Plat Breakdown Week 3

Hey all, it’s CTRL ULT ELITE here again with another Platinum Breakdown. I have been doing a lot of writing these past couple of weeks, and I hope you are all enjoying it! I am starting a much stricter development cycle at work, and it's unfortunately going to cut into my writing time. Instead of going through every series (9 a week), I’m going to try and commit to doing 1 match every division and trying to avoid covering 2-0’s (around 3 or 4 a week). If I have time to cover more, I will (and I hope to!). My plan next week is to redo my power rankings, talk about additions to starting rosters, and predict who will make playoffs. Big shoutouts again to Benjiamans of the stats team for providing us with stats to look at. Also, huge thanks to Manatsu who is going to help me out with some editing.

Game 1 of Elementals Maelstrom (EM) vs Titan Gaming Atlas (TGA) started with some unusual bans. EM banned Brand, Seraphine, and Caitlyn in the 1st round on blue side, focusing their bans on the bot lane of TGA. Brand was a ban at Hamsandw1ch who plays the pick midlane. It is also a flex for AU KnuckeD who does play it, but he plays other poke supports much more often such as Zyra and Lux and has superior win rates on those picks. Seraphine was a weird ban to me as well. As far as I can tell, almost no one on TGA actually play the pick, and they banned it themselves last week in both their games. Caitlyn is a ban I am totally down with and expect teams to do a lot vs TGA. TGA banned Darius, Tryndamere, and Lulu round 1. TheRealOogway does love to split push, and these 2 bans make sense if you are trying to look to play more for teamfights. EM started the draft off taking Volibear, an early game focused jungler with tremendous dive potential. TGA take Wukong and Amumu into it. Wukong is a flex pick that goes even with Volibear while in the jungle and provides the same level of dive threat for back lines. Amumu blind support is pretty spicy. Amumu offers tremendous hard engage and CC in bot lane, doing very well into most enchanters but struggles into other tank supports. EM then take Sivir Braum to round out their blue side round 1. I really like EM’s first 3 picks: you have a solid frontline for Sivir, engage options, lots of CC, and a great lane to gank for Volibear. TGA take Twitch to match Sivir’s scaling. Twitch Amumu is a bit of a strange lane to me and not something I would want. If you can shove in, I guess you have some really deadly roams but no way are you out shoving Sivir.

For round 2, TGA keep focusing their bans on split pushers, getting rid of Kled and Jax.

EM also decide to ban top laners getting rid of Sett and Shen. TGA with the blind pick take Ornn, looking to build more on their hard engage. I'm not crazy about Ornn here as Braum can always block your ult. You need some sort of blind pick frontline, and Ornn is probably the best pick left. EM then take Urgot and Sylas. I think Sylas is crazy here as you already have 3 game changing ultimates to Hijack. The Urgot pick I am less keen on. Urgot is great disengage but needs to be ahead to be able to survive teamfights. Ornn can simply sit in this lane and build early armor to nullify Urgot's laning strength. Urgot can never really freeze due to his passive either. Your team is not that high on burst so I don't think you can fire your ult early and look for a fear disruption. Titan Gaming Atlas with counter pick then take Gwen. This pick came out of nowhere and is crazy good. The only real answer for Gwen with this team is to combo Braum passive with burst from everyone. The problem with doing that is if you are hard forcing onto Gwen then you are going to be bunched up for the wombo combo of Amumu and Wukong with Twitch peppering you.

This game 1 has a very slow start with first blood not taken until 9 minutes. TGA take an early dragon around then in trade for a Rift Herald. There are a couple of skirmishes with kills traded back and forth until the next dragon spawns. There is a fight for it, and TGA manage to trade 3 for 1 and secure the dragon. At 15 minutes, both teams group up again and fight for Hearld, and Gwen gets a triple kill. The game has some more close fights after that, but Gwen is unleashed and takes over the game. Hamsandw1ch ends game 1 with 13 kills and only 2 deaths. Aclick also played extremely well in this game, only dying once and doing the same damage as their fed mid laner.

Game 2 has the same 1st round bans as game 1 for TGA. EM keep their Brand and Cait bans but decide to ban Volibear instead of Seraphine. It’s a good change to get rid of a strong jungle, but I would have gone after the Wukong. Vxpir did play well and provided plenty of CC in teamfights. TGA take Wukong 1st pick. It was good last game so why not take it again? EM then take Poppy and Seraphine. Poppy is another really good early game jungler and can get rid of Wukong in teamfights. Seraphine is a flex pick; it's very strong in 3 roles and gives you some lockdown with Poppy. TGA take Twitch again and pair it with Renata Glasc. This duo is not about the laning phase but teamfights: Renata ults giving Twitch space to auto freely. EM then take Lucian before the bans come through. Lucian, while technically a flex, is the bot laner paired with Seraphine. Lucian wants his supports to shield or heal him and likes hard CC. Seraphine fits that as she just has much longer cooldowns than Nami albeit more focused about teamfight again than the lane.

