In the latest Ties’ Takes, we look at the fallout from the OPL finals, and explore a couple of the more interesting storylines that we saw emerge from Split 1’s Finals run, including the idea of how player hubris could change the course of a series.

Post Mortem

In a region with a rich history of gallant underdogs and fanciful gauntlets runs, at the end of the day the story of Oceania tends to be that the Chalk always wins. And so it remained last week, when the Dire Wolves’ hype train came barrelling from the lower bracket into the much more fancied Legacy roster. I had predicted “the fastest best of five in OPL history” and it looked I may have been scrambling to do some maths at one point, and after a valiant but ultimately token resistance, Legacy closed them out.

There were a number of threads that I found interesting from the finals that you could pick at, should one have a mind to. The first one is that I can’t quite place my finger on how we got to this point. As a fan, I almost feel cheated that we were denied the OPL-classico grand final we seemed to be drawn inexorably towards.

This is not intended to, though it doubtlessly does, take anything away from the Dire Wolves who displayed a feat of endurance and resilience that only feels overshadowed by the Sin Gaming and Order runs of years previous due to the current playoff format and that it started with a loss.

• Read more: Order forge OPL history with 9-1 miracle gauntlet run

I also don’t intend to use this as a dry way of pointing out that “Of course this is different, everything is different in the current environment.” Rather, it felt like that once we all realised that Legacy and the Chiefs were either the two best, or two of the three best, that we all settled in for an entertaining split of “who is going to win the race to third” among the rest of the teams while we waited for a grand final treat we had not seen in some years.

And then it didn’t happen. All the emotional preparation and investment I had put into the split fell by the wayside and it just felt…anticlimactic that it wasn’t Chiefs/Legacy.

I’m not mad about the resulting match, we got to see the Wolfpack make an accounting for themselves that didn’t seem possible. I had written them off. We’ve seen the infamous ‘Kai Kerflop’ on more than one occasion as Ben “Kai” Stewart’s teams would spiral their seasons into the gutter.

At the beginning of the season, I was utterly convinced we’d see it again. At the regular season’s end I was utterly convinced we were seeing it again. Then they lost their first playoff match and I was banking the sentiment.

Still and through it all they found another gear. Even though 3-1 doesn’t read good on paper, I still think there were more positives than negatives for the Dire Wolves when you look at the totality of this playoff run.

And what more can be said about James “Tally” Shute that hasn’t already been gushed about? I think the comparisons to the end of Simon “Swiffer” Papamarkos’ playing career are apt, and not just because they both had a mean Galio. What I love about both of these players, is that when they were on the picks like Tally’s Cho’Gath, or the aforementioned Galio, they exploit the biggest advantage they have left – brain gap.

It isn’t a case of not having the hands anymore – both players have the totality of career and individual plaudits to show that. The thing that I love most about these mid picks is that it’s identifying the biggest differential that the player has over basically all of their opponents – experience and knowledge – and exploits it mercilessly.

It really pleases me to see Oceanic teams identify the different ways you can win a match other than trying to take skillcheck matchups and just hoping to press buttons better than the other team. The “don’t worry, I’ll dumpster this guy” approach feels like it is opted into far too often, as we saw throughout this playoffs.

Solo Lucian Blues

One of the main examples we could see from this is the curse of the solo lane Lucian pick. It actually started spritely enough, with Jesse “Chazz” Mahoney picking up a couple of wins on it, and Pentanet.GG picking up a couple of losses. After getting bounced with it twice, PGG actually took it for themselves and it had a decent, yet unspectacular, showing for them in a losing effort to the Wolves.

This became the story of it as the season played out, and is part of the reason why I don’t like it. You pick it to bully lane and pressure early towers, but the tradeoff for this is heavy in a competitive environment. It forces your jungler’s hand to shadow the Lucian (as we saw Park “Croc” Jong-hoon making time for Romeo “Thien” Tran in the playoffs), risking early Dragon control going out the window. If you don’t get your own jungler into the mix you risk the enemy jungler crashing Lucian’s party and ruining the point of picking a lane bully in the first place.

Then, even if you get through laning phase with the bully ahead as planned, you need the composition to be spiking at the right time to take advantage of this plan so you can begin to take objectives and accrue leads before the other composition begins to do what it wants to do.

In my opinion, it’s taking the path of most resistance. Too much needs to go right to make the solo lane Lucian worth its investment. Further, we saw the pick absolutely crushed in the playoffs with a 0-4 record with Harry “Haeri” Kang (twice), Thien and Chazz all unable to make the pick work. It’s inconsistent with how the playoffs tended to go – teams take fewer risks in the early game and wait for more controllable outcomes in teamfights, as evidenced by the longer game times.

We see this across Esports and traditional sports that things slow down and teams go for outcomes they can control over unpredictable risks. This doesn’t seem to be the place you want a solo lane Lucian. You want him in those early skirmishes and dominating the chaos. It isn’t just here either, globally the solo lane win rate reads like a disaster: 39% in LCK, 36% in LPL, 25% in LCS, 20% in NA Academy – only the LEC has a positive record, with two wins from its two matches (regular season records).

Winning is already hard. I don’t see any reason that teams should make it harder on themselves.

