This article was contributed by guest writer Kyle “Trainee” Notestein. Follow him on Twitter at @TraineeLoL.
An open letter to the Immortals players and staff, following LCS Week 6, Day 3.
To Whom It May Concern,
There’s no doubt that week 6 was a disappointment. The team is struggling to find their identity, with three different compositions over three days all leading to the same end result. Your opponents weren’t pushovers by any means, and especially not the upward-trending FlyQuest squad recently promoted from Academy. Nonetheless, drafts often deserve scrutiny after less competitive games, and that’s where we’ll begin here.
It was apparent pretty early on into the draft what Immortals’ game plan was. Solo laners with lots of agency, high mobility and strong skirmishing are topping the tier lists. Drafts that focus on this select group of power picks is a commonality. On the other side of the map, popular duo Aphelios and Thresh provide a sense of late game assurance along with strong siege and objective taking potential. Volibear slots in as a bridge between these two sides that can patch up certain weaknesses.
In practice, FlyQuest took control over the game in the first clear of the jungle, diving an Akali who was never able to recover and then quickly securing a dragon. Xerxe was decently successful in finding ganks and getting one of his lanes ahead, but was generally outpaced by the opposing Lee Sin.
Could the problems encountered in this match have been avoided in draft? I believe so, and here’s why: Immortals, you should have picked Sejuani.
Rather than taking a retroactive look at how the match played out to hypothesize how Sejuani might have performed, let’s first consider what makes her valuable. She has strong pick potential, almost unmatched single target lockdown and most importantly, a special affinity for melee champions. When paired with your solo laners of Sylas and Akali, Sejuani becomes a strong ganker and hard-scaling supportive jungler through the power of her Permafrost (E).
To understand how valuable Sejuani becomes in this composition, one must consider how oppressive certain champions become when they can stun on auto attacks. Akali and Sylas have different ways of approaching fights, but both use their high mobility and survivability to take out squishies. With this additional mechanic, Sejuani is the Zilean to Akali, the Yuumi to Sylas, all the while providing tons of other benefits.
This is not to ignore that Volibear fulfills his own niches. When contrasting the two in isolation, one can argue of his merit over Sejuani. The aforementioned synergy, however, offers the exact same features: strong level three ganks and dive potential. Permafrost turns a level three flash trade into an easy first blood, while reaching level six provides the opportunity to chain CC a champion under turret until death. Her slower paths of solo queue can be avoided though good wave management and coordination from your laners, while also allowing you to scale in a much more meaningful way.
From here we’ll examine how the draft plays out to further empower a Sejuani lock-in. FLY starts by banning a notorious counter in the first round. Gwen is a common first pick that, when banned on blueside, suggests a fight over a single S-tier character (in this case Viego). She also dominates Sejuani with her ability to dodge skillshots and sustain through moderate damage. The Fury of the North excels in locking down otherwise slippery champions, but in that regard, Gwen is probably her toughest opponent.
FlyQuest’s draft is all about early game aggression and strong pick potential that punishes poor pathing and decision making. Paired with the ability to contest early neutrals in both rivers, you have a meta composition with a clear purpose. When looking at the match in the context of its result, one could infer that FLY executed well enough to overcome one different champion.
The opening week LEC matchup between Schalke 04 and Excel serves as a recent example of how Sejuani has convincingly defeated this composition. Schalke was able to secure an stronger jungler in Xin Zhao, while selecting the same mid laner as FlyQuest in Sylas.
This doesn’t however mean the circumstances around the pick are the same. Patch 11.13 included changes to many of the mobility-related items, exchanging movement speed and cooldowns for better stats. Sylas, completely unaffected by these changes, became relatively stronger as a result.
Sylas Stats
| Patch 11.11 | Patch 11.13 | |||
| Presence | 35.1% | 39.6% | ||
| Games | 27 | 24 | ||
| Winrate | 44.4% | 66.7% | ||
| KDA | 3.0 | 3.4 | ||
Despite Schalke’s extra advantages, Dan made the game uncompetitive through intelligent pathing and high skillshot accuracy. An impressive series of counterganks demonstrated the 2v2 prowess of his champion while also securing the first two dragons in a “losing” jungle matchup.
Let’s spend a moment to address FLY Nxi’s pick. Lee Sin jungle has strong dueling and ganks as seen in his first dive onto Revenge’s Akali, but the champ struggles against more mobile laners and tankier junglers in teamfights. The IMT counterpick of Volibear is a legitimate 1v1 threat early on, but outside of that domain offers less value overall.
To demonstrate this point you need only watch the mid lane. Extremely smart wave management from Insanity allows him to turn a crashed wave at 3:15 into a slowpush by 3:45, eventually forcing Azir to recall at an inopportune time. FLY Triple is forced to burn teleport, creating only a 3 cs lead in a ranged versus melee matchup. While much of Azir’s strength arrives after rank two ult, a maxed out W and a couple of items, Sylas is in prime position to snowball with just the first rank of his ultimate. Keep in mind as well that Volibear’s Press the attack is most valuable when max healths are low.
Instead, this is all wasted on a full clear. Rather than being a position where Sylas would have dominated a multi-man skirmish, Xerxe concedes first dragon without response. Even when Insanity was able to survive a 1v2 dive that resulted in Triple’s execution, it doesn’t make up for the early advantages Lee Sin has garnered. If your goal is to rush for level six, just pick Sejuani. Whether it’s a three camp, four camp or full clear, all paths lead to a better early game.
Furthermore, Viego lacks the multiplicative strength our support-jungler creates and is quickly outscaled. Single target focus, despite being his specialty, causes him to be extra susceptible to single target lockdown. Even if Xerxe doesn’t predict the same three camp into top gank pathing Lee Sin has done for the last decade, that lane is much more recoverable with the greater crowd control of Sejuani.
Forgive me Immortals, but there’s more. You could’ve also nullified Azir. Sejuani’s several stuns—including a ranged skillshot—versus just the Q from Volibear? No contest as to which is better at locking down Azir in the mid-late game.
It’s clear that with the absence of star jungler Santorin, Team Liquid have subscribed to the Sejuani Solution. In summer Armao has a 3-1 record when paired with double melee solo laners. Wasted not is the opportunity to play with quality talent and exceptional shotcalling: there is good understanding of Sejuani’s supportive role.
Evil Geniuses have since gone on an eight-game win streak following this loss.
Xerxe has been to worlds and, unlike CoreJJ, gets to pilot the champion himself. He has the potential to control the game at and above the level we saw from XL Dan. It all makes too much sense.
Your draft had thoughtful reasoning behind it. For teams in the lower half of the standings looking to find stability, keeping it simple makes sense when every win matters. Scrim replays and results are valuable and something only you can account for, but I wonder if that influences decision making as much as watching MSI apparently did with Volibear. Give Sejuani a try.
Photos courtesy LoL Esports VODs and Highlights