Views: 1153 China's Underperformance at Worlds
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China did not have a good showing at worlds this year compared to past seasons. Season 3 and 4 both saw a Chinese team in the finals as well as a higher number of Chinese teams making it to quarterfinals either due to good performances during group stages or receiving a bye past group stages. However, the reasons behind China's underperformance this year were not new problems, just that the tournament structure and environment this season placed a larger emphasis onto the areas where Chinese teams have traditionally lacked.
In order to further elaborate on this topic, the major patches leading up to worlds and the drastic meta shifts must be highlighted. There is a consensus within the community that the implementation of major patches right before worlds was a poor decision on Riot's part. Having champion reworks, meta shifts, and a large number of number tweaks generally takes time to properly balance. Riot tried to maintain this balancing condition by reassuring players that the multiple patches prior to worlds would give them time to adjust things accordingly. The problem then being that all of the regional leagues had ended already so Riot lacked credible sources for data collection. Balancing in this game has never been focused around Solo Queue yet Riot put themselves in a position where they had to attempt to do this. Granted, they tried to also obtain information from regional qualifiers and scrims, but this was not a very large sample size.
To be fair, being able to adapt is a key component of a good team. These types of disruptive patches are no excuse for teams to underperform but neither is that an excuse for Riot's balancing team to put the health of the competition and tournament at risk. The point of this discussion is not to excuse China's underperformance, merely to analyze it. That being said, it is apparent that these hefty patches negatively impacted the LPL teams more so than other regions. Why is this so?
For starters, we have to take a look at the LPL teams' scrim culture. Most analysts have heard countless times that China had an unhealthy scrim culture. Teams would not take games seriously, would not practice what they were going to play, would not scrim around objectives, attempt to team fight nonstop, etc. The guise of this behavior was that they were attempting to scout for information without revealing their own strategies. This may have worked within the realm of the LPL but major patches and meta shifts like what was seen directly prior to worlds require a certain amount of testing. You might be able to dismiss goofing around in scrims when there are several active competitive leagues to base meta knowledge on but when the only obtainable information on a new meta is via scrims, you better be doing scrims properly. It is safe to say that the LPL teams were not able to collect enough information on the meta that would be played at the tournament in part due to their scrim culture.
Another major problem the Chinese teams faced was that they were not able to diagnose the strengths and weaknesses of their players on that current patch prior to their group stage matches. Each of the LPL teams had their own reasons for lacking success but this particular issue appeared across the board. Taking a look at the agreed upon problems for each of the LPL teams that attended worlds, we can further examine them to highlight this trend.
Invictus Gaming have always been inconsistent, but they especially struggled due to their bot lane weakness being exploited by opponents. Kid and Kitties were obviously the vulnerabilities on this roster. Now, it would be unfair to say that merely having a weakness that is exploited correlates to structural problems or failures on the part of the coaching staff. The reason I make this assertion is that they did not play towards covering this weakness up. Against AHQ, for example, IG pretty much built a comp around Kid with picks such as Jinx, support Janna, and mid Lulu. This comp relies on their weakest links performing well. Even when they played towards masking their vulnerabilities via picking Sivir for Kid, they had Kitties on Bard which requires a top tier performance in order to achieve game impact worth the pick. This shows a failure in the draft phase at playing towards the strengths and weaknesses of the roster. I only feel the need to talk about these two instances because these two games made the difference between a 4-2 record (advancing) and a 2-4 record.
LGD had several structure and staff issues leading up to the event. Obviously this had a major impact on their performance. The reason that this held them back so much as opposed to the raw player talent carrying them through groups was that the responsibility for identifying the play style, win conditions, and overall identity of a team falls largely on the shoulders of the coaching staff. It is not the job of the players to audit themselves on an analytical level. Without a proper support staff, even talents like Imp and GODV fail to succeed.
To be more specific, LGD chose to use Acorn over Flame in the first half of the group stages because they did not seem to understand that the top lane meta had shifted towards carry tops. They saw hard engage comps using Malphite top have success in regional qualifiers and tried to use that strategy with Acorn to no avail. Hard engage was strong against AD poke, and is a large chunk of the reason that AD poke such as Varus fell out of the meta, along with the fact that everyone began permabanning Gangplank. This lack of macro understanding is highlighted in their attempted use of Vi and Malphite in their loss against Origen's picks of Elise, Kalista, Orianna, and Vladimir. They ran hard engage not as a counter to AD poke but as a general strategy, and lost to kiting and split pushing. Yet in their loss against KT Rolster, LGD attempted to use Varus mid and fell victim to the hard engage from KT using the same comp LGD failed to use just with the adjustment of switching Vi out for Gragas since he scales into the late game better and partners more efficiently with the Jugger'Maw composition.
