Tag Archives: LCK

Analysis and Opinion

Blank Check: SKT, IEM, and the Jungler Question

When the reigning World Champions are sitting in the bottom half of their league’s standings halfway through the Spring split, it’s bound to stir up a little conversation. When that team goes out and wins an international tournament using their backup Jungler… Well, that’s bound to really fuel some discussion.

SK Telecom T1 were thoroughly convincing at the IEM Katowice tournament, winning all seven games they played and forcing Fnatic to surrender in the deciding Game 3 of the Finals. The natural response is to wonder if they’ll be ready to translate that success into their domestic play. And in SKT’s unique circumstances, we have to wonder whether Blank showed at IEM that he can be a better solution for his team than the veteran Bengi as they play out the rest of this split.

Before we can draw any inferences about SKT’s level of play with Blank, and whether they should use him moving forward, we have to look at the context of the IEM tournament, the play of SKT’s opponents, and—of course—the stats.

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Check the Data

Win Rates by Map Side

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As of March 2, the Blue side of Summoner’s Rift has a slightly higher win rate across the NA LCS, EU LCS, LCK, LMS, and CBLoL. (I don’t currently have LPL data, but I’m working on it!) Blue side has a 52% win rate, with Red side at 48%.

The tables below break down each team’s win rate on each side of the map.

Notables:

  • The ROX Tigers have dropped just three games this split, and all three losses have come on Blue side.
  • The Jin Air Green Wings and CJ Entus have huge gaps in win rates by map side. CJ Entus have won 77% of their Blue side games and just 14% on Red side, while Jin Air’s Red side win rate is nearly double what they’ve done on Blue.
  • Dignitas and Renegades have not won a single game on Red side this split, but Dignitas are 4-3 on Blue side and Renegades have earned both of their wins on Blue.
  • Fnatic are 6-1 on Blue side and just 2-5 on Red.
  • CLG are 7-1 on Red side but 3-3 on Blue.

NA LCSWins by map side, EUWins by map side, LCKWins by map side, LMS

Check the Data

LCK 2016 Spring Mid-split GSPD Standings

Gold spent percentage difference (GSPD) is a measurement of the average gap in gold spent between the teams at the end of the game. In other words, GSPD measures whether a game was really close, or a big stomp. This gives us a more nuanced picture of how well teams are performing than simple win rate. To learn more about GSPD, read the theory article.

Here are the GSPD standings for the LCK, following week 7 of the 2016 Spring split.

LCK Mid-split GSPD

More LCK Spring 2016 team stats

Takeaways

Longzhu Gaming stand out for their relatively strong GSPD but just a 5W-4L series record that has them tied for fifth in the overall standings. Longzhu have won just one of the four Game 3s they’ve played in; one or two more Game 3 victories could have put them in second place instead of fifth. Pairing their GSPD with the LCK’s second-best early-game rating (58.4) suggests that Longzhu may be due to climb the standings soon.

GSPD suggests that KT Rolster and the Jin Air Green Wings are overachieving in the standings, and may be due to come back down to earth in the second half of the Spring split. There’s more to the story, though, because these two teams rely heavily on Dragon buffs in their strategies. Dragon buffs aren’t factored into GSPD because they give power that isn’t tied to gold, so while a game may end with very close gold values, it’s possible that one team had a meaningful advantage from four or five stacks of Dragon buffs.

The Green Wings have the LCK’s highest First Dragon rate at 67%, and have secured 59% of the Dragons taken in their games, second only to the ROX Tigers. KT Rolster have the third-best Dragon Control rate at 57%. The Green Wings have secured the fourth Dragon buff nine times and the fifth Dragon buff three times, and KT Rolster has earned the fourth Dragon seven times and fifth Dragon twice. Both teams have some of the longer game lengths in the LCK as well, the Green Wings in particular, because of playing around Dragon stacking.

The sky isn’t falling for the Jin Air Green Wings or for KT Rolster, but it’s interesting to see how they’ve taken different paths to victory than some of the teams that are ahead of them in the GSPD standings. With Dragon buffs being improved in recent changes, we may see the Dragon-stacking strategy become that much more popular and effective.