So Picks and Bans did Win the Game. Mostly.

               For those of you that did not partake in the spectacle of the League of Legends world finals than you missed out on well… A bit of a stomp to be frank.  SK Telecom T1 ran right through China’s Royal Club in a convincing 3-0 fashion. While I had previously predicted a 3-1 victory by SKT I was quite surprised with the total sweep. One of the funny things about SKT is that they almost always lose the first 1-2 games in a best of X series. For whatever reason something happened on Friday night though, that allowed them to overcome that and crush on through. I will contribute a huge part of SKT victory to their Picks/Bans phase of the game, or maybe to Royal’s mistakes in the same phase.  There was a \ key error and a smart decision in champ select that I want to talk about myself.

               The first of these was ignoring Jax completely by Royal Club. I wouldn't criticize if they let it through in game one and then banned it out because of what a problem it caused.  If they had let it through twice and tried to counter it in game 2 I wouldn’t be upset. However, they let it through in all three games and Impact made himself known on the Grand master of Arms. (Jax) Malphite in game one would've had to get way in front of the Jax in order to stop the split pushing threat it created, although I applaud them for trying at least. The rumble pick in game two was only marginally better. Royal Club known with a Rumble in lane that Jax wouldn't immediately become a monster,  but like the rest of the picks in game 2 it resigned itself  to losing lane overall. Game 3 fell somewhat into the same boat as the first, a curious choice to lane a Kennan against the Jax, but smart rotations from SKT saw that game end by 20 minutes, which is about as fast as you can win a game of League.

               The smart decision from SKT was the consistent bans on Renekton and Annie. Not only are both these champions comfort picks for Royal Club, but both of them also fit into Royal Club’s fighting and dive oriented style of play. Removing the nigh invincible tank Renekton forced royal away from having a consistent tank that could really initiate a dive under the tower, while keeping Annie away from shot caller Tabe forced him to pick Sona in every single game, which allowed SKT to anticipate the pick and counter it in lane, thus making it very difficult for Sona to be effective.

               So yes, the finals were a stomp, guess what? It happens sometimes. Some teams just show up much more prepared and hungrier for a championship than others. It happens. Stop complaining to Riot about it, it’s not like they wanted a stomp either. Close series bring in more viewers, fact. Congrats to SK Telecom Team One regardless. 

Look at them in their nerdy glory!

Why Picks and Bans Could Decide Season 3.

Tonight, possibly the largest event in E-sports history will talk place. Scratch that, this will be the largest event in E-sports. At Nine P.M. Mountain time, at the Staples centers in Los Angeles SK Telecom Team One of Korea will face off with Royal Club of China for the League of Legends Season Three championship and the Summoner’s cup. The clash will be for the ages, as vastly different styles of play clash against one another and I am absolutely hyped up about this.

Oddly enough, the part of tonight that I am most excited about will probably be the Picks and Bans phase of the game. Since this is my favourite part of the game I’m going to go pretty in depth about how this phase of the game goes. Ready for a pretty in depth look at what is only a 5 minutes portion of the game?! Yeah you are! Let’s go! I’ll be using some terminology you might now be familiar with so I’ll explain them at the end.

First off we look at what sides each team are on. There is the Blue side and the red side. Blue side bans and picks first. So Blue selects a champion (character) to ban away from play. Then red side team bans a champion and this goes on two more times and we have three cham

pions banned on each side. Then the blue side again takes the 1st of five picks. After that the red side takes their 1st and 2nd pick, blue then takes 2nd and 3rd picks, red 3rd and 4th pick, blue 4th and 5th pick and finally red takes the last and 5th pick for their team. After this the picks/bans portion of the game ends and the actual game begins.

So why on earth does this interest me so much? Because games are won and lost at this phase. Im serious, sometimes teams outpick their opponents and the game pretty much ends right there. Not really, but anyone with a brain thats seen league played before can see what's coming. This could be especially true in tonight's matches because both teams are so good that if they do outpick their opponents they will not screw it up. This is why I believe that this phase of the game will be so crucial tonight. So without further ado lets go into what I think will be important bans and picks tonight!

