All posts by Tim Sevenhuysen

Tim Sevenhuysen is the founder and sole developer of Oracle's Elixir and provides a variety of consulting and contracting services throughout the esports industry. He is the former Director of Esports Analytics for 100 Thieves, served as Head of Data Science for Esports One, led Shadow.gg from 2017 to 2019, and was Statistical Consultant for Fnatic in 2015. Follow Tim on Twitter at @TimSevenhuysen.
Analysis and Opinion

Peanut vs. Score: Korea’s Best Jungle Talent

Who is Korea’s best Jungler?

So far this year, two players have taken control of the Best Jungler conversation. One is a fresh-faced, diminutive, ever-smiling rookie, Peanut of the ROX Tigers, who played only a single game with Najin in the 2015 Summer regular season. The other is long-time veteran Score of KT Rolster, one of 2015’s most under-discussed players, who spent last year playing in the shadow of Ssumday and Piccaboo.

Both Peanut and Score have been key components of their teams’ impressive performances through the first three weeks of the LCK season. But who has been better?

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Check the Data

Early-Game Objectives in the 2016 Meta

Every League of Legends offseason brings change, as Riot injects fresh ideas into their game. Among the changes introduced for 2016, Riot significantly rebalanced the role of objectives in the early game. They left the Dragon in the same state as 2015, but made sweeping changes to Towers and added a completely new objective in the form of the Rift Herald. More passive gold was also added into the game, making the early game move more quickly.

Common perceptions suggest that the Dragon has decreased in value, that the Rift Herald doesn’t have a clear role, and that Towers have become by far the most important early-game objective. But are those perceptions measurably true?

In the discussion below, I’ll present numbers around each of the three early-game objectives, compared to the 2015 season.

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For some additional insight into the ways that different teams are prioritizing each objective, check out the companion post.

Analysis and Opinion

Fnatic First Look: Signs of Deilor

After an offseason of change, Fnatic fans waited eagerly, and somewhat apprehensively, to see what their revamped roster would look like on the LCS stage. The team’s first two games revealed signs of strength and signs of weakness, impressive highs and disappointing lows, and some telltale signs of coach Deilor’s continuing influence.

One day into the EU LCS Spring season, it looked like Fnatic hadn’t missed a beat: despite coming in with three new players, they handed their European rivals, Origen, a pretty clean defeat. The next day Fnatic faced Vitality, drafted the exact same five champions, and tried to do it all over again, but they went home with a disheartening loss.

Which team is the real Fnatic? Are they the Origen-beating juggernauts we saw on Thursday, or the much less potent, somewhat faltering version we saw on Friday?

Before we try to answer that question, we need to recognize that Fnatic’s play was not a case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. While the outcomes of the games looked very different, it wasn’t because Fnatic themselves played differently in each game. This was not a case of “inconsistency”, that overused pejorative that has been applied in the past to high-highs, low-lows players like Huni and, accurately or not, Gamsu. In fact, I would argue that Fnatic was quite consistent in how they played both of their games in week 1. The difference in the results said more about Fnatic’s chosen style of play than it did about how well they performed.

Continue reading at Unikrn →