Summoner's Insight: An In-Depth Look at LCS Team Compositions - Week 4 EU LCS

Welcome to Summoner's Insight. In this new article series I will be taking an in-depth look at the way teams in both the EU and NA LCS ban and pick team compositions, and what this means for them as individual players, and also as a team. I will be starting with week 4 of the EU LCS but as of week 5 I will be covering both the EU and NA LCS.

Please note this is not a play-by-play recap of the game. It is an analysis of  each teams pick/ban phase and how this translates into the game.

This week I will be analyzing Fnatic taking on Meet Your Makers.

 

 

Bans

 

Fnatic:
Ryze
Shen
Jayce

These bans are fairly standard from Fnatic. Ryze, Jayce and Shen have all seen lots of play as top lane bullies that transition through the mid and late game extremely well. They all fair well in 2v1 lanes, and while Ryze is notably weaker in this regard, he still has the ability to play safe and scale up. This is something which a lot of teams all of over the world have struggled to deal with.

As well as being a strong force in the top lane, mid lane Jayce boasts non-stop poke (provided he has blue buff,) as well as having the potential to decimate squishy midlaners in one combo. Expect to see Jayce maintain a high priority pick/ban rate, at least until his planned nerfs.

MYM
Nunu
TF
Thresh

Meet Your Makers also came out with a generic ban phase plan. Nunu's changes in patch 3.7 have made him a very strong counter jungler, with the ability to steal buffs with a Consume that does more damage (600) at rank 1 than smite (460 + (lvl x 30) = 490), as well as being able to run away from enemies attempts to collapse on him through a combination of the slow from his Ice Blast and the move speed buff on Bloodboil. He has the potential to entirely remove the enemy junglers presence from the jungle, and his objective control mid to late game is something that no team wants to have to deal with.

Twisted Fate is a very common ban against any team, but this ban is also very much targeted at Xpeke. The amount of pressure Xpeke has been able to exert while splitpushing is phenomenal, and the rest of Fnatic's ability to safely disengage any potential 4v5 only makes playing against Xpeke's Twisted Fate even more difficult. 

Thresh is in interesting ban in this game, however. This is the first week that Fnatic were playing with their new support Yellowstar (formerly their AD Carry). Yellowstar would have had very little time to practice Thresh, and as such I am surprised MYM didn't try leaving Thresh open, and either force Fnatic to first pick it (over priority picks such as Elise) or leave it open for MYM to pick it up themselves. This may have been an oversight on MYM's part, or they simply see Thresh as more of a threat than champions like Elise.

Nunu, the jungle terror of 3.7.

 

Picks

FNC;

Top -Soaz - Elise
Jungle - Cyanide - Jarvan IV
Mid - Xpeke - Orianna
ADC - Psuzu- Varus
Support - Yellowstar- Sona

MYM;

Top-Kubon-Zac
Jungle- Mokatte -Nocturne
Mid - Czaru -Zilean
ADC - Makler -Draven
Support - Libik-Zyra

 

Some very interesting team comps going on here, so I'll start off with Fnatic.

Elise is one of Soaz's most played champions this split, as well as being one of his most successful, being picked 3 times with2 victories (before this match.) She is a very versatile champion, as she can be played effectively everywhere except AD Carry. She also has a wide variety of itemisation choices, meaning she works well with many team compositions, and against many team compositions. This makes her a strong pick overall, but also a comfort pick for Soaz. Elise also has interesting interactions with Orianna, which I will go over in a moment.

The other 4 picks for Fnatic realy need to be spoken about together. The 4 together form a heavy engage composition, with the classic "wombo combo" ultimates, with every member having AoE CC. The way Fnatic want to fight is fairly simple. They want to look for Elise to land a cocoon on a priority target, and force the other team to react. While the opposing team scrambles to save the person who is stunned, Jarvan leaps into their backline with his E - Q - R combo, combined with the Orianna Command:Shockwave.

From here Fnatic have a few things to look at and react to accordingly.

1. Did Jarvan and Orianna CC the rest of the team? Did they CC anyone at all (did it miss)?

This is obviously a huge issue. If the chain of CC is not used correctly, Fnatic's teamfight power is significantly reduced. However if they layer it correctly it gives the rest of the team time to assassinate the target locked down by the cocoon, as well as putting down anywhere between 500 - 1000 damage (before resistances) to several targets. (Based on an Orianna a level 8 Orianna R-W-Q, combined with a level 6 Jarvan E -Q-R.) If this combo misses, aside from the potential damage missed, they would also lose out on a 0.75 second knock up, a 20% AoE slow, and a 400 range knockup/pull in displacement. That's pretty huge when you look at it in numbers.

Looks Deadly.

2. Is the initial target (the person who got cocooned) dead? 

If yes, mission successful. Provided the target was high enough priority, think ADC or mid, then the resulting 4v5 should be won by Fnatic, despite the fact they burned a lot of relatively long cooldowns. (This assumes, of course, teams are even. This would be a very different situation if they were 10k gold down trying to win a 4v5 without large cooldowns.) If the person is not dead, why not? How healthy are they? Can they escape? This is slightly less problematic than point number 1, as Fnatic still have 1.5 second AoE CC with Crescendo, and a 2 second single target CC with Chain of Corruption, which will spread to nearby targets.

