Platinum League Breakdown: Week 1
Hi all my name is Storm or CTRL ULT ELITE. I am sure I am a new name to everyone in BOL as I have just started getting back into competitive league this year. I am the top laner and captain of The Basement Dwellers and am going to be the main content writer for our Platinum league. I have written articles for Yugioh and done some Fantasy hockey articles in the past but this is my first foray into LOL content. I hope to see you all on the rift and we all have a fantastic season!
This week I'm going to be providing a little bit of information on every team in BOL Plat as team rosters dropped recently. I have written a short team summary for every team as well as a little bit about every player with their solo que picks and general lane style from research I could find based on their OP.GG as of August 4th.
Here are the teams competing this split in platinum! We have 3 divisions each with 7 teams with the top 4 teams making playoffs in each division.
1) Elementals Maelstrom
Top: TheRealOogway
Jungle: L9 SKOOTIN
Mid: Nèzumi
ADC: defly
Support: DMForScholarship
Elemental Maelstrom are poised to top their division; they have a high solo que average at platinum 2. Their highest rated players are both platinum 1 are TheRealOogway and defly. With a roster built around getting the top side of your map a strong start and letting your AD scale I see this team doing well. Other than watching TheRealOogway to see how many solo kills they can get I would focus on L9 SKOOTIN. When Kindred and Graves get a lead they can start throwing their weight around. A top side gromp mark may look innocent but it could become a team fight with Kled and Galio looking to join.
TheRealOogway is a top laner who looks to carry in solo que. A Jax, Kled and Darius player primarily, TheRealOogway wants to be the one on his team with the most damage done and taken. With this type of play style you force your team to play for you and this roster is built to do just that.
For jungle Elemental Maelstrom have L9 SKOOTIN a very flexible jungler. L9 SKOOTIN has games on many different champions but in solo queue they primarily rely on themselves to carry and play more scaling junglers like Graves, Kindred, Karthus and Shyvana. They do however still have many early game junglers in their champion pool playing Xin, Udyr and Rek’Sai to name a few.
Nèzumi plays a supportive style mid with picks like Karma, Twisted Fate and Galio unlocking L9 SKOOTIN to play his much more greedy scaling junglers. But if Nèzumi needs to carry he can play several control mages or Yone. Nèzumi will probably play for push on his picks and roam with L9 SKOOTIN to whatever lanes need help.
The bot lane for Elemental Maelstrom is defly and DMForScholarship. Both are strong ADCS and DMForScholarship is listed as the support on this roster. With intimate knowledge of how ADC’s want to position and play DMForScholarship will have unique insights playing this new role for themselves. Senna and Renata Glasc are two of the only supports I can find within DMForScholarship’s champion pool. Hopefully they are practicing their new role in scrims. defly the actual ADC for Elementals Maelstrom is a Twitch lover the plague rat has been his most played champ in ranked for 4 seasons straight. defly has primarily early games lane bullies in his pool as Twitch is his hyper carry of choice. I expect this bot lane will primarily look to play for scale instead of outright aggression giving L9 SKOOTIN and Nèzumi an easy gank target.
2) NwE Nebula
Top: Cølę
Jungle: Goati
Mid: Nuffies
ADC: Duck But Rubber
Support: 5ugar
NwE Nebula is a team with a strong core identity. Let Duck But Rubber carry the team on hyper carries with 5ugar and Cølę protecting him. Nuffies and Goati are going to look to harass the enemy team flank and dissuade them from having full 5v5 team fights at objectives. With an average solo que rating of plat 2/3 I easily see NwE Nebula making it out of their group and into playoffs.
Cølę is a weak side top laner. Sion is his tank of choice in solo queue but they also play lots of Ornn, Tahm Kench and Shen. For more damage profile Cølę also plays gangplank and gnar. Having a scaling safe top allows teams to play hard for early drakes. If his team needs a carry Cølę can play Jayce, Camille and Gwen as well.