In round 2, EM ban Gwen and Sett. Gwen rolled you so banning that makes sense. Sett is Rågnar’s most played by far this split and his best solo queue champion. TGA ban Kled and Ahri. Kled gives teams a great go button and is honestly a pain to lane against so I see that ban. Ahri is a fine safe blind mage. She would provide good pick potential with Poppy so I’m not upset about this ban either. I feel however you should have just banned 2 mids. We can assume that EM are saving counter pick for top, and Kled does struggle into tank matchups. EM take Viktor blind. TGA then take Sylas and Ornn, more or less drafting the same comp as last game. Sylas has Seraphine and Viktor ult to steal which are both fantastic in teamfights. EM then take Jax as their counter pick for top. The idea behind Jax into Ornn is that you force Ornn to match you on the side lane and deny the engage. If Ornn ever leaves you, you simply take towers too fast.

This game 2 is all about Nèzumi on Viktor and TherealOogway on Jax. Jax is able to take 6 towers this game while side laning, and Nèzumi just kills everything in front of him. Game 1 was slow and controlled, but this game was fast and wild. There were 40 kills in the 29 minutes game and was in favor of TGA early. At 15 minutes, they had a 3k gold lead but a Rift herald fight at 19 minutes was the tipping point.

Draft in game 3 keeps a similar pace. EM ban Brand, Cait, and Volibear again. TGA ban Tryndamere, Darius, and decide to get rid of Seraphine like in game 1. EM take Viktor blind round 1. Nèzumi did just have an incredible game so I get wanting to take it again, but last game you took Viktor as a counter pick after seeing the whole draft. This time, you have no idea what TGA might take into it. TGA change up their draft for the first time this series, taking Viego and Syndra while forgoing Wukong and Twitch. Viego and Syndra are a great duo. Both are not that popular in solo queue but play well with each other. Syndra is all about bursting a target, and Viego wants to finish off opponents and play for resets. This is for sure a 2v2 that can look to punish Viktor. EM then take Wukong and Yuumi, trying to create lots of zone control in team fights. TGA then finish with round 1 with Sivir, denying a hyper carry from Yuumi and giving some extra wavelear to the side of TGA.

In round 2, TGA ban Twitch and Jax, trying to make sure that Yuumi does not have a win condition to attach herself to. EM ban Sett and Amumu. Again TGA needs some hard engage so banning Amumu makes sense. TGA take Morgana, giving top lane counter pick. Morgana is a pick I don’t feel strongly about. She feels oppressive when she can chain CC you and acts as an engage deterrent with soul shackles but does not have anything really important to black shield this game. EM then take Ezreal and Gangplank looking for poke. My problem with taking the draft this way is twofold. One, your team has like 0 frontline whatsoever. If you ever lose vision, it's almost a death sentence. Two, TGA has poke as well. It’s not a 1 sided shooting gallery. They have Morgana snares, Syndra scatter the weaks, and Sivir boomerangs. TGA then pick Ornn for the 3rd time wanting frontline, engage, and something that can sustain through the Gangplank poke.

Game 3 was close until it wasn't. The 1st 13 minutes of the game are dead even. At 14 minutes, both teams group and fight over Rift Herald before plates fall. TGA trade 4 for 2 and get Hearld and 2 turrets. Syndra completes the Pen mage trifecta with Ludens, Sorc Shoes, and hextech alternator and just starts melting people. Pelli is totally unable to contribute to this game as Wukong, only dealing 5k damage and just gets annihilated by the poke wars. TGA slowly choke EM out of the game, taking every tower, 2 barons, and soul.

Notes from this series

• Nezumi can pop off and drag his team to a win when given Viktor and early attention

• Rågnar is going to keep playing Ornn unless you force him not to

• Look out for Hamsandw1tch to play some hard counters like Gwen

• AClick is looking like the strongest ADC in this entire division, you should probably try to start playing towards bot and make sure they cannot scale for free

• In wins Titan Gaming Atlas play heavily for drake, normally getting soul or being on Soul point

• AU KnuckeD is on top of the league stat wise don’t sleep on this support player

Literal Monkeys vs Mystic Cats

This series was a 2-0 and I do not have time to cover it in full. Couple of points of interest.

• Literal Monkeys did not have their full roster for this series.

• Mystic Cats were dominant in wins both games but took their time making sure to get baron before committing to the final push

• Mystic Cats took Yasuo game 1 and flexed it to ADC.