Another prime example of these self-diagnostic issues is reflected in how LGD practically pushed double teleport into the meta leading up to worlds yet failed to utilize their own strength in this department during the group stage matches. With the development of Juggernauts, kiting and disengage regained strength. Hard carry tops such as Fiora and Riven also moved up into the top tier of top lane picks. This type of information was not picked up in time by LGD as shown in their lack of global pressure from mid and hesitation to use Flame over Acorn. They also decided to waste Imp's outplay potential on having him play Sivir in one of their losses to KT Rolster. All of these problems outline the pattern of a team not playing towards their strengths.
EDG had the same type of problem in that they did not play to cover up their weakness, though in their case this was a much harder task. Their top lane instability between AmazingJ and Koro1 caused them a lot of trouble in a meta geared towards a strong top lane. It appears, at least to the eye of the public, that the EDG staff saw AmazingJ as the top laner with the "carry" champions in his pool while Koro1 filled more of a "tank / utility" role. The reason I still fault EDG's staff in this department is that they did not play towards these established player identities. They had AmazingJ play Gnar and Malphite in group stages while putting Koro1 onto Fiora in quarterfinals.
To wrap up, all of these problems existed in previous iterations of Chinese teams but the tournament environment of the world championships was not as harsh towards these vulnerabilities in the past. With more time to prepare for a tournament patch (or simply there being less drastic changes leading up to a tournament) and alternative methods available to obtain information about the current meta, an unhealthy scrim culture is not as punishing. Teams with better infrastructure adapt faster. If the patches leading up to a tournament are lighter then a team does not rely as heavily on their staffing structure since there is less adaptation required to succeed. Chinese teams have traditionally lost to Korean teams due to the exploitable facets of not playing towards strengths and not covering up weaknesses well but were able to perform well overall at worlds in previous seasons because their raw talent pool carried them past teams from other regions such as NA and EU that lacked the infrastructure of Korea. Now that NA and EU have begun to have stronger organizational structures, China doesn't hold up as well as they did in the past.
Many have said that China has tons of talent in the League of Legends scene but just does not seem to know how to properly utilize those star players. Hopefully this year's tribulations have been a wake up call to the LPL teams and will spur a revitalization of their competitive stature.
In order to further elaborate on this topic, the major patches leading up to worlds and the drastic meta shifts must be highlighted. There is a consensus within the community that the implementation of major patches right before worlds was a poor decision on Riot's part. Having champion reworks, meta shifts, and a large number of number tweaks generally takes time to properly balance. Riot tried to maintain this balancing condition by reassuring players that the multiple patches prior to worlds would give them time to adjust things accordingly. The problem then being that all of the regional leagues had ended already so Riot lacked credible sources for data collection. Balancing in this game has never been focused around Solo Queue yet Riot put themselves in a position where they had to attempt to do this. Granted, they tried to also obtain information from regional qualifiers and scrims, but this was not a very large sample size.
To be fair, being able to adapt is a key component of a good team. These types of disruptive patches are no excuse for teams to underperform but neither is that an excuse for Riot's balancing team to put the health of the competition and tournament at risk. The point of this discussion is not to excuse China's underperformance, merely to analyze it. That being said, it is apparent that these hefty patches negatively impacted the LPL teams more so than other regions. Why is this so?
For starters, we have to take a look at the LPL teams' scrim culture. Most analysts have heard countless times that China had an unhealthy scrim culture. Teams would not take games seriously, would not practice what they were going to play, would not scrim around objectives, attempt to team fight nonstop, etc. The guise of this behavior was that they were attempting to scout for information without revealing their own strategies. This may have worked within the realm of the LPL but major patches and meta shifts like what was seen directly prior to worlds require a certain amount of testing. You might be able to dismiss goofing around in scrims when there are several active competitive leagues to base meta knowledge on but when the only obtainable information on a new meta is via scrims, you better be doing scrims properly. It is safe to say that the LPL teams were not able to collect enough information on the meta that would be played at the tournament in part due to their scrim culture.
