Hey it’s Doublelift, analyst for the World Championships and AD for Counter Logic Gaming, here to give you my thoughts on the fifth day of Groups so far at the S3WC. As always, I’m going to try to get to the point as fast as possible, which is going to create a lot of disparity on the length at which I talk about each game.

Lemondogs VS SKT T1

A horrible start for Faker really put SKT T1 behind early game, effectively negating his mid counterpick. According to Reginald, who I spoke to after the day was over, Riven hard counters Zed. However, Faker displayed a huge lack of respect as well as overconfidence and put himself incredibly far behind.

Despite this, SKT T1 was able to pick off Mithy and Dexter top lane due to their random overextending, and force a dragon fight at almost dead even gold. Confident that they would win, Bengi and Piglet immediately jumped downwards and picked off LD as they filed in completely split up. Going 4 for 1 and taking Dragon, SKT T1 methodically closed out the game Korean style.

OMG vs GG.EU

Nothing to say here, honestly a waste of time to even watch this match.

TSM vs SKT T1

Dear god where do I begin. I want to spend the majority of my time talking about this match and how well both teams played it. Starting off with picks and bans, I favor SKT T1’s comp because it allows for so much outplay with the Jax/Riven/Lee combo. This alone will allow SKT T1’s mechanically superior players to pick up kills throughout the game if they are confident – which they most definitely are.

Starting with mid lane, I think Reginald did quite well against Faker. He split even in a counter matchup and even drew Lee Sin pressure occasionally. The biggest failure was when Reginald got overconfident and was completely outplayed under his own tower. Once Faker got that first kill (because he’s a f*cking god), he was able to farm like a madman and even pick up an early Hexdrinker, which was very smart because the only way he could die was to surprise Karthus damage.

Impact and Bengi pulled some very sneaky stuff with E first on Jax and a level 2 red gank by Lee Sin. This early all-in gimmick on top lane only paid off because Dyrus flashed but was still miraculously in stun range from Jax’s E. Once Jax gets snowballed, it’s nearly impossible to stop him from being a godlike splitpusher mid/lategame. Impact employed this tactic of staying farmed and trying to keep relevant, because he knew that at some point, he would be able to 1v1 everyone on TSM.

Annie + Twitch vs Sona + Corki is a very delicate matchup bot, and I think the favor definitely goes in favor of Sona + Corki. Annie simply doesn’t deal well with the massive sustain and poke that Sona brings, but Turtle and Xpecial played the lane well. Despite falling behind in CS, they had Karthus kill pressure that they used to pick up and early 2 kills. This came into play later, as a fed Twitch is always able to turn around fights and make “da plays.”

All in all, it’s very hard to win a game against a good team like SKT T1 when 2 lanes are losing. SKT slowly choked them out and starved TSM from exp/farm bit by bit, and controlled dragon following the mishap bot lane that allowed TSMt to get the first one. Faker and Bengi also had some massive outplays top lane that allowed them to take a tier 2 tower, a huge blow to TSM’s map control when they have a squishy Karthus trying to farm side lanes against triple bruiser/assassin combo.

This game really was a game of inches. If Faker wasn’t so godlike, if Bengi didn’t have such good ganks and jungle sense, and if Impact wasn’t the first Jax in the S3WC, TSM could have easily taken this game.

GG.EU vs Lemondogs

Once again, kind of a waste of time to talk about this game minus Lemondogs playing way too passive and having a lot of hesitation in making plays. I see similarities with CLG, and these are marks of a weak and indecisive team.

OMG vs TSM

I can’t really comment on what each team’s mentality was coming into this game, but OMG had a seemingly random roster change of bigpomelo out for comA. A highlight of this game was certainly Cool getting killed by Regi mid, and then coming back into the game with amazing Syndra play.

We all know what the main highlight was though, and that is the killer bear, LoveLin. This guy rushed Dorans + Mobility Boots on a jungle Voli! I don’t think I’ve ever seen that in my entire life. This guy doesn’t care, he just runs at your laners and he gets a bunch of kills because TSM has massive problems with getting ganked and warding properly it seems. Dyrus was killed multiple times due to smart lane ganks (considering Dyrus is really good about warding river after his first base back, it was a cute move). Regi and Oddone managed to get a kill onto Cool and even blow Shen ulti mid, but LoveLin just came out of nowhere and cleaned them up.

Bottom lane, Turtle and Xpecial were crushing San/comA as I expected. San is not highly regarded in the Chinese scene, and he is one of the weaker ADs coming from that region. However, his team is very good at playing around their weak bot lane, and I feel like OMGs gameplan is not hindered by too much if they fall behind. LoveLin wasn’t having any of it, and he went bot multiple times, each time resulting in kills.

Overall, TSM had sloppy warding and a complete lack of respect. After a certain point, the game was essentially over and TSM just wanted to get kills. I think it was more of a show than anything, considering TSM knew that once they had lost the game, it was mathematically impossible for them to make it out of groups.

Apple pie and freedom are dead.