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.

NA LCS Playoff Preview: Quarterfinals

Team Solo Mid vs Dignitas

Honestly this series feels like it's going to be much closer than it has any right being. On paper Dignitas is clearly the better team. From adapting to new OP picks, to their sensible picks and bans, to their their often incredible early game roams from Kiwikid, Dig should be considered the clear favorite. What's more Dignitas holds the head to head match up 3-1 over TSM in the regular season. All of that and I still haven't mentioned that TSM lost nearly a week of practice with Amazing in Europe renewing his visa. Still, I can't help but feel the series is tough to call.

Dignitas has hit much better peaks throughout this split; but TSM has been far more consistent. Both teams suffer from serious mistakes in their mid-late game vision and decision making, but TSM has more consistently been able to persevere through those mistakes against the lower tier NA teams. In the end the deciding factor is likely to be champion select, a place that Dignitas has been superior throughout this split. Dig understands both the must pick champions and the weaknesses in TSM's lineup such as Amazing's tendency to fall apart when pushed off the trinity junglers. Dig's tendency to better understand champion select, combined with Amazing losing a week of practice, Lustboy's limited English, and WildTurtle's continued struggles in bot lane should all add together to out weigh Dignitoss' tendency to make poor decisions around Baron.

The inconsistency of both teams is likely to make the series go 5 games. In the end I think Dignitas should take it 3-2.

Curse vs Counter Logic Gaming

Perhaps it's my CLG fan showing through but this series honestly feels like it's CLG's to lose even in the face of Curse's late season surge and 3-1 head to head record against CLG.

Curse surged in the final weeks as CLG slumped, using some interesting strategies like the AD Ttristana mid to snatch a last second 4th place end of the regular season. While Curse has hit their high point pulling out somewhat unusual strategies, CLG's peak this split was entirely about them strategically out playing even the best of NA all across the map. The strategic and rotational play that made CLG a force to be reckoned with during the regular season is what CLG went to Korea to regain. CLG's peak performance this split was unquestionably superior to that of Curse in both map movement and vision control. Now though not only could CLG come back with their slump issues solved, but they've spent the last few weeks learning from some of the best teams in the world while Curse has only had NA opponents to scrim. CLG has all the available tools to bring about a dominant performance in this series, it is simply up to them to use those tools.

While a renewed CLG does have everything it needs to dominate this match up, I don't think it will be a 3-0. There is something to be said for Curse's ability to surprise in champ select. The surprises Curse may have in store could go a long way towards getting them at least 1 game even against Super Saiyan CLG. As a result I predict the series to go 3-1 in favor of CLG. 

Nien's departure leaves gaping hole in CLG roster.

By the time HotshotGG stepped down from his position in the top lane of CLG the professional meta had shifted heavily from that of solo queue. 2v1 lane swaps, fast pushes, rotations, and objective control were king and the old guard were forced to adapt or die. Solo queue was no longer good at prepping top laners for what they'd face in the LCS, and incredibly skilled solo queue laners were getting destroyed by a constant wave of 1v2. Even some of the best LCS top lanes of the time such as Dyrus, Megazero, and Soaz were vocal in their dislike and struggles with the 1v2 that top lane had become.

With solo queue failing to teach the necessary skills, and even LCS alum struggling to cope, how would CLG fill the top lane? Thus formed a wild idea. Instead of trying to break through the bad habits and false lessons instilled by solo queue CLG would pull a mechanically gifted former LCS player, such as an ADC or mid laner, who'd never played top before and purpose build them for professional play. Instead of learning how to 1v1 on Riven, they'd teach their new top laner how to hold a tower 1v2 as Shyvana. Instead of learning how to split push as Tryndamere, they'd teach the new top laner how to combine Mundo and TP to generate intense pressure. A purpose built top laner specifically for the unique meta of professional top lane was created, CLG Nien. 

