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What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.
– Ecclesiastes 1:9
If TSM want to produce a different result in their second best-of-five against the Golden Guardians, they are going to need to find something new under the sun. Could that be a substitution at Support? A change of draft priorities and in-game strategy? A mental reset?
For this preview, I’m not going to outline win conditions and key players for each team; I’m going to focus strictly on TSM’s opportunity to alter the outcome.
(If you want to know what the Golden Guardians need to do to win, just go watch the first series again; they need to do that! For clarity: FBI and huhi crush the lane phase, use tempo advantages to control and stack dragons, and roll a controlled snowball to the finish line. Easy, right?)
Support “Counterpick”
The biggest problem TSM needs to solve is the bot lane 2v2, where FBI and huhi ran rampant in the first series, employing Ashe Morgana twice and Caitlyn Tahm Kench once to amass huge laning advantages, generate all kinds of priority, and earn kills, dragon control, and towers.
TSM have played with both Biofrost and Treatz this split, and they have said publicly, in a now-deleted tweet, that they are splitting scrims between both players to try to determine the best fit for their upcoming series.
I don’t think I can prescribe the better choice, not knowing what has been happening in those scrims, but to drastically oversimplify things, Biofrost is the in-lane choice, while Treatz might offer more outside of the lane.
Doublelift’s laning stats with Biofrost vs. Treatz were worlds apart. His gold + experience difference at 10 minutes (GXD10) in the first 12 games of the regular season, playing with Biofrost, was +230. If Doublelift ended the regular season with that number, it would have been the highest of any starting LCS Bot laner. With Treatz in the last six regular season games, Doublelift posted -185 GXD10, which would have been one of the worst numbers of any starting Bot laner. In the six playoff games so far, that plummeted further to -511. That’s an enormous swing, even setting the playoff number aside.
Part of the explanation for that difference is draft strategy: Biofrost was given the counterpick at Support in 50% of his games, while Treatz got counterpick in 33% (two of six games) in the regular season. But TSM gave Treatz counterpick in 2 of 3 games against GG last series, so that doesn’t tell the whole story by any means.
I want to make a side note that Treatz is capable of playing strong 2v2s, and if you want to see him in a kill lane, for example, just watch game 3 of Thursday’s series between TSM Academy and EG Academy, where Treatz and Lost paired a Leona and Senna together very effectively to layer CC and create offense. You might also be interested in game 2 of that series, where Lost’s Ashe and Treatz’s Soraka layered CC beautifully in team fights to create engage and picks. Actually, Treatz is just good at skirmishing and team fighting, eh? That threat level just hasn’t materialized with Treatz and Doublelift, whether they were piloting the CC-layering potential of Thresh and Ashe or Thresh and Caitlyn. (In fairness, huhi’s Morgana and Tahm Kench picks were well equipped to deny that kill lane potential, though.)
If TSM insist on winning the 2v2 bot and gaining advantages in lane for Doublelift, they should almost certainly sub Biofrost back in, and probably tweak their drafting a little, too, maybe bringing in a Karma for pure 2v2 dominance.
But all things considered, I don’t advise building a series plan around winning the bot lane. Even with Biofrost coming in and a heavy draft focus on bot lane 2v2 strength, I’m not convinced that TSM can beat FBI and huhi in their lane kingdom. That’s why I’m much more focused on reinforcing one of my main pieces of advice from before the first series: play through the Top lane!
Unleash Broken Blade
In my preview for the first TSM vs. GG series, I gave TSM the following win conditions:
- Use Bjergsen and Spica to target Hauntzer and unleash Broken Blade
- Draft safe 2v2 matchups for Doublelift and Treatz
I just spent 500+ words talking about the 2v2 matchup, but that wasn’t even the primary win condition I offered last series. What I really want to see from TSM is a top side-oriented game plan, handshaking the bottom lane (meaning: draft champions that can farm safely and avoid tower dives, and scale into relevance later) and setting up lane priority, tower pressure, dives, and snowballing for Broken Blade.
I still feel Hauntzer is the most targetable link in the GG chain. If you try to attack FBI and huhi head on, you run the risk that they’ll just beat you anyways. If you attack Damonte, his creative champion pool could be a problem (he can take Ziggs and just wave clear, or find a low-econ pick that can give up waves and roam away from the pressure), and FBI and huhi’s lane priority might free up huhi to roam and turn things back around. Damonte is not really a win condition for GG, so attacking him isn’t the most efficient play. But attacking Hauntzer can yield more results, both because Hauntzer has looked vulnerable in many games and given up snowballs in the past, and because it plays away from FBI and huhi.
Add the fact that Broken Blade’s best games have always come on proactive carries, and that Spica’s biggest contributions have come from self-sacrificial ganking play in the top half of the map, and you have both push and pull pressure to make the top lane a focus of the series.
Why haven’t TSM played through Broken Blade in the playoffs? Hard to say. They did give him one game on Camille against Dignitas, and he was good, but that was against V1per, who has really struggled this season. I can see TSM disregarding that data point, though I think they shouldn’t.
It’s pure speculation, but I can see Doublelift’s ego preventing him from taking on the weak side role that I’m recommending. When you’ve been the best, most lane-dominant Bot laner in North America for most of your career, it must be hard to take a step back, surrender that crown to an Oceanic import, and do what’s best for the team.
The fact that TSM is considering bringing Biofrost back in implies to me that they want to match FBI and huhi in lane, and that Doublelift is unhappy with what Treatz was bringing to the table. That’s a shame, not necessarily because Treatz is a better choice, but because it implies to me that the decision between Treatz and Biofrost might be made with the wrong motivations or with the wrong process. And for what it’s worth, I think Treatz has shown how much he can offer as a skirmisher and team fighter, which is what TSM might need more of in this series.
If TSM can play through Broken Blade and Spica while Doublelift just farms out the early game and accepts a weak side role, I think TSM will have a much better chance to win the series through the mid and late game.
Prediction
GG 3-2
I believe TSM will find their footing a bit better in the rematch, but GG have proven that they have all the tools they need to take TSM down. TSM can definitely win this series if they play the style I’m recommending, but I think they’re going to play Biofrost over Treatz and play a bot-focused style in at least a few games, and that’s going to cost them in a close final result.