NA LCS Relegation/Promotion Preview - Group B

This is the second installment in a series thats looking over the North American Promotion/Relegation Tournament on May 10th to May 12th. The first installment is here, which covers Quantic Gaming, Team Astral Poke, and compLexity Gaming. Today second installment covers Velocity eSports, the Hedgehog Brigade, and Team MRN.

The LCS Promotion tournament comes at a very intriguing time, as the two "weaker" LCS teams, MRN and compLexity look the strongest they have all season, and two traditional powers, Dignitas and Counter Logic Gaming, look weak and vunerable. Wheras Velocity's ascension into the LCS seemed like almost a certainty four weeks ago, with its recent struggles and MRN's surprising rise, Group B looks like one of the most exciting groups in the Promotion tournament, and the Promotion match should be one of the closest.

Velocity eSports

Velocity eSports, formerly DirtNap Gaming, has been the second strongest team in the Challenger Circuit this Season, winning the MLG Rising Star Invitational, coming in second at MLG Summer's Challenger tournament, and third in the WWDIO Cup. However, the team hasn't played a major match since the team's veteran Mid laner, Neil "Pr0lly" Hammad left for compLexity during the LCS's eighth week, whom had been with this iteration of the DirtNap squad since its inception. This leaves Velocity eSports in the awkward position of not having competed on a tournament stage with their current line-up and lacking their main shotcaller. However, most of Velocity's players have been on rotating semi-professional squads since Season 2, so they've become used to the revolving door that Challenger rosters have become.

Velocity's Top Laner, Cristian "Cris" Rosales is a perfect example of that, as he was on a vVv squad that wasn't stagnant for more than a month. Cris is known as being a solo-queue hero and rose to prominance due to his Riven play and a widely known attitude. He still plays her, along with other mid-game brawlers, like Rumble, Rengar, and Renekton, and has shown well against most other Challenger top laners. However, certain teams, like Quantic and the former Dignitas Challenger squad, have punished him for his tendency to go all in as soon as he hits level 6. Expect his lane to be an extremely active one throughout their games.

Their Jungler is Andrew "Nk Inc" Erickson, who played on a very strong Meat Playground squad for much of the Preseason and played Moscow 5 hard at IPL 5. He prefers to play very tanky jungler such as Shen and Cho'Gath, and has benefited from the shift back toward CC heavy junglers. Velocity tends to play along with a slower paced jungle, and Erickson's ganks aren't often, but often are of high quality. Expect him to close in on Cris' lane around level 4. Joseph "Vileroze" Bourassa was picked up to replace Pr0lly in the middle lane, but there are some questions about his experience. While Bourassa has been a high-elo player for a long time, his only two stints on the professional level have been with the short-lived Monomaniac Dominatus and Complexity Academy squads. He plays a wide variety of champions, and has shown mastery on assassin champions like Kha'Zix and Zed.

Ainslie "frommaplestreet" Wyllie is the AD Carry for Velocity, and he enjoys playing incredibly aggressive AD Carries. Frommaplestreet has shown a love for aggressive Carries, such as Draven, and hopes to join his older brother, TSM's TheOddOne, in the LCS. He is supported by former Pulse/dignitas Support player, Evan "Evaniskus" Stevens. Evaniskus is known to play more passive Supports such as Janna and Lulu, over the aggressive choices, however he also plays an incredibly aggressive Support Kayle. Expect to see that picked when Wyllie picks up Draven, leading to a terrorizing bottom lane.

Hedgehog Brigade, aka The Salad Bar

Back after their loss in the Season 3 Spring Qualifiers is The Salad Bar, this time qualifying under the moniker Hedgehog Brigade. Known as a team of high-elo Normal queue players, The Salad Bar didn't do well, losing to Azure Gaming and Cloud 9 to get eliminated. However, TSB has shown a a huge amount of life in the weekly Go4LoL tournaments, and they have placed in the top 3 of the last three tournaments. Once again, The Salad Bar hopes to show that its possible for a group of players that just love the game to get up to the professional level.

They're led by Edmund "EHomda" Hom, who is the team's Mid laner. Teams need to ban out Twisted Fate against him, as it is by far his most dominant carry, but EHomda has a wide variety of mid laners, and plays Xerath and  Syndra at a very high skill level. Kevin "Hirishin" Duong is the Top laner for the Brigade. He shows a preference for Renekton and Rumble, but similarly to EHomda, has a deep champion pool. He still plays Kayle in the top lane, with an AP heavy build.