There’s nothing more dangerous than a 2-0 lead…

Normally this adage applies to traditional sports, but it seemed in the playoffs this split that it applies to the OPL as well, because no team closed out a 2-0 lead into a sweep. Three times teams had the chance, and each time they couldn’t get it done.

It could very well just be something as straight-forward as the desperation of being put in the 0-2 hole, but I’ve encountered a little of the attitudes of pro players when they’re ahead and feeling good about themselves. Accordingly, I formed the theory that players permitted themselves a little hubris and decided that it wasn’t just enough to be beating them in the series, they needed to show that they were better players. They had to win with style.

So, I enlisted the help of former OPL analyst, OCS head coach, and Snowball contributor Callum “CDM” Matthews to have a look at these three games and see what we could find.

PSA: must be logged in to a Riot account to view match history

Avant 0-2 Order

Match History

This first game is probably the closest thing to proving my hypothesis. The Lucian mid pick rears its ugly head here, and it left the Order composition begging for magic damage. The Lucian started out only okay, then things rapidly got worse, comparatively and composition-wise. The Syndra was up over 500 gold at 10 minutes, which is not ideal to say the least. The gold difference was even, negligible at 20 minutes. While better than down 500, this still is not where the Lucian wanted to be.

And things went from bad to worse there. I would have liked to have seen an Orianna here, but just anything to keep the Sylas and Olaf honest with their resistances would have worked.

Dire Wolves 0-2 Order

Match History

This game is tragic. You may remember game 4 as the one with tragic gameplay, with the early kill for Swip3rR’s Rumble negated by the Wolfpack turning around Order’s effort to ram the advantage down their throats, but this one is tragic because after three bans and three picks each, Order have got them. They had them.

They got the Senna/Maokai pair to get the funnelled heavy tank and late game Senna passive damage combination, and even managed to secure the Trundle into Olaf matchup that went so well in game 1.

But after the second ban phase they take Corki, allowing Shok one of his signature picks in Cassiopeia. Then Dire Wolves throw the curve ball with Malphite, but it actually doesn’t matter here, Order are still fine. As Callum pointed out, this draft is still excellent for Order – if they can take Gangplank last.

I can only assume that Swip3rR’s Gangplank wasn’t current, because instead they flex the Maokai to the top lane for a new support in Tahm Kench and now Order’s damage is cooked. It’s too little, it’s too late and without the wave clear, global threat and most importantly the zone control that Gangplank provides by 23 minutes they’ve given up the baron, their small lead and ultimately the game.

This one I don’t think was hubris, by any stretch. But it’s an interesting case study in how one pick could have changed so much in this game.

Dire Wolves 0-2 Legacy

Match History

This one is a form of hubris, but not the one I had in mind when I formed my idea.

The genesis for this game comes from Game 1. I don’t know what piece of candy that Legacy’s coach Jensen Goh dangled out in front of Dire Wolves to distract them, but it sells them up the proverbial river. Legacy blind the Trundle jungle in the R1/R2 rotation… and Dire Wolves oblige them by picking the Olaf for them. Madness.

Kai proved that his team can adapt and they won’t make the same mistake twice though. When Legacy start on the AD/Trundle opener at R1/R2 in game 3, the Wolves respond with Kindred…and Legacy are basically doomed. Leo “Babip” Romer does the best he can on the Trundle pick as the map explodes around him, but he’s powerless. He’s down roughly 750 gold to his direct opponent at 15 minutes, and it’s nearly double that just five minutes later.

I think Legacy thought they could dictate the terms of this draft to Dire Wolves, and Dire Wolves showed that they wouldn’t be pushed around. At least for this game, given they handed Legacy a reasonable Trundle matchup by B1’ing Jarvan in game 4 and letting them go right back to their nonsense.

So at the end of these games, I was left with a hypothesis that couldn’t be proved from this sample size, but I still feel like there was a lot to learn about the way that teams handled being in this scenario. I’ll be looking to bring you some examination of trends like the 0-2 deficit in future editions of Ties’ Takes.

With Split 1 in the books, and moves already being made for Split 2, the time has come for teams to put the learnings they will have taken from their own experiences like these and make the push for the World Championship.

Next time on Ties’ Takes, we’ll begin looking at what each of these teams would, could or should be looking for as they make this push.

Follow Reece “Ties” Perry on Twitter.

Photography courtesy of Riot Games
Produced by Josh Swift

We’re going off-schedule with an exciting look at who Legacy could turn to in the aftermath of EMENES departure, and we break down the longest games in OPL history in today’s #BigStatEnergy

There was just too much that unfolded since I penned my last column to make you wait the full fortnight for that.

Legacy’s mid-lane sensation Min-su “EMENES” Jang has spectacularly left the roster in the middle of the split. The wording of Legacy’s release suggests this was relating to out-of-game behaviours and attitudes, specifically towards training. That much, at least, is clear to me.

With talk behind the scenes swirling around the approach to practice, it does make you wonder if he is linked to that, but I have no information to confirm that in either direction.

• Read more: Legacy Esports part ways with rookie mid laner EMENES

While mindlessly speculating as to what exactly went down to get us to this point might be fun, that isn’t the kind of mindless speculation I’d like to entertain you all with. Today’s flavour of mindless speculation involves where Legacy may turn to for their next mid-lane option.

