Earlier today, Fionn tweeted that 2015 will be a Top lane-focused World Championships. I agree: the 5.18 meta seems to be pointing to a lot of Top lane damage dealers, with Top lane champions likely dominating champion selext throughout the tournament.
But I responded with the opinion that of the three tournament “favorites”, SKT, LGD, and EDG, only one team had a true “star” Top laner. I got some justified backlash, so here’s an elaboration on what I meant.
Disclaimer: This is based on general impressions. I’m not an LPL expert, and I didn’t watch every LCK game. So I’m completely open to being criticized/corrected about this. Also, while writing this and thinking harder about it, my opinion may have shifted somewhat. Call me a waffler, but hey, they’re better than pancakes!
What is a Star?
To me, a “star” is a player who heavily drives his team’s success, and who the rest of the team relies on to make their play style effective. That may be a somewhat unique definition of “star”, and my definition may change in a different conversation, but this is what I was thinking of when I posted my tweet.
Here are some teams where I think the Top laner is a “star”: KT Rolster (Ssumday), Fnatic (Huni), H2k (Odoamne), CLG (ZionSpartan), maybe AHQ (Ziv) but I’m not sure.
Are These Players “Stars”?
Let’s look at the three favorites. Who is each team’s star? These are my impressions/opinions of who drives the teams’ success.
Here’s where my opinion has actually shifted a bit since I started thinking more about this: at this point I don’t think any of these teams have “star” Tops if you use my above definition.
EDG’s stars are Pawn and Deft. The other three are great players but the Korean carries drive the team.
SKT’s star is Faker. MaRin is arguably a second star, but my impression is that his split pushing mostly serves a strategic function, not a “make me individually strong” function, which means that MaRin’s split pushing is an enabler of his team’s success, rather than a driver. Good split pushing is accomplished by the team as a whole, not solely by the split pushers.
LGD’s stars are Imp and GODV. You could argue that PYL and Acorn are star-level, especially because of PYL’s strategic/macro control, which is one of LGD’s big strengths. But on an individual level, it’s again the Mid/ADC who I feel do the most individually to make the team win. (This is the evaluation I’m least confident in of the three.) I’m not discussing Flame because he’s a substitute and likely won’t play many games at Worlds, but ai’m open to the idea that on a different team he might be a star.
Originally, in my tweet, I was thinking of Acorn as the most “star”-like of the three. Upon further reflection, I think that was influenced too heavily by the most recent games played, not by a long-term perspective on his play. Right now, I’d call Acorn a supporting star, like the other two: all excellent players in their own right, but not the number one individual drivers of their teams’ success.
Fight Me
Here’s where I think my opinion is most open to criticism:
1. My opinion is based on my own definition of a “star” player, a definition others might not agree with (and one I might not agree with later, either.)
2. I’m too biased towards damage dealers as stars. Possibly true, but I also think YellowStar is a bigger star than Huni, Amazing is as much a star as Niels, and Piccaboo is a bigger star than Nagne or Arrow.
3. I’m too influenced by the Summer tank-Top meta. Probably. I hear MaRin is a great carry but the meta hasn’t called for it lately. We’ll see!
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So this is your chance to tell me I’m wrong, that Acorn and MaRin and Koro1 are all huge stars and my definition sucks, or that I have no idea what I’m talking about. I’m happy to learn why and how I’m wrong, so sharpen your pitchforks and brandish your arguments!
Over extended period looking at EDG–
Even if you’re looking at a damage dealer bias, Clearlove’s KP, high KDA, huge percent of team gold, role as a shotcaller, and general map pressure are hard to ignore. That and the fact that, despite pawN and Koro1 being swapped out of the team a lot this split, they only lost 4 more games than they did last Spring. Clearlove for me is EDG. Part of the reason they struggle is due to when and where he applies jungle pressure in a given game. By your definition of player that heavily drives the team’s success, I don’t think you can pick anyone other than Clearove. For me EDG is the hardest team to pick a secondary star, but I would say Deft. The Riot broadcast team chose Meiko for his role directing vision given that vision is a fundamental part of how the team operates. You probably even argue pawN or Koro1.
SKT is very easily Faker and MaRin. A lot of the team’s focus is in getting MaRin ahead, usually through ganks and vision distraction. Faker receives less attention, but obviously has a very large and noted impact. The team is set up to facilitate MaRin, though, it’s just that Faker does his job to such an extent that it makes that easy, which applies to your definition.
GODV and imp is fair, but only based on Playoffs. Based on the entire regular season, you have to take into account that imp only recently started playing so fantastically two weeks before Playoffs, and Pyl’s absence in Week 1 made them look like utter dogshit. They literally had no idea what they were doing without him.
But let’s put that all away for now. The broader question of “player who heavily drives his team’s success.” For me, the reason these teams are at the top is that each roster has a player who, in some regard, has to play an integral role to drive team success. Arguably, the one exception is TBQ, but in his own way he defines styles.
