Dig into the Rift: The thought decisions behind the picks and plays

Welcome to a new weekly blog; Dig into the Rift. Before we get rolling with an analysis of the Curse vsTeam Dignitas match in week 7, I would like to give you an idea what to expect from this weekly blog.

The whole point of this blog is to step back, slow time, and see what went right, what went wrong, and what became what Bob Ross would call “a happy accident”. I will be covering the key points of each game where Team Dignitas either secures a solid win, or struggles and gives in to defeat, all while explaining the actual thought process that is what makes these pro players as amazing as they are. The key reason behind doing this is to help you, the reader, the player, the fan, the solo queue champion, turnaround and look at your own game play and expand your play style to better yourself.

So with that said, let’s get down to business.

 

The Setup.

Bans:

Team Dignitas: Jarvan IV, Zac, Elise

The bans this game were targets for both teams. Curse has been on an amazing winning streak and a lot of that centres around two areas. Cop and Edward are synergising a lot better these days, and SaintVicious has turned his game up to eleven. To kilter this balance Team Dignitas focuses almost all their bans on the enemy jungle. With Saint in a hot seat, they all have to be wary with his comfort picks gone.

Curse: Sona, Zed, Ryze

Curse, on the other hand, went for a broad spectrum on bans. They knew that Cop's passive style and Edward's harass could safely lane against a Thresh lane so they didn’t waste the ban on it, and instead went for one of Patoy’s strong picks, and removed Sona from the game, this was likely an attempt to bait Patoy into picking up Thresh or Nami, both scary picks on Edward. Further they took down one of Scarra’s comfort picks with the removal of Ryze, and with Zed removed the heavy assault on the tower from KiWiKiD.

Now let’s look at the picks between both teams.

Picks:

Team Dignitas
Support	Fiddlesticks	Jordan 'Patoy' Blackburn
Jungle	Lee Sin	Alberto ‘Crumbzz’ Rengifo
Top	Aatrox	Alan ‘KiWiKiD’ Nguyen
Marksman	Ezreal	Michael ‘Imaqtpie’ Santana
Middle	Kassadin	William ‘Scarra’ Li

From the outside looking in, this looks like a team I had in solo queue last week and lost miserably with, but instead it’s actually a very smart team composition. Look at the team, and count how many members are easily caught off guard, and cannot escape. One. Patoy is the only member with a difficult time escaping, unless you count his fear that lasts at least three hours; but I digress. Their whole team is designed to not be in the same spot for more than three seconds. This combination of champions has insane mobility, along with great split push potential from Aatrox’s lane clear, and their skirmish potential is huge. At any point you don’t know how many people could come over that wall and kill you.

And finally, you may be sitting here saying,”Yo, Kj. These guys have no team fight!”. Last I checked a Fiddle with zero ability power (which is unlikely to happen) does 1625 Magic Damage with Crowstorm. Tag that on Ezreal’s Ultimate, Aatrox’s knock-up and aoe slow, Kassadin's ability to chase down an ADC or aoe burst a whole team with his Force Pulse, and then you start to see the real power behind this composition.

 No this isn’t some randomised group of champions, this is a cold calculated team that keeps the enemy spending tons of gold on wards in constant fear of a gank awaiting them in a bush, or on the other side of a nearby wall.

Curse
Support	Thresh	Eduard ‘EDward’ Abgaryan
Jungle	Xin Zhao	Brandon ‘Saintvicious’ DiMarco
Top	Shen	Joedat 'Voyboy' Esfahani
Marksman	Twitch	David ‘Cop’ Roberson
Middle	Orianna	Chenglong ‘NyJacky’ Wang

Curse, with its previous wins, went again on the offensive with its picks. Picking up Shen meant that they had one lane that would be a pivotal defense. They could count on Voyboy to get farm, get fat, and use Stand United to come into whatever lanes are needed, especially with picks such as Xin Zhao and Twitch, they would be deep into the enemy's tower line.

The real shocker pick was the Xin Zhao pick, based on Saintvicious’ tweet earlier from the EU LCS and its heavy adaptation of Xin Zhao, the champion in his mind was a niche pick. However, with how Saintvicious and the rest of the Curse squad have been playing, this niche was fulfilled with the heavy dueling styles of Twitch and Thresh.

All and all looking at both teams, Curse did put some serious thought into their picks. They knew Shen would be able to last versus anything that Kiwi threw at Voyboy, and they knew that Xin Zhao would be the early game pressure they would need to get fresh kills on Twitch. What they didn’t count on, was that they would be dealing with a team that could hunt them down while they were inbound onto a gank. Nothing is less fun than being a jungle on his way to bottom lane, and having a random Kassadin and Lee Sin come out of literally nowhere.

