THE ACTION!

by Jerrod "Thousand Eyes" Steis

The first week of Korea’s professional circuit has completed and we can finally get back into professional LoL. Of course, one week isn't much in the grand scheme of things, but I think there are some good thoughts to take away from what we've seen so far. Keep in mind these are all just off of one series for most teams. This means what we've seen and what we get later on in the season might not match up. It’s also the first time a lot of these teams are working together since the merger and cutting out sister teams. There’s most likely a lot of work that still needs done.

KOREA IS THE FIRST REGION TO LEARN GNAR

Korea has always been known for being the dominant region overall, but they usually aren’t known for being the innovative ones or bringing out new metas. That’s usually reserved for EU or sometimes NA and then Korean players pick up and master it. We saw this with Ziggs, Maokai, and top lane Mundo for example. However this time, with the early start by Korea, they got the chance to be the pioneers. Gnar was almost always first pick or banned on red side. 

You could even bring up the ESL tourneys and say that EU and NA had a chance to bring it out and couldn't. We saw Gnar being played by Balls, widely regarded as one of the best top laners in NA, and he was mediocre on it to say the least. Meanwhile, the Gnar that was seen during Week 1 ranged from pretty solid overall to extraordinary and was an example of why Gnar is so powerful. Granted his 33% win rate wasn't anything spectacular, but even the losses had some good plays involved. 

The one win with Gnar in Smeb’s Game 2 from the GE vs IM series was absolutely spectacular. Not only was he able to win his lane pretty convincingly, but his late game team fighting and overall control of Gnar’s rage meter was impeccable. He was able to teleport at perfect times and control teams with his ults whenever needed. It’s safe to say that IM won’t be playing Gnar any time soon, and eventually he’s going to be permabanned as other pros learn to play him.

On a bit of a side note, it’s interesting to see that Korean players are more open than ever to trying new and innovative things. Wraith picked up not only a Lulu support, when she’s usually a flex mid or top pick, but a Syndra support as well. To be perfectly honest, the Syndra support - while not an optimal position for Syndra - didn't work out all too poorly for Samsung. The peel she had and ability to lower a tank that dove on the carry was pretty effective.

FAKER IS STILL GREAT, BUT CAN'T SOLO CARRY

One of the biggest things I saw was how teams were able to just shut Faker down. Barring his Game 3 vs. Najin, Faker didn't really accomplish much when he played. SKT won their series vs. Najin, but Faker went 1-1 overall. Also in the game he won, he had an early gank from Wolf (who ended up taking the MVP away from Faker who had a pentakill). He needed help getting ahead to become the monster he was always known to be. His Xerath was just not impactful and they even put him in a lane that was destined to lose, as well as giving him a champ that isn't really his playstyle. Easyhoon is outshining Faker on almost all aspects outside of assassin play, which is still only on the outskirts of coming into the meta.

Speaking of Wolf, he’s really shown to be one of the star players with Easyhoon on SKT. His roaming on Janna was top notch and he made his presence known all around the map in both controlling his champion and controlling vision. He almost single-handedly gave Faker his snowball in Game 3 vs IM. Also his Janna became ban worthy after that series which says a lot when you’d rather ban out a support than either mid laner SKT has.

Both Bengi and MaRin looked pretty good in the pre-season, but once they got into the regular season they had a noticeable drop in performance. Bengi just seemed to not know where to be exactly and MaRin lost a few lanes and didn't position his Rumble ults as well as he could have. Combine that with no response to the camping of Faker that CJ Entus pulled off in their second game against SKT and you’ll find a struggling SKT that seemed to pick up where they left off at the end of last season.

RIOT KEPT OUT OF OGN'S BROADCAST

When I saw that OGN would be broadcast for free on Riot’s stream, I was feeling both excited and worried. I was happy that finally the best region in League was going to be as well covered and open to the public as it always should have been, but I had reservations to how Riot would go about it. MonteCristo and DOA are known for their strikingly different style of casting. DOA cracks jokes about the game and talks about his support *insert carry champ* and Monte is very upfront and brutally honest in his analysis of teams play as well as Riot’s decisions in where they move the game.

My biggest fear was that they would try and tone down Monte and DOA in order to fall in line with what the NA and EU LCS casts were like. The recent news of them replacing the LPLEN stream didn't really inspire a lot of hope either. To my delight though, the OGN steam was left untouched. The only difference is where you go to watch the stream. 

According to Monte, both he and DOA are still contracted to OGN and are not considered Riot employees. This gives them a bit more freedom in their ability to cast within their own style. Overall, I’m very happy to see that nothing noticeable is different on the Korean scene coverage.

CJ ENTUS IS MAKING A (bit of a) COMEBACK

Being a CJ fan, I remember seeing that they played SKT and thinking of how they’d most likely get rocked by Faker and Bang/Wolf. I was wonderfully surprised to see that all the players on CJ stepped up to the plate and really improved their play from the preseason. While overall the games themselves weren't exactly high quality in terms of strategy, CJ still looked much better than before.

