Team Impulse vs Team SoloMid: By the Numbers

What's happened to TSM lately?

Sunday's game between Team SoloMid and Team Impulse began as expected, with TSM securing an early gold lead and maintaining a good control on objectives.  WildTurtle took first blood just under 10 minutes into the game, and TSM brought down the first ring of towers (and a tier 2 besides), 4 kills, and a 4k gold lead around 20 minutes.  That's as far ahead as TSM ever got.

Impact's binding secured the Ace for Impulse to end the game.

To be fair, Impulse really brought it after this point.  They were able to secure some dragons, and managed to trade some crucial kills with TSM.  It seems as though TSM didn't even bother to play the rest of the game through, though--for the remaining 21 minutes of the game, they wouldn't bring down another tower, and only picked up 7 more kills (to Impulse's 18 more).  In fact, they have a rough time securing any objective beyond that point.  They were able to stave off Impulse and maintain a gold lead for the next 16 minutes, but it consistently dwindled into nothing.  Impulse ended the game at 41 minutes with a 7k gold lead.

Rush kicks back Dyrus for Impulse's first kill.

1.  Things change when people listen to Rush.  Rush had an awesome 95% KP this game on Lee Sin.  Perhaps as a result of Saturday's hardships and TIP's confidence in Rush's Lee Sin skills, Team Impulse made sure to respond when Rush decided to make things happen.  Rush also took the lion's share of the damage for his team, but his consistent playmaking gave Impulse the edge that they needed to bring down TSM.

WildTurtle gets melted at the dragon, and there isn't anything to be done about it.

2.  The need for peel.  Rush, Adrian (on Leona), and Impact (on Morgana) proved that this game.  Although XiaoWeiXiao (on Kassadin) of necessity spent a lot of time in close quarters with TSM, Apollo (on Graves) and Impact came out of this match relatively unscathed; in fact, they look less damage together than Rush took all game.  What worked out so well on Impulse's side did not do so well for Team SoloMid.  The big team fight threat that TSM brought to the table was Lustboy's AOE stun (as Annie).  Aside from Annie, the most they could hope for was a bountiful knock up from Santorin (on Rek'sai) or a successful single target stun from Dyrus (on Irelia).  Any of those, however, provided only short lived respite; Annie's stun would be down long enough to kill her, and Irelia was only a threat to the backline every 6 seconds for Bladesurge, and even 8 seconds for Equilibrium strike.  TSM couldn't do enough to keep Impulse off their back line, and suffered for it.

Dyrus gets eaten alive despite having three team members and a turret at his back.

3.  TSM's top lane troubles.  It's becoming more apparent each one of these losses--TSM has to refocus on the top lane.  Dyrus is a pretty solid player who keeps his head well in a team fight.  When he falls behind in the laning phase, though, it's harder for him to provide that solid front line that TSM relies on.  To fix this issue, TSM needs to look at their team the way these other teams in NA look at them.  Bjergsen is going to be strong during the laning phase, and will probably win the lane.  Applying a little pressure can keep him from snowballing, but it should be pretty low risk pressure since Bjergsen has a way of turning bad situations into kills.  WildTurtle knows how to run with a lead, but he's liable to choose the kill over retreat, and often leaves himself exposed when he shouldn't.  Santorin seems to see his position as the "Bjerg enabler" and spends a lot of time focusing on the mid lane--taking only occasional trips to the far ends of the map.  Lustboy is a good support who wards consistently and looks for chances to give his team the edge in a team fight, but he's not quite as menacing as an Aphromoo who manages to do all that with the clutch grab/stun/knock up.  And then there's Dyrus, who you don't hear much of in the early game, but becomes a problem in the late game with his ability to draw fire and stay alive.  Santorin really needs to become the "Bjerg and Dyrus enabler."

All that damage on Adrian, and they're having a tough time getting him down.

4.  Lack of damage diversity.  Looking at the TSM team composition, you wouldn't expect this to be an issue.  You have Irelia, Rek'sai, and Corki for the AD component, and for AP you have Annie and LeBlanc.  However, it's important to consider the sort of damage that comes out of these AD champions in a team fight.  Overall, 1/6 of Irelia's damage is AP (but she's probably not the one doing the most damage to you), 1/3 of Rek'sai's damage is AP (and still not a heavy damage dealer), and 3/5 of Corki's damage is AP.  Everyone on Impulse had a solution to the AP component (which, aside from LeBlanc, was not overwhelming, but enough that it represented 40% of all damage done), either in the form of items (Null-Magic Mantle, Negatron Cloak, Lock of the Iron Solari) or passives (Kassadin's Void Stone and Null Sphere, or Graves's True Grit).  Think about how much more damage could have been done had they picked a pure AD carry instead.

XiaoWeiXiao Riftwalks across TSM's front line, back line, and everything in-between.

5.  XiaoWeiXiao brought his "A" game.  Going into this game, an overwhelming percentage of people watching predicted that Team SoloMid would win--and that, in part, had to do with XiaoWeiXiao's lackluster performance.  In Worlds 2014, XiaoWeiXiao brought powerful picks to the mid lane and danced circles around his opponents (sometimes literally as Yasuo).  This season, his mid lane presence has only been mediocre.  This game, though, he shined in team fights, taking the fight consistently to the back line and locking down threats.  If he keeps this performance up, we might expect to see a little more movement from Impulse before the Spring Split is over.

What do we get out of this matchup?  A jump up for Impulse (especially after their loss to Team 8) and a step down for TSM.  If TSM wants to end this 1-1 streak, they need to iron out their weaknesses and bring back the "wow" factor to their game play.  On the other hand, if Impulse wants to do something with this new found momentum, they need to listen to Rush and back him up.

Other interesting statistics:

• Apollo was the most efficient with his damage, only committing 3.1k damage per kill (technically Adrian was a tad bit more efficient, only putting up 2.9k damage per kill).  Santorin was next with 3.5k, followed by XiaoWeiXiao with 3.6k.

• Even though the damage ratio was 1.12 : 1 (TIP : TSM), the kill ratio was 1.91: 1.

• Despite having the best KP in the match, Rush had the 3rd lowest gold (in part because he was 55 CS behind Santorin, and perhaps because his assists started becoming worth less gold).  Lustboy was lowest with 8.5k, followed by Adrian with 10.9k.

• TSM took their last tower just shy of 20 minutes.  At that point Impulse had only managed to take down two outer turrets.  In the next 20 minutes, Impulse would take 3 dragons, 6 towers, and even an Ace around 39 minutes.