HeckMaister
2015-05-10 10:14:08
SKT bans: Sion, Maokai, Lulu
TSM bans: Rumble, Leblanc, Sejuani
What SKT's doing here is pretty straight forward:The old "ban Dyrus out" strategy. The bans on the hyper tanks will force Dyrus on a champion that can't deal with a lane swap scenario as well as they can. Similarly with Lulu, although even if you camp a top lane Lulu, she needs little to be effective in the mid game so you wouldn't really be keeping the Lulu down unless you're feeding the kills to a carry top laner. The argument can be made that Dyrus could just play Gnar but just a few hours before this game, Dyrus tried to play Gnar and got destroyed by a top lane Cassiopeia and a jungle Gragas (which were both left unbanned). The Key element is to allow TSM to pick their comfort champions for a 2v2 lane. TSM plays the lane swap decently enough to where SKT wouldn't get a lead out of the laning phase barring major errors from TSM's side.
Bans from TSM's side are a little misguided. The Leblanc is a must ban against Faker. There is no arguing or discussion to be made. Since starting his career in spring 2013, Faker is still undefeated on that champion (up until the grand finals of this very tournament, of course.)
The Rumble ban could be because of MaRin's insane performance against the GE Tigers in the finals of LCK. The reason why this seems like a misguided ban was because it was the first ban. Had TSM left it for the 3rd ban, they would have noticed that all 3 bans from the side of SKT are top lane bans, which would leave Rumble up for Dyrus since Rumble is alright in lane swaps albeit not great. Regardless, TSM knows how solid MaRin is on that champion and knows it's better to not let him have it incase lanes have to be standard.
The Sejuani ban is out of place entirely. Bengi has not played Sejuani, neither during the regular season nor in the playoffs. His primary champions have been Nunu and Rek'sai (out of which he's undefeated with Rek'Sai.) There are so many good bans available against SKT that this just feels like a wasted opportunity. Banning Kalista prevents SKT from having a monster laning phase, banning Urgot would allow TSM to pick any flanking oriented team composition or even banning out Rek'Sai/Nunu could force SKT into a terrible first pick predicament. If you ban one of Bengi's power junglers, you force SKT into first picking the other to make sure they can put Bengi on something comfortable. This opens up a first rotation Urgot for either Bjergsen or WildTurtle which lowers the possibility of a Kalista (since Kalista has really short range, shes easy to catch out with Hyper Kinectic Position Reverser). TSM could have forced SKT into an uncomfortable position had they banned Rek'Sai or Nunu.
First pick Urgot. Faker hasn't played Urgot mid professionally just yet, but you have to imagine it can happen at any time because of the meta we're in. The Urgot flex click is strong and simple. It gives nothing away about your team composition aside from the fact that your siege is not good at all. The biggest reason why Urgot is such a good champion currently is because of TSM's first rotation picks.
The Hecarim pick. Normally you'd think "Oh wow Hecarim made it past the bans why didn't SKT pick it? " Well the answer is simple: Urgot. The reason you pick Hecarim is to find the opportunity to use a teleport flank with homeguard enchanted boots. The inmense speed with which you arrive allows you to blow up a squishy carry immediately because of the bonus attack damage Hecarim gets with his passive. Urgot is an amazing counterpick to the Hecarim flank not just because you build tanky items that would prevent you from getting blown up, but also for his ultimate. Saving the Hyper Kinetic Position Reverser for the teleporting Hecarim not only stops him in his tracks, but also swaps him into the middle of your team without any option other than to ult away or ult in and die regardless.
At the same time, without knowing it at the time I saw it, the Urgot first pick put a checkmate on TSM's draft. With the Maokai gone, there is little unavoidable lockdown available in the top lane. So with the Urgot pick, you shouldn't want to pick Hecarim because of Urgot's ultimate. At the same time, if SKT picks Hecarim, then TSM could counter with the Urgot pick to nullify the Hecarim. With the tankiest AD carry on their side, and assuming TSM didn't pick Hecarim, you leave no counterplay available to TSM's AD Carry if you lock in Hecarim second rotation for SKT. In short, TSM were planning to go Hecarim anyway, but they had no option or else they would have allowed MaRin to decimate Wildturtle during the mid/late game.
