At two minutes into the second game of EU LCS 2017 Spring regular season between H2K-Gaming and Misfits, Misfits jungler Lee “KaKAO” Byungkwon noticed the absence of his own red buff. Ten seconds later, H2K-Gaming jungler Marcin “Jankos” Jankowski Safeguarded into mid lane to gank Misfits’ Tristan “PowerOfEvil” Schrage, winning first blood for Fabian “Febiven” Diepstraten. The mid and jungle snowballed from there, limiting KaKAO and PowerOfEvil’s decision-making, and allowing H2K to control the map.





For Misfits’ second game against H2K-Gaming, it’s easy to gut-react and blame either the draft (as Misfits effectively chose three losing lane matchups and a weak jungle matchup) or poor mid and jungle play. But some of Misfits’ patterns instead reveal an overreliance on mid taking a disadvantage to get side lanes ahead. H2K’s style naturally abused this by initially playing to mid lane and denying a strong bottom lane matchup.

As always in the LoL community, a lot of discussion revolves around the optimal way to play the game. Almost everyone agrees, however, that jungle and mid control stands out as one of the most important factors in the standard lane meta. If a team has control of mid lane, they can use it to invade the jungle and extend pressure to side lanes.

Misfits typically skew this principle. Rather than getting control in mid lane first and extending this into the jungle for invades, they will give up pressure in mid lane to get control in side lanes, and then invade and control the jungle. Part of this comes from the fact that Misfits want to fell side lane turrets early so that support Lee “IgNar” Donggeun has the freedom to roam with KaKAO.

This approach has a lot of merit, but Misfits couldn’t adapt when their mid lane faced pressure from H2K-Gaming. As a result, a few limitations of their strategy shone through.

PowerOfEvil tends to roam a lot more than most mids. Misfits have a high first turret rate (62%), and PowerOfEvil frequently groups with the rest of the team to secure a turret in an early play in a side lane. PowerOfEvil has been involved in 13 (in 21 games) of the plays that have netted Misfits their first turret. It isn’t uncommon for him to fall behind the opponent mid laner in experience and gold in favor of giving a side lane a lead. POE averages a 3.5 CS deficit at 10 minutes, the lowest of all mids in the EU LCS.

Though this behavior allows Misfits to snowball on one side of the map early, failure to rotate members of the team mid or to the opposite side can put some of their team out of position. In addition to PowerOfEvil’s tendency to roam to set up turret trades, top laner Barney “Alphari” Morris often uses his Teleport to ensure his involvement in most of the first turret plays. Alphari has contributed to 17 of 21 first turret takes in some way.

When this works, the burden falls to the enemy team to make intelligent trades on the other half of the map. When Misfits act early, rotating PowerOfEvil out of the mid lane first and timing his roam with a strong push in a side lane, they usually get a tempo advantage in a trade. If PowerOfEvil doesn’t get initiative in a roam, Misfits can easily lose out and fall behind.

H2K exploited this scenario by playing naturally. With early mid pressure, they kept PowerOfEvil from roaming to side lanes with ease.

In the first game, Febiven bullied POE with Syndra. In the second game, H2K opened with what has become close to their standard start (in six of nine blue side games, Jankos and one of his solo laners has started by invading the red buff area on red side). Jankos started raptors and red buff, then ganked mid at level two (level two ganking mid is something he did on his only other Lee Sin game against Giants).

Misfits should have predicted this, but they immediately lost control of mid lane. PowerOfEvil couldn’t roam to side lanes first, and H2K took the initiative in many of their map trades.

But Misfits typically have a safeguard if PowerOfEvil loses his ability to roam. IgNar has a kill participation of 71 percent, the second highest of any support in the league, reflecting that Misfits often rely on his playmaking ability. When Misfits have push advantage in the bottom lane, IgNar can influence mid lane with a roam and reset the lane to give PowerOfEvil agency.

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