• Corn Star dominated both games this series same with Washing Hands.

• Wunderworld did a good job keeping up in CS both games despite being down so much in kills.

Ta Wild Side vs TA Tropics

This series was a 2-0 and I do not have time to cover it in full. Couple of points of interest.

• Soulbert got some of their traditional carries as they were not targeted with bans but were unable to carry.

• In game 1 TA Wildside had all their eggs in the Soulbert basket; they were literally their only threat with a Ornn top and a Seraphine mid.

• Game 2 was close TA Tropics were just 1 dragon away from claiming soul and even got a baron. They should look to emulate this draft more with Kurido and TacoCat providing a threat so that Soulbert does not have to try and 1v9.

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This was the streamed series this week by BOL plat and was another certified banger series. Would highly recommend checking out games 2 and 3 both teams put on one hell of a show.

Draft in game 1 had Sensei Squad Susanoo(SSS) on blue and CB Tsundere(CBT) on red. SSS banned Shen Zilean and Sivir round 1. Shen and zilean are interesting bans vs CBT as they do play these champions a very small amount in solo que. Both are very high utility however so if you are trying to play more of a split push game these bans make sense. Sivir makes sense if you are trying to deny speed ups. CBT on red side banned Wukong, Ahri and Zeri in the 1st round. Zeri was a forced ban with Sivir taken away you have to make sure you can trade ADC’s somewhat. Wukong is almost a must ban vs Sensei Squad due to Orphic and Vaulter being nuts on the monkey. It's the same with Ahri as Lavalizard8u has like 70% of their games on the pick. SSS take karma as their 1st pick in game one. Karma is a very flexible champion being able to be played as a poke support, an enchanter or even can be flexed to other roles. CBT take Vi and Seraphine with their 1st 2 picks wanting to have lots of CC for whatever Sensei Squad is looking to pick. SSS then counter the CC with Olaf again a top/jungle flex and take Vex a comfort pick for mid. Vex loves squishy targets and both Seraphine and Vi are weak to burst. Vi has a dash so at least Vex gets something for her passive. CBT then counter the mid pick with Viktor wanting to take an equally strong 2v2 mid jungle before bans come in.

Round 2 of game 1 has both teams making what I think are draft mistakes. SSS ban Ornn and Senna. I think Ornn was actually a bad ban here. I know hot take hear me out. CBT have drafted their support(Shifti only has 4 games on Seraphine) and there is no way that they are going to blind pick top when you can just select your ADC .Also your team needs a clear winning lane and Orphic probably wins vs a last pick Ornn and gives you a point of pressure. Sennas a good ban as Shifti does play it a lot and it works quite well with Seraphine. CBT ban Jinx and Swain. Swain I do not get as a ban and think it was a waste as well. You have all the hard CC so its not like Swain can sit in your team to drain tank and where are they going to put it? Top lane blind? You already have a burst mage so it's not going mid and if you put Sunflower on it your teams is going to lack AD. Jinx is a fine ban. I'm not really sure how you could play her into this team comp but I guess she is one of the higher ranged ADCS. CBT take Misfortune to compliment Serpahine. Seraphine loves slows that MF provides with making it rain so that her beat drop can snare enemies and the ults layer together very effectively. SSS finish blue side of the draft with Jihn and Aatrox. Jihn Karma is a lane all about poking enemies out and being really safe. Aatrox blind is a bit of a callout but he is one of the best top laners this patch. Aatrox’s losing matchups are also very lane focused, think stuff like Quinn or Warwick. CBT then take Renekton as their last pick something to match Renekton in the side lane and something that can look to put early pressure onto Aatrox.

This game 1 was a clean win for CBT. They were in the driver's seat the entire game making proactive plays like diving Orphic top at minute 4. They also converted their kills into objectives. Get a successful gank bot and kill Karama. Proceed to your free dragon. Sensei Squad got behind on champions that were designed to win lane and then group. Fonso played absolutely incredible this game on Viktor only dying once and having the most kill participation on his team. This game was a clean victory.

Draft for game 2 has CBT on blue and SSS get red side and counter pick. CBT start out draft by banning Zeri, Ahri and Olaf. Zeri and Ahri are 2 bans that are almost a must vs SSS and Olaf is a general counter to the CC teamfight comps that CBT generally play. SSS ban Viktor Zilean and Sivir in the 1st round. Viktor was amazing last game so get it off the table. Sivir is a really strong blue 1 pick so I also get removing her especially with Zeri banned. Zilean was banned again and I'm not quite sure why the pick is getting targeted. CBT take Wukong 1st pick just as much to deny the pick as to take it themselves. SSS take Seraphine and Trundle with their 2 picks. Both are flex picks with Trundle being able to go top or jungle and being an adept duelist. Into wukong you are able to out fight him early for scuttle crabs but you do clear the jungle slower. Seraphine here just gives your team a go button which is always needed. CBT then take Taliyah and Lulu. Talyiah is a mid who is all about wave clear and roam potential something that fonso has been practicing in solo queue. Lulu is the utility support picked into Seraphine and is much more defensively focused. In lane Lulu can play aggressive with her shield and poke abilities but the later the game goes the squisher the enchantress is. Lulu needs an auto focused hyper carry to latch onto so SSS should have a good idea round 2 what CBT are doing. SSS then take Vex mid again it is a comfort pick and an even matchup. Vex can look to burst and fear whatever hyper carry CBT lock in.