Goati is the cap exception player for NwE Nebula. Primarily a mid lane roam specialist Goati has a very interesting jungle pool with high damage profiles to compliment his tank top laner. They play a lot of champions who can jungle as well as mid and seem to enjoy assassin junglers such as Rumble, Zed and Qiyana. Gaoti will have to expand his pool to some more conventional jungle champions I feel but who knows maybe Rumble jungle is sleeper OP.
Nuffies has played a lot of champions this season and almost none of them over 10 times. Nuffies plays over 100 different champions almost every season of rank they play. Nuffies was diamond back in season 9 and played the majority of their games on Sylas mid. Currently Nuffies is enjoying Ahri and Zeri mid. I expect NwE Nebula to look to give counter to Nuffies and let them pull out crazy counter picks in draft. I expect that Nuffies will play a different champion almost every single series.
Duck But Rubber is the reason that Cølę is a weak side top laner. Duck but rubber is a hyper carry focused ADC playing Jinx, Vayne and Aphelios. They are also picking up Sivir, another very strong scaling ADC. Last season Duck but Rubber was playing mostly Senna, Twitch and Samira. Samira might be played often as their support 5ugar loves early game aggressive supports. 5ugar has almost 200 games of maokai this season with a 55% win rate. It is their comfort pick. Other supports in 5ugar’s pool include Blitzcrank, Ashe, Nautilus and Leona. For more enchanter style picks 5ugar plays Janna and Renata Glasc.
3) TA Tropics
Top: Twiggy 44x
Jungle: CoffeeBlack 7x
Mid: Monix 11x
ADC: Paneer
Support: Jackie Moon 33x
Ta Tropics have a strong team this season for BOL Platinum. The key carry for this team is Monix 11X a high ranking mid who can look to secure picks for their team. Both top lane as well as the bot duo on this team play plenty of different picks and I imagine that they will be able to react accordingly in draft. Playing VS a team like NWE Nebula who are all about their bot side of the map you can early pick a safe top laner for Twiggy 44x and look to ensure you have a winning 2v2. But if you are against a team with a really strong top side of the map like Elemental Maelstrom you probably want to save a counter pick so your top laner has a playable matchup, looking to punish with range advantage.
Twiggy 44x is a player within the Freljord group who has the option of playing on the weak side of the map. Twiggy 44x plays weak side picks like Gnar, Mundo and Ornn but also has the option of playing for counter pick and strong side as well. Last season their most played was Mordekasier and they do have other strong side picks such as Akshan,Camille, Sett and Sylas.
For Jungle they have CoffeeBlack 7x a top laner who is making the switch down from top lane to jungle this season. CoffeeBlack 7x played juggernauts in top like Urgot, Darius and Sett while transitioning to jungle they have seemed to enjoy playing much more mobile picks. Lee sin Jarvan IV and Lillia are currently their most played. I'm curious if this lane swap will be beneficial for TA Tropics as CoffeeBlack 7x seemed to have a lot of success in the top lane.
Monix 11x is a mid player with a slightly unusual mid pool, they enjoy mages with much more CC compared to the average mid laner. Most of Monix 11x games are on Ekko but they also have lots of games in solo que on Lissanada and Neeko. All these champions provide a deadly 2v2 mid jungle synergy so I expect CoffeeBlack 7x to spend a lot of time mid to unlock their mid laner and allow them to roam with them to other lanes.
The bot lane for TA Tropics is Paneer and Jackie Moon 33x. Jackie Moon 33x is the support player and higher rated of the duo in solo que. Jackie Moon 33x has a wide support pool not specializing in any particular champion or style of support but looking to pick whatever is best for their team. They play it all from enchanters like Lulu, poke mages such as lux to engage options like Rell. With such a wide pool Paneer will have almost his choice of support to pair with whatever marksmen they lock in. Paneer enjoys ADCs not typically found at the top of tier lists. Most of their games this split are on Caitlyn and Kai’Sa. Paneer off roles into mid so I expect Mages to come out of them sometime in the split. Jackie Moon 33x also plays Senna allowing for more unique picks bot with fasting Senna. Ta Tropics will always have lots of bot lane options with this duo Panner having mid picks to draft from and Jackie Moon 33x having a support for almost every pick.
4) Literal Monkeys