Alex "GhostZero" Dubois is their Jungler, and unlike much of the Junglers in the relegation tournament, he's still running Lee Sin and Xin Zhao in the Jungle. Outside carry Junglers, he tends to run good dueling Junglers like Volibear and Jarvan IV. George "DkBnet" Truong runs as the team's AD Carry. DkBnet still runs two members of Season 2's Holy Trinity of AD Carries quite often, Ezrael and Graves, and fills out his roster with Caitlyn and Varus. He often goes on the aggressive with his lanemate, David "ArcZSlash" Pham, who runs Sona and Lulu, alongside Thresh. Expect DkBnet to pick up a Blade of the Ruined King almost no matter what. 

Team MRN

Team MRN fell into Relegations after coming one game short of GGU during the Spring Season, having a brutal Week 10 that saw the team split the games 2-2, winning against CLG and compLexity, but losing to Curse and TSM. A team known for playing extremely streaky, MRN showed that they deserved to be in the LCS, but did it too late for them to crawl out of the hole they made for themselves early in the season. The team is centered around playing a two Carry composition much of the time, behind Patrick "MegaZero" Glinsman in Top lane and Zach "Nientonsoh" Malhas, one of the strongest AD Carries in North America.

MegaZero has shown that he's able to duel with any Top laner in North America, and his crucial weakness that was exposed in the beginning of the season, his poor 2v1 matchup, has faded away as the season continued. MegaHero's most sucessful champion during the Spring Split was Renekton, and he is at home on champions that put out massive burst damage, such as Akali. During the latter portions of the season, he showed that he wasn't unable to play tankier Tops, however, and has a very deep champion pool that includes Malphite and Shen.

MRN's Mid laner, Tyler "ecco" Spesick is often who determines the success of MRN, as when he wins his lane, MRN usually wins the game. He usually plays poke heavy champions, with his pool being dominated by Nidalee, Lux, Anivia, Karthus and Twisted Fate. If he isn't playing a poking champion, he's diving into the enemy team with Kha'Zix, Diana, or Katarina. His early aggression makes him succeptible to early ganks, but that weakness has gone away as he's gained experience at the competitive level. 

Clark "ClakeyD" Smith is MRN's Jungler, and is... well, inconsistant. He can dominate games one day, and completely chuck away the game afterwards. Look for him to play Jarvan IV, as it was by far his most successful champion during the Spring Season, and he might bring Trundle in, even if the game isn't being played after the Frejlord patch's quality of life improvements.

ClakeyD is one of the most aggressive counterjunglers in the NA LCS, and this has been both to his benefit and to his detriment, as more than one game has been started with him being caught in the enemy's red side Jungle. MRN's bottom lane is Nientonsoh and their former AD, Peter "Heartbeat" Lim, playing Support.

Nientonsoh has been a catalyst for MRN's success, and much of this has been because teams have allowed him to get Vayne, which should be almost certainly a permanently banned champion against him at this point. Heartbeat is MRN's play caller and plays Lulu predominantly, while also playing Janna and Thresh, and his goal seems to be to simply peel for Nientonsoh during teamfights. They are also one of the few duo lanes in the LCS that can be happy to just sit back and farm, rather than presenting massive amounts of pressure.

 

Expectations and Predictions

Group B's first match, between Hedgehog Brigade and Velocity, isn't as clear cut as it has some have made it seem. Velocity is still reeling from the loss of its shot caller in Pr0lly. That being said, Velocity has experience on the tournament scene, and the Salad Bar's only live experience was a 0-2 drumming out of the Qualifiers. 

Velocity 2 - 1 The Salad Bar

However, the Promotion matchup is a rematch of the final match of the Qualifiers, a 2-0 stomping that MRN put on DirtNap. The Cris/MegaZero matchup often goes MegaZero's way, and Nientonsoh has had the number on this team for quite a long time. Follow that up with dissaray and a hungry MRN squad, and you'll have MRN coming back in the Fall.

MRN 3 - 1 Velocity

Coming up next: Group C - Team Summon, Fidelis, and Team Dignitas.