Team SoloMid vs Gravity: By the Numbers

Week 8 has been an exciting week for outside picks--but there is outside (something like Nautilus support, where it's a rarity in competitive play, but still quite viable) and there is Urgot.

Now, he did get some buffs with patch 5.5.  His base shield was reduced, however it scales now with mana (+8% total mana, which equates to an additional 180 HP on his shield at level 18 with a maxed out muramana, or a little over 200 additional when the game ended).  The cooldown on his Ultimate also was reduced (to 120/100/80 from 120/110/100).

That said, it's still Urgot.

Zed takes a few shots at a dancing Urgot.

The game started out in TSM's favor.  Keane did manage to keep up pretty well with Bjergsen on CS, but he died twice (once because he was greedy, and once because his flash was down and Bjergsen called in a gank).  TSM was able to quickly capitalize on the misplays, and created a 4k gold lead around 17 minutes with the outer rim of towers down and 5 - 1 kills.
Around this point, three members of Gravity (Hauntzer, Saintvicious, and Keane) all started to build Frozen Hearts.  Since the vast majority of damage coming out of TSM would be physical damage, this would effectively frustrate whatever Bjergsen and WildTurtle could do.  This had immediate effect in a 4 - 1 team fight just right of the mid turret, where Gravity was able to catch TSM in a choke position.

TSM were running out of options to respond with.  That team fight nearly swung the gold deficit back to neutral, except now Gravity had the chunk of change it would require to build against further attack.  Towers started to fall one after another, and TSM couldn't respond.  After that 17 minute mark, TSM was only able to bring down one more tower (in response to Gravity taking baron).  With little effort, Gravity turned their attention the base and powered their way in through the mid tower and through TSM's base.

Bunny FuFuu's 4th hook that connected in less than a minute.

1.  Bunny FuFuu's Thresh.  There's a reason why he was picked as the most valuable player for NA Week 8--his hooks were on point.  Between the CD on his masteries and eventually the Glacial Shroud, Bunny FuFuu was able to toss out another hook every 8-9 seconds.  What made this especially impressive is that he managed to hook someone every time he wanted to.  There was a space where TSM was doing their best to defend a turret where Bunny FuFuu caught someone out time after time again, allowing his team to take a chunk of damage out of them.

It's hard to take down four tanks because they just won't die.  SPOILER: Gravity wins this fight.

2.  The patch of the tank.  Since Patch 5.5 went live, we've seen more tanks than ever.  Gravity decided early on that they wanted to run a tank heavy composition--aside from Cop's Corki, everyone on the team had enough damage mitigation that Bjergsen and WildTurtle--on two of their best champions--only took three kills a piece.  In fact, by the end of the game, Dyrus had done as much damage to champions as Bjergsen.  Apparently the tank comp is a real thing that teams will need to prepare for.

Cop secures a double kill at the top tier 2 tower.

3.  Cop, the unsung hero.  With an Urgot in the mid lane and a Thresh who never seems to miss a hook, a powerful AD carry can sometimes go unnoticed.  Cop did 33k damage over the course of the match--roughly 39% of all the damage Gravity did to TSM.  He, Hauntzer, and Saintvicious also had an impressive 94% Kill Participation in this match.

Dyrus gets caught out at his turret.

4.  Dyrus is back to having a rough time.  With a score like 0/6/0, Dyrus seems to be taking the brunt of the abuse.  It also goes to show that he's really not getting support from his teammates--of the 5 kills TSM got during the laning phase, 2 were in the mid lane and 3 were in the bot lane.  In the same time period, we see much more variety with Gravity--two towers, and dragon, a kill in the top lane, and a few close calls in the mid and bot lane.  When Dyrus is involved in regular play making, TSM does well--remember Dyrus's Equalizers in Game 1 of the Finals at IEM Katowice?  If Dyrus is involved from the beginning, he can turn the tide of games--but if he's left alone, he has a rough time catching up.

Keane uses his ult on WildTurtle to the latter's demise.

5.  Is Urgot really viable?  It's hard not to look at this match with rose colored glasses and say that Urgot might really be viable for competitive LCS play.  It should be noted, though, that this has been one of Keane's favorite solo queue picks for quite some time--to mixed results.  Urgot's viability is dependent on mid game spikes and a team composition that can help Urgot get a few kills.  It wouldn't be out of the question for Keane to bring out Urgot again (although the earliest we could expect it would be the Summer Split), but most teams probably won't invest a lot of resources in trying to prepare for the Urgot pick.

Other interesting statistics:

• Saintvicious was effectively the focal point of every team fight.  While he only died once, he took 34.8k damage--over 12k more than his next teammate (Hauntzer on Maokai).  He also incidentally took twice as much damage as Keane (17.1k), but had 3 fewer deaths.

• Saintvicious also warded more than Bunny FuFuu (39 wards to 29), and incidentally only dropped two fewer wards than Lustboy (41).

• Aside from Cop, every member of Gravity had built some sort of Armor item.  On the other side, Bjergsen had three armor penetration items (Brutalizer, Last Whisper, Youmuu's Ghostblade) and WildTurtle had one (Last Whisper)--but they barely ended up doing more damage than Dyrus with his magic damage.