Views: 1491 Analysis of Regions
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Korea has won All Star's commandingly, leaving other regions to wonder what makes Korea so dominant. While Korean's being more objective focused is part of their success, the actual reason they are so dominant has more to do with their cohesiveness, timing, and analysis of lane matchups. This is demonstrated in nearly every Korean match you can find and is only less relevant in "cheese" games. It's not really surprising that the region that embraces Esports would have the most advanced meta game, still I don't think they are unbeatable and are quite weak to what we in NA would call "cheese."
Other regions have a problem with their style, because not only do the Koreans have decent farm they ALSO have good objective control as well. The other regions are so used to last hitting that they don't quite understand how to keep their farm high while pushing fast, and aren't as good at reading their maneuvers as they should be. (I'm not saying other regions miss more cs, they just don't have the mindset of Korea's players as it relates to overall strategy).
Where in most cases if you leave a Korean player and a North American player in separate lanes (both freezing) they will end up with nearly identical farm, it is the decision making and the propensity to identify exactly WHICH point to stop farming as much and favor tower damage that sets them apart from other regions.
This is partly due to their culture and the prevalence of one shot caller, but the players themselves play a huge role in this and in fact their item builds and individual decisions/mechanics make a huge difference as well.
This may not be for every team, but in general: The Korean team simply feeds information to a single mastermind (usually mid or jungle) and their success will live or die with this person's decisions. This player has an understanding of the meta in terms of structures, minions, team compositions and gold values and because he is in charge, he is able to make better decisions and more "risky" calls.
In an attempt to showcase the difference in NA and KR region, I will focus on the AD Carry Player in this example: In North America, it isn't uncommon to leave a tower up to extend the time their counterparts will have to spend in an unfavorable lane, but that would simply not happen in Korea. As soon as an ad carry loses lane (if he's not already in a different lane) he will just start to go farm other places of the map and push towers.
This forces one of two things onto the NA style of AD, he either has to push out and group or push out and start to take tower as if he continues to freeze, he will have to deal with the rest of the map's objectives going down and his team likely losing a 4v5.
Back to generalized examples: If you leave a tower up that you maybe "should have taken" it is common in EVERY region to send the jungler to that lane and take their tower in response (while hopefully keeping their own tower up for longer).
Of course, every region has their own tricks, but Korea is unlike any other region because they seem to value ANY tower damage by ANY player. They roam more often than other regions and they don't have a problem showing up in a lane and ignoring the enemy for a tower.
The difference in playstyles is clear when you watch an EU region game versus a KR game. I tried to watch an EU match, but I just happen to hate their style of play and don't think they are that good in comparison to any other region so there is no reason for me to watch them. I do, however, understand their meta game as they always steal a bit from north america AND the asian teams.
Now, as I stated, EU steals their meta from other regions and is quite stale in terms of innovation on their own (don't let the EU guys fool you, they just try to seem advanced). The biggest difference you will notice in EU to KR is that EU almost always seems to have longer stalemates than anyone else. They don't innovate so they don't know what to do outside of copying other regions.
In NA, we seem to have more "exciting" matches as they tend to farm up a bit more here and there will be a series of climactic team fights and back and forths (NA is probably the "throwiest" region in general). The games in super-week are a good example of this and in fact is what I'm basing this point on because it is the current play that we should be analyzing more than anything.
If you watch a KR match the game will have very little time without action (there are still obviously times when they let a tower go or don't contest objectives), but everyone knows their place and this makes it so KR games usually have less kills than other regions.
In summation, Korea, while having great game knowledge, mechanics and strategy may not be the most exciting region to watch (I'm not saying this because I'm biased to NA, I'm saying this because I actually see a lot less action in other regions), they are undoubtedly the best strategically.
As other regions look to bridge the divide and come closer to Korea in terms of playstyle, you should see marked improvements across the scene in terms of level of play.
While I'm not going to say Korea won't stay two steps ahead of everyone else, I will say that they don't seem to be too far ahead of the curve and in fact, if the other regions get better about making the game flow on their own terms they may see that, yes, they don't have the best mechanics they just have excellent decision making and free flowing information as well as acknowleging an overall strategy and playstyle for each game.
