LPL Week 2 comes to an end with 4 teams tied for 2nd place.

- - -

OMG vs. YG

The final day of the second week of LPL kicked off with the team showing the strongest performance in the end of the spring split as well as the beginning of the current one. Nothing overly aggressive went down in the jungle, a rare site considering Lin started boots on Nunu. Elise was still able to secure her own blue and lanes appeared standard solo queue style with a 2v2 bottom lane and mid/top respectively. Both teams were very AP heavy in the jungle and in solo lanes.

We saw it yesterday and we're seeing it again today -- Many players have been picking strong laners such as Varus and Caitlyn to shut down Tristana. This game is no exception where Dragon and Cryboy tried to shut down San's Tristana early on, but San was far ahead in farm and also started the game off with a double kill, bringing that ultra destructive late game closer than ever. Shortly after, the kills calmed down and the pace of the game was much more calm.



OMG's bottom lane was relentless in their assaults. ​

Action would once again commence when Lin would commit to an ambitious dive bottom, bringing the hyper-carry Tristana even closer to her late game power only 10 minutes into the game. The situation was looking grim for YG as they hadn't taken a tower of their own yet and had the weaker late game composition by far. A fight in mid would net Young Glory a few kills, but when San came on his monstrous Tristana, their momentary celebration would soon come to an end.

An 8-0 Tristana was now trampling the battlefield, pushing turrets relentlessly with blood boil on and showing no mercy to their enemies. The variance between the gold on OMG and YG would only extend with all the lanes doing incredibly well, but still most noteworthy was a 14-2-2 Tristana about 24 minutes in where OMG took an uncontested baron. It didn't take long for OMG to roll over the opposition in a humiliating first win of the game.

​ VOD (click for full-screen)

​

PE vs. EP

Energy Pacemaker hasn't been having a good time in the LPL as of recent, but they've been trying to rid themselves of anxiety and go for very aggressive early game plays. Boasting a composition mostly comprised of lane dominators, EP started the game by walking directly into the blue side of Positive Energy's part of the map. Positive Energy simply countered this by walking to their blue. Neither team committed to the invades and backed off as vision was placed at both respective buff areas.

Buping's Lee Sin was a little bit too ambition in his counter-jungling endeavors trying to catch Jing out by his wolf camp and then learned the hardway that a level 2 Lee Sin is narrowly defeated by a Level 2 Xin Xhao, granted both start the jungle with a Doran's Blade. SuperCat on Zed would redeem his team by picking up a 1v1 kill on JoJo's Vladimir, allowing them to secure an early dragon despite being down a turret and 2,000 gold.



Today we learned that Lee Sin can't duel Xin Xhao early. ​

Though the skirmishes were being split fairly evenly between both of the teams, Positive Energy showed prowess in their sieging potential, grabbing 2 turrets by the 12 minute mark whereas Energy Pacemaker hadn't landed their first turret kill. Knowing their weak sieging potential, EP simply continued to do what was working best and grouped up around the map, ganking and attempting to shove off their gained advantage.A 3 man gank top would allow EP to finally down their first turret of the game.

With the assistance of his team, Jojo's Vladimir was able to catch up to the deficit had against SuperCat who was making work of him during the laning phase. EP eventually mustered up enough power to catch up in turret kills, but the scaling advantage for Positive Energy was quickly becoming apparent. Through a vision advantage and more successful sieging strategy, PE was able to close the game out against Energy Pacemaker.

​ VOD (click for full-screen)

​

iG vs. RC

These two teams have consistently been monsters in the Chinese scene ever since the drop in the all-dominating World Elite era. A few interesting things were caught out in the drafting phase for this game, most noteably Kid carrying ignite on Ezreal and ZZ1tai showing his Swain for the first time in a long time in competitive play. Despite both teams having relatively strong level 1 potential, both sides would return to common lane formations, with RC's purple side duo 2v1ing top as per tradition.

iG started the game off strong, accumulating 2 kills onto IlluSioN and Kid, following it up with 2 turret kills on the bottom lane with only the outer turret down for iG's top lane. PDD fell pretty far behind in the CS war up top, but habitually comes back as a monster in 2v1's despite the circumstance. A lack of mobility would allow Royal Club to catch back up with their upgraded boots and Blade of the Ruined Kings as opposed to the basic or non-existant boots of iG, allowing them to be caught out a bit in the mid game and nearly evening the gold values.



iG's team composition was far superior in long lasting combat. ​

The game remained extremely even up until the dragon fight broke out at 20 minutes where iG had a significant advantage in prolonged battles, where Ezreal shines above all other carries in the midgame. Royal Club's mistep would have them completely melted at the dragon battle, allowing Invictus Gaming to pick up the dragon as well as a delayed ace. The advantage gave iG an advantage and ability to lock down carries between Pdd's fed Ryze and blue build Ezreal which means even on Uzi's best day, his mechanics couldn't save him.

Though Royal Club were able to stall, Invictus Gaming put an end to that when they took baron nashor with no casualties and walked right into the front door of Royal Club, taking an inhibitor and walking out 30 minutes in to choose another siege target. The poke and lockdown would prove far too much for Royal Club to hold off and allowed iG to sweep another win in the LPL, leaving Uzi's infamous Vayne at a 0/3/3 against an unfavorable composition.

VOD (click for full-screen)

​

WE vs. LMQ

The final game of the night would open up with World Elite's Caomei locking in Zac once again, a champion he has been spamming even though he has a negative win/loss ratio with him. Despite this, World Elite confidently trotted into LMQ's jungle, warding up their red and backing out for vision dominance. LMQ did the same vision exchange at World Elite's red, waiting in a brush with a pink ward looking for a victim. With proper warding, no one got picked and lane setup allowed for 1/1/2.

The game was a stalemate in terms of gold, kills, and objectives for the first 10 minutes, with only LMQ's bottom lane feeling the pressure and tower damage from Weixiao and Fzzf's strong shoving potential. The calm would be interrupted when World Elite's bottom decided to engage onto LMQ, utilizing excellent mechanics to come out ahead 2 for 0. The advantage allowed World Elite to take the first turret of the game, extending the tower pressure towards top after swapping the duo there, allowing a 2-0 tower advantage.



Weixiao shoots​, Weixiao scores!!!

World Elite continued their rampage in a very Korean-esque manner by sieging sidelanes and rushing mid as soon as possible. LMQ attempted to defend their towers, but it only costs them their lives. World Elite became so far ahead with this method of play that they were able to force a 23 minutes baron fight and demolish LMQ, bringing them to 12-0 and acing them. LMQ were desperate but could not find an advantage anywhere.

World Elite would bring an anticlimatic ending to the week by shredding through LMQ like butter and roaming the map as they please. Top inhibitor went down first, followed by middle inhibitor and the nexus. Even by the end of the game, it would appear that World Elite was thoroughly unamused by their convincing victory. World Elite closed out with a fairly solid week, while the same could not be said for LMQ.

VOD (click for full-screen)

STANDINGS