Round 2 SSS ban Twitch and Shen. CBT with their picks are looking to take a blind tank top and a hyper carry so it's a great idea to get rid of probably the best meta hyper carry left in Twitch. Shen is a counter to Vex and pairs extremely well with Wukong so I get that ban as well. CBT ban Mordekaiser and Darius trying to make sure that whatever Rindo is given blind will not just get perma run down in the side lane. SSS take Miss Fortune saving counter pick for Orphic and establishing a strong early bot lane. CBT then take Ornn blind and Kog’Maw. Kog is the exciting pick here; the Void puppy can melt through just about anything given time and space but is very weak to CC not having any way to kite except by spacing and orb walking. SSS finish the draft off with Sett. Sett vs Ornn is a very strange matchup. Sett can interrupt Ornns ult his own but Ornn can also deny setts ult with a well timed bellows breath. Ornn also is able to rush early armor items to try and mitigate setts laning strength but Sett has enough regen in his kit due to his passive to stick around in the lane. Overall both are great team fighters with lots of CC but Sett is more damage focused however and CBT can kite the playmaker out with the movement speed that Lulu provides.

Game 2 has some absolutely wild gold swings and I would just watch it instead of reading whatever I type out. There are literally 3k gold swings that last a minute. In the end SSS take that game and bring us to game 3.

Game 3 of this series and both teams now have a measure on each other. Draft for game 3 has SSS on blue and CBT on red. SSS ban Zilean, Vi and Sivir. I guess Sunflower does not want the pick as they have the option of banning something else with their last ban and taking Sivir. CBT ban the 3 must bans vs SSS Wukong Zeri Ahri. SSS then takes Seraphine 1st pick trying to make sure that they still have the engage that was so pivotal last game to their success. CBT then take Miss Fortune and Hecarim. Miss Fortune I think just to deny it from Sunflower. Hecarim has slowly started creeping back into the meta with a build of murmana into full tank. Hecarim provides you with hard engage and is especially adept at diving squishy back liners thanks to Unstoppable Onslaught and can punish those who rely on CC to stay safe like Seraphine. SSS then go with a different mid option and take Swain along with their jungle in Xin Zhao. Swain offers bulkiness or tank stats that allow him to survive the Miss Fortune and Hecarim and can then drain tank with Demonic Ascension to provide a frontline along Xin. CBT then decide to go with Karma trying to give some more movement speed to Hecarim and something to match the push power of Seraphine.

In round 2 CBT ban away Darius and Mordekiaser from Orphic. SSS take away Shen and Amumu. Karma can be a mid flex but I think this should have been a Renekton ban. Rindo showed you that they can play the pick quite well and you need your top lane this game to be high impact. CBT take Viktor trying to give Rindo a chance to counter pick Orphic. Viktor lanes quite well into Swain and can provide the burst damage to delete backlines in combination with Hearim. SSS then take Tristana and Gwen. Tristana is a mid flex here, something that can shove Viktor in and look at all in them. Gwen blind is brave but if Gwen ever gets to 3 items your team doesn’t have an answer. Rindo takes Renekton again looking for a strong top laner yet again hoping to get Gwen down and providing their team with frontline.

This game 3 was mostly SSS game. They had a gold lead for almost the entire game but CBT were able to match them in teamfights being able to secure both barons that were taken this game and matching dragons with both teams taking 3. SSS always had a push advantage however and were able to get 9 towers and both Rift Hearlds compared to the 3 towers of CBT. Sunflower on swain was not nearly as impactful as they had been in previous games in this series, only doing a third of the damage that Shifti did.

New World Esports Titan vs Absolute Esports

Aboloute Esports were actually a team full of smurfs. They have been banned from BOL https://www.blueotterleague.net/post/competitive-ruling-absolute-esports I had previously typed in this post that RoseofGold had some smurf like stats guess they really did.

