Team of the Week: OPL Split 2, Week 5

Tally put forward a pair of exemplary performances this weekend. While Swiffer and Dream had the sexier scorelines against Legacy, it was Tally’s Renekton that kept the Legacy map crumbling around them and meant that they could never muster an effective defence as they were getting stretched from pillar to post by the croc in the top. His damage and kill contribution numbers are on par with Swiffer and Dreams’ and he did so with a much smaller gold share, showing his ability to be impactful with lesser resources.

Despite the loss, I found his Irelia game to be just as impressive. There was a moment before 16 minutes when Tally exploded into a fight with multiple kills where his power level in tandem with Spookz meant Order were a genuine threat to overwhelm Dire Wolves. Sadly for Order fans, the rest of the composition wasn’t able to pace Tally and Dire Wolves wrested control back. This match showed the diversity of his skillset and his ability to work with an early lead.

If all you had time to watch this weekend was the first five minutes of Friday’s broadcast, you’d wonder what this is doing here. Praelus and Gravitas exposed Babip and tore his early pathing to shreds as he was made to look well below OPL standard. It might be an odd way to start the listing of a Team of the Week post, but I do this to set the scene for how good the rest of his week was. After two early deaths, he only died one more time over the last 45+ minutes of play in both games.

His Jarvan and Olaf games were a vision masterclass, which is an underrated hallmark of Babip’s game – after falling behind early he contributed great warding numbers in the Legacy game. Against Bombers he had mind-boggling ward clearing numbers which enabled Mammoth to out-skirmish the Bombers after allowing Looch out to an early lead.

Claire had perhaps the single best game of any player on Friday, as his Vladimir was omnipresent in the match, dealing colossal damage and making highlight-reel dodges all over the map. His 19.1k of damage was higher than both combinations of the top 2 and bottom 3 players on the Wolves, and he had more kills than the entire Wolfpack combined.

While his Corki game may have been subdued by comparison, the performance was no less important. He once again topped the Chiefs’ kill charts and was an important contributor to his teams’ objective control. He had an important job to do as Corki into Azir, and delivered it with aplomb – the mid tier-one tower perhaps the most symbolic way to show his dominance over Gravitas.

Ably performing alongside his compatriot in the mid lane, Chiefs’ superstar Marksman was at his usual excellent best this week. He died only once in each game, and the death against the Dire Wolves was off the back of a botched play across three different players. He was so dominant on Friday that he still had biscuits left at the end of the match.

His match against Gravitas was the latest example of his development as one of Oceania’s premier Ezreal players. In my observations he usually eschews the Iceborn build in favour of the Trinity Force and put it to work, putting up over 800 damage per minute, dying only once to the hardly-fair Mordekaiser of Pabu. And this performance was the product of switching lane partners to the returning Cupcake. While Cupcake was certainly no slouch, having to go into his first match in nearly a year served to display Raes’ versatility in the manner of the seamless transition.

Destiny showed a glimpse of returning to his absolute peak form this weekend, save for a small blip, and most encouragingly for Mammoth fans, did so way from his hallmark hard-engage champions. When you look at Friday’s game the bottom lane was a rather grotesque mismatch but the challenge of having a lane-pushing AD like Sivir laning with you while your jungler struggles early makes for a challenging lane prospect. Destiny handled this unique challenge very well as the game transitioned out of the rough start and into a place where he could start contributing to 12 of his side’s 14 kills.

While his lane started poorly against Bombers, one might make an argument this was closer to k1ng’s fault than Destiny’s. As the match played out Destiny continued his great play on the Yuumi pick, contributing relevant damage for a support, significant healing, and yet again a monstrous kill participation. Destiny with his tail up (no Yuumi pun intended) is a significant boon for Mammoth, and he will be looking to consolidate this week into continued great play to close out this split and season.