Mid Hecarim, it's not just horsing around

When Keane locked in Hecarim for the mid lane against CLG in game 5 I like many others was shocked. Hecarim was an out of favor melee jungler known for his speedy ganks facing the ranged wave clear machine of Ziggs in lane. After watching the game multiple times and reading up on some lane Hecarim guides though I not only know what Keane saw in the pick, but also where things went wrong for Curse Academy that game.

THE GOOD:

Hecarim has a shockingly strong laning phase. Where most melee champions struggle early on in lane without some form of ranged harass/farming spell Hecarim doesn't seem to suffer the same problems. Keane's starting item choice of boots combined with Hecarim's high base move speed and his passive that ignores minion unit collision made it shockingly easy for Hecarim to avoid most of the ranged harass coming out of Link's Ziggs. On top of his ability to dodge harass Hecarim brings a spammable aoe damage tool to both shove the wave and harass his opponent, as well as self sustain from his W. When put all together Hecarim not only survives the lane but actually does quite well managing to put harass back onto Ziggs and only falling behind in farm from jungler pressure and when roaming.

Lane Hecarim solves one of the champion's biggest issues, gold income. One of the major issues with Hecarim as a jungler that saw him fall out of favor was the gold flow of the jungle. Hecarim needs expensive items like Trinity Force to be fully effective and it takes forever to farm up that much gold as a jungler. Dedicated farm from a lane, helped along by his surprisingly good lane phase means Hecarim can hit those item break points quick enough to be relevant in the mid game. Hitting his big damage items quicker means opponents have less defenses and Hecarim can do the ridiculous 50% hp burst hits like we saw Keane do to Dexter 17 minutes into their game 5.

Even as a laner Hecarim's speed makes for impressive roams. As a jungler Hecarim's speed was a prized part of his kit, allowing him to zip through enemy wards and be on someone before they could react. Though moving from a lane makes him a bit more predictable that speed for Hecarim is still there allowing impressive freedom for the post 6 roams to put the rest of his lanes ahead. In this way Hecarim works a lot like Twisted Fate pick, he farms his way to level 6 as quickly as possible then roams to build advantages elsewhere on the map.

Hecarim is a strong split pusher. His spammable Q and high move speed allows him to shove waves into towers quickly and safely a must for any split pusher. Not settling for just shoving around minions though Hecarim is also capable of putting down incredible burst and chase onto someone caught alone trying to shove back his minion waves. We saw the ridiculous burst Keane put onto Dexter before he'd even finished his Trinity Force. That instant burst potential means Hecarim's split pushing forces a lot of enemy resources to come deal with him.

THE BAD:

Hecarim is about as melee as you can get with only small AoEs on his abilities all of which are targeted around himself. This means Hecarim is not very good at sieging objectives. That can be a problem as the game goes late and you're forced into sieging the enemy's inhibitor turrets, as well as it changes the dynamic of the team comp you build around him. Being very melee means it's easier for defending opponents to land poke and ranged CC to kill you under turret. So Hecarim needs to fight away from enemy turrets, and a team that helps him catch the enemy when they venture out for neutral objectives like dragon or baron.

His late game is nothing to brag about. Hecarim's big power spike is the Trinity Force which sets up his mid game nicely and helps his mixed AP and AD scaling. It also means that he will not be as effective in the late game. He can continue to stack glass cannon and hope to finish out the game quickly while he's still far enough ahead the other team can't build defensive items, or become sort of a utility semi-tanky split pusher and flanking initiator, but either way he'll pale in comparison to late game monsters like Ryze.

Head on team fights are terrible for Hecarim. He's too  fast, his big initiation tool sends the enemies running away from him, and no matter how fed he is he'll never be as tanky as someone like Mundo. That means if Hecarim attempts to simply fight a head on team fight by running straight at the enemy he'll both run the enemies away from his team, and out run his own team, leaving him stranded in the middle of the other team with no backup and not nearly enough effective health to get out. You can deal with that by getting flanking team fights, but you need vision denial and room to move about to get a proper flanking team fight, which leads to the next problem.

When Hecarim falls behind it's hard to recover. It's hard for him to engage in heads up team fights, he needs vision control to either team fight properly or split push, his biggest power spike is his Trinity Force completion which typically comes first, he can't siege very well, and is about as Melee as you can get. All this adds up to Hecarim being mostly useless when he falls behind. He won't be able to split push, engage fights, or be much use in siege defense, from behind.

