Well it’s been 1 week of games, meaning each team has played one best of three, so it’s time to overreact to everything that’s happened so far!
If you followed the articles I wrote last season, you’ll probably remember a more detailed breakdown of each individual game, talking about individual plays with clips about every fight and most of the kills.
We’re not going to be doing that this season. It’s incredibly time consuming and half of the time is just me fanboying about Paz. Instead, it’s important to focus on trends. Where we were correct in our assessments, where we were wrong, and what we can do better going forward. Last week, we listed a power ranking of where we thought the teams would be based on the off-season roster changes, so we’re going to continue updating that throughout the season.
This week, we’re going to be focusing on how the newcomers are looking: V3 Esports and the new imports we’re seeing on every team.
So what happened this week?
| Team A | Score | Score | Team B |
|---|---|---|---|
| PGM | 2 | 1 | V3 |
| USG | 2 | 0 | RJ |
| DFM | 2 | 1 | 7h |
As a brief overview of how the sets actually went, it’s important to keep in mind the following: PENTAGRAM starts 0-1 in their first five sets of the season, per Riot’s ruling. While we all have our own opinions on exactly HOW stupid this ruling actually is (why are the players being punished?) it will nonetheless affect the team’s standings and possibly have an effect on their playoffs chances.
PENTAGRAM vs V3 Esports
Firstly, PENTAGRAM vs V3 Esports was not a close series. To me, this largely seems to because of V3’s unwillingness to lose slowly. They will make aggressive plays even while behind in order to try and come back, something that they should be praised for. While it didn’t work well this last week, as PENTAGRAM moved and reacted to V3’s actions very competently, the issue is a difference in scale, not a difference in kind. Continuing to look for plays is good, they just need to be smarter about which risks they are willing to take.
Unsold Stuff Gaming vs Rascal Jester
The second set, USG against Rascal Jester, did not look good at all. Unsold Stuff Gaming looks just as good as they did last season. While they lost REMIND, Haretti, and Neo (who is now playing in Turkey), the acquisitions of Tussle and Gango have clearly paid off. Gango is very aggressive and even earned a pentakill in his first game on stage. He does some odd things with his build, like Trinity Force Statikk Shiv Ezreal, but they so clearly outclassed their opponents that it didn’t really matter. WyverN is basically the only glimmer of hope for Rascal Jester right now, who look just as unimpressive as I had expected.
DetonatioN FocusMe vs 7th Heaven
I wasn’t sure what to make of this matchup. I had ranked 7th heaven highly in last week’s article, and some members of the community had seriously questioned that assessment. I’m not sure if this set vindicated my thoughts or not. Ceros continues to play his own meta, bringing out Ziggs and Heimerdinger in their first set. What’s clear about 7th Heaven though, is that they do not have a top laner that can hold their own against the top 3 of Paz, Evi, and apaMEN. Given the counterpick multiple times, he lost laning phase incredibly hard against Evi. Evi’s so good though, he topped the damage charts for his team in two games, and getting beat by Ceros’ Heimerdinger by less than a thousand damage in Game 3. The rest of the map did passably against their opponents, and Haretti managed to maintain a CS@10 lead in every game. Rokenia even managed to find a solo kill against Ceros in the midlane.
The largest issue was that 7h was in many ways playing a 4v5, as raizin was just never relevant. The fact remains though, that they won a game when they put raizin on a tank.
Standings
| Place | Team | Set Record | Game Record | Joushi Tier List |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | USG | 1-0 | 2-0 | A |
| 1 | PGM | 1-0 | 2-1 | A |
| 1 | DFM | 1-0 | 2-1 | A |
| 4 | 7h | 0-1 | 1-2 | B |
| 4 | V3 | 0-1 | 1-2 | B |
| 4 | RJ | 0-1 | 0-2 | C |
The gaps between times appears much less stark than what I might have imagined prior to seeing the teams play. In the games that DFM won, they looked very good, able to push forward and take objectives and play the more standard League of Legends that often defined their playstyle last season. The game they lost was pretty even leading up to the 40 minute Baron fight, where we had praised them last season. During playoffs, I recall remarking that a standard game that revolved around a late game Baron fight would always be a win for DFM. They messed up that streak this last week.
