Froggen is without doubt the most well known Anivia player in the world right now. From tales of him grinding games early in his adoption of League of Legends on it, to his incredible Season 2 performances with it on CLG.EU Froggen's legendary Anivia has become a fan favorite occurrence. Fans enjoy his Anivia so much that when Froggen was voted into the Paris All Star show matches fans went out of their way to make sure he played an Anivia game. Surprisingly we didn't just get to watch Froggen on his legendary main at Paris, we also witnessed him absolutely crush Bjergsen's Zed and carry Team Ice to victory in the show matches. It's little surprise then that fans exploded in excitement when Froggen locked in Anivia for their match against Roccat this week. The Anivia pick was not just for the fans though, in returning to his favorite cryo-phoenix Froggen had found a massively synergistic pick with the current meta.
Right now much of the LCS champion select revolves around the fact that outside of Lucian, the highly immobile Twitch and Kog'Maw are by far the best ADC picks. This has baited more than one team into running Kog'Maw with little to no peel to rather disastrous effect. Meanwhile in mid many of the meta favored champions don't pair well with Kog'Maw. Lulu, Orianna, and Nidalee are okay pairs with their shields and heals, but picks like Leblanc, Kassadin, Twisted Fate, and Yasuo offer nothing to the protect the Kog'Maw composition usually required to run the champion.
Enter Anivia, in place of the shields or heals Nidalee, Orianna, and Lulu offer to Kog'Maw Anivia instead brings overwhelming zone control and peel. Anivia brings a 400 unit radius slowing AoE from her ultimate, an AoE stun that slows anyone it damages even if the stun misses, and a wall that at max rank extends 800 units across the map. On top of all that team utility Anivia brings to lane strong burst from her Q+E combo, Ziggs level infinite wave clear, and near unparalleled safety from the egg form passive. When paired with Kog'Maw Anivia's kit asks the question "How are you going to get through all this peel and still have something left to catch the ADC?" The simple answer to which is, you're not.
To really hammer home the advantage Anivia brings Alliance held the Anivia pick in both games until late in the champion select. This allowed Alliance to see Shyvana and Evelynn come out from their opponents and ensure that the enemy would have very little hard engage to lock down someone. This magnified Anivia's strengths allowing Froggen to block flanking routes into the team and funnel enemies through his heavy slowing and damaging ultimate. The zone control of Anivia allowed Tabzz on Kog'Maw in game one, and Twitch in game two, to pump out damage with impunity, ensuring Alliance's victory.
By digging into his past Froggen was able to find an incredibly strong pick no one was using and make a 2-0 week look easy. The ability to look outside the popular picks and find something that works so well in new metas is what sets the best players apart, and Froggen has certainly shown he is still a world class mid laner breaking out the Anivia again.
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Showing posts with label Alliance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Alliance. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 10, 2014
Monday, February 3, 2014
Friends don't let friends jungle Nunu
The yeti rider's popularity, and strength, in the jungle hit it's peak in season 3. Patch 3.7 brought changes to Consume, giving him buffs for consuming jungle monsters, intended to make Nunu a more competitive jungler.
The Rise
During his prime jungle Nunu was adept at counter jungling, able to steal away an enemies buff and set them behind all game thanks to the huge consume damage. That same consume damage also made him great at controlling important objectives like Baron. The benefits of a Blood Boiled AD carry in fast push strategies certainly didn't hurt Nunu's popularity.
The power of Nunu jungle made him an often target for bans, he ate a ridiculous 41 bans in NA and 53 in EU LCS summer split. When he did make it through a few players like TheOddOne were able to make great use of him. Despite his strengths and his popularity Nunu actually ended with a losing record in both regions, foreshadowing the problems the pick would suffer when nerfs came down.
A new kind of Jungle
All things must come to an end, and Nunu's popularity is no exception. The first hit to Nunu came with a change to the jungle intended to hamper counter jungling. Experience granted by the large monsters in the buff camps was reduced so stealing away a buff at level 1 would no longer give you a level advantage. Nunu fell in popularity though he was still an okay choice for siege compositions.