Revolution Ice Age vs Crustacean Nation

• This series was a 2-0 and I do not have time to cover it in full. Couple of points of interest. Dragon Moon Cake is still averaging only 1 death a game

• Teegarden was given Ezreal in game 1 and he played incredible for the 3rd game in a row on the pick. You should probaly ban Ezreal vs CN

• TehSplash brought out the Amumu jungle to play engage for his team.

• Elsa from Frozen ran over top lane in both games having a 50 cs lead and died 3 times between both games.

• For Revolution Ice age Twiz on leblanc is something teams probably need to look to ban or have a clear counter for he is great on the pick.

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Xflow Blue(XFB) vs Basement Dwellers(BD) was another series with some pretty dominant wins between the 2 teams with only game 3 being anywhere near close. The Basement Dwellers had their full roster together this week with Battle Gnome back into the Jungle and Amandalin at Support.

In game 1 XFB started with bans focused on Jayel the ADC for BD. They banned Vayne, Twitch and Anvia, something that NakNak has been playing the majority of their solo que games this past month. BD focused their bans on XfW Gibb Diff banning Trundle and Wukong. They then banned Sivir with 2 of the main answers into the pick being taken off the table. XFB took Poppy 1st pick a jungler who excels at countering mobile champions and has really stong early gank setup. BD then took Caitlyn, Nami a strong bot lane all about push and early pressure. Jayel gets plenty of gank assistance so having something that gives them some early game pressure is a great idea. Nami compliments cait being able to bubble people who step on traps and letting Cait take aggressive trades and then healing them. XFB take Jinx and Amumu into Cait Nami. I guess the idea behind these picks is that if Poppy parths bot you have a really strong kill setup and Cait Nami are always going to be pushing this lane. My main issue with this lane however is Amumu is going to get poked out. Jinx does not have enough kill pressure if Amumu goes forward with Q and Cait nami can just harass the sad mummy whenever he walks up for relic shield stacks. The BD seeing all of the CC that XFB have drafted take Olaf looking to really hammer home the early game.

Round 2 BD ban Fiora and Ziggs. Ziggs was a respect ban to the crazy game that OPkillswitch had as well as the fact that BD needs to push and Ziggs and stall that out. Fiora is a ban as BD are going to look to blind pick some sort of tank and do not want CTRL ULT ELITE to get run over in the side lane. XFB van Sejuani and Veigar. Sejuani is a top lane ban trying to deny engage potential whereas Veigar is a great counter pick into more traditional scaling control mages in the mid lane. BD then blind picks Mundo, something that CTRL ULT ELITE plays a ton of in Solo queue. Mundo like Olaf can simply ignore CC and is great at diving. Even in lanes where Mundo hard loses he can still just look to farm with cleavers. The problem with tanking Mundo here is that Mundo provides no CC or real engage. XFB to finish out their draft take Viktor and Ornn looking to play a very normal AOE teamfight comp. The problem with this is that BD have a comp that more or less wants to fight you as early and as often as possible. XFB need time to scale on almost every pick that they have drafted besides Poppy. BD then take Cassiopeia as their Viktor counter again looking for something to shove and play aggressively.

Game 1 the BD win every lane and win the game with their early advantages taking almost every objective on the map. They get every tower, all 4 dragons and elder drake. Cait is able to bully the lane down bot and get an early dragon stack going. Battle Gnome ends the game at 8-0-4 showing that they know their aggressive limits and not allowing Poppy to do much of anything the entire game.

In game 2 BD are on blue with 1st pick and XFB is on red with counter pick. BD ban trundle and wukong again the same as their game 1 draft. With multiple ADCS up they decide to ban Ziggs in the 1st round. XFB ban Vayne, Anivia and Olaf both teams more or less kept their bans the same as game 1. Olaf was the only change to the bans for XFB and it is a smart ban if you are trying to play more for AOE teamfights Olaf can simply ignore whatever frontline is there. BD first pick Sivir as it was left open and is stat wise the best ADC in solo queue and competitive. XFB then take Zeri and Yummi. This lane turned out to be a huge problem for BD across the rest of the series. Zeri Yummi is a lane that doesnt really interact with you. They both are safe scaling champions who get shoved in and then leave if a dive is threatened on them. After both are 6 they do have kill options into most lanes but the duos real strength comes from teamfights. Zeri if she is not bursted down will be able to keep peppering whoever is left alive darting in and out of the fight with her insane move speed and mobility. Yummi further augments this and let's Zeri survive burst with Zoomies and Final Chapter acts as disruption. BD then take Soraka and Sejuani wanting to establish a frontline and CC to try and make sure the Zeri can just endlessly kite them out. XFB matches top laners and take Aatrox giving Yuumi someone else to jump onto. Aatrox Yuumi is another winning combination as Zoomies combined with World Ender means that Aatrox can heal his entire health bar multiple times in a fight and has the movement speed to catch you.

