Subs take their toll and Origen rebounds: Joe’s LCS blog
Origen is looking better each week of the European League of Legends Championship Series, but there are still obvious signs that its communication isn’t quite where it was last year. Alfonso “Mithy” Aguirre Rodriguez made a good play early on in today’s win against Elements by stealing the enemy red buff and granting a kill for Paul “sOAZ” Boyer. Despite a bad call to dive bottom tower, Origen was in the lead the entire game. Another bad call was when Origen was trying to kill baron, when multiple team members disengaged a a very low health Baron, almost throwing the game as it did last week.
Thankfully for Origen’s sake, the call wasn’t too detrimental and the gold lead was still in Origen’s favor. At the end of the day, when Origen is playing at the top of its game, it can be a top contender for Europe. There is a lot of time left in the season, and Origen showed some glimpses of greatness today by putting Elements in its place as a mid tier team.
Visa issues showed their effects
Yoo “Ryu” Sang-ook was replaced with Marcin “Selfie” Wolski on H2k, and it was a clear downgrade, but with minimal impact on the final outcome. He had a couple deaths throughout the week that could have easily cost H2K because of the low economy/macro-oriented play. H2K, though, is just a lot better than its opponents this week, and the downgrade in mid was of minimal consequences.
Team ROCCAT’s Edward “Edward” Abgaryan was replaced with Vytautas “Extinkt” Mėlinauskas. While ROCCAT was the clear underdog this week against H2K, there were some instances where ROCCAT could have possibly taken the game today if it had Edward. H2k had small practice time with its temporary roster and took a while to eventually take the lead. The first mistake by ROCCAT when failing the lane swap, making Mohammad “Safir” Tokhi fall incredibly behind the opposing ADC, Konstantinos “FORG1VEN” Tzortziou. This was important because teams need to be willing to punish FORG1VEN’s stubbornness to not pick Kalista and default to a mediocre ADC, Corki (he’s much better mid.) With the powerful duo lane in Kalista and Alistar that ROCCAT was able to pick up today in the draft, Edward could have possibly punished FORG1VEN. There was a couple instances where Extinkt either failed to get a good Kalista ultimate or good crowd control when the time was opportune. (At 22:50 in game clock. Extinkt fails to use his ultimate to cleanse or use his Alistar combo correctly. This could have turned the game single-handedly).
Danil “Diamondprox” Reshetnikov was replaced with Charly “Djoko” Guillard for Unicorns of Love. This is the hardest to evaluate out of the substitutions because they have a similar champion pool and play style. G2 is also a top team right now, and UOL is not, hence, if Diamondprox was playing today, it’s hard to say if there would have been a difference in the outcome.
Overall this issue is affecting multiple regions, not just Europe. It is pretty ridiculous that Riot Games didn’t take care of this before the season. It also puts into question the location of the LCS and why is it in a country that doesn’t support professional esports as a viable visa-granting profession. This can never happen again. It’s embarrassing for the esport.
Corki is an OP champ in mid lane
I was on the fence about this for the last couple weeks, but my mind is set now: Corki is overpowering when in mid. The meta right now rewards siege comps, and the perfect mid lane champ is Corki. He’s been a champ that has always has pretty much everything: poke, engage, disengage, wave clear, magic damage, and physical/strong auto attacks. He also has the benefit as being a flex pick, even though ADC Corki is mediocre comparably. He also wins lane versus most mid lane champions, and right now should be a priority pick coming into next week. Hopefully the meta will evolve and teams will find a good counter.
Joe “Pistallion” Cannavino is a staff writer for Slingshot Esports and a diamond-level League of Legends player. Contact him at joec@slingshotesports.com.
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