End of Week 2 LCK

By Tea

During the first week of LCK, there were 8 champions that had a 100% Pick/Ban rate. Now there are only 4, which is still a big number considering the fact that none of these 4 have a negative record. The current 4 are: Rakan - 12 Wins - 7 Losses 100%PB Lucian - 7 Wins - 7 Losses 100%PB Urgot - 21 Wins - 12 Losses 100%PB Cassi - 1 Win - 1 Loss 100%PB Then you have Aatrox, Akali, Galio, Irelia, Ezreal, and Tahm Kench all with over 70% PB. Just by this, you can instantly picture the Meta. The current meta (9.1) rewards risky, EARLY, mechanically gifted fighters. Long are are the days where teams would pick Tanks, lanes that are passive, lanes that can't actually punish or abuse the current Tower Plate system. If you don't want to read the massive example point text, skip to TLDR at the bottom! So why is it like THIS? Why do we no longer see the likes of Tanks just being straight picked? It should be somewhat viable in PRO play , right? Many things factor in (nerfs, buffs to bruisers, keystones, nerfs to adc, adc itemizations, and on and on) but generally , there is just TOO much damage right now. Lets rewind to about a year or two when teams would actually pick tanks to lane against carries in general. I'll use Maokai(any meatshield will do) and Jayce as an example. The general thought process of both players going into the game was pretty much the opposite. Maokai : " I'll hold as long as I can, it doesn't matter if I am down 15-30 cs, as long as I don't die, and keep up in levels, I will definitely help my team much more efficiently than the enemy Jayce, one late game team fight is all it takes. " Jayce : "I need to snowball in lane and damnit I can do this. I can play as well as Khan, this tree has nothing on me, as long as the enemy jungler doesn't interrupt me , no one can stop me. This ugly tree won't be able to farm, and as long as I am ahead , even in the late game, he won't be able to stop my split push. "

Both have valid points, both know their winning/losing conditions, and to this day the thought process is somewhat similar but now there are additional conditions to both players. The Tower Plate System.

To those who don't know about the Tower Plate System, it is very simple. From start to 14 minutes, Towers have something called Plates. One plate = 1k hp, you knock it down, you get 160 gold. The chances of Maokai hitting Jayces Tower is pretty much impossible. This gives carries who do an insane amount of early game damage / and push well a major advantage. Not only will you naturally be up 10-20 CS, you'll at the very least knock off a few plates. Lets say two, in a no kill situation with about 2 waveish difference. That is about 600ish gold give or take. Not the worst situation if you are the Maokai, you've done decently enough even though we won't calculate things like top lane pressure, the enemy jungler not being able to contest the top scuttle crab from pretty much level 1 unless he runs it after his first clear, or the fact that herald vision control is pretty much gone. Now here comes something truly disgusting, what if the Jayce went Kleptomancy? Easily over 1k. What if the team enemy got Herald and used it at the Maokai's tower with Jayce? Gold keeps rising and rising to the point where you see a difference easily between 1-2K.

Now we can all say , oh this is predictions/hyperbole , there are many other factors that we won't be able to calculate, and that is true but the way we've seen the games go so far is that, generally when you go with tanks , you are going to lose the early game pretty hard. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wHQKluklss https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H--DfFYN9vc These are some of the games that we see massive early/mid game leads just cause of that early game / pushing power allows you to control the map and get so much more overall gold. Sure, Hanhwa did lose that game 1 against Griffin , but nonetheless, Griffin were forced to play from behind , even though they have Superior players in all positions. Both games, the junglers were forced to give up camps including herald , drake , and in those games you clearly see the early game power pushing/laning power against tanks with heavy cc. The gold continues to rise and rise and the tanks can't just force a fight/gank cause the enemy comps are also pretty mobile enough to either dodge / or re initiate the fight themselves. --------------

TLDR: With bruisers being up , ADC Itemization being too difficult to reach/nerfed , the meta favors Damage. Early game damage / fights allows you to control Drakes/More Camps, Turret Plates, and Herald which = more Turret Plates which ultimately becomes a massive gold difference. Tanks in LCK are -EV period. Sejuani is 3-6 , Sion is (9-12) , and those two are the only two true tanks left that were played. Ornn has been only played as a support. Gragas junglers do not build tank, they build full AP. Urgots don't build full tank, they go hybrid. Tanks being horrified means ADCs have a much harder time , with no one to peel them. That is why the top 3 ADCs that are picked are Ezreal / Kaisa / Lucian. All 3 are capable of dealing damage without risking too much in positioning, but for me personally , Kaisa is the worst. She is not strong enough in lane to pressure the other 2 ADC's, and generally just takes too long to come online compared to the Klepto Ezreal, or the Lucian powerspike. Tanks not being picked also means that the likes of Ezreal/Lucian who struggled against Tanks are extremely top tier. Just because I say Kaisa is bad doesn't mean she can't be good. Drafts are all relative. If the enemy team also has a scaling ADC, low pressure Jungler/Top , and the game looks to go late, there is absolutely nothing wrong with Kaisa. ( This is my first post on here, and yeah I do ramble a bit but thats because its just a generalization of LCKs hectic week where the teams that went to Worlds are heavily struggling! Next post will be more about individual LCK teams and their drafting habits!)