In round 2 XFB ban Veigar and Cassiopea trying to make sure that NakNak will not be able to play a control mage and limiting the secondary carry options. BD ban Volibear and Viktor. Viktor makes sense to narrow the mid pool more but Volibear probably was not the best ban. As BD you need something like Volibear or Vi to latch onto Zeri and try and follow it up with the Sejuani and Soraka. XFB take their junglers in Diana further strengthening their death ball style team comp. Sivir at this point has too many durable juggernaut like threats to deal with by herself. BD then decides to go for an out of the box combination and take Galio and Qiyana. Its Qiyana jungle for Battle Gnome and they are the one on their team who must kill Zeri. With last pick XFB take Vel’Koz and BD are now in a lot of trouble. This game now hinges on the pre 6 for Qiyana. If Qiyana can snowball with early kills before Aatrox has a chance to buy armor or can get onto Vel’koz before they have Zhonyas the BD have a chance, but if Qiyana is not at the 1 shot breakpoint I can't see them winning.

So in game 2 BD are not able to get an early lead. In fact at 20 minutes there are down 6k. Vel'Koz and Zeri both do too much damage and Yuumi is able to keep their carries alive. Sivir does their best to try and DPS but is never safe enough to completely take over a fight. Sejuani top is also pretty worthless this game CTRL ULT ELITE does very little damage or CC more or less just being a punching bag same with Nak Nak on Galio.

In game 3 XFB start again on blue and keep their bans from the previous game. BD ban Aartox, Fiora and Volibear looking to limit how much impact XFW ReedandWrite will have and honestly make a mistake. Volibear should have been left on the table with both Wukong and Volibear up banning one and leaving the other does not accomplish very much. This should have been a Zeri ban. XFB 1st pick yuumi on blue. BD then responds with a trundle flex and Cait. This is again not respecting the Zeri Yuumi duo if trundle is jungle you don't have enough dive threat and Cait is a good pick at getting ahead but she generally does not threaten all in kills to seriously get Zeri behind. XFB then take Zeri Wukong and now as BD how do you ever win a teamfight? XFB has better CC, more mobility and BD then take Nami again looking to recreate the game 1 magic the duo had.

BD in round 2 ban Viktor and Darius. I think the darius ban makes sense again if you are looking to hard win top lane but Viktor probably was not the correct choice. OPkillswitch has shown that they are really good on a variety of mid laners. You have banned Ziggs the entire series why not ban it again? You are looking to play a split push comp at this point and Ziggs can simply clear waves way before any split pusher can start hitting a tower. XFB simply keep their mid bans of Cassiopeia and Veigar trying to make sure that NakNak is not on something with hard CC to stop the Zeri chase down. BD then pick Mundo again here. This pick sucked for a lot of reasons. You lost the trundle flex, you have picked no hard CC for teamfight, Trundle needs to play to cover your bot lane, that is the lane that has to win. XFB knowing that Mundo cannot play aggressive early and take Sett and Ziggs. Sett is generally not a good pick into Mundo he can ignore the CC that let you land haymakers at max Grit. He also does not get displaced by your short trading patterns. However Mundo does stack HP so if both of you are even heading into teamfights you can just ult mundo to dive bomb into the enemy team and nuke thier healthbars it still does the damage even if you dont take the enemy with you. Ziggs just denies any win condition that BD have. If Mundo does go godmode and start hard winning top you can simply put Ziggs in the same lane as them and Mundo can now never push. Its the same with Caitlyn. BD end the draft with Malzahar trying to take something that can shove as fast as Ziggs and look to ult a key target in teamfights.

Game 3 is the closest game of the series. Neither team gets to stack all the dragons. The BD are unable to win a single teamfight but are able to play side lanes getting 7 towers. Even when XFB get baron it is traded for a tower and dragon. But XFB win every teamfight and are able to break the game with their 2nd baron ending it through a mid push.

Ta Akatsuki vs CB RUSH

This series was a 2-0 and I do not have time to cover it in full. Couple of points of interest.

• This was our 1st look at TA Akatsuki and I feel bad for them having to play vs probably the best team in the Freljord division for their 1st week.

• In game 1 CB Rush were able to win without anyone on Ta Akatsuki doing over 10k damage in 28 minutes.

• Pipp played the split push on Cammile very well, doing more damage to turrets than champions.

• In game 2 CBR Rutledge popped off doing almost double the damage of the next closest player in the game on Sylas.

• Hunterwolfsteel5 did very well in both games and is a top 5 jungler in BOL Plat.

• PotPot Pothead is performing the best on Ta Akatsuki acording to the stats that Benjimans in tracking

• Eqq played Sivir both games into Twitch and was able to keep up in CS but was unable to keep up in damage game 1.