Let’s look at five names, each with varying levels of likelihood, of being the next Legacy mid laner.

The Chalk

The clear front-runner is former Mammoth Academy mid James “Halo” Giacoumakis. Halo has been almost good enough for two years now in OCS – almost good enough to take down the Dire Cubs in last year’s grand final, and almost good enough to make the playoffs with the Legacy Genesis Revival tour.

There isn’t really a better active domestic option out there who is a natural mid laner. At least of those, who are active players (ooh, foreshadowing). He seems to play everything and the only players he struggled against are currently in the OPL.

The only thing you’d want to be cautious about is passing a player behaviour check, and not necessarily in-game. The reason he isn’t in the league already is salary expectations – as in, he wants one. Which is fair enough. But he’s spent considerable time in Twitch chat talking an inordinate amount about the players who did elect to play on the lower salaries this year. Doing these kinds of things in Riot’s broadcast channel is not likely to endear him to any decision-makers.

With that said, given who has passed checks I can’t see that stopping him, and so he is the odds-on favourite to finally show up or shut up.

The All-Star

I don’t think this next one would be overly likely considering he was already considering a role-swap to a different role. But, given that he’s talented, available, popular, and the lines between top and mid lane are becoming ever blurred, we must at least consider Jackson “Pabu” Pavone.

The two-time all star had arguably one of his best years on Gravitas last year on a roster that struggled at times, and with his regular content on Twitter, his stream and here on Snowball Esports, you know that he’s current in both his playing skills and OPL knowledge.

Ultimately, I don’t know if this one is too likely as I’m unsure if the role swap situation between either he or Topoon would lead to enough likelihood of success to satisfy either Pabu himself, or Legacy GM Tim “Carbon” Wendel.

The Thanos

“Fine, I’ll do it myself”

Part of me, and I don’t think it’s too bold of me to suggest that a part of us all, wants to see Carbon himself… and his “signature” Riven find its way into Legacy’s mid lane.

I don’t know if he can play mid. I don’t know if he wants to, and I don’t even know if it’s allowed under Riot’s rules. But the heart wants what it wants. And this is what mine wants.

The Prodigal Son (again)

This one I quite like because it involves a role swap that was teased in rumours that were circulating before the start of the split. They involved James “Tally” Shute rejoining the fold alongside OG prodigal son Leo “Babip” Romer.

Now, this callously robs us of half the co-stream power duo and that’s a definite downside, no question. But to return back to Legacy in his old role of AD Carry would free up Quin “Raes” Korebrits to play in the mid lane he was rumoured to be swapping to preseason. And that’s the part of this that interests me. It’s one of the better options Legacy have in the mid lane just to minimise the drop-off in raw talent alone, though it would be a compromise of sorts on talent in ADC.

Tally is an option that I see appealing to Carbon’s traditional sports heart. He’s familiar to the organisation, talented, a good teammate and has played the role before – for Legacy no less. In addition, he also understands the importance of the rivalry with The Chiefs – so between him and Raes wanting to stick it to his old team, their veteran presence would provide a real boost to the younger players as this rivalry plays out across the top of the OPL ladder.

I’m fairly confident that I want this to happen more than it is actually likely to happen, but there are parts of this that make sense across a number of levels.

The “Galaxy Brain” Choice

While we’re talking about returning old players and role-swapping them… how about Legacy have the plane pick up an old friend on the way back from Korea?

Former Legacy top laner Ju-seong “Mimic” Min would be a wild choice. To be honest, I don’t even know if he’s still playing. He may have gone to do military service, and with the coronavirus outbreak causing havoc in Korea it may not even be a good idea.

But if those concerns can be handled, it’s a wild choice that just may work better than anyone would have thought. We know that Mimic is an excellent player, and the points in Pabu’s favour are also in Mimic’s – he had a great season when we last saw him and top lane champs are basically all mid lane champs now, too.

This would be a “rich man’s Pabu” option that I just can’t see Legacy, and more relevantly the Adelaide Football Club justifying the expense for. Unless their mandate is “just go for the title” – which is antithetical to the measured approach Legacy have had for two years, if you were going to transplant a top laner it may as well be Pabu or Tally.

The Dark Horse

I wish I could take credit for this one, because it’s a really interesting option that I would implore both parties to consider. But when Snowball’s own Harry Taylor came to me with this name that he’d seen on the list of available free agents my eyebrows arched high with intrigue over this name that I’d thought was inactive.

After having a cup of coffee with 100 Thieves, OPL winning coach Richard “Phantiks” Su would tick a lot of boxes for Legacy. Let’s go through them:

• He’s a natural mid laner
• He’s, as far as I know, available (from a League of Legends standpoint)
• He has working experience with the entire roster (though once removed with former Mammoth Academy support Isles)
• He can be immediately plugged in as a viable option to a team trying to contend for a title.

Phantiks represents the best choice they could make in my opinion. This is a player who exists on excellence. He needs it like we need air and water. That kind of drive is exactly the right kind of replacement for the mentality and approach Legacy are claiming fits their values.

As a coach, he’s expanded on his already impressive game knowledge and would give Goh “Jensen” Quian Sheng and James “Denian” Goddard a third coach out there on the rift.