Another major problem the Chinese teams faced was that they were not able to diagnose the strengths and weaknesses of their players on that current patch prior to their group stage matches. Each of the LPL teams had their own reasons for lacking success but this particular issue appeared across the board. Taking a look at the agreed upon problems for each of the LPL teams that attended worlds, we can further examine them to highlight this trend.
Invictus Gaming have always been inconsistent, but they especially struggled due to their bot lane weakness being exploited by opponents. Kid and Kitties were obviously the vulnerabilities on this roster. Now, it would be unfair to say that merely having a weakness that is exploited correlates to structural problems or failures on the part of the coaching staff. The reason I make this assertion is that they did not play towards covering this weakness up. Against AHQ, for example, IG pretty much built a comp around Kid with picks such as
Jinx, support Janna, and mid Lulu. This comp relies on their weakest links performing well. Even when they played towards masking their vulnerabilities via picking Sivir for Kid, they had Kitties on Bard which requires a top tier performance in order to achieve game impact worth the pick. This shows a failure in the draft phase at playing towards the strengths and weaknesses of the roster. I only feel the need to talk about these two instances because these two games made the difference between a 4-2 record (advancing) and a 2-4 record.LGD had several structure and staff issues leading up to the event. Obviously this had a major impact on their performance. The reason that this held them back so much as opposed to the raw player talent carrying them through groups was that the responsibility for identifying the play style, win conditions, and overall identity of a team falls largely on the shoulders of the coaching staff. It is not the job of the players to audit themselves on an analytical level. Without a proper support staff, even talents like Imp and GODV fail to succeed.
To be more specific, LGD chose to use Acorn over Flame in the first half of the group stages because they did not seem to understand that the top lane meta had shifted towards carry tops. They saw hard engage comps using
Malphite top have success in regional qualifiers and tried to use that strategy with Acorn to no avail. Hard engage was strong against AD poke, and is a large chunk of the reason that AD poke such as Varus fell out of the meta, along with the fact that everyone began permabanning Gangplank. This lack of macro understanding is highlighted in their attempted use of Vi and Malphite in their loss against Origen's picks of Elise, Kalista, Orianna, and Vladimir. They ran hard engage not as a counter to AD poke but as a general strategy, and lost to kiting and split pushing. Yet in their loss against KT Rolster, LGD attempted to use Varus mid and fell victim to the hard engage from KT using the same comp LGD failed to use just with the adjustment of switching Vi out for Gragas since he scales into the late game better and partners more efficiently with the Jugger'Maw composition.Another prime example of these self-diagnostic issues is reflected in how LGD practically pushed double teleport into the meta leading up to worlds yet failed to utilize their own strength in this department during the group stage matches. With the development of Juggernauts, kiting and disengage regained strength. Hard carry tops such as
Fiora and Riven also moved up into the top tier of top lane picks. This type of information was not picked up in time by LGD as shown in their lack of global pressure from mid and hesitation to use Flame over Acorn. They also decided to waste Imp's outplay potential on having him play Sivir in one of their losses to KT Rolster. All of these problems outline the pattern of a team not playing towards their strengths.EDG had the same type of problem in that they did not play to cover up their weakness, though in their case this was a much harder task. Their top lane instability between AmazingJ and Koro1 caused them a lot of trouble in a meta geared towards a strong top lane. It appears, at least to the eye of the public, that the EDG staff saw AmazingJ as the top laner with the "carry" champions in his pool while Koro1 filled more of a "tank / utility" role. The reason I still fault EDG's staff in this department is that they did not play towards these established player identities. They had AmazingJ play
Gnar and Malphite in group stages while putting Koro1 onto Fiora in quarterfinals.To wrap up, all of these problems existed in previous iterations of Chinese teams but the tournament environment of the world championships was not as harsh towards these vulnerabilities in the past. With more time to prepare for a tournament patch (or simply there being less drastic changes leading up to a tournament) and alternative methods available to obtain information about the current meta, an unhealthy scrim culture is not as punishing. Teams with better infrastructure adapt faster. If the patches leading up to a tournament are lighter then a team does not rely as heavily on their staffing structure since there is less adaptation required to succeed. Chinese teams have traditionally lost to Korean teams due to the exploitable facets of not playing towards strengths and not covering up weaknesses well but were able to perform well overall at worlds in previous seasons because their raw talent pool carried them past teams from other regions such as NA and EU that lacked the infrastructure of Korea. Now that NA and EU have begun to have stronger organizational structures, China doesn't hold up as well as they did in the past.
