The shifting tides of game balance are an inherent reality of League of Legends. While it’s true that the best players and teams in the world are able to flex themselves to fit the changing needs of the meta, it’s also true that certain metas are bound to favour certain teams over others. In North America, two teams currently find themselves on the wrong end of the spring meta: Team Liquid and Counter Logic Gaming are both sitting in the bottom half of the standings, underperforming most analysts’ preseason expectations.
While an eventual meta shift will benefit both teams, solutions have to come from within, and soon. If Liquid and CLG can’t learn to win more consistently now, in this meta, they may not have enough time left to climb the standings later in the season.
What’s the problem?
If we boil the current meta down into its simplest components, we can describe it something like this: top laners play tanks or anti-tanks, mid laners offer the main damage source, and AD carries provide utility (almost always picking Ashe, Varus, or Jhin). The jungle and support roles are a bit more flexible, but carry junglers are a bit more common than tanks, and supports are usually ranged mages who do well in the laning phase. Overall, this meta isn’t that constraining for most roles, but the AD carry position specifically has been heavily pigeon-holed because of complicated itemization issues that you can learn more about elsewhere.
The reason the current meta is troublesome for both Team Liquid and CLG is that it limits the effectiveness of each team’s two most important players. In effect, this meta neuters the ways both teams’ biggest carries want to assert themselves and pushes their most important playmakers out of their comfort zones, while asking weaker members—for these teams, the mid laners—to be the primary damage dealers.
Team Liquid: Bringing the Koreans together
Liquid’s 2017 roster is anchored by two Korean superstars, Kim “Reignover” Yeu-jin and Chae “Piglet” Gwang-jin. Both players have specific personalities and play styles. Reignover is a control jungler, which means that he prides himself on efficiency, outthinking the opposing jungler, and enabling his teammates to shine. He perfected this style alongside long-time partner Heo “Huni” Seung-hoon, serving as the protector and playmaker who spring-boarded Huni into a place where he could carry games with damage. Piglet, in theory, is Reignover’s new Huni: as a cocky, aggressive, highly mechanical AD carry, Piglet is all about outplaying his opponents and overwhelming them with his raw skill.
Right now, Piglet is being forced to play champions who have none of the tools he most prefers. Piglet wants to have high mobility and larger bursts of damage. That allows him to dodge skill shots and surprise opponents with aggressive movements, winning trades in lane and creating openings to take risks and earn kills. Instead, he is being asked to play methodically, conservatively, and consistently, on champions with no movement skills or real burst damage.
Meanwhile, Reignover has run up against smart ban strategies from recent opponents, with both Team SoloMid and Phoenix1 spending all three of their blue side bans on tank junglers and forcing him to pick up Kha’zix. Reignover isn’t a bad Kha’zix, by broader standards, but his play has been disappointing when his influence on Kha’zix is compared to what he can achieve on junglers with more beefiness and crowd control.
The final piece for Team Liquid is in the mid lane, where newcomer Greyson “GoldenGlue” Gilmer is mostly playing mages like Cassiopeia, Orianna, and Azir, all of whom have high damage output and are meant to farm out the laning phase so that they can contribute to team fights later. Prior to the start of the season, GoldenGlue was flagged as a likely weak point of Liquid’s roster. While he’s had brighter moments, especially on a less standard Ekko pick, GoldenGlue certainly hasn’t proven that he can be relied on as the main damage dealer of an LCS playoff team: so far he’s dead last in CSD@10, GD@10, and DPM for NA LCS mid laners.
The almost perfect mismatch between Team Liquid’s carry profile and the 2017 meta has been obvious in everything from how they set up the map to how their opponents are drafting against them. It’s clear that Liquid would readily welcome some big changes to the bottom lane, to allow them to give Piglet some more room to express himself.
In the meantime, though, there are some glaring issues the team needs to fix that have nothing to do with the meta. Most pressingly, Reignover and Piglet need to get on the same page about how they are managing the push and pull of the bottom lane minion waves.