Team Dignitas has been studying Curse’s recent play styles and changes, and they adapted to it in the picks and bans, now lets see how they executed this strategy for the win.

The Level One.
With the changes to the jungle spawns and gold value, level one has gotten more and more dicey. With the champions on the field, statistically speaking I give Curse the level one upper hand with what they brought to the table. Team Dignitas is aware of this, and you can tell by the positioning of their team in every entrance. Even though they have the spread vision, they increase their potential to not die at level one with two Doran’s Shields, on each of the solo laners. This in itself shows they respect the advantage Curse gave themselves in level one and don’t want to tango if they can avoid it.

The Lanes.
One thing we have always seen is the deep wards into the enemy jungle, and this is for two reasons. First and obvious is so you know where the enemy Jungler is and can prepare for a counter gank on the lane he goes to or apply pressure elsewhere with your Jungler and mid laner, or another lane for instance. Secondly, this is so they know who’s going where. Team Dignitas made a very smart play by sitting back, even if Curse decided to go into their jungle, they would have known exactly where wards were so they could then put into place their masterful plan.

Team Dignitas elected to send Kiwi’s Aatrox bottom into the two versus one lane. With most melee fighters this is going to cause you to be down on farm and get dived very easily, but not against Aatrox. His passive and his heal from Blood Thirst, allowed him to stay in the lane without getting pushed out too hard, on top of that the Doran’s shield added in some solid defense for him.

With this setup Team Dignitas created a two versus one for Voyboy as well. Shen isn’t a spectacular two versus one champion. He does a good enough job farming underneath his own tower, and when a jungler comes in for a gank he does a spectacular job in helping lock the enemy into place should he land his taunt, however....versus Ezreal and Fiddle he finds himself getting pummeled and pressured bad enough that Xin Zhao has to come top otherwise Team Dignitas would have taken that top tower without an answer bottom.

 

If you are a huge fan of the LCS and watch it often, you notice that the current way the meta has evolved, is to drop the top and bottom tower as soon as possible, trading one for one, and whoever reacts faster will end up ahead first and with the advantage. Curse is at a serious disadvantage where they are stuck with Voyboy twiddling his thumbs while Kiwi can farm away, not afraid of the harass. If top tower goes down, Team Dignitas will just send Imaqtpie and Patoy bottom and let Aatrox free farm and push the top lane versus a no farm, underleveled, Shen.

To counter this Curse gives up letting Saintvicious jungle and gank, which put Nyjacky in some scary positions, and gives Shen the space he needs to get up in CS as well as allowing Xin Zhao to get back some of the experience he lost when Imaqtpie stole his blue buff. A masterful counter by Curse on this play, they gave up a little to secure the first tower with no immediate answer.

The Setup for Dragon.
Shortly after the tower dropped Nyjacky put himself forward just too much. This over extension allowed Crumbzz and Scarra to dive on him forcing Curse to make a serious decision. Do they use the 200 second cooldown, Stand United, and save themselves from giving up a very easy first blood, or do they hold it in their pocket.

Knowing they would rather give up Stand United then fight a 4v5 for dragon, Team Dignitas goes in for a win-win situation. Remember this is the team of escapes that is never in the same place twice. Between Flash, Riftwalk, and Safeguard, they have no real chance of catching either Scarra or Crumbzz.

The Execution.
Team Dignitas needs this dragon. Their whole team is full of late game carries. Blue Ezreal requires an advantage. Kassadin has a very terrible early game and the faster he can hit mid game the better. Lee Sin scales poorly and needs as much gold as he can to get forward. Aatrox is realistically the only balanced champion on their team other then Fiddle, in terms of how much gold it takes for them to reach a potential that can withstand a teamfight.

Team  Dignitas knows this. They go for the dragon, all stacked in tight around it, to mitigate the damage, and stop any potential poke forward onto it. Thankfully Crumbzz hits the smite on point, and they turn the fight and pick up first blood as well in a One plus Dragon in return for Aatrox’s passive.

Curse trusts the Cannon Minion.
After taking out dragon most of Team Dignitas disperse toward the top half of the map, with Imaqtpie taking another blue buff for himself, which turns into a dive and kill onto Voyboy secured by Crumbzz’s Dragon Kick on Lee Sin. However, this kill gives up the mid tower, because they dove deep enough they are all sitting 50% or less in the top lane, seeing this Curse takes the current cannon minion in the mid lane and pressures the tower.

One thing to take back to solo queue here is that the power of 1 cannon minion, especially against a champion that requires creep to do almost all of the damage to each other to get CS, like Kassadin, is to use these minions to take towers. That 30% reduced damage is not to be underestimated.