The preseason changes brought another wave of changes to the jungle hit Nunu hard. With jungle monsters now scaling to the average level of everyone counter jungling does little to put people behind. Nunu's primary strength in the jungle, was completely negated. To make things worse Nunu's favored team composition, the siege comp. became weaker as changes to turrets made it harder to safely gain a turret advantage by sending your duo lane to 2v1 the top.
The Worst and the Best
Thus we come to today, where conveniently week 3 of the LCS has given us examples of good and bad team comps revolving around Nunu jungle, and a clear indicator of why he's no longer a strong pick.
First up Alliance over in EU broke out the Nunu jungle.
Alliance's team comp with the Nunu jungle did not make much sense sadly. Lucian does get benefits to his ultimate with Blood Boil but it does little to boost his tower pressure. Malphite has absolutely no way to make use of Nunu's skills. The only bit of synergy with the Nunu pick is Kayle, but once Kayle has her Nashors tooth the benefits of Blood Boil are a lot less significant in comparison to a jungler who can make picks.
Nunu's few strengths in the team don't even get to show up. Gambit quickly forces kills against Froggen's Kayle and Wickd's Malphite setting Alliance behind. Because he can't out fight or out gank Evelynn, the lack of an early lead for Alliance instantly made Nunu a non factor. With such a weak jungler on the enemy team Gambit was able to safely expand their lead all game long.
NA had the other side of the coin when Curse brought out Nunu against CLG.
The team comp from Curse is much more set up to make use of the jungle Nunu. Every champ other than Mundo is great for sieging turrets. Jinx is already a monster at killing towers, and with Janna AD buff and Nunu Blood Boil her tower crushing just gets magnified early game. Ziggs similarly is great at sieging turrets thanks to his poke and the extra auto attack damage from his passive. Add to that the strong disengage from Nunu and Janna, and you have a team that can come together to siege a turret and then safely back away when CLG tries to engage. Curse was also very smart in what they picked this team comp into. CLG rushed out Shyvana and Renekton in their first picks, exposing a lack of hard engage that would make Curse's team comp that much safer.
For the first 20 minutes of the game Curse plays their team comp perfectly. They send their duo to 2v1 top and fast push towers. Map rotations are on point quickly securing all the outer and inner turrets, and even picking up a few kills while staying relatively safe.
At 21 minutes Curse has taken the first inhibitor tower top lane and is beginning to siege for the inhibitor. This is when Curse makes the mistake that turns the entire game. First Nien on Shyvana and Aphromoo on Lulu are seen by Curse wards attempting to flank.
Curse plays this engage attempt well, using their disengage to safely prevent the fight. On important aspect they miss though is that Shyvana did not use her Dragons Descent ultimate in the fight. Right here Curse should back away, respecting the Shyvana ultimate, and wait for their own cool downs to come back. Instead, feeling the pressure of Nunu's looming time limit, Curse moves back in to try for the inhibitor.
A relatively simple mistake, but it was enough to completely end the dominance of Curse's team composition. Shyvana and Yasuo combo their ultimates and CLG gets three kills from this reengage. The pressure taken off from CLG picking up 3 kills was enough for them to take back control of the entire game. Soon after CLG pick up the Baron and Curse are never again able to dictate the flow of the game.
Please let Nunu die
Even in the perfect comp, played to near perfection we see the weakness of Nunu jungle. He can no longer effectively counter jungle to get ahead, Nunu cannot out fight or out gank any of a dozen more popular jungle picks, and lowered dragon value makes objective control with Consume less crucial. All that adds up to Nunu only being okay in a fast push team, and even then one small mistake turns Nunu from controlling the pace of the game to dragging his team to the bottom along with him. We can only hope that our favorite teams will finally get the message, Nunu is simply not up to par. .
The Rise
During his prime jungle Nunu was adept at counter jungling, able to steal away an enemies buff and set them behind all game thanks to the huge consume damage. That same consume damage also made him great at controlling important objectives like Baron. The benefits of a Blood Boiled AD carry in fast push strategies certainly didn't hurt Nunu's popularity.
The power of Nunu jungle made him an often target for bans, he ate a ridiculous 41 bans in NA and 53 in EU LCS summer split. When he did make it through a few players like TheOddOne were able to make great use of him. Despite his strengths and his popularity Nunu actually ended with a losing record in both regions, foreshadowing the problems the pick would suffer when nerfs came down.
