Far too often, Chinese team comparisons have been overused in the West. “They like to team fight a lot! They are like the Chinese!” That doesn’t mean that, occasionally, a western team doesn’t earn the comparison in other ways.

While not renowned for something that a team normally wants in their reputation, G2 Esports have been dubbed “LG2D" by some Chinese fans and struck up a small following for their disastrous Mid-Season Invitational performance in Shanghai. Mid laner Luka "Perkz" Perković has been compared humorously to Wei “We1less” Zhen (previously known as GODV) for perceived hubris prior to an international event and failing to deliver. I read a comment by one fan that went so far as to say, “If LGD can’t make Worlds, I’ll just cheer for EU LGD.”

Beyond memes, G2 have also been noted as a more experimental team in the regular season (yes, that word), bringing out confusing compositions like the one that featured Nunu against Giants Gaming. Last split, their coach Joey "YoungBuck" Steltenpool lamented that G2 perhaps didn’t play as seriously in scrims as he thought they should, a sentiment also shared by many Chinese team staff members. Even the black and red color scheme calls to mind quite a few LPL teams.

But none of those factors are actually relevant. The most striking thing for spectators is how the dynamic of G2 is set up to depend on a strong, invading jungler and an aggressive bottom lane. This heavily resembles the dynamics of the two top Chinese teams in the League of Legends Pro League, Royal Never Give Up and EDward Gaming.

Reddit is flooded with speculation on how Team SoloMid will fare against Korean giants, but G2’s Take 2 against Chinese heavyweights after a disastrous MSI in Shanghai is something I’m personally excited about. Because all three teams have striking stylistic similarities, matchups between G2 and their Chinese competitors may turn into games of inches. In celebration of all three qualifying for the World Championship, it’s time to prematurely sift through their dynamics in regular season and find what will matter should these teams collide in October. Of course, this is neglecting any possible patch changes that throw everything away between now and then, which is why I won't belabor meta details.

A first look at G2, EDward Gaming, and Royal games gives one an impression that these teams are defined primarily by their junglers and bottom lanes, cutting off resources to solo lanes relative to other teams within their regions. Action is generated in the bottom lane with jungle involvement, with or without Teleports.

Comparing the gold distributions of all three teams relative to their perspective regional averages reinforces this idea (though Royal Never Give Up is definitely the most extreme case and EDward Gaming the most well-rounded of the three).

Gold distribution relative to regional role average (i.e., meiko receives .8% more of team gold than average LPL support, Trick receives 1.1% more gold than the average EU LCS jungler)

It’s clear that the key matchups are between jungle and bottom lane. It’s not without reason that Jesper “Zven” Svenningsen, Kim “deft” Hyukkyu, and Jian “Uzi” Zihao are among the most anticipated AD carry names heading for Worlds, though all of them can be outshone at times by their laning partners, Alfonso "mithy" Aguirre Rodriguez, Tian “meiko” Ye and Cho “Mata” Sehyeong. While Kim “Trick” Gangyun and Liu “Mlxg” Shiyu don’t have the experience and gravitas of Ming “clearlove” Kai, they’re arguably the breakout junglers of the year in their respective regions.

All three teams do function with an invasive jungler who farms a lot of the game’s jungle camps. clearlove, Mlxg and Trick all average positive CS leads at 10 minutes. Azir is the most played champion of all three mid laners. Aside from just being an incredibly strong champion for most of the split, his wave clear and setup potential meshed well stylistically, even with slightly less of team resources than other mids have. All three top laners are near the bottom of regional percentage of team gold values with extensive emphasis on late game team fighting and Teleports.

But the interesting aspects of G2, EDward Gaming and Royal Never Give Up aren’t in their similarities, but in their differences. Already, a glance at these gold distributions suggests that the relationships aren’t strict one-to-one.

Aiming for some of the low-hanging fruit, G2 actually don’t fight as much as their LPL brethren in this example. With a .64 combined kills per minute, they don’t hit Royal Never Give Up’s .81 and EDward Gaming’s .82. Arguably, since every single LPL team has a higher combined kills per minute than G2, and G2 sit in the top 4 in EU for combined kills per minute, this statistical discrepancy could come from opposing teams not buying into G2’s desire to fight across the map, but other numbers point to less aggression from G2.

G2 have the lowest first blood rate in the EU LCS (tied with Team ROCCAT) at 39 percent. This is considerably lower than RNG’s 65 percent and EDG’s 62.16 percent. Typically, when one watches a G2 game, one can notice that they want to set up control through vision and gold leads first. Usually, that means other teams can catch them out for first blood, but this risk gives them better control of the map to set up for their lanes to build momentum.