In game 1 Ice Born Chaos(ICE) decided to spread out their bans in game 1 getting rid of Akshan, Jihn and Sejuani. These are the 3 most played champions for the assigned players. Hypnotic Gaming(HG) also spread their bans out with Azir, Wukong and Kindred. Diana is the 1st pick taken by ICE. I think this is a good 1st pick Diana has very few losing jungle matchups and clears quite well. Diana’s major weakness as 1st pick is that they are not terribly effective pre 6 and can be invaded. Hypnotic decide that they want to take comfort here taking Gnar and Sivir. Gnar while being a great blind pick does have some really hard counter matchups. Anything that can hard commit and burst Gnar does quite well. Sivir is again a great pick but she needs a frontline and ganr does not really provide that. ICE then take Camille and Jinx. Camille gives you a hard counter to Gnar in the side lane being able to take very short trades thanks to precision protocall and hookshot that can burst the squishy yordle. Jinx is a hyper carry answer to Sivir giving you late game scaling and can out range Sivir. Hypnotic finished round 1 on the red side with Viego looking for resets. I again am not a fan of veigo here specifically. I like Viego but they need a team with very high burst and excels at skirmishing, not the long drawn out fights you're looking for with Sivir and Gnar.

For round 2 HG ban Vex and Rakkan. Both these bans make sense as you need something to follow up onto the Diana and are also trying to keep Sivir safe. ICE ban Seraphine and Lulu looking to deny engage as HG just has to kind of run at you. HG takes Braum and now I'm concerned about this team comp. ICE has the split push advantage and you have no hard engage. Your best way to start a fight is to let Braum E towards a Viego in stealth while Sivir ult is on and try and look for some CC. The problem with doing that is you leave Sivir all by herself vs a Diana and possible Camille flank and it's horribly complicated to do. ICE grabs Karma and Galio to finish their comp off. Karma more or less ensures that you can never catch Jinx and Galio means that you can look to support Camille in side lane dives or you can play for Diana engages. HG finish the draft out with Tayliah, one of their better picks this draft. Taliyah gives you push advantage mid, can follow Galio roams and gives your team some sort of burst so Viego can look to reset.

Game 1 QLUU and Stunna for ICE completely run the game. This is going to sound super critical and I'm sorry Mikewiwi. I don't think I have seen in this league anyone do less in a victory than you do on galio this game. They only did 2k damage to champs, made 63 more gold than their support and had a cc score of 6 in a 23 minute game. Like these numbers make it look like you were AFK or DCed. QLUU on this same winning team just for some contrast did 17k damage and made 5000 more gold than their mid laner; they also even had double the CC score as Jinx. In terms of the actual game the early game till 10 minutes was even. A couple of solo kills later and at 16 minutes there is a teamfight where ICE goes 4-0. Games over from here between this point and the end of the game. For the next 9 minutes HG only get 1 tower and 2 kills.

Draft of game 2 starts with both teams banning completely the same picks in the same order other than a Wukong ban being swapped for a Diana ban. I hate this if you are Hypnotic why are you banning Kindred, an incredibly high risk pick that is generally taken as a counter. Like I get that Stunna is really good at Kindred but like you are 1st picking one of her hardest counters. Kindred also means your team has to play for early push and needs tanks. Mikewili just showed they are not that great at that. With 1st pick as I alluded to HG take Wukong. I’ve said this before but its a great 1st pick. You can flex it top with some teams; he's great in teamfights and has some tricky gank paths that can bypass normal wards when jungling. ICE take Graves and Gnar with their 1st 2 picks. Graves is one of those picks that is feast or famine. The Graves on your team in solo queue is busy eating glue or huffing paint and can barely clear their camps. The enemy team's Graves though is Oner reincarnated clearing every camp on the map on spawn, perfectly kiting camps so they are full hp, taking Dragon whenever it's up and while they wait for camps to respawn they leave their jungle to 1 shot your backline. Anyway Graves here is kind of risky as he can be kited and is weak to magic damage. HG then take Braum and Lilia. Braum can block graves ult gives resistances and can easily stun Graves hes great here. Lilia is still a jungle top flex here, same with Wukong so you can wait to see whoever is top lane and throw one of the picks up there for the matchup. Lilia is great into graves you out pace his farm and can kite him out. ICE then take Vex for Mikewiwi looking to give comfort to their mid laner. I personally don’t like Vex here there are very few dashes for you to play off of, Braum can stop your ult and no one is squishy enough for you to 1 shot. You also have now pick your top and mid in the 1st rotation not giving you anything worthwhile to counter with your last pick.