Over and over, Piglet and Matthew “Matt” Elento have found themselves pushing a wave close to the enemy tower and working to either land chip damage on the tower or harass the enemy ADC to force them to miss last hits. It’s a viable strategy, a high-pressure approach that takes on added risk but can produce good rewards. The problem is that the missing piece of this strategy is jungler attention: Reignover should be planning his jungle routes to bring him to the bottom side when the waves are pushing forward, so that he can cover the river with his body, wards, and/or scuttle crab shrines. Instead, Reignover has been sticking too closely to old habits, pathing through the top half of the map. He’s doing perfectly well for himself—Reignover has earned a +55/+164 gold difference and experience difference at 10 minutes through the first two weeks—but his choices are being reflected in Piglet’s uncharacteristically moderate laning stats.
The desynchronization between Team Liquid’s jungler and bottom lane will not disappear if Piglet can begin playing Lucian, Caitlyn, and Kalista, or if Reignover stops having his tank junglers banned out. As vital as a meta change is for Team Liquid’s future strength, they can’t expect to find success if they don’t improve their communication, decision-making, and game planning first.
Counter Logic Gaming: Duo lane doldrums
Much like Team Liquid, Counter Logic Gaming would prefer to look to their AD carry for damage output. Throughout 2016, Trevor “Stixxay” Hayes proved himself a worthy successor to previous CLG ADC Yiliang “Doublelift” Peng, putting in work on champions like Lucian, Caitlyn, and Ezreal, and memorably sealed CLG’s spring title with a Tristana triple kill. Stixxay’s best work last year came in big carry performances, when the team shone the spotlight on him and set him up to succeed. Now, in a secondary role, he is having to draw more on a different side of himself.
Stixxay’s forced shift is less an issue for his own play, though, and more an issue for the rest of his team. So far, Stixxay has been contributing pretty well: he leads all NA LCS AD carries in laning stats, has solid damage numbers, and is involved in most of CLG’s action with 76.9% kill participation. But CLG can’t afford to build team compositions that have secondary carry champions in both the mid and bot lanes, so with Stixxay playing utility, Choi “Huhi” Jae-hyun is forced to move away from his own favoured roaming/enabling picks.
CLG’s second pain point, unlike Team Liquid, isn’t in the jungle. Instead, it’s their shot calling support, Zaqueri “aphromoo” Black.
Aphromoo is inarguably the most respected homegrown support in the NA LCS. He has been leading CLG for years as a strategic voice and a clutch playmaker. The value of strategy and shot calling will never diminish, but the support role’s options for classic initiation tools have become more limited recently.
In spring 2016, aphromoo’s most-played champions were Bard, Braum, and Alistar. All three were among his most played in the summer split, as well, with Karma thrown in for balance. But ever since patch 6.15 brought about the death of lane swaps, 2v2 laning strength has become much more important from the support position. Picks like Alistar and Braum run the risk of falling so far behind in the laning phase that they never get the chance to properly impact the game.
Aphromoo has found himself experimenting with a wide variety of champions, trying to find something comfortable that also fits the contours of the meta. Unfortunately, the only champions he’s found wins on so far are Miss Fortune and Malzahar. Somewhat surprisingly, aphromoo’s Bard has yet to make an appearance, though he used to be so well known for playing it.
With aphromoo playing mostly disengage champions, or champions like Malzahar who are so heavily reliant on Flash to be proactive, the burden of initiation is falling more on Darshan “Darshan” Upadhyaya’s shoulders, with some help from Stixxay’s utility champions. With the triggers in different players’ hands, CLG have looked less decisive and cohesive than we’ve come to expect over the past few splits.
Like Team Liquid, CLG have to solve some problems that are bigger and deeper than the meta if they want to truly turn their fortunes around. But while Liquid’s biggest gaps are glaringly obvious, CLG’s are a bit harder to pin down.
In their losses, CLG have had uncharacteristically poor macro, and it’s also been surprising to see them struggle to coordinate in team fights. Both issues can be tied, at least in part, to shot calling, which points the finger at aphromoo. CLG’s biggest strength for the last several splits has been coordinated, decisive play built around clear game plans. With aphromoo experiencing discomfort in his champion pool, that core strength seems to be slipping.
CLG are showing signs of life. Their 2-1 loss to Cloud9, North America’s current best team, was encouraging: it showed that CLG are taking the right steps to get back in shape. It was especially good to see aphromoo pick up Thresh in game 1 and start to look like a playmaker again, though Cloud9 ultimately took that game with a smart Baron call. CLG’s growth needs to continue: they not only need to become more comfortable with the new state of the game, but they also apparently need to rediscover some of the things that made them successful in the past.
Photo courtesy flickr.com/lolesports