I love this option. It’s the one I want to see the most, and it would really shake up the league to see Phantiks back terrorizing the mid lane.

Big Stat Energy

This time on Big Stat Energy we explore the longest games in OPL history.

Pentanet.GG GM Pete Curulli brought up that his team had just taken part in the longest game in OPL history last Friday in their nail-biting loss to the Dire Wolves. Thanks to the boffins over at Leaguepedia, I was able to comb the OPL archives to see where the game had placed among the league’s longest games since its inception at the beginning of 2015 and the trip back through time yielded some interesting finds. Let’s take a look at the most interesting of them.

The longest game ever was one I was – indirectly – involved in during my brief stint as an analyst. Tainted Minds took down Sin gaming in an hour-and-five-minute slugfest that saw current TSM Academy player Lawrence “Lost” Hui triumph alongside OPL throwback Michael “Zahe” Dunn, who will feature regular appearances among these games.

The Pentanet.GG/Dire Wolves classic came in at the sixteenth-longest game at 51:11. Much like Zahe, the Dire Wolves are a regular contributor to this list of the sixteen longest games, having appeared in half of them with a 4-4 record.

Legacy and Avant were next, each with four appearances, though with disparate fates as Legacy went a perfect 4-0, and Avant a more pedestrian 1-3. Tainted Minds were 2-1 in their relatively brief stay in the OPL, and three teams had two appearances, with the Chiefs’ 2-0, Immunity’s 1-1 and Mammoth’s 0-2 creating a symmetrical record across the teams with two games. Abyss, Bombers, Infernum, Order, Pentanet, Sin and Tectonic all had one showing each.

What I want to highlight here as being really interesting is the absolute dominance of red side in these long games. 12-4 is overwhelming odds, with the Dire Wolves being half of those blue side wins (including last Friday gone).

The red side win rate of the fifty longest games in LoL’s competitive history was only 54% so it’s hard to know if 16 game sample is not big enough or if there’s something to be looked into there in terms of global win rates, how they shift over time within a game, and whether that’s something that teams should be drafting towards.

I won’t list every player who appears, but I do want to highlight a couple of regular and interesting appearances. Only Swip3rR and Tally among top laners have appeared more than once and remained perfect, with BioPanther being there three times and lost twice.

Carbon, having been a career Legacy player was always going to be perfect, being 3-0 and is joined by Spookz on that mark. Spare a thought for Sybol who is 1-3 on this list.

If you’re noticing a pattern here you won’t be surprised to learn that ChuChuZ and Swiffer are each 3-0, while Getback and a surprising Phantiks are each 1-2.

Lost is 2-1 among his three appearances on the list, offset by the 1-2 of Chenyboy, who is not a name I expected to write about in 2020.

Across our supports we see a 1-2 record from Cuden and a perfect 3-0 from EGym.

With one exception, in all of these roles I’ve left out the most regularly appearing player. These six players (due to a tie at support) are the longest of the long, the princes of patience, and the sultans of slow play.

Here is our All-Time Long Slog Team:

James “Tally” Shute:  4–0*

Michael “Zahe” Dunn:  3–2

Stephen “Triple” Li:  2–3

Calvin “k1ng” Truong:  2–3

Andrew “Rosey” Rose:  3–2

Jayke “Jayke” Paulsen:  2–3

*Includes two of his ADC games

There’s much more to dig into with these games, we haven’t looked at long games vs slow games (ie long game with no kills), nor champion impacts. But those are stories for another time. So, with this jam-packed bonus edition of Ties Takes in the books, I’ll be back next week with the mid-split OPL review!

Follow Reece “Ties” Perry on Twitter.

Photography courtesy of Riot Games

The OPL ladder looks like a cycling race, with leaders, stragglers, and a big pack in the middle. Let’s dive on into the guts of that pack and see who looks like rising and falling over the next few weeks!

The tour winds on

We’ve reached the end of the first round robin, and the league really does resemble a great cycling event, with the bottom of the league a full two wins behind the pack, and the pacesetters have pulled themselves two wins ahead of the peloton.

Some of what was expected has come to pass – Legacy are very good, Mammoth are struggling mightily, and the Dire Wolves are comfortably in playoffs ?–  a distance away from challenging for first, but equally far away from being outside of the playoffs.

Pentanet.GG and Chiefs have surprised us, despite most reasonable projections having both in the playoffs. What we knew about each roster before seeing any play has been outweighed by what each has brought to the table.

And despite a social media propaganda campaign trying to convince us otherwise, it may just turn out that Gravitas was #NotVeryGood after all.

Tune into a future Ties’ Takes for some mid-split award contenders. We’ll have played over half the games by then, so it’ll be a good time to have a look at those. But for now, I want to have a look at three teams who we might not have the full picture of through eight games.

Dire Wolves

The Wolves are sitting pretty in third, but I become filled with dread when I think about them hanging onto the spot. And it’s all for weird, intangible, and arguably arbitrary reasons.

Of all the teams I’ve watched play this year, I think the Wolves draft to a plan the best. I’m not saying that the plans are the best, or that their picks are the best for that plan. What I’m highlighting here is that when you look at a DW draft, more so than other teams, you know exactly what they’re trying to do, and when they win games it looks like how you imagined it would in their head. In my mind that says that they have the best grasp on their identity. By having this approach to their draft on lock, their success is the most repeatable.