We, as other regions, can look to capitalize on the Korean mindset, by innovating on our own and revisiting old setups, even if that means "cheesing" every once in a while.
Other regions have a problem with their style, because not only do the Koreans have decent farm they ALSO have good objective control as well. The other regions are so used to last hitting that they don't quite understand how to keep their farm high while pushing fast, and aren't as good at reading their maneuvers as they should be. (I'm not saying other regions miss more cs, they just don't have the mindset of Korea's players as it relates to overall strategy).
Where in most cases if you leave a Korean player and a North American player in separate lanes (both freezing) they will end up with nearly identical farm, it is the decision making and the propensity to identify exactly WHICH point to stop farming as much and favor tower damage that sets them apart from other regions.
This is partly due to their culture and the prevalence of one shot caller, but the players themselves play a huge role in this and in fact their item builds and individual decisions/mechanics make a huge difference as well.
This may not be for every team, but in general: The Korean team simply feeds information to a single mastermind (usually mid or jungle) and their success will live or die with this person's decisions. This player has an understanding of the meta in terms of structures, minions, team compositions and gold values and because he is in charge, he is able to make better decisions and more "risky" calls.
In an attempt to showcase the difference in NA and KR region, I will focus on the AD Carry Player in this example: In North America, it isn't uncommon to leave a tower up to extend the time their counterparts will have to spend in an unfavorable lane, but that would simply not happen in Korea. As soon as an ad carry loses lane (if he's not already in a different lane) he will just start to go farm other places of the map and push towers.
This forces one of two things onto the NA style of AD, he either has to push out and group or push out and start to take tower as if he continues to freeze, he will have to deal with the rest of the map's objectives going down and his team likely losing a 4v5.
Back to generalized examples: If you leave a tower up that you maybe "should have taken" it is common in EVERY region to send the jungler to that lane and take their tower in response (while hopefully keeping their own tower up for longer).
Of course, every region has their own tricks, but Korea is unlike any other region because they seem to value ANY tower damage by ANY player. They roam more often than other regions and they don't have a problem showing up in a lane and ignoring the enemy for a tower.
The difference in playstyles is clear when you watch an EU region game versus a KR game. I tried to watch an EU match, but I just happen to hate their style of play and don't think they are that good in comparison to any other region so there is no reason for me to watch them. I do, however, understand their meta game as they always steal a bit from north america AND the asian teams.
Now, as I stated, EU steals their meta from other regions and is quite stale in terms of innovation on their own (don't let the EU guys fool you, they just try to seem advanced). The biggest difference you will notice in EU to KR is that EU almost always seems to have longer stalemates than anyone else. They don't innovate so they don't know what to do outside of copying other regions.
In NA, we seem to have more "exciting" matches as they tend to farm up a bit more here and there will be a series of climactic team fights and back and forths (NA is probably the "throwiest" region in general). The games in super-week are a good example of this and in fact is what I'm basing this point on because it is the current play that we should be analyzing more than anything.
If you watch a KR match the game will have very little time without action (there are still obviously times when they let a tower go or don't contest objectives), but everyone knows their place and this makes it so KR games usually have less kills than other regions.
In summation, Korea, while having great game knowledge, mechanics and strategy may not be the most exciting region to watch (I'm not saying this because I'm biased to NA, I'm saying this because I actually see a lot less action in other regions), they are undoubtedly the best strategically.
As other regions look to bridge the divide and come closer to Korea in terms of playstyle, you should see marked improvements across the scene in terms of level of play.
While I'm not going to say Korea won't stay two steps ahead of everyone else, I will say that they don't seem to be too far ahead of the curve and in fact, if the other regions get better about making the game flow on their own terms they may see that, yes, they don't have the best mechanics they just have excellent decision making and free flowing information as well as acknowleging an overall strategy and playstyle for each game.
We, as other regions, can look to capitalize on the Korean mindset, by innovating on our own and revisiting old setups, even if that means "cheesing" every once in a while.
Plus, there's the language barrier and communication in same language.