WHERE IT WENT WRONG:

So we've got the good and bad of the pick out of the way and we can see Curse Academy definitely went to work making use of the good parts of mid Hecarim. By 18 minutes Keane had done reasonable in lane against Link's Ziggs, and used the impressive speed and burst of Hecarim to roam and rack up 5 early kills before even finishing his Trinity Force. The biggest missteps for Curse Academy were actually in champion select. We heard in an All Chat segment that they were determined to play the mid Hecarim since they'd prepared it but their composition didn't really set it up as well as they hoped.

Seconds before going "Woah! what?" Source: Lolesports

Curse Academy built a cheesy speed buff composition to boost the Hecarim but few of their champs were set to spike at the same time as Hecarim and they weren't particularly good at the mid game picks he'd need to avoid his problematic sieging. Instead of trying to build a speed buff comp they'd have likely been better suited building a pick/disengage comp around it. So instead of Zilean we'd want Janna, Nami, or Thresh support for crowd control(CC) and disengage. An Elise pick instead of the Lee Sin for jungle would sync nicely with the pick comp goals as well as make up for Hecarim's sieging a bit, all while still keeping within the new trinity of competitive junglers. The Lulu top is actually decent for a Hecarim pick/disengage comp considering the meta at the time of this game, though I'd have liked a Corki for ADC to better synergize with Hecarim's power spike timing. With our new Lulu, Elise, Hecarim, Corki, Janna/Nami/Thresh comp we still use Hecarim's early roam power to help build everyone to their mid game spikes quicker but there's far more weaknesses than the one CA built. We've now got CC for picks, extra siege potential from Corki and Elise to make up for Hecarim's lack, and the potential for both a 1-3-1 or 4-1 split push where the core group has enough safety from Support ultimate and crowd control, Elise cocoon, and Corki's leap away that they can safely avoid an enemy engage onto them.

Curse Academy's team comp wasn't the only problem in champion select though, the team CLG had assembled was also very problematic for Hecarim. CLG had built a decent team fighting and sieging comp with both incredible late game scaling and plenty of ability to stall the game if it falls behind. With Ziggs, Ryze, and Tristana they had plenty of wave clear in case of falling behind to stall out Curse Academy long enough for those three to out scale the opposition. To make things worse Ziggs' near global range ultimate also meant CLG had strong answers to both the roaming and split pushing potential of Hecarim. Ziggs could use his ultimate to get involved with other lanes without having to keep up with Hecarim's impressive speed and shut down split push attempts with relative ease. When ahead CLG's comp is also excellent in team fights, with an impressive amount of AoE as well as Kha'Zix and Tristana's ability to reset their jumps and keep pursuing with each kill, and sieging turrets thanks to the high range and poke of Tristana, Ziggs, and Kha'Zix. Before Hecarim had even been hovered by Curse Academy CLG had built a comp that was good at countering Hecarim's strengths and stalling long enough to utilize their own.

There were some errors made in game as well by Curse Academy but those were far less relevant to their success in the game than their unfortunate champion select phase. CLG had a comp well built to counter Hecarim's strong points and weather the mid game storm of CA. On Curse Academy's side they not only let through problematic answers to Hecarim they also failed to build a comp that truly took advantage of the champion's strengths.

Worlds Group stage predictions

Group A: 1st Samsung White, 2nd Edward Gaming

Samsung White is the favorite of many for the entire tournament as one of the two best teams from Korea and EDG is the #1 seed from China a region that has placed 2nd behind Korea in most international competition for the last year. Their opponents in the group are the weaker of the two Wildcard teams and the 2nd seed from SEA the region that finished dead last in All Stars Paris invitational. I highly doubt anyone has different predictions for this group. 

