Regardless of results the SK vs GMB rematch needed to happen.

UPDATE: Riot Nick Allen has confirmed in a follow up post that no decision was made by the referee and therefore 8.3.3 did not apply, and that the forceful remake was done to prevent SK falling under undue external pressure from the decision. He goes on to state that LCS rules will receive an update soon to make what happens in this scenario clearer and hopefully prevent another incident. 


When it was announced only hours before it would take place the remake of SK vs Gambit, caused in large part by this Aatrox bug, rustled a lot of feathers. Reddit and Twitter exploded with people railing against the decision, spurred on by a statement from Gambit blasting the decision. All the arguments were focused around the same flawed points the official Gambit statement used, a single rule example against the idea, and examples of other known bugs that did not result in remakes. Both are flawed arguments for different reasons so I'm going to tackle them one at a time.

First is the LCS rule book quote. Gambit's statement quoted a single rule which they thought proved Riot themselves were breaking the rules by having a remake. That quote in full from the LCS rule book is 

8.3.3 Finality of Judgment. If a referee makes an incorrect judgment during a match, the judgment cannot be reversed, as the decision of the referee is absolute and final and there is no appeal process. 

On the surface Gambit sounds like they're correct in stating the remake shouldn't have happened, but it's ignoring a few key details. First is Rule 11 which states all rules and their interpretations are at the discretion of LCS officials. This is important because it means Riot already stipulated that theirs is the correct interpretation of the rules, Gambit may disagree but so long as Riot maintains the interpretation uniformly then no amount of quoting the rule book can make Riot's interpretation wrong.

The other important flaw with gambit's rule argument is that it fails to actually take into account why the remake was happening. Both the official Riot statement and Travis' interview with nRated make it clear that no referee decision was actually made. Roughly 4 minutes in SK paused the game and informed the onstage referee of the bug. Once the bug was verified rule 9.4.2 of the LCS rule book states that the game may be remade, a fact that the referee failed to communicate to SK at the time. The referee's failure to inform SK that they could remake the game, not a decision by the referee, was what Riot sought to rectify by forcing a rematch. As the referee did not make a judgement rule 8.3.3 had absolutely no bearing on the situation.

The other argument against the remake was in the form of citing other prominent bugs that did not get a remake. Most often cited was the semi-recent Coast vs Curse game which Saintvicious tweeted post game saying he experienced a bug causing him to drop Annie Tibbers on himself instead of the enemy team. Other popular references were made towards Xpecial flashing out of CC bug which hit the front page of Reddit a few weeks back and the Zed bug that occurred in the NA All-Stars vs LPL All-Stars match last year.

All 3 bugs, of which only 2 were confirmed, have one thing in common that sets them far apart from the SK vs GMB case. None of the bugs referenced resulted in a pause to challenge them with a referee. The Saintvicious and Xpecial bugs were complained about on twitter and Reddit, and the Zed bug was found by fans on Reddit. None of them were immediately paused after happening, none of them resulted in players having a conversation with the referee.

Without a stoppage of play to challenge the bug the players are by their continuing to play the game signalling that the bug is in line with acceptable play conditions. If the bugs used as counter examples had resulted in a pause and been verified they likely would have been given the option of restarting the game just like SK should have when they paused. We can see this in action during Team Alternate vs Wizard Club in the EU summer promotion tournament where a skill shot bug resulted in several game remake attempts and days of delays to fix the issue. While the Alternate vs Wizard example is far more extreme of a bug it is a much more applicable of an example, play was stopped, a bug was verified, and a rematch (though heavily delayed) was offered.

Not only did Riot not break their own rules, nor contradict themselves, they handled the situation in the best way possible. Once the referee's mistake was clear Riot needed to rectify the situation. They could not do that by awarding special treatment to SK in subsequent games, nor could they punish gambit in subsequent games, for something that was entirely the on stage referee's fault. The best course of action to ensure the situation was handled fairly was a rematch. Even more important is the decision to forcibly have the rematch rather than give it as an option to SK. Had SK been approached before the LCS started on Friday and asked if they wanted to have a rematch of SK vs Gambit their decision would have been heavily tainted by the potential blow back that a rematch would entail. SK suffered a large amount of undue hate for the rematch when it was forced upon them, it would have been a thousandfold worse for SK if they had chosen to play a rematch on Friday.

The remake being forced upon both teams was the fairest way to make up for the referee's mistake, regardless of how the original and the remake played out. While it is unfortunate for Gambit, it was also unfortunate for SK that the referee mistake happened in the first place. Riot handled the mistake as best as was possible to bring about an outcome that was fair to both parties.

Ohmwrecker has a 100% win rate this season.

Yup, you read that title right, Ohmwrecker has a 100% win rate so far in Season 4. It has been picked up in two professional games, in the same week.

The first purchase of Ohmwrecker came out in Korea during the OGN Champions Spring qualifiers in the SKT T1 S vs Midas FIO match. The second barely over a day later in the European LCS during the Gambit vs ROCCAT game. There is some argument that it's a troll pick as SKT never used the item in their game, and Roccat were against Gambit's substitute squad, but I think the Roccat game shows it's potential viability.

Since the recipe change in 3.14 that dropped the price of Ohmwrecker by about 800g the item has been gold efficient on stats alone. It remains a mostly unused item though, and not for no reason. Items like the Talisman of Ascension, Sight Stone, and often Mikael's Crucible take priority for a support to aid in team fights. Ohmwrecker's turret disabling active is useless outside of tower sieging and while the AP and HP are nice they simply don't stack up to the benefits of the other aforementioned item's actives.

Ohmwrecker is definitely not useless though, and Roccat gave a perfect example of the situational viability of the item. When Roccat buy Ohmwrecker they're ahead and looking to siege on Gambit's inhibitor turrets, but they only have Ziggs and Lucian for ranged damage and Gambit has an incredible amount of wave clear. This is where Ohmwrecker shines, allowing Roccat to keep their siege champions under the turret longer in the face of heavy wave clear. It also comes in handy in more than one dive for them, disabling the turret long enough to win the fight without taking heavy casualties.

It's unlikely Ohmwrecker will ever be as popular a pick as the Talisman of Ascension, but in a season where games often turn during the inhibitor turret siege there's a niche for Ohmwrecker to fill. It's possible we wont see much more of it, but then again SKT and Roccat may have planted just enough of a seed for pro teams to value Ohmrecker's niche usage.

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. .