NEST Roundup: Kassawin, WE's victory and the Tristana Trundle lane
China is burning.
Not really, it's just offseason after a difficult World Championship. EDward Gaming have pulled out of tournaments for the rest of 2015, rosters are in shuffle, and this historically has always made results more difficult to predict in China than they already are. I was actually lead to believe King (now Royal Never Give Up), was a good team last year when they placed second in nearly every event. Yes, it's that bad.
It's difficult to glean much on how a team will perform in the coming year from offseason tournaments, but if you read between the lines they're still valuable to watch. The National Electronic Sports Tournament was the first full tournament played on Patch 5.22, meaning new champion picks and compositions made an impression. Some teams still show the same problems they always had. Even if we can't gauge results, individual performances may stand out and reveal new rising talents.
Without further ado, here are five things we can actually learn from NEST.
Vici Gaming's management AFKed
(As usual)
I don't care anymore that Invictus Gaming and LGD Gaming haven't played a tournament since LPL in which they've advanced past the stage at which they entered. Or that LGD and IG both lost 1-2 to teams they've traditionally performed better against — Vici Gaming with a worse mid and AD carry, and Team WE without Spirit. I doubt LGD's roster will remain as is, meaning the chances that they're practicing hard are small, and IG are notoriously unreliable. I also don't have any expectations for them next year.
Vici Gaming's management decisions, however, continue a seemingly worrying trend. Vici Gaming like to breed their own talent, picking new players from solo queue or their secondary teams rather than buying stars. Choi "DanDy" Inkyu and Cho "Mata" Sehyeong are the exceptions.
It's also unlikely that the roster they debuted in NEST is the final roster they'll bring to LPL. Management have already said Li "Vasilii" Weijun probably won't start for the team. That doesn't inspire a great deal of confidence when Vici Gaming have traditionally changed out players like pairs of underwear, giving up talents such as Wei "GODV" Zhen or Yu "TnT" Rui early on.
This tournament, Unlimited Potential — let's be honest, UP are probably still a subsidiary of VG, owned by a relative of some sort — played with two mid laners and no top laner when Wang "Carry" Zhujing is still part of the organization. The flagship team, Vici Gaming, played with two AD carry mains and no mid laner after shuffling both their mid lane players — including Peng "Peng" Yibo, who appeared talented in the last legs of LPL — to UP last week.
No matter what carries Vici Gaming pick up in the remainder of the offseason, I'd like to see someone try to explain the logic behind their current situation. Just let me get my incredulous gifs first.
Snake need someone else to do champion select for them
(Someone who doesn't let Li "Flandre" Xuanjun play whatever he wants)
This is another observation that shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who has followed LPL this year, but Snake still hasn't won a LAN since the Tencent Games Arena that qualified them for LSPL. Despite talent, smart management and solid roster building, Snake choke in the finals in tournaments where they have relatively little competition. Losing to Royal Never Give Up and WE at the finish line is nothing short of disturbing.
Despite a clean quarterfinal and semifinal, Snake's drafts always seem to hurt more than help them. Tristana terrorized NEST, and Jin "Mystic" Seongjun picked it in every game it was available. Her kit is aided by increased base attack damage and reduced cost on B. F. Sword and Infinity Edge which, while reducing the AD on the itam, also makes it possible to purchase those items earlier. Statikk Shiv provides higher critical strike chance with less itemization, allowing Tristana to beef up her early and mid games, the latter of which has traditionally been her weakness.
Snake ignored Rod of Ages-buffed Kassadin and fixated on Riven, even after finding seamless success with Jax. Snake were unhinged at the World Championship Qualifier by a failure to adapt. And the same problems plagued them at NEST, where they adapted somewhat against WE, but without understanding the perks of playing Dr. Mundo correctly.
I have a lot of praises for Snake, but they still can't win if they can't draft. Keep Chen "Jun" Linjun as head coach, but find someone else for champion select.
Kassawin
With the cost of most AP items increasing to balance out the increase in ambient gold, Rod of Ages drew the long straw. The increase in available Ability Power from 60 to 80 ups the per-AP-point gold efficiency from .022 to .027, despite the cost increase. That's 37.5 gold per AP point while also retaining the other benefits of the item.
To put it in perspective, a Needlessly Large Rod is 21 gold per AP. A fully stacked Rod of Ages provides one AP for 25 gold along with other benefits (500 HP and 800 MP), making it, according to Shakarez's efficiency guide, 168 percent gold efficient. Even without any stacks, he rates the item over 100 percent efficient. By his rating, a stacked Rod of Ages is the most gold efficient AP item other than a stacked Mejai's Soulstealer or Guinsoo's Rageblade.
This more or less just means that any AP champion that can build Rod of Ages should. Kassadin, putting himself in the fray of a fight, benefits from health, requires a lot of mana and will do a lot of burst damage from AP scaling.
In addition, Kassadin's base mana was increased by almost 50 this patch, making his laning phase more tolerable. Kassadins have been building Corrupting Potion as well, which grants extra damage from attacks and his spammable spell kit with charges to refill health and mana. Overall, I think Corrupting Potion will go out of style, as it delays build paths in short games, but for now it makes Kassadin's laning more attractive.
