EDG’s Drafting Visualized
Today we’ll briefly look over EDG’s drafting tendencies during their summer split & playoffs semi- & grand finals.
I will provide data about their drafts & draw conclusions based on my calculations, in addition I hope that I can hold myself back comparing EDG to ROX Tigers, which is by far one of the hottest teams coming into worlds.
(Bear in mind I’m a die hard ROX fan since they managed to get into Finals last year without having a big sponsor behind their back — a magnificent story!)
To start off let’s look at EDG’s blueside drafts during their summer split:
EDG is known for their powerhouse jungle & botlane who are often times standing in the limelight. Looking at their preferences we see that they feel comfortable picking their support straight away, even though Meiko is known for his Thresh from last years summer split & solo queue. They are also eager to show very vulnerable picks like GP, Ryze & Maokai which can all be countered by a variety of champions, e.g. Fiora or Swain against Maokai & Irelia with Clearlove’s help. At the time GP was the get go toplane pick since he provided a lot of pressure on the botside of the map and even by getting totally denied by his opponents top/jungle duo with picks like Ekko or Gnar. He brought too much on the table and metawise it played into midgame oriented ADC’s like Lucian, Jhin & Ezreal. Midlane was dominated by picks that can outpressure their lane opponents pre level 6 & still scale well into late, with some exceptions like Karma & Aurelion Sol.
Before we start with their picks let’s also take their bans into account.
EDG’s bans suit their overall drafting scheme, since they would often times first pick either Sivir or Braum who can predetermine a kiting back composition (in most cases) mostly paired with Ashe & Kindred. Vlad ban makes sense considering that EDG mostly played mid/lategame oriented control mages (e.g. Azir, Viktor, TF) or supportive picks like Karma, which are mostly in favor of Vlad who could at the time just out sustain the named matchups.
Now for worlds what we can expect them to bring out on BS first pick will be either a first pick for Meiko like Tahm Kench who is currently sitting on top of the support picks or a champion that is suitable for Clearlove. But for me it is yet not clear if he will bring out Elise like last year during regionals but the stats say that Clearlove tends to more likely chose Graves or Khazix. Let’s see if they picked up Lee Sin or show an unconventional pick like Zac. Honestly saying I had the most fun time watching LPL vods, but EDG is a rather calm & calculative team that, alongside team WE, made Maokai work. Can we expect them to pick up a first pick Sivir? I doubt it.
The current meta is very midgame oriented, with changes to Jayce, nerfs to Taliyah, nerfs to GP & globals. That all sounds very benefiting for EDG’s botlane. Are they confident enough to flex pick Ryze on BS? Leaving confidence by side that would be reckless. I think Ryze will be an exclusive RS pick for most teams, not talking about SKT of course! Furthermore do picks like Ekko, Maokai & Irelia really play into EDG’s hands.
So let’s take a closer look to EDG’s botlane pick preferences & when they usual occur during the draft.
Statistic wise they picked Ezreal in 33% of all BS games, additionally they picked Ezreal 5 times out of 7 in their 3rd rotation on BS. Now let’s also look at the 2nd rotation and afterwards draw some conclusions.
So there we see pretty significant number of picks for their support role, EDG prioritizes getting one of the comfort champions for meiko. (Thresh, Alistar, Braum). Let’s see if they sticked with that trend during playoffs.
As we can see they sticked with picking for their support role on 2nd rotation but 1st picks were mostly used for Taliyah, GP and even Lissandra while Tahm Kench was open. At the time Taliyah could oneshot the 3 range cs on level 1 which leaves the team that has Taliyah ahead in terms of river & raptor control.We also had a variety of jungle picks Gragas & RekSai were mostly blind picked. Graves, Hecarim & Elise got picked during 3rd rotation, mostly when jungle & midlane picks were shown by their opponents.
We exclusively talked about blueside so far and there is a reason behind it. EDG played 37 games during their summer split, 16 on redside & 21 on blueside. They managed to win 11 of their RS games & a tremendous 20 games on BS! They only dropped 1 game versus LGD. EDG chose PawN as their starting midlaner, giving him Ekko & Mouse Rumble. Drafting wise it was well planned, sticking with their Braum fp & leaving LGD the possibility to first rotate RekSai away (which is meh). But LGD preferred Hecarim & Gnar over Elise to have a split damage 2v2 matchup against LGD on toplane. (In EU we preferred Olaf over Hecarim, since most european teams don’t play super proactive).
Although Redside looks a bit different, they dropped ~1/3 of all redside games. Is there a difference in playstyle or pick tendencies?
They chose to ban both globals in some of their games versus WE in playoffs semifinals, despite GP nerfs to not play into WE’s hands. WE played the majority of their games on bot side, solely looking at Condi’s jungle pathing early. Furthermore they lost both RS matches, picking Gnar + Tahm in game 2 & Sivir + Karma on game 4 early in the draft.
EDG likes to play proactive compositions on RS, which comes in handy since they use their 3rd pick for midlane. Leaving the option to them to dodge bad matchups on toplane by flexing Ekko or sticking with a more sustain DPS control mage in midlane. Showing Maokai early on RS left them running into a lot of trouble since they also left Trundle & Swain open. They fixed these small mistakes until the end of the summer split, going with saver first rotations like Gragas & Braum on RS.
Drafting wise EDG is on top of the LPL, they consistently manage to get good matchups on their solo lanes especially showing EU how to use Lissandra. Also they go with the current trend of picking Tahm Kench but value getting early pressure midlane picks over that.
To come to an end we can definitely expect EDG to play differently on BS in comparison to their RS games. They preferred having kite back compositions with a control mage in midlane on BS which is the safer approach when their opponents can have a the better top- or midlane matchup. In comparison on RS they chose to play a more proactive playstyle, with picks like Hecarim in combination with Sivir, Syndra or Ekko as a flex pick.
To name a few picks at the end that im curious to see in group C:
- Ahq Albis’ Tahm Kench & Ziv’s Gnar
- H2k Vander’s Zyra & Godgiven’s Lucian (we’ll mostly see Lee Sin, Nidalee or Elise from Jankos)
- H2k Tahm surprise Flex for Odoamne?
- INTZ micaO’s Ashe & Jockster’s Alistar, also Vlad for Tockers & RekSai for Revolta leaving me very excited for tomorrow
- EDG Deft’s Varus & Scout’s TF, Meiko’s Alistar & curious whether or not they pick up Rumble or Jayce for Mouse or Scout. (that would mean they changed their playstyle completely)
Im excited for group B & C, I think these are by far the most interesting ones. Group A will be dominated by ROX Tigers & G2 will be on the edge to not get out of groups. CLG looks very strong so far, so I see them above G2.
For Group D to interfere the TSM hype, I’m quite sure that Samsung will be on top of that group but not sure if RNG can overcome their urge to throw in mid & late game stages of the game.
For all the readers that endured my first timing on writing a short article, it would mean a lot to me if you could give me constructive critic. Have a good worlds experience everyone! ROX claim the throne!
