The Taipei Assassins have struggled with identity issues for a little over a year now, making constant efforts to emulate the play seen in Competitive League of Legends’ best league,  League Champions Korea.  This came with the hiring of their Korean coach, Sim Sun Soo, formerly of Najin Black Sword, and has been their memo as a Taiwanese team since. Since the inception of the LMS, TPA has generally struggled under this system, but in recent times have found themselves more secure footing with such emphasis on strategy. They currently stand at third place behind 2015 Worlds Quarterfinalists ahq e-Sports Club and Flash Wolves. TPA has seemingly become the best lane-swapping team in the region, consistently gaining early gold advantages, but also consistently struggling with them.

TPA’s relative mastery of the lane-swap has them leading the league in first tower percentage, destroying a structure first 75% of the time -- In simpler terms, they have only failed to destroy the first tower five times in twenty games. While this has them often losing the first dragon, only acquiring it first 40% of the time, early gold and map pressure are far more valuable than a scaling neutral objective that offers little in the early stages of the game. It’s no surprise that the Assassins have the highest gold difference at 15 minutes in the league, leading by nearly 2.5k gold on average.

The early macro game has been key to much of their early game success, but the current top laner and jungle duo of Morning and REFRA1N are masters of maximizing their own personal gold lead. Morning has always been known as the lane-dominant type, being near the top of the league in CSD@10 the last two splits. REFRA1N’s further supports this style with his seemingly endless pressure in the enemy jungle, farming camp after camp on carry junglers such as Nidalee, Graves, and Elise. He boasts the highest CS difference at 10 minutes, at 6.8, with HKE’s Dinter being a far second at 2.9, and maintains the second highest CS per minute at 4.2. The top side of the map is rarely lost by TPA and is their point of power going into any mid game, with Morning and REFRA1N consistently being ahead of their adversaries. Mid laner FoFo and veteran AD Bebe have also been consistent in winning their respective matchups, with TPA’s laneswaps also playing a large factor here.

However, despite TPA having the strongest early game in the League, closing out a win is inherently difficult for the unit. More often than not, they find themselves playing passively, unwilling to contest Dragon in the later stages of the game or contest it late, leading to unfavorable teamfight situations -- TPA only kills Dragon 45% of the time and finds themselves with a low CKPM (champion kills per minute) of 0.65, despite having the third longest average game time, at 34.2 minutes. Considering the current state of late game death timers and TPA’s solo-tank compositions with an emphasis on early-mid game power spikes, this is an incredibly dangerous way to play the game.

Player identities make it difficult for the Assassins to operate in the later stages of the game despite being so bolstered with veterans. While veterans are more likely to contribute knowledge or direction in game, they are also more likely to be inflexible. As it stands, TPA has four players who have been professionals for at least three years. None of them look to be changing their playstyles anytime soon -- and the Morning/REFRA1N tandem, while successful in some ways, makes it difficult to transition fully into the mid and late game.

Morning has long been a talented player in the LMS region, clearly showcasing good levels of individual skill in both mid and top, but has generally failed to deliver on consistent playmaking. He is most remembered for his performances at the 2014 League of Legends World Championship, where he had the highest CSPM of any mid laner, but failed to have any meaningful impact on the games. He has been poor at pulling off flanks, with or without teleport, and has no tact for setting up fights. Morning is at his best when it comes to secondary disruption, whether that is being the buffer for his carries or sneaking into the enemy backline and causing havoc there.

REFRA1N is one of the best performing junglers in the LMS this season after long  being seen as a lower tier jungler due to his champion pool, despite always displaying strong early game pathing. Historically, he has been unable to transition very well into the mid game when forced into a tank pick, but showed up well when he was alleviated of engage duties and given the space to be a damage dealer. Considering the current stable of junglers are largely carry focused, he has never been more comfortable, being a notorious Kha’Zix player back in the day and favoring such junglers. However, this further limits TPA’s ability to find a source of initiation as most junglers are either best for pick comps or as a secondary damage source.

Now -  considering that Jay is in the twilight of his career and offers more intangibles to the TPA roster and mid laner, FoFo, is still a rookie -  There is really no appropriate form of initiation on TPA with their current stable of players. That doesn’t mean that TPA is without some form of salvation, as they are surely still a top half team, but one that will even have trouble beating the likes of HKE, much less ahq or Flash Wolves. TPA can still succeed with an emphasis on disengage and splitpush, assuming they pay more attention to warding their flanks in the future (hopefully to avoid engages like this). Their best wins have arguably come off of a combination of Morning splitpush and placing Bebe on a champion like Kog’Maw or Ezreal that serve as high late-game damage dealers. It may be a bit much to ask of the bullheaded, veteran-filled TPA, but it would be a shame to see a team that plays the early game as well as them, to get relatively nowhere in Spring.

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All stats used are from Oracle’s Elixir. Be sure to check out http://oracleselixir.com for constantly updated stats!

Photo credits to lms.garena.tw