In round 2 ICE ban Viktor and Anviva trying to give themselves a point of strength mid. HG ban Karma and Thresh trying to make sure that Braum will not get poked out of lane. ICE take Renata Glasc, a pick that offers great disengage and is a hard counter to Braum not allowing him to engage with his incredibly telegraphed combo. Hypnotic then goes all in on the magic damage and take Seraphine ADC and Xerath. Your team now is a complete nightmare for ICE. You have engage with Seraphine Wukong, poke with Xearth and disengage with Braum and Lilia. ICE has almost no way to start a fight with their picks into your poke comp and I can say that you won draft here. ICE then takes Jinx as their last pick again looking to recreate the game 1 pop off performance.

Game 2 is a win for HG, their 1st so far! It's not nearly as dominant as game 1 was for ICE but HG were up gold the entire game and only allowed ICE to take 7 kills. King Yeetloaf on Xearth was the obvious MVP this game being the damage dealer leader. Wukong piloted by GreatJace absolutely crushed Gnar in lane and side. Ganr did not hit a turret once in this game. Overall a clean victory and they stuck to their draft plan.

Game 3 in draft has ICE back once again on blue side with 1st pick and HG on red with counter pick. Both these teams absolutely smashed one another with whoever won draft so I'm very curious if either of these teams made adjustments in pick/ban. I was disappointed when both teams simply repeated the 1st round bans from game 2. As HG should you have not banned Wukong instead of Kindred here? Wukong has proved to be an incredibly contested pick between the two teams and both sides have crushed with it. ICE is obviously going to 1st pick(they do) so why not ban it? As ICE why not shift your bans more towards mid lane? King Yeetloaf has counter pick this game and is showing that they are the X factor why not limit their carry options? It worked well for the BD, they banned 5 mids last week. So ICE take Wukong 1st pick its a no brainer Wukong has dominated for both teams and both teams already 1st picked it. HG take Lilia and Searphine in round 2. I like Lilia again here it gives you some teamfight power to match Wukong but I think Seraphine was picked a little too early here. Seven Devils is the one who will be playing it and just means that ICE can take whatever ADC they want to take a free lane. ICE take Braum and Zeri and this comp is looking good. Braum is awesome into Serpahine being able to block Encore and Zeri is as well being able to generally dodge the slow moving projectiles that Seraphine throws out. Zeri is terrible in solo queue I know but in coordinated games she is much better being able to receive the little bit of peel she needs before her movement speed stacks and she can kite people to the moon and can snipe people across walls if they won't commit to objectives. HG take Taric as last pick and I am now very worried about their draft again. I would argue Taric is the best support in the game currently but he struggles heavily with 1 thing: kiting. If Taric cannot use his passive to reduce his cooldowns he becomes significantly worse and they can only stun people who are very close to them. If ICE just drafts more mobile picks you can never have a fair 5v5 wombo combo team fight that HG wants.

With the next set of bans HG get rid of Vex and Cassiopeia from Mikewiwi. You cannot really ban top laners or junglers here as Wukong is a flex so they might just be completely wasted so I agree with targeting mid. But these bans should have been less about with Mikewiwi plays and more about what would counter your team. As a diamond 4 mid laner Mikewiwi obviously plays more than 3 picks and your team wants ICE to pick something like Cassiopiea here. Ahri, leblanc, Ekko these assassin picks are going to pick your team apart if they get picked. ICE realize that HG needs something with really high damage to make up for their teams lack of damage so they ban Gangplank and Viktor. I agree a lot more with these bans. HG take Aatrox giving counter pick to mid. I hate Aatrox here. I think you should have blind picked mid here for sure it gives you a ton of information and you more or less have no idea what Mikewiwi is going to play. It’s not the pick itself, Aatrox is fantastic paired with healers and utility, it's that HG are ignoring what ICE is picking almost. Your team is really susceptible to being kited and you pick one of the most position reliant picks in the game. If Aatrox cannot hit Q sweet spots he's not a champion. Wukong top is also probably one of his worse matchups. ICE take Ahri and Kayn and uh I feel like this games over before it even started. There's 0 way for your team to catch a Zeri, Ahri or Kayn. Unless the 3 of them stand on top of each other and get hit by a 3 man sleep or Braum fails to block a Seraphine R they can kite you more or less endlessly. They all also can look to pressure you from unconventional angles Taric is not going to be hitting their stun unless they have flash or someone screws up bad. HG take Anivia as their counter and yeah its done. Anivia vs Ahri is a complete skill matchup and again no one should be hit by your very slow Q. Even with a wall setup every single person on this team can hop your wall, even Braum.

This game ICE wins. It's another blowout win that this series has been full of. Zeri just gets to more or less free hit this entire game only taking 12k and dealing over 25k while having almost 10 cs a minute. Mikewiwi also popped off doing the most damage in the game and avoiding dying.

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