SKT was making poor and cocky calls all throughout the series and CJ not only called them on it but came up with some great plays of their own. CoCo really shined this series and Shy also proved to be a very powerful and annoying Mundo. Even Ambition seemed to be getting more comfortable in his new jungle role. 

One of the biggest and most surprising things for me though was watching Space. Space has always been known as the player that held CJ Frost back, that MadLife was stuck in “Space Prison.” This series, however, Space made plays. His Corki was just the right amount of ballsy in order to get in and get out without dying. To be honest, it seemed more like MadLife was holding Space back in the series as he was missing some pretty easy skillshots. His vision control was very aggressive though and he was able to get a few nice flash Flays in the second game on Thresh.

One thing I think CJ needs to work on is their pick/ban phase. They didn't ban Gnar in either game, and while MaRin didn't perform spectacularly in Game 1, the composition almost certainly should have left CJ reeling. Let’s look at the P/B phase for Game 1:

While I admire the Janna ban from CJ they left Gnar open first pick, which was immediately locked in by SKT. The Jarvan and Corki pickups were nice though. Now at this point, it should be noted that Easyhoon is playing mid and not Faker. 

Easyhoon is known as a much more passive player and prefers mages rather than assassins. This becomes important when Xerath gets locked in. Xerath is all about poke, and CJ countered with Mundo and Braum, two beefy guys that can stop the poke. Once those were baited out, SKT locked in Lee Sin and Sivir for the massive engage from Annie, Gnar and Sivir which has almost no way of being stopped. CoCo locked in Jayce as a final pick, which didn't really put a lot of pressure on to Easyhoon in lane like you can with a blind pick Xerath.

Honestly, CJ got played hardcore in picks and bans. They left Gnar open and then fell for the thought of it being a poke comp with Xerath rather than taking a deeper look at the Annie and Gnar picks. Yes, SKT is very mid-centric, but they have other good players as well.

It was through some good objective control and some sloppy play by SKT that CJ could pull out the win in the first game. Shy got too tanky to deal with and literally could fight three people at once while his team mopped up the rest.

CONCLUSION

Overall, Week 1 of OGN brought a lot of interesting stories in ways I didn't expect. I knew that Gnar would be an insta pick/ban in every almost every game. I had also figured, as we got closer to the actual broadcast, that Riot was not going to do much to mess with Monte and DOA.

Seeing CJ wake up and SKT and Faker struggle was a bit of a surprise though. All of the unorthodox picks were really fresh from Korea as well. It’s shaping up to be an exciting split for OGN/LCK. Lots of new teams and strategies, old players, new players, and now a way to see it all for free!

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by Jerrod "Thousand Eyes" Steis

Impaler : Team could be seeing some changes.

by Reece "SabrewoIf" Dos-Santos

We've approached the half-way point for the 2014 League Of Legends group stages and the games have lived up to their expectations providing both dominant performances and huge underdog showings. I managed to run into Matthew "Impaler" Taylor, the Jungler for EU LCS’s Supa Hot Crew at an event being hosted by my university, and I slipped in a few questions about his view on Worlds so far and what his outlook is for Supa Hot Crew.

Watching Worlds:

Have you been watching worlds and what are your impressions so far?

Impaler: I’ve watched the first few games and I think the Koreans are going to dominate. They’re on a whole new level compared to all the other teams and Samsung White have definitely proved that in their games.

Rengar: 

We've seen quite a few Rengar picks at worlds so far. As one of the best Rengar players from the west, what is your opinion on how he’s been played?

Impaler: I’m actually surprised that Rengar has been played so much, especially considering his ult got nerfed, it’s been pretty good so far. The Koreans and the Chinese have a much better grasp on the mechanics and key skills than the western teams.

Supa Hot Crew:

How has it been for the Supa Hot Crew since the end of the season, do you think you could be challenging for worlds next year?

Impaler: I’m not too sure. The team has been kinda of shaky at the moment and the line up isn't certain. We could be seeing some changes. We’re really disappointed that we messed up against Roccat, but I think we could take SK Gaming in a best of five.

Last thoughts:

Lastly who do you think is going win worlds this year?

Impaler: I think its going to be Samsung White. Player for player they’re better and much more mechanically adept than any of the other teams and their team play is unchallenged. If I had to pick a team to challenge them, I’d say Samsung Blue have a pretty good chance as they've taken games off of White and can do so here. Basically, I’d pick any Samsung team to win it this year. Personally I’m a big Dandy fan. I’ve learnt a lot from watching his play and I think if you really want to learn how to be the best at League of Legends, you need to be watching the OGN over the LCS. 

SSG Blue vs SSG Ozone : Spring 2014 Semi-Finals Preview

 

by Chris Tajii

The Samsung Galaxy organization has looked significantly improved this season. The swap of Pawn to Ozone and Dade to Blue in the mid lane seems to have benefited both teams, and both have demonstrated their strength in the group stages and quarterfinals.