Group B: 1st Team Solo Mid, 2nd SK Gaming 

This prediction is probably the one that will get me the most flak. After all I just admit that China has basically been 2nd behind Korea in all tournaments outside IEM for the last year, how could SHRC fail to escape this group with no Korean team? I've been watching some LPL games to prep for Worlds and what I saw gave me a lot of confidence for LCS teams. The Chinese teams have serious problems in their vision and map control and a particularly poor understanding of proper 2v1 starts. If the SK we saw all playoffs, and the TSM we saw against C9 in the finals show up for the group stage matches SHRC will be in a world of trouble. TSM and SK both demonstrated much better 2v1, vision, and map control than anything SHRC showed in their recent matches. SHRC might have a mechanical edge but LCS teams have been forged in a meta that considers kills mere tools to securing a bigger objective. Both SK and TSM have been trained all season to crush the kinds of teams coming out of the LPL, they have the tools in place all that's left is for them to make it happen. 

Group C: 1st Samsung Blue, 2nd Fnatic

Do I even need to explain SGB? #1 seed from Korea, heavily favored, the only team people think could stand up to sister team White. 

The real talk is about Fnatic and much like with SK in group B I believe Fnatic has an edge over LMQ and OMG due to watching recent LPL games. Fnatic has always had incredible team play and strong vision control. They have struggled some this season but that's even more reason to value them above OMG and LMQ as a Fnatic without summer split issues would have been just as favored to win this group due to their map and vision control advantage, without having been forced to improve by disappointing results in EU playoffs. Fnatic has made very smart moves since playoffs ended showing up to scrim with NA playoff teams at PAX and then moving on to Korea where they added Toyz to their coaching staff to prepare for the tournament. What we've seen suggest Fnatic is working out the kinks before the groups start on the 18th and if they do it's hard to see them landing anywhere but 2nd in group c. 

Group D: 1st Najin White Shield, 2nd Cloud9

Apart from Korea being the heavy favorites in this tournament it's hard to deny how good Shield looked as they ran the gauntlet defeating teams like OGN Summer champions KTA and S3 World champions SKT T1 K to secure the final seed from Korea. Shield is not as untouchable seeming as the Samsung teams in this tournament but their recent performances are enough to convince me and many others that they'll be able to hold off the LCS power house teams long enough to take the 1st seed out of group D. 

C9 is hardly a favorite for this group, many people admit they've got a decent shot against Alliance but Alliance is still the favorite of many due to the many times EU has come up ahead of NA in the past. On close inspection though it's clear Cloud9 should hold the edge in the matchup. Meteos and Balls are stronger players than their Alliance counterparts, C9 has had significantly more experience both regional and international as a unit, and Cloud9 is far more decisive in their wins often closing games they're clearly ahead in 5-10 minutes faster than Alliance in similar scenarios. It's these small edges that should be enough for Cloud 9 to make up for what Hai might lack in the head to head against Froggen and push them over into the 2nd place finish in group D. 

Riot's new more aggressive region lock is a mistake

Riot has just announced a new policy where 3/5ths of an LCS team needs to meet "residency requirements" in the region they wish to play. They haven't released the exact residency requirements yet but they make it quite clear it's intended to stop an overflow of foreign players taking over. However foreign players permanently overrunning the LCS is an incredibly unlikely scenario, and this rule to combat that worst case scenario could have negative impacts on potential salaries for the best league players in the world.

The new rule is primarily in place to stop full roster moves, like LMQ and the failed Quantic, as well as stop LCS from becoming what Starcraft 2's WCS has been in recent years with all the regions being filled nearly exclusively with Korean players. That unfortunate scenario for SC2 was caused largely by the fact Blizzard ran the majority of the WCS online. Players could live in Korea, play on the Korean server against other Korean opponents, and simply play the majority of their matches remotely. Because Korea was already established as the strongest region in SC2 the lack of LAN play for the majority of SC2 tournaments meant non-Korean players had to invest significantly more for the same chance to compete. Korean players scrimmed on the Korean servers even when they were participating in the North American region, meaning there was no chance for NA local players to get practice against the caliber of players they'd have to defeat to qualify without moving to Korea. NA players would have to move to Korea and play on the Korean servers just to practice against their potential NA opponents. Because of that disproportionate investment required the scene stagnated and Korea remained on top by virtue of simply having been at the top of the pile from the start.

Back in LCS games are not played over the internet with only a handful of LAN tournaments requiring people to show up, instead they are played live in front of an audience 2-3 days a week for 3 straight months at a time. The fact that the LCS is in its entirety a LAN event means teams and players must move to the LCS region they're participating in. Living locally in the LCS region means they scrim local teams and play on the local soloqueue ladder all against other players who live and play in the LCS region. This means just like how Hai and Froggen elevate their respective regions each time they play soloqueue or scrim another team, foreign players who come to compete in LCS like XiaoWeiXiao do the same for that LCS region. Because the LCS is on LAN when a player is imported to play in the LCS, while they do deny a slot to a local player, they provide more and better practice for local players for the duration of their career in the region.