Top lane pressure

For this reason, G2 deceptively benefited from lane swaps. Though they didn’t have the best lane swap execution in the EU LCS, they lane swapped in over 58 percent of their games. Some of the explanation for this sits in their top lane, according to the data. Ki “Expect” Daehan averages a 10.2 CS deficit at 10 minutes in standard lanes, as opposed to only a 1.2 CS difference in lane swaps. Overall, this reinforces a subtle average gold difference at ten minutes between standard lane and lane swap games for G2 Esports.

Though all three of these teams, on paper, because of the talent on their roster should theoretically benefit from enforced standard lanes, only Royal Never Give Up show a much larger gold lead at 10 minutes in a standard setup, while G2 and EDG actually had slightly higher gold leads at 10 minutes in lane swap games. As evidenced by EDward Gaming’s series against LGD, lane swaps also helped them to play around their top laner, though in a slightly different way.

clearlove has a history and reputation of not pathing toward the top lane, while Expect’s addition to the roster has made Trick play slightly more around his side of the map. I speculate that he does this because Expect is more likely to lose lane on his own without pressure, but G2 also had a smart ability to use Expect as bait. Often following a lane swap, they could leave Expect to freeze by a Tier 2 turret and bait the enemy top laner into over-extending to get farm, leading to ganks by Trick.

Meanwhile, for EDG, lane swaps opened up roams for meiko much more often, supplementing EDG’s jungle pressure, and, in general, not all LPL teams perfected lane swap execution. EDG were able to get tempo advantages they could channel into more farm for Chen "mouse" Yuhao. clearlove rarely plays to mouse’s side of the map, but in lane swaps, he didn’t have to, and mouse could still build an advantage without the threat of a gank.

Without lane swaps, G2 and EDward Gaming both lose this mechanism for compensating for their top laner and must rely more on their mid lane and duo lane. As evidenced by the regular season set between Royal Never Give Up and EDward Gaming this split, however, that actually doesn’t matter. Since Royal Never Give Up tunnel so hard onto their bottom lane and getting their bottom lane ahead, they’re rarely able to use the skill advantage they have in the top lane to the fullest extent.

Jang "Looper" Hyeongseok averages a 6.1 CS lead at 10 minutes, setting him ahead of both mouse and Expect significantly in laning, but he also has the lowest kill participation among the three top laners at 57.3 percent. Looper has a low chance of getting involved in Royal’s action or influencing the game in a meaningful way with any lead he accumulates. His late game split-pushing also isn't incredibly consistent.

Looper’s low gold distribution reflects more low involvement than poor ability to accumulate a lead, and then Royal allocates almost every free farm lane to Uzi. Creating more strategies around Looper, especially given his tendency to overperform at international events, could create a distinct advantage for Royal that the other teams don’t appear to have the resources to prevent.

Agency

As for where the action is driven, highest kill participations among jungle and bottom lane players are also consistent with the emphasis on bottom lane fights in the meta and expectations for G2, RNG, and EDG. Yet slight differences in theses three roles reflect observations obtained from watching the games. G2 shares more similarities to Royal Never Give Up in that their jungler is the main driver of action with 74.6 percent kill participation for Mlxg and 75.6 percent kill participation for Trick. Most action is driven by Trick’s ganks or skirmishes in the jungle, just as Mlxg dictates much of the pace for Royal.

Royal’s calling card is Mlxg’s frequent level two ganks, even on champions like Hecarim and Graves, which are expected to play more of a farming style in the early game. This is reflected in Royal’s high first blood rate. While Trick may not act as early as Mlxg, he has a lot more variation in where he’ll apply pressure.

Except that Royal can compensate for this with their fanatic obsession with vision. With 3.77 wards per minute, Royal Never Give Up use advantages early, accumulated from Mlxg’s daring, to place vision. They snowball the early game so efficiently, averaging a gold lead of 1,710 at 15 minutes relative to EDG’s 1,495 and G2’s 1,181, because they channel leads into wards from Mata and, surprisingly, mid laner Li “xiaohu” Yuanhao (though the rest of the squad isn't far behind him in WPM) as the primary warders for the team. This interaction of RNG trying to track Trick with vision will be an interesting one to watch.

For both EDward Gaming and Royal Never Give Up, the second highest kill participation player is their AD carry, while Zven has a kill participation slightly below 70 percent. Expect also has a much higher kill participation than either of the Chinese team top laners at 67.8 percent. As such, the side of the map where G2 create pressure is less predictable. Trick works well in conjunction with mithy’s roams, and sometimes this means they get caught out more often, but it makes them hard to counter.

