World Championships Group Stage - Day 1 Observation and Thoughts

While I'm currently pretty strapped for time with university and my other projects, I made sure I was able to tune in to at least some of the world championship games that happened last night. For the most part, many predictions were correct when determining the outcome of the matches but there were still a few surprises.

Korean "Domination" Coming into Worlds

Many people looked at the two Korean teams in the group stage (SKT T1, Samsung Galaxy Ozone) as being the strongest teams in the world. While there is no doubt that they are mechanically sound, the first day of matches showed that they definitely are not unbeatable. The Chinese team OMG and Russia's Gambit Gaming managed to secure wins against both of their Korean match ups in pretty convincing victories. Even North America's Vulcun Techbargains managed to have a pretty strong showing in the early stages of the game against Samsung Galaxy Ozone. This shows us how cutthroat high level League of Legends is where any team can defeat any team at the top level and how close the competition has become this year.

Rise of Vi

After I believe the Asian scene revived Vi into competitive play, I was a bit surprised to many of the Western teams snatch her up as their primary jungler pick. A common theme I've seen among most high pick competitive junglers is their early game objective control. Champions like Elise, Nasus, Leesin, and Vi can easily secure early dragons through their high damage (Percentage HP damage) and somewhat high sustain kits (regen, lifesteal, shields). A lot of people seemed to overlook her after her damage had been nerf back in the Spring Split but after some nerfs to the other high priority junglers and people running more pick oriented team compositions, we have seen a resurgence of her. She can easily catch targets out of position with her long range gap closing abilities and lock them down for her team to burst the target instantly. This is extremely advantageous with high mobility assassins (Ahri, Zed, Kassadin) becoming more standard picks since Vi can provide a long range initiation and lockdown on these targets.

The Focus of Supports

I did not manage to watch every game but out of the first 6 that I did manage to see, I noticed a heavy emphasis teams had on taking out the support player as soon as possible. I'm not sure exactly if it follows a specific strategy, or if the support just happens to be out of position so they get bursted quickly, but many teams who had a Thresh on their side were seen being the target of the mid lane burst. In the first game TSM vs GG.EU, TheOddone's Vi would constantly use his ultimate on Thresh specifically when ganking and in teamfights while his team followed up (Zed ultimates) with damage to blow him up before getting a chance to use his high utility spells.

My take on the focus on supports is that in this current meta where teams are running high damage assassins in their other lanes, their teams rely on the utility from their support in order to lock down teams to allow the assassins to safely take out their targets. By taking out the main utility (Thresh's crowd control, Sona and Zyra ultimates) it makes it not only a 4v5 fight, but the team without the support loses the potential to lock people down for their carries to do damage as well as protecting their carries.

In addition to the utility they offer, supports in competitive play are known for buying pretty much only wards since the traditional support items are not as important as vision in competitive play. By taking out the support, the enemy team will lose major vision control especially if the other team has an oracles around objectives. By killing the support and then clearing out vision, the enemy team will have limited vision (all members do purchase wards) and will have to risk face checking into an unfavorable position while being at a man disadvantage.

These are just a few of my observations and thoughts as a competitive League of Legends follower. I'm excited to see what else Worlds has in store for us and to see which team will rise to the top and claim the summoner's cup.