I’ll go through this position by position. (There are 5, top, jungle, mid, ad carry and support.) First top lane picks and bans. From SKT T1 I expect to see Renekton banned away, Royal Club’s top laner GoDlike has shown excellent proficiency with the champion and it fits Renek fits in so well with a dive/fighting focused team. He can jump headfirst into big fights or towers and often come out the other end alive because of how tanky he is. With picks I think SKT T1 will be looking for either Shen to give a solid tank/split pusher with a global or Jax to become a split pushing monster. Royal Club will probably be required to ban out Jax in nearly every single game unless they want to make a move with GoDlike playing it himself.

The jungle is going to probably be the most boring part of picks/bans tonight. Both Lucky and Bengi of Royal Club and SKT T1 respectively have shown a huge preference to play differant junglers and neither one of them has been game breaking enough to require a ban. So Expect to see Bengi play Lee Sin and Lucky on Elise unless something weird happens.

Mid lane is one of the most interesting because of what a huge emphasis has been put on this slot throughout the tournament. In the beginning of the world championships everyone was talking about Assassin Champions in the mid lane. That being Champions that were very adept at picking out a single target of a team and eliminating them quite quickly. Many games occurred when every single popular assassin was banned out entirely because of how dangerous it was to allow it onto the opposing team. Fizz, Ahri and Zed, and even Kassadin if you were playing the European Fnatic squad were heavily banned out. I expect this trend to continue. Three of the six bans will probably be spent on teams making sure those champs are not played. Both teams have created strategies that fix this problem though. Faker of SKT T1 has found two solutions actually. The first being a rapid expansion of his champion pool to include unconventional assassins like Lissandra and Riven, and the second being to focus on more utility like mid champions such as Gragas and Orianna. Wh1t3zZ of Royal Club more on utility champions solution more with all three of their wins against Fnatic coming from him playing the Utility champs like Orianna and Kayle. I expect Orianna to be a very high priority pick from both teams tonight and would even go to say that it will be likely to see the red side team banning the champ away every time. That will mean that most likely 4/6 bans will be devoted to mid laners. Huge impact on the game.

The bottom lane with AD carries and Support I’ll talk about together since they go to the same lane. This will be a very interesting lane to see played out, but I don't think many interesting things will happen with picks/bans here. There simply aren't enough bans to go around with so many going to the mid lane. I think a contested pick will be Caitlyn just due to how safe she is, with all that range and solid scaling into late game I won't be surprised if either Piglet or Uzzi pick her. However, I also wouldn't be surprised to see Uzzi and Tabe of Royal Club to go with the Twitch and Annie lane if neither of them is banned out. Piglet will play Ezreal, Cait or Vayne. I don’t think Corki is going to that important of a pick, but I could be wrong. Uzzi will be looking for Twitch, Vayne or Cait. Tabe will play Annie if available or Sona if not, Poohmando likewise will play Zyra if available and probably thresh if not.

So there you have it, my thoughts and what champions are going to be played, banned and be critical in whoever is going to win tonight. Good luck and have fun to both teams! PS I’m on the Korean hype train and think SKT T1 will win in a 3-1 score line.

Dive - When a player pushes forward into a enemies tower to initiate a fight, its dangerous because enemy towers do a lot of damage to your character and quickly.

Split pushing - When one member of a team goes into a lane and attempts to force the other team to react to it. Usually done by either a champion with a global or one that is a very strong duelist forcing the enemy team to send more than 1 person to stop it and that puts that team in a bad posistion.

Assassin - A champion that specializes in picking a specific target out and eliminating them very quickly. Didn’t really need an explanation did it?

Champion Pool - Every player has a list of Champions that they feel comfortable playing in a competitive setting. That is their pool.

AD carry - a character designed to inflict very large amounts of physical damage but is very weak on the defensive. Think glass cannon.

Yes, I'm aware that SKT T1's bot lane is named Pooh and Piglet. I am aware. Its adorable.