EDward Gaming are the most predictable when it comes to where they look to create skirmishes. deft has the second highest kill participation of any EDG player at 72.8 percent, but EDG are incredibly likely to start action in the duo lane, even without their jungler. With meiko’s 75.6 percent kill participation and the most assists of any player in the LPL, it’s clear that EDG’s main action driver is actually their support, and not clearlove. While Trick and Mlxg will drive action for their teams, EDG have set clearlove in a counter-gank based role. If meiko acts, then clearlove may be in the area, but his assistance isn’t always needed. There’s a reason meiko receives the highest gold distribution of any of these three supports.

Yet this also can make EDG’s early game incredibly risky. They’re likely to start fights with their duo lane using a weak matchup like Braum and Kog’Maw into Bard and Lucian. This is something either RNG or G2 can take advantage of before clearlove’s countergank arrives, but tunneling too hard on this weakness has already backfired for Royal. It’s much more advisable to tackle EDward Gaming from other angles.

In addition, because EDG focus more on allowing clearlove to control jungle and farm while meiko makes early plays, they become more formidable as a team fighting unit as late game approaches. G2's chances against RNG actually increase as the game lengthens considering their warding falls of, and Mlxg has a tendency to over-extend in teamfights.

Getting to how G2 can actually win

I know that this is the primary question on the minds of an English-speaking audience. G2 align with both RNG and EDG in different facets. All three teams have powerful teamfighting and strong junglers and AD carries.

If Royal ever shake off their aversion to playing around anyone but Uzi, Looper is a tool they can abuse to unsettle both EDward Gaming and G2 in standard lanes. RNG's coordination with Looper also make his Teleports incredibly reliable.

EDward Gaming will likely do whatever is within their power to bait bot lane 2v2s. This high risk works for them way more than it should because of the sheer skill of deft and meiko as a unit. Zven and mithy are capable enough to try to contest it — but they shouldn’t if there’s a better option.

There is, and whether it’s by fate orchestrating a redemption story for G2’s most ridiculed superstar, G2’s way ahead is through Perkz. Or, more specifically, how G2 play around him.

One might pause at this point. After Perkz made the statement that he didn’t believe Asian mid laners were that strong, he sufficiently humiliated himself against the mid lane representatives from LPL, LCK and LMS. xiaohu, Royal Never Give Up’s mid laner, was one of them.

While xiaohu is certainly one of the best mid laners in the LPL, his function on Royal has changed drastically. Mid lane first bloods happen much more scarcely, he receives the lowest percentage of team gold of any mid laner in the league (21.9 percent — there are top laners who receive more of their team’s gold than that), and with engage AD carries becoming more popular, he plays fewer engage mid lane picks, leaving him on near permanent wave clear and warding duty.

This leaves him more vulnerable to ganks and roams because Trick is less predictable. xiaohu’s job is more to have an impact on the map, but teams like Snake and Oh My God have had success by keeping him confined to the mid lane and ganking him. Both G2 and Royal share a similar stylistic trajectory following Worlds — they upgraded their bottom lane, and teams became much less about mid lane, but the fact that Trick is less predictable means that he can counter any bottom lane pressure by keeping one of Royal’s biggest map pressure aids in lane at all times.

As for EDward Gaming, they were recently put severely on the backfoot by a similar strategy from Team WE. WE, like the other three teams mentioned here, have a distribution of gold that favors jungle and bottom lane and an AD carry that does upwards of 30 percent of team damage to champions like Uzi, Zven and deft. Yet they dragged EDward Gaming to five games in the semifinals by using their mid laner, Su “xiye” Hanwei, as a pivot point against Lee “scout” Yechan with jungler Xiang "Condi" Renjie heavily camping the mid lane. EDG didn’t react well, and scout got run over in three of five games, with EDG only barely coming back in one of them.

G2 have demonstrated an ability to flex their main carry back to mid lane in games where Perkz plays Vladimir with a devastating 10.19 KDA and 27 percent kill share in five games played. While Zven is G2’s new laning carry focus, he’s not the center of attention to anywhere near the extent of Uzi, which makes the team with the biggest mid lane threat to Perkz more restricted.

At IEM San Jose, GODV capitulated on his chance at redemption. Everything has aligned, and G2 fans dearly hope EU GODV doesn’t make the same mistake.

Unless otherwise specified, all images credited to lolesports flickr.

Kelsey Moser is a staff writer for theScore esports who still naively believes in the possibility of a tournament where both EU and China show up. You can follow her on Twitter.