Where they fall down is in their sometimes baffling gameplay. The standout in this is the Week 1 game against Mammoth, where they made exceptionally hard work of the win and really should have swept them aside. Now, that was the sub roster and so you can point the finger at not having Ha “Vital” In-seong, and perhaps a little of the Shernfire-era Dire Wolf arrogance coming back to roost, but make sure you can get the job done first. If the Wolves can clean this up, they’ll be in great stead.

The other elephant in the room for this team is we’ve literally seen this before from the trio of Ben “Kai” Stewart, Ryan “Chippys” Short, and Ari “Shok” Greene-Young and it went completely up the creek. So, while I’m cautiously optimistic for the Dire Wolves, their next three weeks is as hard as it gets. I won’t declare them legit contenders until the core can improve on their win rate heading into playoffs.

Order

Will the real Order please stand up?
I repeat
Will the real Order please stand up?
We’re gonna have a problem here
Y’all act like you’ve never seen an inconsistent Order before…

I’ll spare you all terrible spoof song lyrics, if only to sing the Ballad of Mighty Haeri. The young Harry Kang has been magnificent on an Order lineup that has at times struggled with Brandon “Swip3rR” Holland’s deaths in the early game, and Ronan “rare7” Swingler’s in the mid-late.

I bring up Order here because their record itself is a bit questionable if you expect them to be a top three team insofar as they lose to teams above them and beat up on the teams below them. Also, they’ve played Gravitas twice. This says to me they’re about where they should be. They need to ramp up if they want to maintain their current spot, and quickly if they expect to climb.

Maybe some of that coach difference that was hinted at in a tweet before the season could help here?

Pentanet.GG

Pentanet for my money is in the opposite situation to the Dire Wolves. And not just because of the obvious third-versus-third-last comparison. While the Wolves are falling victim to their gameplay not matching the quality of the game plan, at times Pentanet.GG’s gameplan is obtuse, inaccessible, or just plain absent.

At their worst, they look like a team bereft of identity. “Getback Friday” memes sprout and Souli looks very much like the rookie that he is.

In full flight they look decisive, full of purpose and committed to their goals. The teamwork is abundant, Jake “Rogue” Sharwood’s engages enable the team and Paris “Souli” Sitzoukis is given ample opportunity to explore his competitive limits and plenty of space for mistakes. At their worst, they look like a team bereft of identity. “Getback Friday” memes sprout and Souli looks very much like the rookie that he is.

What I want from this team is just to let Mark “Praedyth” Lewis carry. I don’t know if this is being stopped by coach Scott “Westonway” Farmer, or Praedyth himself. Let the man auto-attack some time. Dare him to deal some relevant damage, challenge him to perform in these midgame fights. As Legacy fans from last year will attest, he’s rather good at it when he does it.

If they can fix this up, accept and understand that this is a Praedyth-centric team and make sure he’s there contributing to kills and not just irrelevant Ezreal damage, then they can turn this split around. He’s third-bottom in kills despite being fourth in KDA and second in gold share in his role which, combined, is a sign that indicates he isn’t converting his safety and leads into impact in games. They’ve played the Chiefs twice already, so when you look at the ladder as it stands, they have the easiest last 13 games of all the teams.

Big Stat Energy

I’m working on something for future Big Stat Energies that should be a bit more meaty, but I just wanted to take today’s column to highlight a few intriguing numbers that I’ve seen on Games of Legends:

• The Chiefs have three of the top individual kill games, on three different players.
• Mammoth have given up three of the top individual kill games, to three different teams. (This one perhaps not so surprising)
• Raes has three of the best four CSPM (CS per minute) games
• Pentanet.GG have given up three of the best CSPM games. (I would cynically argue this is indicative of not being pressured enough in lanes and that Praedyth needs to be unleashed more, but even though two of them are ADC’s this is not prescriptive)
• Shoutout to Avant’s rookie ADC Violet for crashing the top two’s KDA party. He’d been touted behind the scenes as one to watch and while KDA is a fairly useless isolated statistic, it’s still an achievement.

The second round robin is where we really see the teams settle in to what we can expect from them as the season closes, so it’s now the teams at the bottom have to make their push if they want to be in the scrap for finals places.

Friday from 4PM AEDT is when we’ll rejoin the action, so make sure to see if these three teams can better their split trajectories for that fight!

Follow Reece “Ties” Perry on Twitter.

The OPL returned with a new look for its new era. CS:GO is also up and running again with MDL (though I won’t cover that today), and Ties’ column is back with the first column of a new decade.

Impact Performance

I came away really impressed with Minsu “EMENES” Jang. I know I’m not alone there; many others were as well. Don’t mind the broadcast where he arrived to mixed reviews, with  Skimmy beginning day 2 by commenting on his day 1 performance that he was “not as convincing as he may have wanted to” before following up with “When you put that much hype into somebody you need to see more convincing results at that level”.

So apparently EMENES needed to pack multiple good games into his first game. If someone can hit me up on Twitter with how the heck he was meant to do that, I’d appreciate it.