A new kind of Jungle
All things must come to an end, and Nunu's popularity is no exception. The first hit to Nunu came with a change to the jungle intended to hamper counter jungling. Experience granted by the large monsters in the buff camps was reduced so stealing away a buff at level 1 would no longer give you a level advantage. Nunu fell in popularity though he was still an okay choice for siege compositions.
The preseason changes brought another wave of changes to the jungle hit Nunu hard. With jungle monsters now scaling to the average level of everyone counter jungling does little to put people behind. Nunu's primary strength in the jungle, was completely negated. To make things worse Nunu's favored team composition, the siege comp. became weaker as changes to turrets made it harder to safely gain a turret advantage by sending your duo lane to 2v1 the top.
The Worst and the Best
Thus we come to today, where conveniently week 3 of the LCS has given us examples of good and bad team comps revolving around Nunu jungle, and a clear indicator of why he's no longer a strong pick.
First up Alliance over in EU broke out the Nunu jungle.
Alliance's team comp with the Nunu jungle did not make much sense sadly. Lucian does get benefits to his ultimate with Blood Boil but it does little to boost his tower pressure. Malphite has absolutely no way to make use of Nunu's skills. The only bit of synergy with the Nunu pick is Kayle, but once Kayle has her Nashors tooth the benefits of Blood Boil are a lot less significant in comparison to a jungler who can make picks.
Nunu's few strengths in the team don't even get to show up. Gambit quickly forces kills against Froggen's Kayle and Wickd's Malphite setting Alliance behind. Because he can't out fight or out gank Evelynn, the lack of an early lead for Alliance instantly made Nunu a non factor. With such a weak jungler on the enemy team Gambit was able to safely expand their lead all game long.
NA had the other side of the coin when Curse brought out Nunu against CLG.
The team comp from Curse is much more set up to make use of the jungle Nunu. Every champ other than Mundo is great for sieging turrets. Jinx is already a monster at killing towers, and with Janna AD buff and Nunu Blood Boil her tower crushing just gets magnified early game. Ziggs similarly is great at sieging turrets thanks to his poke and the extra auto attack damage from his passive. Add to that the strong disengage from Nunu and Janna, and you have a team that can come together to siege a turret and then safely back away when CLG tries to engage. Curse was also very smart in what they picked this team comp into. CLG rushed out Shyvana and Renekton in their first picks, exposing a lack of hard engage that would make Curse's team comp that much safer.
For the first 20 minutes of the game Curse plays their team comp perfectly. They send their duo to 2v1 top and fast push towers. Map rotations are on point quickly securing all the outer and inner turrets, and even picking up a few kills while staying relatively safe.
At 21 minutes Curse has taken the first inhibitor tower top lane and is beginning to siege for the inhibitor. This is when Curse makes the mistake that turns the entire game. First Nien on Shyvana and Aphromoo on Lulu are seen by Curse wards attempting to flank.
Curse plays this engage attempt well, using their disengage to safely prevent the fight. On important aspect they miss though is that Shyvana did not use her Dragons Descent ultimate in the fight. Right here Curse should back away, respecting the Shyvana ultimate, and wait for their own cool downs to come back. Instead, feeling the pressure of Nunu's looming time limit, Curse moves back in to try for the inhibitor.
A relatively simple mistake, but it was enough to completely end the dominance of Curse's team composition. Shyvana and Yasuo combo their ultimates and CLG gets three kills from this reengage. The pressure taken off from CLG picking up 3 kills was enough for them to take back control of the entire game. Soon after CLG pick up the Baron and Curse are never again able to dictate the flow of the game.
Please let Nunu die
Even in the perfect comp, played to near perfection we see the weakness of Nunu jungle. He can no longer effectively counter jungle to get ahead, Nunu cannot out fight or out gank any of a dozen more popular jungle picks, and lowered dragon value makes objective control with Consume less crucial. All that adds up to Nunu only being okay in a fast push team, and even then one small mistake turns Nunu from controlling the pace of the game to dragging his team to the bottom along with him. We can only hope that our favorite teams will finally get the message, Nunu is simply not up to par. .
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