The pre-existing soft region lock for LCS meant that the influx of foreign talent was a self correcting problem. By virtue of being forced to play against their future competition each foreign player added to an LCS region makes it that much less successful for the next foreign player to move over. In fact we've already hit an early milestone on this progression of the problem fixing itself. So called "C tier" players are no longer viable in NA due to the influx of foreign talent. While super star players like Bjergsen, and Dexter, and "B tier" Chinese players like Vasilii and XiaoWeiXiao have proven NA is not done correcting the problem, other attempts like the failed Quantic team, Amazing, Helios, and Seraph have proven there is verifiable progress towards foreign talents being more expensive than they're worth.

If NA had actually followed the worst case scenario people fear and gotten worse by the early importing of Edward, Bjergsen, and Dexter then subsequent imports Quantic, Amazing, Helios, and Seraph should have been slam dunks to only have to compete against other foreign imports in their lanes. Instead the best of them are middle of the pack NA players. Quantic a team of 5 "C tier" Korean players formed to dominate NA failed to even make the promotion tournament. Helios and Seraph, touted as the conquering Koreans come to dominate NA, shook out to be barely middle of the pack in their respective roles, both outclassed by more than one local NA player. Amazing, TSM's slam dunk don't even need to try him out European jungler import completely collapsed; dragging the entire TSM team down with him for the majority of a split before they could finally train him up to be a reliable asset in time for playoffs.

That leaves Lustboy the newest acquisition for TSM who has certainly out performed former teammate Helios so far in his time in the LCS, and the full Chinese roster LMQ. LMQ actually helps further the point that "C tier" foreign talent is no longer viable as the team contains members from the 6th place LPL team, a member of the S3 Worlds runner up team, and several of the players were rising talents on the verge of breaking out in China. Most of LMQ would likely have found starting positions on teams in China had they stayed. On top of that LMQ while managing to stay near the top in NA has struggled to maintain that position all split long sharing top 2 with no less than 3 other NA teams prior to playoffs, and only barely made worlds as the 3rd seed. LMQ is another strong indication that NA is moving up in overall skill and becoming harder for foreign players to enter and find success. LMQ's move to NA LCS also had the added benefit of directly raising the strength of the challenger scene where most other imports only effected it tangentially through Soloqueue. The split LMQ spent competing in the challenger scene made the teams they faced like up and comers Team 8 that much stronger, and helped forge local rising talent Altec into a top ADCs in the NA LCS.

Recent imports make it readily apparent that high profile expensive moves to nab the best foreign talent will soon be the only way to make importing players more valuable than simply training up a rising star from the local challenger scene. In essence the imports would have to return to what was seen originally, pulling in players widely regarded as the best up and coming talents of their regions like Dexter and Bjergsen where when acquired, or competing away an integral part of one of the strongest teams the region has ever seen like with Edward. These big expensive moves due to the fact they're pulling the top tier highest profile players would be both rarer than the recent rash of imports, and far better for players in all regions. When teams from all over compete to secure a top player of a region like Froggen, not only does Froggen benefit but so do all other players. Froggen gets a huge check to secure him against theoretical offers from the likes of CLG or Curse, and players like Bjergsen get to say "hang on a minute, I'm nearly as good as Froggen and get payed 1/3rd what he does! Pay me more or I'll find someone who will." The expense of securing the best players in the world helps all the players get a better salary, and has the added benefit of further stunting foreign talent imports.

Now this is where the new rule moves from jumping the gun on a pointless rule into a full blown mistake. The drive and desire to secure super stars like Froggen, there by helping to increase theirs and other players salaries world wide, is now severely impeded by this rule. Because no LCS team can have more than 2 non-residents many of the teams with the deepest pockets are taken out of the bidding before it even begins when a must have like Froggen becomes available. Before this rule if Froggen's contract were to expire post worlds and he was still seen as the best in EU he could expect offers from most of the wealthy LCS teams in both regions. However after this rule is in place in the same scenario TSM, CLG, LMQ, and EG would all be incapable of putting forward offers due to their number of non-residents already on  the teams. This means competition for a star player's contract is lower, and as a result what he can expect to receive as a final offer is likely to also be lower than it would be if multiple additional teams were allowed to participate in the bidding.