Looking at that first game, though – it really shows the more subtle ways that great players are great. On the Orianna, and – let’s be honest – with his bot lane doing a baby int around him, EMENES quietly built himself an impressive early game. His team helped him out by getting him the kill on the top road, and he paid them back in kind, handling a 1v1 against Dragon “Dragku” Guo on the back side of the team fight despite getting caught off-guard by the Mordekaiser out of the bush.

The thing that I liked most out of EMENES was that he built an impressive game without a highlight-reel Command: Shockwave. Few things change a game quite like a huge Shockwave, and to have the impact that EMENES did on his Orianna without hitting a game-breaking ultimate shows a no-fuss way of going about his business that in my mind showed impressive poise in his first stage game.

On that overlay

Look, I don’t want to go in too ham on this, it’s been done to death. To me, it looked like a conscious decision to hide the part of the spectator client that shows the champion stats and buffs. The issues are twofold to me: 1) It’s just such a large, pulsing blue around it that it really stands out and takes attention away from the action. And 2) Is that even something we want in the first place?

I spoke with an OPL fan outside my normal echo chamber of friends I discuss esports with, who lamented the loss of the champion stats/cooldowns/buffs/etc panel, and they pointed out that with the release and popularity of Senna, that having the panel there to see her stacks of mist would be really helpful.

Initially I wasn’t too sad to be rid of this panel as I have a vague memory of it blocking out something important in a teamfight one time. But after hearing this, which I hadn’t first considered, I’m now in favour of being able to see it again.

I’m sure Riot got the message on the Week 1 overlay loud and clear, so let’s see if we can get something a little more minimalistic, as opined by Brandon “Juves” Defina.

I think the LCK overlay is a good example of less is more. Clean and can see important bits of information.

I’ll say it again, less is more.

— Brandon Defina (@SINJuves) February 5, 2020

The rest of the weekend

• I came into this split worried about Avant, and an 0-2 week isn’t going to help this at all. I don’t think Dragku is a player they should have been building around and nothing he showed me so far has changed that.
• I like the edge Dire Wolves have going into preparation for future weeks. If Kai doesn’t know what he’s going to do before each game, how can the opponents be expected to predict it?
• I want to see more games from Pentanet and Chiefs before I’m completely confident with how I feel about either
• I was impressed with Gravitas. I expected a disaster, and at times they looked more organised than a lot of other teams.
• NichBoy continues to be a delight in my life.

GG great OCE banter

It was great to see some hard-hitting banter go around the league, led by Chiefs coach Chris “SeeEl” Lee who had this to say post-match after Pentanet.GG coach Scott “Westonway” Farmer vowed to hand him his first OPL loss ahead of their Friday meeting:

Where’s my loss?

GGWP @Windowsmonkey https://t.co/EeVjw2sdFu pic.twitter.com/76VYHtKcDy

— Chris Lee (SeeEl) (@coachseeel) January 31, 2020

He definitely had the last laugh with the win. Congratulations to SeeEl on the win, and a bigger congratulations on his fourth career competitive victory taking his tally past his career competitive rulings. See you on stage in Week 3.

Big Stat Energy

I’ll close with this week’s edition of Big Stat Energy, which is all about the numbers that I find interesting around the scene. And it’s a quickie today.

Had Order not punted a monster gold lead on Saturday, the following stat would have been true:

Since the Rift Rivals break last year (5th & 6th July 2019), not including games against each other, Avant and Legacy would have been a combined 0-24.

Pour one out for Rift Rivals, by the way. Raise your #RipRivals.

With rare exception, the first week of the OPL was just as fun a watch as it has always been, even with the myriad new faces. Beyond our prediction feature matches, I have my eye on Dire Wolves/Gravitas as the match most likely to be fun. The Wolves should handle them comfortably at full strength, but “should” is a funny word when it comes to winning in the OPL.

See you in a couple of weeks with more Ties’ Takes!

Follow Reece “Ties” Perry on Twitter.

In this first trip into my grab-bag column, we digest the fallout from both the minor and the major and we see what’s creating #BigStatEnergy!

Major Debrief

*This section was written as DH Malmo began.*

The major is now well and truly behind us, leagues have started back up and the year-closing event season is in full swing with Dreamhack Malmo underway after Grayhound Gaming qualified into that event.

On the surface, little seemed to have changed since IEM Katowice – The Renegades retained legend status for the second consecutive time, and Grayhound found new heights in achieving their second pyrrhic victory from two trips to the major. So while the major is long gone, rippling below the surface is a new wave of promise in the Oceanic scene that I want to touch on.

Avant

The first of this new wave is the rise of the rejuvenated Avant squad. Retaining only Mike “ap0c” Aliferis and Jay “soju_j” Jeong from the previous iteration, the squad retooled with Euan “sterling” Moore, formerly of Grayhound and two players out of the Breakaway Esports squad in Jared “HaZR” O’Bree and Jireh “J1rah” Youakim.

They returned to action in the Minor qualifiers, carving a swathe through the event – toppling madlikewizards, Order, Ground Zero, taking a map from and putting a rocket up Grayhound before knocking off Order a second time to find themselves in Europe for the Minor.

The Minor itself saw them play 5POWER on either side of a swift 0-2 to Grayhound – eventually, they bowed out after losses to Tyloo and MVP PK. Their run was punctuated with tough losses on their own map picks, despite being paced by solid play from sterling.

