To Whom Do We Pledge Now? Welcome to Week 2 of Worlds
To say that Week 1 of Worlds was the wildest ride in Worlds’ history would have been an understatement.
Many of the teams favored to skate by their groups, their dominance guaranteed, ended up completely missing the mark. None more so than China’s top team, LGD Gaming. Despite winning in what was once traditionally known as the best region in the world, LGD managed to go 0-3 in Week 1 and earning the new moniker: Lose Group D.
With Week 2 just a day and a few hours away, we look back at some interesting tidbits that might help you understand what teams are coming in with this week.
A helpful tool as Garena’s Pledge feature allows fans of the games to essentially offer up their in-game Influence Points to bet on the outcome of matches at Worlds. With the 2015 Worlds tournament proving that there are no teams that stand head and shoulders above the rest, fans are finding it difficult to predict who to root for.
Today, I’ll be sharing some of my picks for the teams that you should be pledging for to get that sweet, sweet victory, along with my reasoning for their success.
Teams not included in these lists are by no means bad (Counter Logic Gaming for life), but I do expect them to perform more or less the same as last week.
An aside — While still undefeated and still tournament favorites, I have decided NOT to write about SK Telecom for this week. I do not expect them to drop any matches, but it really does seem that something is not quite right with the premier Korean squad in this year’s grand tournament. Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok has been quietly winning and letting his teammates shine. SKT 1 is looking like a team that wants to silently dominate and pull out all the stops later on, in the knockout rounds.
Let’s Go:
The Good Bets
Cloud 9: Oh C9. The new darling of North American LoL. There’s no denying that C9 truly stepped up this week, with their exploits even appropriating some good old memes from the other North American darling of 2015, Counter Logic Gaming.
While many spectators and fans are justifiably hyped by An “Balls” Le’s Pentakill and overall decidedly not Diamond 2 level display of skill in Week 1, I truly think that the team’s success can be attributed to another person: their shotcaller, captain and jungler: Hai “Hai” Lam.
As the in-game communications logs from the weekend revealed, Hai basically marshalled his team into victory in all of their games, even giving birth to some new memes along the way. His clear, level-headed approach to objective control and making sure the C9 bottom lane took their turrets early and often were key to their wins.
But even more importantly, Hai showed that he truly does have some mechanical chops in the jungle, playing Lee Sin and Elise with a total KDA ratio of 5.0, and accounting for 26 assists in three games.
I expect C9 to continue their winning ways not soley because of Hai, but because Hai’s presence truly makes C9’s carries shine. Nicolaj “Incarnati0n” Jensen and Zachary “Sneaky” Scuderi both enjoyed monstrous games in Week 1 as Azir and Tristana made short work of towers and eventually, short work of opposing champions.
All in all, look to C9 to take towers early and have one or two late game ranged carries this week — all tied down together by a ringleader in the jungle.
Origen: If you play solo queue then chances are you’ve at least come across that one person who “knew” the outcome of the game just by looking at the compositions. For all I know, you could be that person.
But if there ever was any truth to the fact that a team can win a match at champion select, then Origen is that team.
Origen played some of Worlds 2015’s best matches and a lot of those were thanks to some truly creative composition at the pick and ban phase.
Against TSM, Origen pulled out a truly exciting Anivia, Braum and Lulu composition to shut down Marcus “Dyrus” Hill on the Darius. Where other teams snatched up the Lulu for a classic JuggerMaw or Protect the AD Carry style, Origen stumped TSM by choosing to instead protect Enrique “xPeke” Cedeño Martínez’s Anivia.
Against KT Rolster (my personal pick for the best game thus far of Worlds 2015), Origen decided to never engage KT Rolster’s superior team fighting line-up composed of Ekko, Kog’Maw and Alistar and instead opted to split-push their way into victory through xPeke’s Twisted Fate and their shining star, Paul “sOAZ” Boyer on the Fiora.
Indeed, xPeke Worlds Buff jokes aside, Origen seems to be the best at capitalizing on the Chinese teams’ true weakness in this tournament: their sub-par drafts.
It’s been long speculated that ultra-competitive nature of the Chinese region has finally done them more harm than good. With the eastern teams pumping out really inbred compositions, Origen is raking over the returns hand-over-fist as they pull out some intelligent counters to some ultimately predictable strategies.
Samsung Blue's Deft vs an alpaca: a study pic.twitter.com/vtjZ6L4tUg
— MonteCristo (@MonteCristo) April 13, 2014
Edward Gaming: EDG, China’s only saving grace after the first four days of Worlds 2015, has many strengths going their way.
While many of their compositions have issues similar with their other regional counterparts, EDG’s strong jungle, bottom lane and midlane presence have pulled them out of sticky situations last weekend.
Tian “Meiko” Ye and Kim “Deft” Hyuk-kyu combine to be a truly terrifying force to be reckoned with. Against H2K, meiko’s Annie essentially destroyed any hope that H2K’s AD Carry and Support would ever get off the ground. Meanwhile, Deft essentially took over the mid game, scoring a perfect 6-0-9 on Kalista.
Heo “PawN” Won-seok and Ming “ClearLove” Kai on the other hand, essentially dominated in their roles in the games that they won. PawN particularly wowed the crowd with a Kassadin pick and flanked an already well-behind AD Carry for H2k.
But even in the game that they lost to tournament juggernaut SKT 1, EDG still showed that they had the mechanical skill to keep up…right up to the point where they lost.
In total, EDG has the individual skill to pull them out of games where their draft choices might serve to pull them downwards. After a week to re-calibrate and adjust their strategies to the metagame that is Worlds, I fully expect EDG to perform better this week and close out the Group Stages in a convincing fashion.
Right behind SK Telecom, of course. I’ll be personally pledging my support for EDG in all of their games sans against SKT 1 and I do expect to be handsomely rewarded for it.
There you have it. My picks for the best teams to bank on this weekend. Is your team not included? Agree or disagree with my picks? Let me know in the comments below!
You can follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/thepaolosaur for live updates of the games!
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