Summer Split: Top 5

Those of you who have followed my blog have noticed I took a three month hiatus, starting around the beginning of MSI and stretching through the majority of the LCS Summer Split.  To compensate, let's look at the highlight reel for the past three months with a top 5 list of biggest LCS news.

5.  The Volatile Meta.

Taric has been looking fabulous in the LCS.

Week to week in the Spring Split, the biggest shifts we saw in the meta was the initial popularity of Nidalee in the jungle, and the rise of the Cinderhulk.  Summer has been full of changes, and has opened up a wide variety of options in Champion Select.  After all, there has to have been a fairly big shift to have Gragas be the most picked/banned Champion in Europe.  Traditionally strong picks like Zed, Leona, and Vi have seen barely any play time, while less traditional picks (including dazzling Taric) have made their way on to the Rift.  Although we're seeing essentially the same setups we've always seen (tanky teams, protect the Kog'Maw teams, siege teams, etc.), the major Champions in those compositions have rotated significantly.

4.  The North American Bloodbath.

1-6 was up in the air all the way to the end of the regular season.

There's a healthy bit of debate over whether NA or EU is better.  At times--IEM Katowice, or the Mid Season Invitational--it seems like one clearly outshines the other.  This year, there is really only one rule to live by: in Europe, there are "Kings" of the League who are clearly head and shoulders above other teams (SK and Fnatic in the Spring Season, Fnatic and sort of Origen in the Summer Season) and in NA, we have a bloodbath.  There is no lofty throne, and no team so clearly dominant that a lower ranked team can't take down.  Although Europe appears to take the cake this time around (hello #1 on this list), there is something to be said about the "trial by fire" system here that helps prep NA teams for international play.

3.  The Focus No Longer is Mid.

Reignover gets a Quadra kill.

Traditionally, the mid laners garner a lot of attention and acclaim in the professional LoL scene.  After all, these mechanically precise players tend to play champions that look very impressive when they outplay everyone else--consider the FeniX 1v4 quadrakill on Azir, for example.  However, with the changes in the meta and especially the changes to how a jungler operates, we don't focus nearly so much on the early game duels between mid laners.  Early game action follows the junglers now.  Truly, their role in either creating picks for their team or coming to their aid has become the focal point of the laning phase.  Honest to goodness, we see less of the early solo kill and more of the jungle ganks (both the precise ones and the risky ones).  Riot promised that this year that they'd worked hard to change the way the Jungle worked--I'd say they were quite successful.

2. The Predictor: First Blood.

First blood C9 vs. TSM.  Incidentally, this wasn't the best indicator in this match.

There are many different things to look for as early indicators of how a game will go, but there are few more reliable early indicators than First Blood.  At Week 4, First Blood successfully predicted the winner with close to 80% accuracy in both NA and EU.  To be honest, 80% is extremely strong in statistics--after all, people feel pretty confident making predictions of Presidential candidates and weather with as little as 52-53% accuracy.  It'll be interesting to see how it continues to play out for Worlds--will first blood continue to be a strong predictor, or will another (first tower?  first dragon?) become more prevalent?

1.  Fnatic.

The logo says it all.

This is truly the team that can do no wrong.  As of this writing, they have played 21 games back to back without a single loss.  This makes them the most successful team in the world this season (and, dare I say, ever?), and quite possibly a chance to secure another Worlds title.  Let's talk a bit about what has led to their success.

• Synergy.  With the exception of Rekkles, this is the same team that dominated Europe in the Spring Split as well--and one can hardly forget that Rekkles came to Elements from Fnatic.  They have a lot of experience playing together, and that gives them an edge over the European competition.  In Worlds last year, the Rekkles/YellowstaR bot lane was a feared force that could only be matched by the most elite Asian teams.  Outside of the bot lane, the power of their communication is obvious--collapses, rotations, split pushing, and excellent team fighting is like watching clockwork.  Before the enemy realizes that a team fight is going to break out, Huni is teleporting in and Reignover is jumping out of the brush.
• Huni.  There is something special about Fnatic's top laner.  Everyone on the team is top quality, but Huni is truly a force to be reckoned with.  In the Spring Split, I explained how the only teams that managed to take down Fnatic (especially UOL) made it a priority to shut down and thwart Huni from the get-go.  The problem this season is that they've made it too dangerous for a team to focus on bringing down Huni early; if you leave either mid or bot lane alone for even a minute, the split push comes in strong and before you know it Fnatic has secured two objectives and Huni still took down half your team anyway.  Regardless of how the rest of the team performs at Worlds, you can be sure that Huni will perform exceptionally well despite the competition.
• Objective control.  When SK Gaming took the forefront of the European scene in the Spring Split, the way they did it was with precise objective control.  I described them as "playing against the computer" because kills took a backseat to securing objectives.  For the first half of the season, that worked really well for them--until teams realized that by shutting down FORGIVENGRE early and punishing the split push, SK became an easy opponent to deal with.  In the off season, Fnatic must have put in some time studying this strategy and adapting their own to include better objective control.  They still have the pack mentality--whenever you pick a fight with one Fnatic member, expect the rest to come along shortly--but amid their hunt, they've excelled at ensuring lanes are pushing their way, towers are going down, and they're on top of Dragon and Baron before the other team has had a chance to regroup.  This is why Fnatic has gone undefeated in the main season of the Summer Split: Fnatic never gives a team the chance to go back and lick their wounds.