The “Joushi Tier List” will be trying to create tiers of teams, rather than absolute rankings. Japan has often been a two team region (Rampage vs DetonatioN) with a third team sometimes making waves (this has been USG and 7h in the past). A team in a tier could conceivably beat, or lose to, any other team in their tier. They should usually beat any team in a tier lower than they are, and a difference in two tiers means they are unlikely to drop a game.
Right now, both 7h and V3 seem like they could definitely sometimes take games off of the top three teams, who are all looking quite strong. Rascal Jester remains the red-headed step-child of the LJL, and frankly if their performance this week was any indication, I see them playing in relegations at the end of the split.
How are the New Imports Doing?
| Team | Tag | Role | Success Level |
|---|---|---|---|
| USG | Gango | ADC | 5 |
| PGM | Once | Jungle | 4 |
| PGM | Gaeng | Support | 3 |
| V3 | E hi | Mid | 3 |
| V3 | Smile | Jungle | 3 |
| RJ | Fanxy | Mid | 2 |
We’re going to be focusing only on imports that are new this season, as a comprehensive list of imports would not only take a long time but also go over so many players that are well known in the scene at this point.
USG Gango is good. Drawing multiple Draven bans as a former KR challenger known for his aggressive playstyle, he has taken control of the two games he has played thus far. While potentially an overreaction from Week 1, having only seen him play against a weak set of opponents, he is already showing himself to be a valuable counterpart to Enty’s playmaking abilities on the tanky supports that popular right now.
PGM Once replacing Tussle is an interesting trade to make. While Once is still showing a penchant for more aggressive junglers like Kha’zix and Jarvan, he doesn’t show the same early game aggression that allowed Rampage to snowball a lot of their early games. He’s shown himself as much more of a pressure oriented jungler than a playmaking jungler in their first set, building small advantages over time.
PGM Gaeng looks to be a pretty net neutral trade to make when compared to Dara in terms of ability. Perhaps a bit better at laning, perhaps a bit worse at roaming. The biggest drawback I’m currently seeing in terms of the replacements PENTAGRAM has made is they don’t appear to have clear playmakers. Paz has underperformed against cogcog, Ramune has never been well known as a playmaker, and YutoriMoyasi plays closer to a Rekkles style of ADC, only flashing forward if he’s incredibly confident in the play. Gaeng and Once are good players relative to the field, but not having a playmaker could hurt the team later on.
V3 E hi and V3 Smile are almost a package deal in terms of how they’re working together. In their individual matchups, they aren’t anything to write home about. E hi was behind in CS@5 and CS@10 against Ramune despite having the counterpick both times. He also doesn’t seem to play Azir which could hurt them right now. While Ramune is not a bad mid laner by any stretch of the imagination, he is merely adequate at the highest level of Japanese competition. Failing to outperform Ramune raises serious questions about how he will do when matched up against Rokenia and Ceros.
Smile is very willing to make aggressive plays, which makes me expect that he may be a key voice in the team’s communications. Again he looked solid, but matched up against Once, he failed to show himself as a standout player.
It’s hard to rate RJ Fanxy fairly. The rest of his team is just so lackluster that it’s difficult to tell how his individual play figures into the equation. He’s done about as well as Gariaru in the laning phase, but the rest of the map is losing so hard that going even is insufficient.
So what did we learn?
Well, the biggest surprise we had this week was that 7th Heaven actually took a game off of DFM. Otherwise this week went pretty much according to plan. The top 3 teams beat the bottom 3 teams.
This next week will be pretty pivotal to the rest of the season. V3 vs Rascal Jester ought to go V3’s way, and USG is probably going to win against 7h, but there’s more room for upset here than you might otherwise expect. The real match to watch though has to be the newest incarnation of the Rampage v DetonatioN rivalry now that the former has rebranded. We’ll get a much better idea of how the top half of the bracket shapes up.
Unfortunately, it looks like my schedule is unlikely to permit me to do a broadcast of the games in English, either live or as a rebroadcast. Even this is coming out only shortly before the games of Week 2 (though I didn’t watch quickly because I was trying to find time to broadcast). We’ll continue to get these articles out though, because #WildCardRegionsMatter
Cheers!
