A look at China's best: World Elite and Invictus Gaming eSports Central

The best of China, World Elite and Invictus Gaming, battled it out last week in two series - UGT finals and Kung Fu Cup. The matches could be considered the last warm up for both teams before the World Championships later this week. We figured this would be a good opportunity to take an objective look at both teams to know what to expect from the two teams in the upcoming weekend.

Misaya is the backbone of World Elite. If the talented mage player can do well and win his lane it will lead to his team winning the game. Misaya's top picks are Twisted Fate, Gragas, and Orianna. In game 2 of UGT, Misaya showed some of the best Orianna ball control in hectic team fights that I have ever seen. His Twisted Fate play does a great job of pressuring the other lanes that they have to play much more defensive than they would like.

As for Invictus Gaming, I wonder if World Elite just has their number because they really didn't play that great in the 5 games. Compared to World Elite, iG is not as late game centered. They are very aggressive in their play-styles and will often go all-in on some engagements that they would have been better off just avoiding.

In the matches versus World Elite, PDD (Top) and zZ1tai (Mid) got manhandled in most of the games. For zZ1tai it could have been champion picks against Misaya. In the five games he had: Gangplank versus Twisted Fate, Karthus versus Orianna, Diana versus Twisted Fate, Cassiopeia versus Ryze (Championselect.net says that Cassiopeia is a counter to Ryze, Misaya proves that it isn't 100% true). For PDD, I believe it was more about the fact that CaoMei had Irelia in most every game and he is beneficial with Irelia every game even if he gets shut down.

In the 5 game series it looked as if WE.ClearLove was able to dictate the flow of the game from the jungle a lot better than iG.illuSioN. ClearLove is very proficient with junglers that are known for their initiations, Nocturne and Maokai to name a few. It was hard to get a very good handle on illuSioN against World Elite because it felt that he didn�t have that great of coordination with ganks. In one game as jungle Olaf he was doing a fair amount of counter jungling but it wasn't really hindering ClearLove on Maokai all that much because he was aggressively ganking and racking up kills in all the other lanes.

The bottom lane duo of World Elite is also better than Invictus Gaming. In every game they had better farm than their opponents. The team is also deadly with Ezreal and Taric together. Fzzf does what any support should do, keep the lane safe and use your abilities to either make sure the carry is safe or to secure a kill for your carry.

With all that said, the biggest difference between the two teams is the decision making. There were a few times that the over aggressiveness of iG left the door open for World Elite to take a major objective across the map.

I think we are going to see interesting games come out from the two Chinese teams but World Elite is definitely at the top of their game right now. Will Invictus Gaming be able to deal with the passive farming of the western teams? I don't think so but the question can be flipped, will the western teams be able to deal with the aggressiveness of Invictus Gaming?

If Invictus Gaming wins against western teams, the games will end before 30 minutes and it will be from a very quick and effective snowball. The western teams would be wise to pick tank compositions or shield compositions. In game 2 of UGT, the damage mitigation of Maokai and the shields of Orianna and Janna allowed World Elite to handle the damage coming from Invictus Gaming and they eventually outlasted them by taking global objectives and winning late game teamfights. Western teams would be smart to do the exact same thing against Invictus Gaming.

Now a game-plan for World Elite is a little harder to come up with because they are great farmers, decision makers, and team-fighters. I would ban Irelia against CaoMei because he is just so good with her. The pressure needs to be put on Misaya and on their bottom lane, you can't just let them farm. The junglers will have to be able to create the plays because World Elite is not going to give the western junglers a free chance very often.

My predictions:

World Elite - Top 3 finish
Invictus Gaming - Will not make it out of group if they continue to play like this

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