It's understandable that Riot wants to calm people's fears of another SC2 situation arising but they are fighting against a non-problem with a rule that actively hinders the growth of LoLesports. Still Riot has decided to take action and lots of people are calling out for something to be done, so here's s way Riot could solve this problem without damaging the growth of the scene.

Simply make this rule apply to teams who enter LCS from the challenger scene. Rewrite the rule to require that any team participating in the promotion or expansion tournaments must have a minimum of 3 players who will meet the residency requirements by or before the start of the next split. The rule will function much like the age requirement for challenger teams, it halts full rosters trying to make it in with low investment into the scene, and it doesn't remove some of the richest teams in LCS as potential bidders for the biggest superstar players. It's still unnecessarily fixing a non-problem like the newly debuted rule, but it does it in a less damaging way.

The current iteration of Riot's new rule is a mistake that fixes a problem that will mostly self correct, while impeding growth of the scene. I am certain that if LCS continues it's current growth rate that within the next few seasons (not splits) Riot will be forced to significantly alter if not completely do away with this rule as it not only becomes obsolete but a more significant impediment to the growth of League of Legends as an esport.

LCS Playoff Predictions Review

Now that LCS playoffs are over I'm going to go over my EU and NA quarterfinal predictions as well as those from Gamescom and PAX. I'm going to discuss how I made those predictions, where they went right, where they went wrong, and thoughts on each region's Worlds qualified teams.

The first big thing to talk about when discussing predictions is that it's not something you can ever expect to get 100% correct without a whole lot of luck involved. Everyone from myself to Montecristo to players who'd been scrimming the teams in the finals got some predictions wrong. Because of the limited information we all have available, and the ever present question of player's mentality day of, as well as effectiveness of training and adapting to the patch it is very hard to make anything more than a semi-confident prediction.

While predictions can never be flawless, there is a lot of information available to help improve predictions. I looked at past history between the two teams, accounted for champion select tendencies, as well as strength of team rosters and their specific play styles when making my predictions. When it was a very difficult one to call, like Fnatic vs Alliance, or Dig vs TSM I gave preference to the team which in my opinion had a stronger peak performance with their current roster. In some cases peak performance failed, like in the Dig vs TSM, but in others it helped me properly weight the matchup, as in the case of ROC vs SHC.

EU

SHC vs ROC Prediction: 3-1 ROC, Actual Result: 3-1 ROC

This series went mostly as expected. The one thing I did not expect was SHC to be capable of rallying for game 3, rather than taking an earlier game off and falling to momentum. 

SK vs MIL Prediction: 3=0 MIL, Actual Result: 3=0 SK

I have to admit to a mistake in predicting this series. I didn't give enough weight to how MIL had performed in the final week, a mistake I made multiple times throughout my predictions. I undervalued just how badly MIL had performed in week 11 vs how well SK had performed that same week. Accounting for their difference in results should have adjusted my prediction to a 3-2 in MIL's favor. That prediction still would have been different from the results, but it would have better fallen in line with how the teams had performed throughout the season and accounted for their results only a week before their series. 

SHC vs MIL Prediction: 3-1 SHC, Actual Result: 3-0 SHC

I feel pretty good about this prediction. While I didn't get it exact I correctly noted that if either team went 2-0 up they'd sweep and correctly gave the edge to SHC. I didn't really adjust predictions going into this series, though I likely gave MIL too much credit in spite of their recent performances. 

Fnatic vs ROC Prediction: 3-1 FNC, Actual Result: 3-2 FNC

I'll be honest even as a Roccat fan I never expected them to put up such a wild fight against Fnatic in the semi-finals at gamescom. Overall I feel good about the prediction, Roccat showed up and pushed Fnatic further than most people thought they could and they deserve praise for it, but I think it would have been a bit fanboyish of me to have blindly predicted such a crazy series. 

ALL vs SK Prediction: 3-1 ALL, Actual Result: 3-1 ALL

Nailed it. 

