It’s no secret among European League of Legends fans that Team BDS top laner Adam is a monster on Darius. Apparently, Team Whales from the VCS never got that memo, however, and in their first game at Worlds 2023, they quickly learned that the former Rookie of the Split is not to be trifled with when he’s on the Hand of Noxus.
Just 10 minutes into the first game of their best-of-three series in the play-in stage today, Team Whales challenged Adam’s Darius in the top lane, sending three players into his domain for a gank. Despite being nearly out of mana, Adam fought back with the help of a countergank from his own jungler, Sheo, and used his level advantage to cut down Whales’ top laner Sparda and jungler Bean, who were playing Renekton and Viego, respectively.Â
Adam chunked down the two initial gankers with a cast of Decimate (Q) and used the crowd control provided by his teammate playing Rell to make room for even more damage. Although Adam killed both Sparda and Bean at the top of the skirmish, they did get his health down low enough that even the slightest amount of follow-up damage could finish him off.Â
Adam’s fate appeared to be sealed once Whales’ support Bie appeared in the top lane and used Rakan’s trademark Quickness (R)/Grand Entrance (W) combo to charm and knock up the mighty Darius. But Adam had fortunately started another cast of Decimate (Q) a split-second before Rakan’s charm went off. This cast persisted through the charm and allowed Adam to heal himself through the back end of the skirmish. An eventual third cast of Decimate was weaved in between Darius’ auto attacks, allowing Adam to snowball out of control and put an exclamation point on his laning phase.Â
By the time the fight came to an end, Adam was 5/0/1, while his lane opponent Sparda was a miserable 0/4/0 just 10 minutes into the game. Adam and Team BDS went on to stomp the first game of the series, with Adam’s final scoreline in the game reaching a peak of 8/0/4. Team Whales smartened up in games two and three, banning Darius in both of those contests and winning the series—likely as a result of those bans.Â
Darius is, without question, Adam’s signature champion. Across his entire career, Darius is Adam’s third-most-played champion in his pool with 23 games played and has a record of 17-6 across those games (including games played in ERLs), according to LoL stats site Games of Legends. The champion itself is a relatively rare pick in the pro scene and no other major region players have as much experience in professional games with Darius as Adam does.Â
Dating back to 2021, Darius has appeared in just 38 major region pro games, good enough for a pick rate that hovers just around one percent. Nearly half of those games belong to Adam. But after seeing how strong the champion can be when he’s played correctly, it’s got us wondering when we’ll see more top laners around the world pick Darius up in pro games.
Team BDS will return to the Worlds stage on Friday, Oct. 13 for a must-win losers bracket series against DetonatioN FocusMe.Â
Published: Oct 11, 2023 12:37 pm