Many have said that China has tons of talent in the League of Legends scene but just does not seem to know how to properly utilize those star players. Hopefully this year's tribulations have been a wake up call to the LPL teams and will spur a revitalization of their competitive stature.
It's not that I think the blame should be on Acorn's shoulders for any of this. I'm stating that LGD failed to recognize the new meta and how their team could succeed within it. They should have had GODV use TP more from mid, put Imp on team fight carries with more potent dps rather than putting him on Sivir, and should have put more resources into their top laner. Acorn is a great player and he had played a bit of Fiora, but classically speaking he is not the type of player accustomed to consuming large amounts of team resources whereas Flame is. If the meta revolves around high resource top laners, Flame would be a strength in that category for LGD.
I honestly don't blame the LGD players much for their losses. I can agree that a few of them under performed but their draft phases were just terrible. However, we can't just leave it at that. Teams don't intentionally have bad drafts. They usually believe at the time that their strategies are good and will work. So it's important to look at why terrible drafts happen. In LGD's case I believe it is because the management doesn't properly recognize their teams strengths and weaknesses. They don't fully realize the tools for success, how every player and their champion pools can run efficiently as a cog in a machine, and what types of goals can be worked towards as realistic win conditions.
I wasn't suggesting that Flame was a washed-up player by any means. After all, he handed LGD the only two wins they got and I believe as you do that Flame should probably have been starter in hindsight. My main issue is in the way you seem to put the blame primarily upon Acorn's shoulders (and coaching management) when this is not the case. GodV fell to pieces on his debut and PYL underperformed to say the least. I give Imp leeway because right now the AD meta isn't entirely in the favour of playmaking Marksmen and he played his heart out, poor guy.
Coming into Worlds, I'm saying that other than maybe LGD or even scrim partners, no one had any information that suggested Flame would have been a better starter than Acorn. Acorn was, for all intents and purposes, a completely appropriate starting pick as far as anyone else knew.
I think it will be easier to link something akin to my thoughts of LGD's group stages:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JryJ_fFJqno
Relevant section starts around 1 hour in. Thoughts?
http://www.thescoreesports.com/news/4250
http://www.goldper10.com/article/635-acorn-vs-flame-lgds-toplane-debate.html
My overall point in this article is that China doesn't know how to properly use their resources. Acorn is a utility / team oriented top laner who can play a low economy style in order to feed resources into Imp / GODV. Flame does best on a team where he can consume a larger chunk of the resources. This is why LGD used Acorn over Flame for the majority of the Summer season because of how the tank meta was being played. Yet LGD failed to realize the trends towards a top lane oriented meta. Korea was already pumping more and more resources into their top laners before the drastic patch changes happened. Champion reworks empowered this trend to continue. Just from a macro standpoint of the meta, Flame becomes the more sensible choice.
Sure, Flame didn't get to see as much play in Summer as he did in Spring, and even when he did he was forced to play a bunch of Gnar and Maokai. Though the one game he got Ryze and was able to consume resources in game he proved he could dominate. But the idea that he was just sitting around doing nothing and getting rusty is a misconception. Also Acorn is good sure but he was never a hard carry for Samsung Blue like Flame was for CJ. Even on his Rumble he mainly focused on a low economy team fight style where he could play towards zone control and complimentary damage. He has always been a complimentary player to his teammates on Samsung and LGD, not a star player himself.
If LGD had been more sensitive to meta shifts they would have had more time to prepare Flame for greater chances of success. Even without planning ahead for this, LGD still had a 0% win rate with Acorn and a 67% win rate with Flame at worlds. Just imagine if they had been able to prep more properly. Perhaps they wouldn't have dropped games to TSM and OG.
Other than the simple collapse of Acorn's dominance as a top-laner, I believe you are correct that the coaching staff did not properly draft their team properly many times, putting Acorn and GodV on champions which were not necessarily in meta anymore.