Gravity vs Winterfox: By the Numbers

Gravity proved to us Sunday that when they play the meta, they know how to take care of business.

Gravity took control of the map from the get go.  Saintvicious took a sub-six minute Dragon.  When Winterfox collapsed on Hauntzer for first blood, Keane pushed the mid turret and took it before 10 minutes.  From that point on, for everything Winterfox was able to secure Gravity had a follow up.

The game slowed down a bit for Gravity between 24 and 34 minutes.  Winterfox was able to secure a tower, dragon, and a kill in this time period.  Gravity, though, went about it patiently, making sure to apply enough pressure so that Winterfox would have to back away from their new found advantage.

Once dragon came up again, Gravity pushed their advantage.  They took dragon and a tower besides, and forced a team fight that resulted in an Ace.  Gravity continued to keep up the pressure, and systematically dismantled Winterfox's base--choosing to take down each of the Inhibitor towers one after the other instead of pushing with the super minions in through the exposed lanes.  By the time the last inhibitor fell, super minions poured in through the other two sides and Gravity made the clean up look effortless.

What looks like an easy pick turns into a Gravity collapse.

1.  Split push to collapse.  Throughout the match, Gravity kept up the pressure in all lanes--and it shows.  Winterfox was only able to bring down the first ring of turrets.  If a minion wave threatened to build to their disadvantage, there was someone there to mop up the gold and push it back toward Winterfox.  The game, though, was really decided in the way Gravity would react to Winterfox's aggression.  Since Winterfox had a tanky composition with great initiate but little follow up damage, Gravity had a window between first encounter and the actual team fight.  Not that it mattered much, anyway, since Gravity was collapsing and anticipating Winterfox before Winterfox even knew what they were doing.  It's interesting to note that not a single kill actually happened in the bot lane; in fact, there were really three epicenters of kills: Winterfox's attempt to push the tier 2 turret (a slew of kills in the mid lane beyond the tier 1 turret), the jungle (top side jungle, close to the red buff), and around the last inhibitor tower in the top lane.  Gravity was on point, coming quickly and powerfully to each others' aide when the going seemed rough.

Gravity takes down the middle turret in exchange for Hauntzer.

2.  Objective trading.  Whenever Winterfox took an objective, Gravity had pressure on the opposite side of the map to capitalize on that focus.  Most of the early game objective trading amounted to little more than skirmishes; neither Gravity nor Winterfox wanted to push the issue, so Gravity made sure to apply the pressure elsewhere.

Gravity won't let Winterfox have a chance at coming back.

3.  Leave no quarter.  Gravity didn't want Winterfox to make a comeback, so they took the least risky route and ensured their base was demolished.  When the second inhibitor and turret fell at 40 minutes, they had ample minion waves and champion strength to force the fight to the Nexus turrets right there.  Instead, though, Gravity decided to take the safer route, and circled around to the last inhibitor tower and push it in as well.  There have been quite a few games as of late where both teams were able to open a gap in the opponents' inhibitor turrets, but a game changing Ace--at either an objective like dragon or baron, or sometimes even at the Nexus itself--was enough to swing the balance back into the enemy team's favor.  In fact, we'd seen it before, between Team Liquid and Winterfox.

Nothing says use your Equalizer more than a grouped up line of opponents.

4.  Gravity loves a good team fight.  Saintvicious and Hauntzer owned the team fight initiation.  Saintvicious was on point with his knock ups, giving his team enough time to pour some damage on to Pobelter and Paragon.  Likewise, Hauntzer kept landing beautiful Equalizers that tore through Winterfox.  They proved well that in a team fight they're willing to get their hands dirty.

And Keane takes the Dark Passage to safety.

5.  The lanterns.  Bunny FuFuu did have a number of good hooks throughout the game, but they were not the sort that stood out as anything too out of the ordinary for an LCS Thresh.  His lanterns, however, were ridiculous--so many potential Winterfox picks were thwarted by a last minute lantern that a member of Gravity took to safety.  Bunny FuFuu's work made certain that Gravity could turn what looked like a fairly hopeless situation into a collapse that could turn the tide of a team fight.

Other interesting statistics:

• Hauntzer is a beast.  He laid out the most damage to champions in the match at 30.9k; Cop wasn't too far behind him at 26.6k.  The differences from that point out really put their achievement into perspective: Paragon was next at 13.8k, followed by Keane at 13.7k, and then Pobelter at 12.7k.

• Saintvicious took his beating better than normal.  It's no surprise that Saintvicious currently has the most deaths in the league--quite often his aggression (and eventual death) forces an encounter.  In this match, he took 36.9k damage, but only died twice for it.  Bravo, Saintvicious, bravo.

• Altec has a personal vendetta against enemy vision.  The ward placement was fairly even between the two teams, but Altec managed to destroy a total of 26 wards--about half of all the wards Bunny FuFuu placed.