The community backlash was strong, spurred on by things like Nien's former team mate and popular top laner Megazero criticizing CLG for passing him over in favor of Nien an at the time AD Carry. These sentiments would sour a vocal section of the community against Nien for the duration of his time on CLG and even color the judgement of some prominent esports personalities. Ultimately this section of the community would be cited by Nien as a contributing factor to his departure from the team after a full year of play and CLG's first ever positive results in the LCS. 

Contrary to that wildly popular sentiment though, Nien was not a weak player. The most often lorded examples of Nien's "bad" play were actually the exact opposite. He was often criticized for being caught out farming behind an enemy tower, over staying with a hefty sum of gold built up, or being caught out tower diving an opponent. In all the cases Nien did indeed make mistakes resulting in his death which anti-fans and esports journalists alike would foolishly trumpet as proof that Nien was a bad player. The truth however is the exact opposite, not one of those scenarios is possible when losing. You can't get caught out dirty farming behind an enemy tower if you're behind, the enemy laner would simply kill you 1v1 as you'd have no place to go. You cannot be caught out tower diving an opponent when you're losing the lane, as you'd never have won enough trades to have the health disparity making a dive possible in the first place. And you certainly cannot stay in lane with over 2k gold in your pocket while losing the lane, you'd be crushed under your tower long before you could build to that point. This is not to say Nien was without his flaws, of course he made mistakes. He would occasionally lose lane to stronger duelists Balls or Dyrus on top of the mistakes born of greed listed above that would often result in his death. 

Many of Nien's critics, blinded by their own solo queue mentality, have spoken at lengths about how better players would have survived the scenarios where Nien faltered, and they are in a sense correct. If we were to blind ourselves to everything but the top lane and compare Nien to someone like the much vaunted, and often fan requested to be the new CLG top laner, Zorozero it would be no contest. In a pure 1v1 head to head Zoro would smash Nien over and again in most matchups. League of Legends is however not a 1v1, and professional play is a long way removed from the smash your lane and carry by yourself attitude of solo queue. 

When we separate away the lane phase and compare the team play impact of both players Zorozero is simply out classed a thousand times over. Nien's 1v2s, rotations, usage of teleport pressure, and willingness to sacrifice his own score to allow his team to win, all those things CLG wanted to purpose build into a top laner, result in Nien having more than double Zorozero's time spent fighting with his team when they needed him and a far greater impact on games. Even in the recent promotion matches with Teleport being so heavily buffed Zorozero's team impact was a shadow of what we've seen from Nien for the entire split. 

League of Legends is a team game, and the importance of that team work has never been more apparent in the professional scene than it is today. CLG knew they'd have to build a top laner from the ground up to avoid the pitfalls generated by solo queue top lane play. Now with Nien gone there's a gaping wound in CLG's lineup and too few weeks to heal it. At best CLG finds a stop-gap in the form of an individually strong player like Zorozero or Megazero and fumbles their way around their solo queue bad habits to place in the top 4 again. At worst CLG is forced to start all over again training a new top laner from the ground up. Either way the hope of continued improvement and, a trip to Worlds this year, is low. Caused in part by the community's inability to cope with a player changing positions. 

TSM beats CLG in the inaugural LCS Hearthstone Invitational

Riot taking a page from OGN's book announced the expansion of their esports brand the LCS today with the addition of Hearthstone. Redbeard stated that Riot was happy to finally be working together with Blizzard again so many years after the Defense of the Ancients map that started it all. Alongside the announcement came our first taste of what's in store as popular NA LCS superstars Team Solo Mid and Counter Logic Gaming took to the stage for the first LCS Hearthstone match.

The action started off with Nien's Warrior deck against Dyrus' Mage deck. After a tense match Nien would find his combo to finish off Dyrus.

Nien would also make short work of Oddone before falling to Bjergsen's Rogue. Bjergsen would once again prove why he is the BjergerKing going an amazing 5-0 to secure the all kill over CLG and the win for TSM.