Blue ended group stages by going 5-1, only dropping a single game to the KT Bullets. In the quarterfinals they defeated CJ Frost 3-1 after Frost took game 1 with a dominating performance by Swift and Coco. Dade showed off his favorite Ghost/Flash summoner combo, taking his team to 3-1 with impressive Ziggs play and some exceptional work on Twisted Fate.

Ozone ended the group stages by going undefeated across all six games, capping everything off with a 3-1 victory over the S3 World Champions, SKT T1 K. While defeating the previous world champs is certainly impressive, SKT T1 K had certainly fallen off as of late. The support for SKT, PoohManDu in particular looked sloppy having just returned to the line-up. He got picked off multiple times for being out of position, unsafe ward attempts and missing skillshots. These and other moves made SKT T1 K look like perhaps they were not prepared for the changes to the meta in the 4.15 patch. Despite SKT T1 K looking less dominant, Ozone played well and appeared ready to move on to the Semi-finals.

As for the match-up between Blue and Ozone itself, I believe Ozone has a distinct advantage for a couple of reasons: champion pools and Looper.

Champion Pools:

Ozone takes the cake pretty handily here. Ozone’s Pawn has shown the ability to excel at almost every midlaner he picks up, and he has picked up a lot of them. We consistently see bans against Pawn’s Nidalee, Leblanc, Lulu, Ziggs, and Yasuo. On Blue’s, Dade is well-known for his Ziggs and TF - everything else seems pretty mediocre besides his old Zed play, but Zed is not very good against the current change to Exhaust.

At support, Mata and Heart can play a large number of champions, I don’t expect this to be a big point of interest as far as bans go for either side, though I will definitely be watching how many Thresh bans go through. In the Jungle, Spirit and Dandy’s repertoire of junglers consist mainly of Lee Sin, Elise, Evelyn, and Kha’zix. (Nothing different here. Most Korean junglers play the same group of champions.)  

AD Carry (sorry Riot, Marksmen) has a very interesting dynamic to it. Both Imp and Deft have champions that can have a major impact on the game. Imp is of course known for his Vayne mechanics, and the duo of Imp and Mata make them scary even with a relatively passive carry. Also with the current number of invades into laneswaps, Vayne is a pretty safe pick that will scale incredibly well in the current state of the game, being able to peel for herself from dangerous melee top laners like Jax, Shyvana, Renekton. On Blue’s side is Deft with Ezreal. This season he has picked it 4 times and has a 100% win rate on it. He’s incredibly comfortable with it, even running his own style of Blade of the Ruined King first, and is known on the Korean Ladder as the best Ezreal player there. Keep your eye on the picks and bans from Ozone and see if they try to take Ezreal away from Deft to make him slightly less comfortable.

The Looper Effect:

When Looper (Ozone) first came onto the scene taking over for Homme at the beginning of S3 World Championship Playoffs, everyone was a bit confused. Looper may not have had the greatest set of premier matches on the big stage, but at the time he showed one thing that has come to greater prevalence in the current meta; he was great at using teleport. Whether it was his Singed teleporting in to run amok and disrupt the other team, or his Shen ultimates, Looper always showed a great affinity for being prepared to jump in and give his team an advantage with a split push. In the current meta, this is probably one of the greatest tools as it’s almost required for every top laner to take teleport. Though Looper’s champion pool has had to progress with the meta, the same mindset has stayed with him moving on to champions like Jax, Shyvana and Mundo.

The main reason I think that Looper will have a significant impact on these games, though, is because Acorn isn’t quite the same type of player. Acorn is a dominating top laner and likes to punish his opponents. This can be seen through him only running Teleport (as opposed to ignite) two out of the four games he played top vs CJ Frost. He tried to punish Shy in lane, and did a good job. However, Looper is the kind of player that doesn’t mind playing the farm game, sitting under turret, and simply allowing his opponents to push his lane in; he plays for the late game. I will be watching two things here.

First, does Acorn try to play those punishing champs like Renekton? Or does he switch his style up and also try to scale harder to match Looper since Looper will likely play safe. Second, if Acorn does go for those aggressive early top laners, how well do Looper and Dandy ward to keep him safe from any types of dives that Spirit may try to pull off, since Spirit also plays a number of aggressive early junglers.

Featured Match-up: Dandy vs Pawn in the Midlane. Both players should draw a lot of attention in Picks & Bans. I expect Pawn to do better in the 1v1, while Dandy will roam more to help out his other lanes. It will be very interesting to see if Nidalee even gets banned, however, since both Samsung teams have been counter-picking her with Yasuo. I expect to see a number of picks and bans for Ziggs, Twisted Fate, Orianna, and maybe even an exciting game of Leblanc to try to blow one of these safer farmers up.

My prediction is that Samsung Galaxy Ozone will 3-1 their sister team Blue.