EDG: Clearlove controls the pace of early game and gets Deft ahead. Koro1 and pawN are self-sufficient solo laners who don’t require jungle pressure to at least go even in lane. Meiko drives vision placement. Deft is the main late game damage dealer with Koro1 and Clearlove driving zoning, pawN providing diversion, and meiko controlling vision still.
SKT: A lot of their playstyle hinge on Wolf’s ability to have some effective roaming, Bang to be self-sufficient, bengi to control vision, Faker to pull pressure, and MaRin to get resource to be that driving force through top.
LGD: TBQ has created LGD’s knack for laneswapping to free up the rest of the players to roam with him. GODV is almost a secondary jungler. Pyl has extremely high roaming. Acorn’s self-sufficiency lets the team split map pressure between mid and bot. imp gets to free farm for late game or with Pyl be devastating in the 2v2.
You have to have a team where everyone’s a star by your definition of a star to compete at top level. Each player has to be able to be the difference between a win and a loss. To an extent EDG beat SKT because meiko out-classed Wolf, and that’s something I didn’t expect being the result–but it could be because each player in some way facilitates the style. There’s no just dead weight on a top team. Idk. Your definition is extremely broad to me still.
I didn’t reread, so I’m sure there are a lot of errors, apologies.
Great thoughts all around. You definitely can’t have a great team if you have any poor players.
Focusing on your last paragraph, what do you think of a team like the KOO Tigers? To me, they’re a team with five solid players but no real “star”, and I think it’s one of the reasons they’re held back from being truly top tier. Without a star, they seem to rely more on their prep and pre-existing game planning than other teams have to. Agree/disagree?
For me, GorillA is a very clear star. Very excellent with vision and reactive play, etc., and Smeb is a close second. Smeb is one of the better tops in KR.
The rest of their members are lacking, especially jungle. KurO serves his purpose in so far as he just holds the lane, and PraY serves a good positional role, but his champion pool is a bit limited and he has somewhat low pressure without GorillA. Hojin/Wisdom is just meh. One trick junglers that oscillate between horrible and okay. That’s definitely a position that could help their excessive early game problems.
But I do think they definitely have stars.
Hmm, okay. I’ll have to rewatch a few games with that in mind, see how things look different from that perspective.
Kelsey pretty summed up everything. The only thing I’d add is that usually the star players in your definition (high damage dealers) are almost never self-sufficient, and require a lot of support (through jungle/support roams/plays or through gold distribution from minions/jungle camps). The best example I can give is Samsung White. The two best players on that team were Mata and Dandy, and they did so much to get their carries (Imp and Pawn) to a point that they can affect the game.
This comes to the top lane meta. The top lane meta doesn’t hinge solely on the top laner. The top laner has to be provided with the resources early by the team in order to get to a point where he can affect the map through split push/skirmishing/flanks/teamfighting/etc. The point here is to get the top laner more fed than the opposing top, thus impacting the game to your favor. This doesn’t mean you funnel everything on to the top laner, the top only needs a sizable portion of gold (around ~21-22%).Why not get the ADC or mid early attention? Well most adcs and mids nowadays play to scaling. This may change if assassins are played, but I think control mages will still see a lot of play. Even if assassins come into play, the game allows you to focus on two lanes.
Ultimately,The top laner right now has a lot of impact with TP from early to late, and you usually want the person with global pressure to be really strong. That’s why we are currently in a “top lane meta.”
Apologies for any incoherencies.
Fully agree on the carries (damage dealers) needing to be enabled by the supportive players. That’s why I call YellowStar, Piccaboo, etc. stars. It’s harder to spot star-level play from enablers than from damage dealers, though, which is why it’s easy for me to misidentify stars from teams I haven’t watched as closely this year.
Calling someone a “star” definitely has some guidelines to follow.. Those you gave are pretty much legit basis for what constitutes a star. There are however, viable questions that could be raised. For example, is it alright for a player to be called a star if a non star can easily outperform him? Huni is considered a star but he got outplayed by Soaz.
It really seems you lack knowledge about the LPL. Yes Pawn and Deft are the big names in EDG, however it is definitely Clearlove that drives them. EDG doesnt lose a lot, but when they do (or in the games they had a hard time) it was when Clearlove has had a subpar games. In the Summer playoffs Clearlove and Koro1 got outplayed, and the result is 1-6 record against both iG and LGD. iG has Rookie and Kakao who you consider as their stars, but them winning usually hinges on how Kakao and Zzitai plays.
Now based on that, is Clearlove a “star” (despite being considered the 2nd best jungler this worlds you didnt label him as such)? How about Zzitai? Guys like Acorn aren’t relied much by their team to make their playstyle effective, but they do a solid job and rarely underperforms, no matter who they are matched against. Did Samsung White have 4 star players, or just 2, or even perhaps none? Your classification of a star is flawed in such a way that even crappy teams will have a star. It is absurd for example that by your definition HolyPhoenix of last years Dark Passage is considered a “star” but Samsung White’s imp isnt. Just a food for thought.