Giants vs Elements: By the Numbers

There’s a lot riding on this week.

Both Elements and Giants were invested in the win here.  In order to have a chance at securing the 7th place (and safe) spot, Elements would need to win this match (since the odds of winning the match against Fnatic today doesn’t look too optimistic), while the Giants need to win a match to save themselves from relegation—and this was their match to do it.

As could be expected of a team that has so many members who have competed internationally, Elements built an early lead with a 2:34 1st blood (Krepo kills Fr3deric) and a few kills in the mid lane.  Elements began to steadily take down Giant towers, while the Giants continued to slip farther and farther behind.  After the constant pressure on the mid lane, PePiiNeRO was forced time and time again to use his ultimate to escape ganks.  Things were looking to be solidly in favor of Elements.

Except they had such a struggle closing out the game.  They got through their first inhibitor just after 28 minutes, and through their second around 32 minutes.  With so much pressure on the base, a good application of pressure and solid awareness should have made this an easy win.  Instead, over confidence and a lack of respect for Giants led to 4 deaths and a base race that nearly cost Elements the game.

Rekkles prevents a repeat of their last encounter with well placed Chompers over the wall.

1.  Rekkles has regained some of his reputation.  Finally, we get to see some of his same game play that helped to bring down Samsung Blue back at Worlds a few months ago.  Even though his opening play was still on the passive side, he proved to be a force to be reckoned with on that Jinx.  Over the course of the game, he managed to do 27.2k damage--nearly 11k more than his next teammate--and had a 9.5 KDA and 76% KP besides.  Although they'll be hard pressed to win against Fnatic, it would be nice to see a similar caliber of game play today.

Krepo takes down Fr3deric at blue buff.

2.  The jungle isn't safe.  This isn't the first time that we've seen the early jungle gank.  It is, however, the first time that we've seen the support solo kill the jungle.  That's part of the risk of this new jungle--you go dangerously low so often in the first clear that a good guess can sometimes secure a kill.  To be fair, Krepo only had to do a little over 150 damage to get the kill (which he managed only by using his hook, flay, ignite, and autos) since the jungle had done the rest of the work, but it really gives a lot more sway to the top/jungle roam strategy that was so common at the end of season 4.

Froggen cleans up after a team fight at mid lane.

3.  Froggen.  Parts of this game could have been deemed the highlight reel of Froggen's mechanics.  Especially in the early game, Froggen was doing everything right.  He was everywhere he needed to be, and then--he disappeared.  He was still there in the team fights, still picking up kills, but it was as though he decided to hand the reins over to Rekkles.  By the end of the game, he had only earned 13.5k gold (4.4k behind PePiiNeRO and nearly 5k behind Rekkles) and had only 219 CS (an average of 5.9 CS per minute).

Shook turns back to get PePiiNeRO, and exposes the rest of his team to some punishment from the Giants.

4.  Over confidence.  Perhaps this is as a result of so much professional play, but there's a lot of over confidence in Elements' play style.  It's as though they're all caught up in the potential strength of their team that they forget how to concisely close out games as a team.  Missteps and over confidence is what gave Giants the opening to almost steal the game--if Elements want to make it into the Summer Playoffs (since they'll be hard pressed to get 6th), they'll need to put egos and reputation behind them, and instead move forward as a unit.

PePiiNeRO nearly wins the base race.

5.  The Spanish mid laner.  Spain has a propensity for turning out great mid laners.  Much like xPeke, PePiiNeRO has had a solid performance in the mid lane.  Unfortunately, Giants have bigger overarching problems that they'll need to sort out before they can expect to land a spot in the LCS playoffs, but PePiiNeRO is the type of player we can expect to see more of in the future.  He's also accrued a reputation for himself among the EU teams--enough that if they don't focus on the mid lane early in the game, they'll have the pay the consequences later.  After all, 4 members of Elements had 1 tower and 1 inhibitor to work through to get to the Nexus--PePiiNeRO had 4 towers and an inhibitor and nearly beat them to it.

Other interesting statistics:

• Shook placed more wards than Krepo (34 to 31), and Rydle placed more than either (37).

• If Elements had been able to close out the game when they intended, they would have won 11 towers to 5; instead, they finished the game 10-8.

• Elements had a gold lead over their counter parts in every match up except mid lane, where even though Froggen had a 9/4/6 KDA, he was 4.4k behind PePiiNeRO (6/5/6) in gold.  Most of that could be accounted for with the 152 CS difference.