Mastery changes also benefited Kassadin, giving him more options in utility from an increased CDR cap to damage to low health targets to the interesting Thunderlord's Degree, which allows champions who spam abilities to do extra magic damage.
In the end, it's a headache to trade against his shield, his base damage and utility perks get him to scale faster, and he's an all-around nasty piece of machinery who synergizes well with other disrupters in pick comps. He was the deciding factor in the Invictus vs WE series. Stop picking Viktor into him.
WE's best player is still their jungler
With only two tournaments under his belt, it's hard to definitively praise Wang "WuShuang" Haili, but his sense for which lanes to pressure made WE's NEST. If there's an advantage available, he seems to be able to find it with his pathing. Mechanically, his Lee Sin prowess also sent Snake into shambles today with a five-man Dragon Strike that allowed WE to defeat a team with Dr. Mundo on it.
We don't talk about Dr. Mundo.
Either WE are relying on the same dynamic that allowed Lee "Spirit" Dayoon to shine, or WuShuang is really one to watch this year, with or without Peng "Aluka" Zhenming and his continued inappropriate Sion fixation (you know that's not what I meant).
Here's a thought that's sure to make your blood curdle: WE have won more tournaments with WuShuang than they did with Spirit. Don't shoot the messenger.
Trisdle
Likely the most common question I received during NEST (other than, "How do I make the cloud popup go away?") was, "Why all the support Trundle?"
The short answer is that it's quite a good selection. The slightly longer answer is that it's disgusting when paired with Tristana.
I've covered Mystic's fixation with Tristana briefly, but she was a common pick across the board. In addition to the changes I've mentioned, Tristana also benefits from the ability to double up on Energize passive since it is not unique on 5.22 (I'm not sure who decided this was a good idea) with Rapid Fire Cannon and Statikk Shiv. Her abilities are retooled to encourage reckless positioning with more options for resetting Rocket Jump. She does more area of effect damage with more ways of stacking Explosive Charge and more opportunities to hop at people.
The biggest Tristana buff, however, comes in the form of feeble turrets with reduced resistances. With her ability to use Explosive Charge on turrets, scaling range and attack speed buffs, she can take a turret from full health to nothing without a minion wave or anyone else to tank for her if given the opportunity. Thank you, Riot Games.
The laning skirmish power of Trisdle
I still haven't mentioned Trundle and why he works well in this union. The most common supports in NEST were melee skirmishers like Thresh, Braum, and Tahm Kench. Trundle fits the mold, but has passive lane sustain, a 75% slow with a four-second cooldown, the ability to create terrain, more slows, cost free ways to increase healing, movement speed, attack speed, attack damage reduction and the ability to sap resistances and health from targets.
But Trundle has almost always had these things, and the most we've seen him played in the support role recently outside the International Wild Card AllStars and NEST was in the European playoffs when Bora "YellOwStaR" Kim had a brief fixation.
Level 1 Statistics for Supports picked more than once in NEST
NEST SUPPORT PICK
BASE HEALTH
BASE ARMOR
BASE AD
Thresh
561
16
48
Braum
576
26.7
55
Tahm Kench
610
27
56
Alistar
613
24.4
61
Trundle
616
27.5
60
Aside for having some of the best base bottom lane skirmish statistics of supports picked more than once in NEST, Trundle's attack damage reduction on his Chomp becomes more effective with the increased prevalence of AD items. He can also use his Pillar of Ice to get picks on less mobile AD carries like Miss Fortune or force others to use escape abilities.
In part due to the buff to Rod of Ages and AD items, skirmishes are more common with the champions being played. Trundle can manipulate terrain in open fights, isolating a target for a safer Tristana all-in. The combination effectively makes her an assassin with her changes to Rocket Jump such that she can get in and out quickly. The pillar also provides enough time to delay a collapse, while Tristana takes take a turret and escapes.
Target isolation and assassination potential
While I don't recommend first-picking Trundle, in the WE vs. VG semifinals WE's Ke "Conan" Yi frequently chose him in the first rotation to deny Mata, who had picked it liberally against LGD the day before. It's somewhat safe to do this since even if the enemy team doesn't bring a lot of tanks for Trundle to target with Subjugate, the ability can still be effective against high health opponents — it does percentage of enemy health as damage. With Rod of Ages so commonly built, it's safe to bet higher health targets will appear in some form.
With changes to passive laning gold in itemization and increased ambient gold, Trundle can also get more items from the laning phase instead of relying on late game assist streaks as a support. Trundle spends less on sight wards because they don't exist. Games also tend to not go so late that the fact that Trundle is played in the support position becomes a hindrance with fewer items.
Trisdle is a pretty disgusting turret taking and skirmishing combination with some of the 5.22 changes. I expect to see it a lot more often.
This is a short description in the author block about the author. You edit it by entering text in the "Biographical Info" field in the user admin panel.
0 nhận xét:
Post a Comment