Nothing to add about Gragas. Gragas is just a good meta jungler, arguably the best cinderhulk jungler. He has good clear speed, crowd control, decent scaling, does enough damage late game to remain relevant, and excels at ganking early. He could've played Rek'Sai instead to deny it from Bengi but the only thing Rek'Sai provides that Gragas doesn't is the global presence with her ultimate, whereas Gragas is a great teamfight peeling champion and with strong disengage capabilities. The real issue with the Gragas pick is "why ban Sejuani if your intention was to pick Gragas in the first place?" SKT had not banned any jungler what so ever by the time the Sejuani ban came through from TSM's side. If SKT locks in Sejuani after a Gragas pick, you can nullify most of SKT's engage by simply using Explosive Cask to throw back the remaining champions from SKT.
With TSM's top lane champion locked in, SKT plays it safe and picks their own top laner. MaRin chooses to pick Gnar, a champion he's had mixed success with in the LCK. In this particular matchup, Gnar has the laning advantage against Hecarim because of mini Gnar's range. However, The biggest.mismatch of this lane is the fact that Dyrus has no real escape. His speedboost is irrelevant once Gnar starts landing boomerang after boomerang. So essentially Dyrus has to surrender his early game laning presence in exchange for late game initiation (which we've already established will be hard to achieve against Urgot). At this point TSM should see it coming and already understand that Dyrus is going to have a very tough time.
The fact that Bengi was allowed Rek'Sai during this tournament continues to be a mystery to me. Any minimal amount of research on SKT and Bengi this season will have given you the conclusion that Bengi is most comfortable on Rek'Sai and Nunu. Banning Leblanc against Faker is a must, but is it worth to keep Rumble away from MaRin in exchange of giving up Rek'Sai for Bengi? The pressure Rek'Sai can have on the map is unmatched and SKT has always set up ganks very effectively since the 5.5 patch. Nunu was the other comfort pick that Bengi could have defaulted to, but TSM had already locked in the Gragas. After the first back, Gragas is one of the hardest junglers to be in the face of because of his CC and % damage from his drunken rage. Had SKT planned a laneswap however, Nunu would have been a better choice because Nunu is a much safer champion when it comes to walking into enemy jungles to place deep wards and maximize information as opposed to Rek'Sai who doesn't have a low cooldown slowing ability. There is also no need to blind pick the mid lane for Faker, which is something SKT has done in the past to very poor success. Ride the safe champion select and pick against what TSM had already locked in, leave Bjergsen and company wondering if that Urgot will go either mid or bottom.
TSM has to show either AD carry or Mid lane at this point. Kalista is a very contested pick in competitive play because of what she offers in terms of teamfight potential and laning presence. Very strong 2v2 fights and teamfights allows Kalista to snowball effectively... BUT, she's being played into Urgot. Kalista has a very low autoattack range, making her incredibly vulnerable to point and click crowd control. Ergo Urgot works perfectly against her post 6, since his suppress is unavoidable if he manages to get into range. This automatically prompts SKT to send Urgot in the hands of Bang into the bottom lane. Thinking objectively, Sivir would have made more sense considering the team composition TSM was looking at. Sivir is a safe wave clear AD carry with good scaling. (To those who say Sivir doesn't scale well because of her low range, I'll respond to the fact that Sivir is the only AD carry with bouncing autoattacks which is also an autoattack reset. Ricochet can do inmense work in the midst of a teamfight simply because of the amount of players who do not realize how often that skill is available to Sivir. Where any other AD carry would be able to do 8 autoattacks, Sivir can do 11.) On the hunt would also aid Dyrus in his quest to jump into the back line and assassinate a target. Finally, while Kalista can kite very easily, Sivir has a spellshield and continous movement speed which would allow her to reposition more effectively than Kalista considering all the CC coming from the side of SKT just from the first 3 picks alone.
Lustboy is a powerful Thresh player. This pick provides a good lane partner for Kalista, strong initiation, adequate zone control and is overall one of the best support champions regardless of team composition.
