Before we begin, it is important to note that this tournament was not played on the 3.14 Preseason patch: It may be a good idea to turn around at this point, if you were anticipating China’s adaptation to the preseason. However if you are here to check up on your favorite Chinese teams, welcome! 🙂

Roster Changes:

Invictus Gaming: As many of you know XiaoXiao, former All Star support of IG is retiring! So they are trying out different supports the past two tournaments, Kitties being the current support.

World Elite: While still rumors, World Elite is going through a troublesome period, with their manager Aaron allegedly taking away Misaya and Caomei from the team. World Elite Academy is substituting their sister team in this tournament, due to the current team’s rumored disbandment. UPDATE: Misaya has retired.

Royal Club HZ: For those who didn’t know Uzi has moved to the mid lane, with Royal Club’s B team’s bottom lane stepping in to fill the vacancies (RIP Singing). However after Tabe’s initial retirement, the support “Rui” replaced him and is now back. He previously left due to a neck injury, which was why we saw Tabe return from retirement to play at Worlds, but Rui is now back and starting for Royal Club.

Grading Each Team’s Performance Before the Finals

Team OMG: B

Losing to IG in the first match in a long drawn out game is nothing to be ashamed of. The unusually passive game was between the two best teams here, as they would meet again in the finals. What drops their grade down to a B, is the fact that they almost (and should have) lost to WE Academy. They lucked out as LoveLin stole Baron, and their superior team fighting synergy allowed them to win the game. They would go on to stomp Royal Club in 2 games to get to the finals.

Team IG: A

With only two matches played at this point, IG looks very strong. Beating OMG, who were the favorites coming into the tournament, they made a statement as they would convincingly win over Royal Club’s new lineup as well. Both games showed calculated aggression, and a very composed and well trained team. Kid, IG’s marksman, showed up to play against Royal Club ending the game with a 12-0-4 score. Quite impressive seeing as how Royal’s ADC has been playing incredible all season long, and was good enough for Royal to switch Uzi over to the mid lane.

Royal Club HZ: C

Even when playing against the best mid laners in China, Uzi still looks like one of the most talented players in the scene. His high mechanical skill, and his rare ability to single handily “carry” the game has certainly transferred over to the mid lane. However the team’s overall synergy is certainly far from there, and while Uzi plays with a sense of urgency, this can lead to questionably aggressive plays that can really start to snowball against him. The talent is there, but Royal will struggle until someone takes an appropriate leadership role on the team.

WE Academy: C-

I wanted to but a D here, but their impressive performance against OMG kept them from going that low. We only got to see them play 2 games, both of them including an interesting Jungle Riven pick. While it didn’t work out well against Royal Club, it worked marvelously against OMG. After obtaining an early lead, he essentially lived in LoveLin’s Jungle, effectively taking him out of the game until Lovelin stole Baron and won the game…. Their problems lie as a group effort however, as their mid lane got crushed by Uzi to the tune of over 100 cs and multiple 1v1 kills. Another issue was the performance by their marksman “Allen” who had multiple team fights where he continually died first, providing little to no damage. The World Elite organization appears to be in a very poor situation at the moment.

Tournament Results Coming Up to The Finals

Game 1: Winner Invictus Gaming

Pick/Ban:

A relatively slow start for a Chinese match, the game explodes around 8:10 as Invictus attempts to sneak a dragon with their jungle and bot lane. However OMG snuffs it out and LoveLin and Gogoing trade 2 for 1 with Gogoing’s Rumble getting both kills. While this is happening, Coma and Cool catch Zzitai out in the mid lane, granting Cool’s Lucian a kill. Around 13 minutes iG decides to tower dive, which quickly turns into a 5v5 which turns into a 4 for 3 in Invictus’s favor. 20 minutes in their Nidalee Corki siege comp becomes too much for OMG to handle, as iG tower dives the low and poked down targets for a 3 for 1 trade. This exact scenario happens again around 24 minutes, and Zzitai’s Mejai’s begin to stack up very quickly. After numerous sieges, iG takes baron and OMG responds by surrendering at 29 minutes.

Game 2:Winner OMG

Pick/Ban:

Honestly at this point, I thought the series was over. OMG’s mediocre performance against not exactly China’s finest teams made me quite skeptical, however they prove me quite wrong.

After some beautiful tower aggro juggling, OMG successfully 3 man tower dives PDD’s Rengar for first blood at around 3:30. Around 10:30, Cool’s Riven and LoveLin’s Nunu begin running around as a 2 man gank squad. Their success begins with Cool picking up two kills up at top lane and then they both run to Dragon to secure the objective. At this point Riven has a Bloodthirster and a red pot, and the team as a whole has a 5k gold lead.

Cool and LoveLin’s gank squad continues, as they trick Zzitai into thinking they are roaming bottom lane picking up an easy kill.

Not only does he waste Flash, but this baits his team into an unfavorable position, which LoveLin and Cool quickly spot out.

LoveLin flashes in, and quickly slows down Kid’s Lucian, while Coma hits a briliant hook on to Lulu.

After picking up the kill on Lulu, Cool flashes in and knocks up Lucian, and San’s Ezreal picks up the kill. They later force IlluSioN’s flash as he gets away although they take his blue buff to compensate. OMG’s lead baloons up to 7 k and they cruise to an easy victory, despite their crushing defeat the game before.

Game 3:Winner OMG

Pick/Ban: (Note here that Nidalee is actually first picked and not Lucian)

OMG picks up a nice First Blood around 1 minute in, as Coma flash stuns Kitties Sona with his Annie. Around 6:20 OMG decides to tower dive iG’s bottom lane as Cool roams down with his Riven. It all goes wrong though, as Lucian and Sona get out with sub 50 health, and Zzitai’s Nidalee and illuSioN’s Jarvan IV clean up the other two kills on to San and Coma. At this point the gold is exacly even, however OMG slowly builds their lead back up as they LoveLin and Gogoing continually pick on PDD’s Rengar, dropping him to 0-3 with half of Gogoing’s CS. The gold lead slowly rises to 2k around 15 minutes through better rotations and overall map pressure executed by the veteran experienced OMG team. At this point OMG catches iG in the jungle, and trade 4-3 while picking up two towers. Due to this game still being on patch 3.13, OMG gains a substantial pressure on the map via Oracles and Pink Wards. The lead eventually creeps up to 7k as OMG can slowly push towers with their map control and take all of iG’s jungle camps. 22 minutes in they fight in the jungle, but at this point it is incredibly one sided with how tanky OMG’s front line has become. They trade 1 for 3 as well as an inhibitor and it’s now a difference of 10 k. 25 minutes again, PDD gets caught once again way over extended and he is now 1-6 while down 100 CS. OMG takes Baron at 26:30 and with the buff they were free to take inhibitors at will. iG attempted to make a last stand and lose 4v5 for a clean ace. The game ends at 30 minutes.

Where the game is lost:

To be honest, there is no specific point. Top lane matchups in the patch of 3.13, are usually Rengar, Shyvana, and Renekton. If this were played in patch 3.14, I’m sure this match would have been closer since the new defensive tree favors Rengar self sustaining kit over Shyvana’s. But LoveLin recognizes that If he snowballs Shyvana, then there is no way that PDD will be able to get the items that Rengar desperately needs to have an impact on the game as he needs 5-6 items to be that late game monster that we see often in competitive play now. Near the end of the game, Gogoing’s Shyvana is up a full 2 items on PDD, and the game essentially becomes a 4v5.

VODS:

Game 1 can be found here.

Game 2 can be found here.

Game 3 can be found here.