ROC vs SK Prediction: 3-2 ROC, Actual Result: 3-0 SK

This is one of those series that makes it clear why predictions just don't end up being 100% correct without a lot of luck. Roccat has had better champion select than SK for a long time, the teams share a lot of the same problems avoiding either team having obvious significant edges, and ROC had just proved against Fnatic that they were on point at Gamescom and should have pushed SK to the limit. While ROC may not have taken it in the end this series really should have gone all 5 games. Instead Roccat appeared to have spent everything just trying to make it past Fnatic and when they failed they fell apart for the series against SK. 

ALL vs FNC Prediction: 3-2 FNC, Actual Result: 3-1 ALL

While Alliance did hold the head ot head 3-1 over Fnatic this split it felt in large part thanks to Fnatic's All Stars slump at the start. Fnatic was simply not showing up the first few weeks in a lot of peoples opinions. When Fnatic did finally turn it on near the end of the split they were hands down playing on par with Alliance, while having a better champion select phase. Fnatic's superior champion select and the fact they were defending 3 time EU LCS champions weighed it in Fnatic's favor. Instead just like Roccat, it seemed Fnatic was forced to burn everything they had just to make it to the finals against Alliance. I feel like this was another example where a prediction fell apart due to team mentality day of more than incorrectly assessing past results. 

NA

TSM vs Dig Prediction: 3-2 Dig, Actual Result: 3-1 TSM

I feel like not weighing Dig's final week results into this is less of a mistake than it was for MIL's games, but still a definite mistake. I think if I'd retained that lesson from the EU playoffs I might have weighted the series 3-2 for TSM instead of Dig. 

Curse vs CLG Prediction 3-1 CLG, Actual Result: 3-0 Curse

Unlike with Dig I don't think weighing in CLG's performance issues would have been a smart move for this series considering they hadn't been seen since week 10 and spent nearly a month in Korea. By all measure this series should not have gone the way it did. The last time CLG spent a few weeks with coach Montecristo in house they had a dominant performance and sat near the top of the NA LCS standings. Add to that the fact they were practicing in Korea against better scrim partners and it's difficult to reasonably argue that we should have expected CLG to lose, much less fall apart, this series.

Dig vs CLG Prediction: 3-1 CLG, Actual Result: 3-1 Dig

Again I think it would have been a bit unreasonable to predict differently here. Dig's singular working strategy against TSM succeeded thanks to a lack of aggression from TSM, something that CLG had not lacked against Curse even if it hadn't created a win. Dig's champion select also made progressively less sense against TSM where CLG seemed to actually be pulling themselves together a bit over the course of the series but were let down by their actual play and decision making. 

LMQ vs TSM Prediction: 3-0 LMQ, Actual Result 3-2 TSM

Another good example of day of performance making predictions a bit of a crap shoot. TSM did not look any better than they had all split long against Dignitas and LMQ had had their number every time they matched up. I'd hazard to say anyone who predicted this match in TSM's favor after watching TSM vs DIG is guilty of fanboying a bit. The only vaguely reasonable reason to predict difficulty for LMQ was the ownership drama they'd recently been through. Even that didn't seem enough to so heavily set them back though. 

C9 vs Curse Prediction: 3-2 C9, Actual Result: 3-0 C9

Cloud9 is probably the only team I didn't give enough credit to in playoffs this split. Curse had been surging like crazy, there were parallels to other similar team styles matching against each other. I thought that plus C9's continued struggles throughout the split was enough to make it a close match. I did not give the C9 dominance enough credit, peak C9 showed up this series when I didn't think it would and it rolled over Curse. 

Due to there being no break on the weekends and me writing my predictions before hand I didn't make actual predictions for TSM vs C9 or LMQ vs Curse. I didn't expect TSM to come out ahead of LMQ. On twitter though I predicted LMQ taking it over Curse and C9 3-0ing TSM again due to TSM still not looking better against LMQ. I was very happy to be wrong about C9 vs TSM. All credit must be given to TSM for finally looking like a team that could contest for 1st place against C9, both teams played very strong matches and TSM came out the victor.

So there you have it, how I made my predictions, where I think I went wrong, and where I think the unpredictable factors in League made a difference. I intend to make similar predictions for Worlds once more information on matchups are released and hopefully the lessons learned from looking over my predictions this way will mean more accurate predictions in the future.