To further their crowd control chain, Alistar is picked up for Wolf. Working both as a great intiation/anti-initiation champion, Alistar is a perfect support for the meta. SKT has an inmense tank line between Alistar, Gnar and Rek'Sai. The main thing to mention about the Alistar pick up for Wolf is the threat this poses onto TSM if they choose to laneswap. If Hecarim goes to the lane against Urgot and Alistar, he becomes extremely easy to dive. Alistar can headbutt pulverize to allow Rek'Sai to walk up and just unburrow right ontop of him to chain the CC. Since it's practically a staple to not take any retreating summoners on Hecarim top lane, Dyrus could repeatedly die to tower dives. Tough decisions had to be made at the start of the game, either you toss Dyrus into the bottom lane against the enemy duo and hope that WildTurtle and Lustboy can gain enough of an advantage in a 2v1 OR have standard lanes and give Dyrus a match up which he is going to lose very hard because of the Gnar range and boomerang slow. The biggest issue in this scenario is that it's very hard for Lustboy and WildTurtle to find an advantage in the 2v2. Sure Kalista/Thresh is a very strong lane, but Urgot/Alistar is a very tanky lane with enough sustain to survive practically any onslaught unless it's a very aggressive Caitlyn that would simply outrange the both of them by too much for Alistar to react upon. TSM has no worthy answer; they either lose pressure in one lane, or the lose pressure in 2.
We get to the final pick for SKT. Faker chooses to take Cassiopeia into the middle lane. As many people would have heard by now, it is not a myth. Easyhoon is overall a better Cassiopeia player than Faker, but that doesn't mean that the legendary mid laner of SKT can't perform on that champion by any means. Looking at how much protection Faker can achieve during the mid to late game, SKT can allow their mid lane Cassiopeia to slowly scale into the late game without getting punished for it. Blind picking assassins is a very bad idea in the meta we're currently in, considering that the enemy team's mid laner could pick a relatively tanky champion such as Cho'Gath or Vladimir and run exhaust to counter all of your burst. The other options available to Faker in a line up like this one are Azir and Ziggs, neither of which are champions he has played in competitive (He has one loss on Ziggs in summer of 2014, but has not been played before or since then). As much as I would've loved to see Faker's Azir this game, SKT needed something with a LOT of damage. While Azir's damage can be absolutely insane but Cassiopeia's damage is much more reliable once she manages to get a good angle.
Bjergsen's answer is just as good. Ziggs can help TSM stall out the game in case everything starts going south for them early. With effective stall and side lane presence with his mega inferno bomb, Bjergsen sets his team up for a long game in which siege would be the name of the game. Hecarim will be irrelevant early and TSM knows this by this point in the draft. They would need a lot of gold funneling into both WildTurtle and Bjergsen unless they want SKT to create a massive lead from which TSM couldn't come back. With Ziggs, TSM can hold on to the game for long enough for Urgot to become much less effective in the late game. There were fingers pointed at Bjergsen for not taking the Azir into Cassiopeia match up but looking at how the map was layed out, Azir would have been irrelevant once the 25 minute mark hit. If Gnar manages to get into a prime position, Azir would have to use his ultimate to knock Gnar away, freeing up both Alistar and Rek'Sai to get into the back line freely. Ziggs, on the other hand, has excellent zone control with his minefield and the satchel charge, negating two points of entry from SKT. All in all, good reaction pick from TSM considering how hard they were losing champion select up until that point.
Conclusion:
Fundamentally, TSM's bans were not suited for the team composition they wanted to run. Tunneling on the Hecarim pick without banning Urgot costed TSM a lot of potential engages. Another ban opportunity gone to waste would have been banning either Rek'Sai or Nunu. If TSM banned Nunu, SKT would have been forced to either pick Urgot or Rek'Sai in their first rotation. If Bengi decided he needed to secure Rek'Sai first just so that TSM wouldn't pick it away, that would open up an Urgot/Gnar first rotation for TSM which would have denied it from Bang/MaRin. Without Gnar/Maokai/Rumble/Sion or even Lulu available, MaRin would have to pick himself into a losing laning match up against Dyrus in either Hecarim or Shyvana. As previously mentioned, picking a flanking oriented top lane champion into Urgot is simply a bad idea because of Hyper Kinetic Position Reverser. If I had to guess, they valued Kalista and Hecarim a bit too highly and ultimately it cost them more than they would have hoped for.
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