Despite falling at the last hurdle, the side showed a lot of promise not just for themselves, but for the hopes of the rest of the region. Avant are in a tight fight with the Chiefs, Order and Genuine for the next best squad after Grayhound, and for Avant to put up such a showing in spite of the lack of experience shows that as the rest of the region continues to build, we can hold hope that the day of three Oceanic teams at the major being closer than we all might have thought.

Grayhound

For their part, the Hounds did their efforts one better on the scoreboard but showed a typically tenacious run through the major. In Katowice, they dropped two best-of-ones before dropping a respectable series 2-0 to Fnatic.

They started on a similar trajectory with an opening loss to Cr4zy – who showed themselves to be a feisty squad throughout the major – and Forze led to a collision with Brazil’s third-best team in INTZ. This time they overcame the 0-3 curse…only to find themselves in the line of fire of Vitality, then thought by many to be the second-best team in the world over recent months. Vitality would springboard from a 2-1 result over Grayhound, all the way into the top 8 of the major – and so Grayhound, despite their disappointment, can look back on the event with pride.

The background story for Grayhound was the farewell tour of Erdenetsogt “erkaSt” Gantulga, as visa issues meant he had to return to his home of Mongolia. ErkaSt leaves behind a colossal legacy of great play, and as a catalyst in the Grayhound squad that has paved the way for future teams, much like Avant, to chase their international and major dreams.

Replacing him in the team after his departure is Joshua “INS” Potter, formerly of Order. INS joined the team for the DreamHack Malmo qualifiers, and after a slight misstep against Genuine Gaming in the second round, stormed through the rest of the qualifier, dropping only a single map in games played the rest of the way (the 3-1 against Genuine in the finals included an automatic one-map advantage for coming from the upper bracket). That map was part of a spectacular series against Avant which I thoroughly recommend re-watching if you missed it.

I had the opportunity to ask a couple of questions to Grayhound’s AWPer Simon “Sico” Williams who talked about how the qualifiers helped the integration of INS and how the trip through the lower bracket as having some benefit, even though they’d obviously have preferred to take the easier route through the upper bracket.

“When getting a new player there is always a teething period where you get used to each other’s playstyle. You go over your strats and your entire game again and make sure all the roles are properly-suited to each player. Playing more games definitely helps us become better as a team and get the finer details of our game more concrete heading into Malmo”.

Sico’s own experience at the major saw him go head-to-head with ZywOo, and since joining the hounds he has taken on some giants of the AWP in Kenny “kennyS” Schrub and Ladislav “GuardiaN” Kovács – and he had this to say on these European powerhouses: “Aside from the obvious fact that they are very sharp and fast with the AWP…a lot of the European AWPers have different styles and are more dynamic with their positioning than Australian AWPers”.

Perhaps cheekily, I finished by asking Sico how INS was going to copy him next, having taken his spot in Order when Sico left and now following him to Grayhound. Ever the team player, Sico only had his eyes on the prize as he hoped to “pop his major cherry”.

If Grayhound continue as strongly with INS as they have started, that is but a matter of time.

Renegades

“Only a matter of time” describes the hopeful, yet fatalistic outlook I’m sure many Renegades shared with me as they were down 0-2 in the New Legends stage. Despite two competitive matches against Avangar and NRG, it felt like more of the same that we’d seen from the Renegades in between the two majors.

In fairness, Renegades had what could be politely described as one long nightmare from February to August after that initial wonderful success at the Katowice major. Visa issues and disrupted preparation plagued their attempts to consolidate their major run and left them with no consistent match fitness and dependent once again on a boot camp to find their form.

Their way out of the 0-2 pit started thanks in large part to Jay “Liazz” Tregillgas making a sparkling run through the major. Liazz finally showed the performances he was putting up before he joined the Renegades after not being able to stand out in a largely thankless role. In particular, he combined brilliantly with a throwback Joakim “jkaem” Myrbostad outing to topple G2 Esports and helped Renegades seal their second straight top 8.

The quarterfinal would see a comfortable 2-0 win over an ENCE squad going through a little turmoil as aleksib was on his way out of the Finnish side. They took Avangar all the way to the second overtime on Mirage, before the clock struck 12 on this wondrous run as they dropped Dust2 16-9.

In the face of what seemed to be the most impossible position, the Renegades reeled off their best finish at a major. The magical performance of Azr’s troops has had wide-ranging impacts throughout the scene. Firstly, the most important impact is that all the concerns, all the doubts that were coming in from outside the team during their rough patch between the two majors was smoothed away with this run. Winning, as they say, cures all ills.

Much as it was with IEM Katowice flowing into this major, the next standout effect is one for the rest of the scene. By not needing to go through the minor system, we will see another case being made by our teams for three Oceanic teams making it to the first major of 2020. Avant and Order have been having themselves some fierce battles over the quest to be the third-best team in the region, and they may be driving themselves into a position where they can each threaten The Chiefs off of what previously looked like an unassailable second.

There’s been a cavalcade of crazy results that have followed the major, and it’s a series of events that makes the next major cycle an enticing prospect. There’s still plenty left to play for in Oceanic Counter-Strike this year as teams jostle to put themselves in the best possible place to make that great run into the first major next year.