"Just in case."

So what does this mean for Fnatic, and what are they trying to achieve with this team comp?

Fnatic are all about the teamfighting with this team. They want to take larger 4-5 man fights, with everyone level 6. Their early laning should be safe, and Jarvan's early ganking and skirmishing should keep the other team's lanes honest until level 6. The team isn't the best at taking towers quickly against in 1v1/ 2v2 situations, but are still pretty decent at it if they manage to kill their lane opponents after a successful gank, especially with Jarvan's Demacian Standard attack speed buff.

Once mid game rolls around, Fnatic have plenty of wave clear. Orianna and Varus can both clear waves very quickly to hold towers, while Elise, Jarvan and Sona are very good at catching oppenents transitioning between lanes and objectives.

Another strength of this team is it's objective control. With %HP damage on Elise's Q (Neurotoxin/Venomous Bite,) Varus popping stacks of  Blighted Quiver, and to a lesser extent, Jarvan's passive Martial Cadence, Fnatic are very fast at taking Baron and Dragon. They can also very quickly peel from these objectives to fight if needed. Conversely, if the enemy attempt to secure an objective without properly removing Fnatic vision, the natural clumping of targets that occurs while taking neutral monsters favours this AoE comp.

The ultimate goal of this team comp is to make it through the early game without being too far behind, preferably even. Then they will group up near objectives, try to deny the enemy vision and teamfight. After hopefully wining a team fight with a clean ace or at least forcing a huge numbers/hp advantage in their favour, they will take an objective or two. From here they should look to apply safe pressure until the next objective. Mid game objective control should allow Fnatic to snowball into the late game with a gold lead large enough to see them able to close out the game.

Tons of %hp damage!

Now lets take a look at MYM.

MYM picked safe lanes. Zac and Zilean can both run away from ganks with relative ease, with Zilean having the added bonus of being able to farm from range. Zyra and Draven are naturally aggressive, on good Grasping Roots from Zyra could spell instant death for whoever gets caught, especially if Draven has landed a few unanswered Q enhanced auto attacks beforehand.

If Jarvan decides to try to gank this lane, a Grasping Root combined with 2 slowing plants and Draven's follow up damage could very quickly turn the gank around. This becomes even more risky once Nocturne hits level 6. His ultimate, Paranoia, allows him to charge in from up to 2000 units away. This allows him to easily turn a Jarvan gank around if he is in the area, or knows Jarvans location through strong warding. Nocturne also has the advantage of being fairly good at all aspects of jungling (while not really excelling at anything.) This means he can survive without first blue, can duel when needed, has pretty good pre-6 ganks, and a wide variety of build options.

 

But past lane phase, what does MYM do, and why is their AP mid Zilean?

This is where the magic happens. MYM know exactly what Fnatic want to do, and is where Zilean comes in. We already know what Fnatic are trying to achieve, either pick off one person off, or wombo combo.  Zilean prevents both of these scenarios.

But who does Zilean use Chrono Shift on?

This part of the team comp is something many people will find confusing. Zilean in his own right doesnt offer much as a straight up DPS mage. As a ultily mage, he is usually reserved for very niche comps that utilise 1 or more hypercarry style champions (Vayne, Kog, Jax etc) where he can give his ally an extra life. This basically says "the person im reviving does enough damage in two lives to make up for my lack of damage." So, with no hypercarry, what purpose does Zilean serve? 

In the first scenario outlined, Zilean simply saves the target initially stunned by Elise. If Fnatic use their combo to create space for the assassination, they effectively waste several long cooldown ultimates in exchange for 1 very short cooldown (180s), which becomes even shorter with Rewind, Blue Buff and CDR items. In theory, it simply does not matter who he decides to revive. As long as someone is revived after Fnatic's long cooldowns have been spent. 

Let them spend their cooldowns.

But what happens after this set of events?

The teamfight basically resets, allowing MYM to fight the way they would have wanted to in the first place - run at Fnatic with Draven, Nocturne, and Zac. Another little thing to note about Zilean is he can put his bombs on both Nocturne and Zac, which will allow him to damage enemies from a very safe distance, meaning he shouldn't have to use his ultimate on himself. Also, provided Zac has his passive Cell Division up,  he will not need to receive the Zilean ult.

The whole purpose of these revives is to delay.

When a team is looking to use long cooldowns to kill groups of people instantly, the simplest counter is to fight while they aren't up. Late game, this is rarely possible. However with a team of Champions that have the capability to live twice, you can create more opportunities to fight a favourable fight. 

 

I wonder why they don't all take revive?

 

Final Thoughts.

I won't spoil how the game played out, as thats not what I am here to do. That being said, I hope that gives you some insight on why these two teams picked the compositions they did. Over the course of the next few weeks I hope to be able to expand your knowledge on the thought process that professional players make.

This is my first article, so of course any comments and feedback would be well received. Tell me what you want to see me write about, as I'm always looking to improve.

I'd also like to say a massive thank you for taking the time to read this article, aspiring content creators such as myself seriously appreciate it. Really.

Finally a shameless plug of my Twitter, @FarlstonChew.