The Champions Summer's first week started with unexpected stalemates.
The Ups
The first team that surprised us was once again, SKT S. SKT S is often called 'Snatic' in Korea because they play really well when they pick up their own pace. The team has once made a draw against SKT K and stopped their legacy of continueous victories starting from The Champions 2013-2014 Winter. They defeated Samsung Ozone (Now White) in LOL Masters also. This season SKT S surprised the League Of Legends community by defeating Samsung White in their second match of LTC.
- Wolf's brilliant Solar Flare stuns Pawn and Imp, taking out two main dps out of the game
The team showed amazing improvement of strategy and snowballing in their second match, following Samsung White's pace even though they had a lackluster start. Samsung White, on the other hand showed heavy misplay by Dandy and Looper, who's greed caused them to be punished from the start. The best performing player so far is SKT S's support player Wolf, who showed amazing use of Solar Flare, turning the game's tide to the team.
The second team that showed amazing improvement is Jin Air Falcons Jin Air Falcons was infamous for their continual defeat of all Spring season matches of BOTH LTC and Masters. After losing 12 matches in total, no one have predicted that the weakest will tie against Najin White Shield, the runner-up for Spring season of LTC in a David vs. Goliath matchup.
- XD's brilliant Tidal Wave completely ruins NJWS's teamfight
However, the steady and solid plays from GBM and outstanding plays from the Falcons top laner Rock and Support XD broke NJWS's Barrier . Rock, playing as Top Gragas, completely dominated teamfights with strong damage and tanking. This is the first time in recent patches we've seen solo lane Gragas do well as Invictus Gaming's new Korean top laner Yongsoo has been struggling with it.
Rock utilizing top lane Gragas in their games against Najin White Shield.
XD showed amazing use of Aqua Prison and effective uses of Tidal Wave, showing how important a good support's influence has become since the winter season of LTC.
Congratulations to the Falcons, winning a hard and meaningful match.
Thanks to SKT S and Falcons, LTC Summer had a fun start with "upsets" to kick off the league.
General Overview:
The previous Winter season and the appearance of the almighty SKT T1 K resulted in other Korean teams raising their mechanics and game play structures. As a result, Korean professional teams were able to fight evenly in the Spring season, which were dominated by both Samsung Teams who added creative drafting phase and teamfight prowess to their teams.
This summer season is great because the other teams who received poor scores throughout the 2014 season like Jin Air or SKT S brought strategic and creative drafting to defeat classically identified strong teams like Najin White Shield or Samsung White. This shows that picking out OP champions or perfecting their picks by strong, classical means is not always an advantage anymore. If traditionally powerful teams want to achieve solid scores in LTC Summer, they must create or be able to counter these, or they might not even be able to make out of Ro.16 of The Champions, a constantly evolving and hyper-competitive league.
The Downs
If there are Ups, then there are teams who also go down. Although we cannot downgrade Samsung White or Najin White Shield too much, we can definetly say something about KT Bullets.
- Both Mafa and Ryu's skills miss, giving Ohq a chance to survive and win the teamfight
Traditional KT Bullets fans were disappointed with the first match and the team fighting presented against Najin Black Sword. All of the KT Bullets' lanes lacked comparing to NJBS. Especially the Ohq and Cain duo thwarted Mafa and Score, setting the pace for the entire game.
Ryu made a crtical mistake taking Nagne's blue buff, which basically let NJBS advance foward in mid lane and take advantage in teamfights. To look on the bright side, KT Bullets haven't lost their unique colors- appropriate calls were attempted and opportunities to fight back were sought after. Mafa tried to stun and take out Ohq with Crescendo, but it failed. There was a brief issue and pauses claiming it was a bug, but was decided that it was a visual error, not a bug.
The issue with KT Bullets:
KT Bullets have showed unreasonable line-ups and position changes. Last summer they brought Kakao to KT Bullets' jungle even when they had the world's best jungler in the team. During the Spring season, KT Bullets was ruined because they replaced the jungler with Zero, and then back to inSec.
Now, they brought previous mid laner Ryu to the jungle, and even shoved GimGoon in the first match against NJBS when they already had Limit, who showed strong plays in Masters and NLB.
To make the long story short, KT Bullets keep making fundamental mistakes. If they want to survive in Ro.16, which seems hard since Falcons, who were considered the weakest team made a tie with NJWS, they need to improve their teamwork and lane presence at the same time. With time short for KT Bullets, it'll be an uphill battle.