In the post game interview TSM owner Andy "Reginald" Dinh stated that he was happy TSM was given the chance to take the first win in LCS Hearthstone, and that he expects TSM to top the standings in every form of LCS in the coming years.

Riot stated that this was just the first step of the next phase of the LCS. They hope to unveil new LCS leagues from FPS titles like CS:GO and Battlefield 4 to RTS titles like Starcraft II, and even other MOBA titles. RiotMagus stated "Many fans have expressed wishes to be able to watch other esports while they watch LCS. It was such an obvious step we figured, why not?"

The future of the LCS is here and I for one am excited!

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. .

CLG left without a starting Jungler after Dexter turned away at US border.

Today Marcel "Dexter" Feldkamp tweeted that he'd been denied entry to the united states including a night in jail.

Visa got cancelled. On my way Home again for nothing
— Marcel Feldkamp (@MarcelFeldkamp) January 3, 2014

I also had the pleasure to spend a night in a cell. Fuck my Life
— Marcel Feldkamp (@MarcelFeldkamp) January 3, 2014

CLG was quick to issue a few tweets to verify the situation.

To confirm, @MarcelFeldkamp got denied entry to the US, unsure at this point what our options are
— Counter Logic Gaming (@clgaming) January 3, 2014

We don't know why he got denied or how long till he can come back yet. His athlete visa needs to be approved before he comes back however
— Counter Logic Gaming (@clgaming) January 3, 2014

This unfortunately means that as of this writing CLG has no starting jungler for the LCS season which starts in only 14 days. With any luck CLG, Riot, and Dexter will be able to work things out with US immigration and get Dexter in the states in time for the LCS, but in case they don't I'm going to go over a few of the likely jungler options for CLG in the meantime.

#1: Brian "Trickz" Ahn. Many will remember Trickz playing for CLG during IEM Cologne 2013 back in November. While Trickz did occasionally seem shaky, likely due to his inexperience at LAN events, during IEM Cologne, his play was a large part in the success of CLG at the event. Gank pressure provided by Trickz helped CLG mid laner Link run rampant over superstar Fnatic Xpeke in two of CLG's three games. Champion picks during IEM also showed Trickz can play the current top tier junglers like Vi and Shyvana. Even as just a temporary fill in Trickz could go a long way to helping CLG start the LCS off strong.

#2. Michael "Bigfatlp" Tang. Bigfatlp has been an off and on staple of the CLG lineup for years, and served as CLG's jungler in the season 3 summer split of the LCS. The level one strategies that all members of CLG credited to Bigfatlp were an enormous factor in several CLG victories including both of those picked against Cloud 9. His immense game knowledge and dedication to research clearly outshine whatever problems the highly underrated Bigfatlp may have. The biggest problem with bringing back Bigfatlp yet again would be the tendency CLG has to fall into bad habits, and they simply do not need a repeat of the underwhelming summer split.

#3. George "HotshotGG" Geogallidis. Team owner and long time fan favorite HotshotGG stepped back from the team at the start of the Season 3 LCS summer split making way for Nientonsoh to take over in the top lane. Despite that HotshotGG has continued to play and stream League of Legends at a high level. HotshotGG has previous played jungle for CLG during season 2 and is well known for his fondness for the tanky farm heavy champions similar to the current strong jungle picks. The farm heavy tanky jungle meta is quite similar to the season 2 jungle HotshotGG was a part of. The return of HotshotGG to jungle could work as a short term stop gap while CLG waits for Dexter's visa to be cleared, and the fan buzz from the move could certainly help drive interest in the early weeks of the LCS.

Obviously these are not CLG's only options, there is the possibility of pulling up someone from the Challenger scene. One of these three options seems the most likely fill in for Dexter however, largely due to a mix of HotshotGG's sentiments on available NA talent and the fact that many players are tied up fighting for a place in the Coke Zero Challenger league. Whatever move CLG makes we'll certainly know soon as they've got to field a team for the first day of LCS on January 17th.

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