Big Stat Energy 

Each column, I’ll be taking a look at statistics that intrigue me, and then talking about whether or not there’s something behind these stats, or if it’s just the wonderful circumstance of numbers.

The Great Oceanic Ezreal War

Those that know me know that I have had an axe to grind with this for some considerable time. I have had it with most OPL teams picking Ezreal. Absolutely had it. I think this pick, with notable exceptions, does absolutely nothing for the region. Let’s dive into why.

Ezreal serves several useful purposes. The most common reason is that it is a high source of damage per minute from must-respect range across the course of the game, while maintaining the ability to stay quite safe with his Arcane Shift.

That same range allows it to whittle down a wave from safety as well. It can serve as part of a great poke/siege composition. And it does an excellent job of nullifying enemy bot lanes where the composition has been designed to get a lead through bot-lane. Ezreal/Braum, a lane I have railed against on many occasions for doing nothing, is noteworthy for its specific ability to turn a lane that an opponent is depending upon to nothing. To borrow a phrase from another game:

“But it doesn’t do anything!”

“No, it does nothing.”

But this is not how it plays out. At least not in this league. Time after time after time we see the Ezreal picks put into situations where it doesn’t suit the composition, where it is asking the pick to teamfight off its ideal tempo, or with not enough damage supporting it to win a fight.

If you’re planning to teamfight with an Ezreal, something has probably gone wrong unless it is massively fed or is sporting a Trinity Force into a squishy enemy composition. You’re planning to fight with a pick that needs several seconds and ideally multiple rotations of Mystic Shot. Not only that, all of them need to hit, and probably he needs to be close enough AND safe enough to be auto-attacking alongside that.

All in all, it’s asking really a lot from the pick to be set up for failure like this and ask it to succeed. And speaking of success, let’s have a look at the numbers that feed this big stat energy. Take a gander below at the win rates of OPL AD Carries (and Victor “FBI” Huang, as one of the great luminaries of the pick from OPL days gone by).

There’s some good in this, no doubt about things. FBI, while he was still here, was immense on the champion, and arguably it’s his signature pick. K1ng is another player who is a legacy Ezreal player and is excellent on it. Raes was not someone I associated with it, but this year he came on in leaps and bounds showing great performances in both wins and losses.

After that, and throwing out Looch’s (and Anderu’s if you must) win rate for sample size, it’s abysmal viewing. Top of the list salvages that 41.8% win rate in 2019 which is awful in and of itself. Let’s explore some of the reasons behind that number.

Traditionally, teams in Oceania love big teamfights. It’s something we do relatively well as a region. It lets the players display their micro-skills which they’re inclined to want to do over patient, methodical build-up. If you can teamfight well, then you can win from in front and even from narrowly-to-moderately behind. Players play to this strength, and so they look to teamfight with their Ezreal in situations where it is off the proper timing, or when they don’t have control over when and how the fight happens, nor correct vision control to protect their carries.

So as I touched on before, teams pick Ezreal in some situations where it doesn’t make sense. In Oceania, fights are often over before the Ezreal can get enough Mystic Shots away to be threatening.

Excellent teamfighting teams like The Chiefs can take advantage of this to punish Ezreal compositions that get caught in fights. The Chiefs excel against the Ezreal pick by forcing teamfights upon it, exemplified by their undefeated 12-0 record when the enemy team picks Ezreal.

Flowing on from this, Ezreal requires unbelievable discipline from everyone on its team. You need to have discipline putting it in positions to succeed, you need to play patiently with the pick – particularly if you go to a dedicated poke composition, and the Ezreal player needs to be unbelievably disciplined in the way that they position an Ezreal for maximum damage output.

One of the elements that makes the best three Oceanic Ezreals above so good at the pick, and particularly k1ng and FBI, is the way they hover on the razor’s edge of danger. They know they need to be close enough to weave in autoattacks to augment Ezreal’s spell damage, close enough to make Mystic Shot harder to dodge, yet far enough away that they can stay safe.

This can be overwhelming for all but the most spectacular of players. Ezreal is a champion that regularly does high damage yet doesn’t always have the impact to match the raw damage number. The best players don’t just put out damage, they have massive impact with the Ezreal. And that’s just not everyone.

Verdict: This is not all the fault of the champion. He’s certainly not a bad champion, not by any stretch. The pick can bring a dynamic punch in widely different situations. But he’s not a get-out-of-jail-free pass to being a late game hyper-carry. He asks a lot, of the composition, of the execution, and of the pilot.

But just because the problem isn’t always the pick – that doesn’t mean it is OK to play it. Pro League doesn’t exist in a theoretical vacuum, it exists in the real hands of the real players who need to make the pick work in real games. In a region still developing the discipline to play this pick at the highest level, across all the players in the league, it just feels like taking the path of most resistance.

At the end of the day, if your name isn’t k1ng, FBI, or now Raes…I don’t want to see Ezreal in the OPL. I’m declaring war on this pick – just stop doing it.

With this meaty first edition complete, thanks for reading through the first of my columns. Check back next time, where you can expect to find a little more CS, a little more league, and more great Tie Takes.

Follow Reece “Ties” Perry on Twitter.