The $2.2 million Riot World Championships whittled eight teams remaining down to four in the race to crown a League of Legends king.
The quarterfinals packed four best-of-five series into the weekend, with upsets and ridiculous play galore.
But just who performed best during the important set of elimination matches? Dive into the stats to find out.
Samsung Galaxy Blue’s Choi “Acorn” Cheon-ju put together a dominating performance against Cloud9. Choi controlled his lane against Ahn “Balls” Le, one of the best Western top lane players, and parlayed that into big numbers. Choi led all top laners with 542.49 Damage per Minute (DPM), doing 26.45 percent of his team’s damage. Choi’s teleports were perfectly timed compared to Le’s, allowing him to make a bigger impact.
But the real top lane star was OMG’s captain, Gao “GoGoing” DiPing. The shot caller for OMG posted an insane 6.57 KDA in his team’s three game sweep of NaJin White Shield. What’s so impressive about it is his lane opponent was none other than Baek “Save” Young-jin, one of the last remaining carry top laners, considered one of the best at the position in Korea. DiPing used his favorite champion Ryze to destroy Baek, posting massvie CS leads and controlling the flow of the series. DiPing put up 458.57 DPM, the second highest top lane total in the quarterfinals.
The other two quarterfinals also came away with clear lane winners. Edward Gaming’s Tong “Koro1” Yang beat out Star Horn Royal Club’s Jiang “Cola” Nin handily, despite losing the series. That’s been a theme for Royal Club’s top laner all tournament, and one that may haunt them against OMG in the semifinals.
Samsung Galaxy White’s Jang “Looper” Hyeong-soek won the battle between two steady and consistent top lane players, as Team SoloMid‘s Marcus “Dyrus” Hill failed to impact the game after an uneventful laning phase.
The best jungler in the quarterfinals, stats wise, comes as no surprise: Samsung Galaxy White’s transcendent Choi “DanDy” In-Kyu. Choi posted the highest DPM, best GPM, and a top KDA. He lived in Team SoloMid’s jungle, with a 29.34 counter jungle percent, but lived in SoloMid’s back line even more, putting up 56 kills plus assists in the five game series.
One of the more interesting jungle matchups featured American William “Meteos” Hartman of Cloud9 and Smasung Galaxy Blue’s Lee “Spirit” Da-yoon. Hartman has built himself into a superstar in the West, the best North American jungler, but his steady, mistake-free and reactive jungling style failed him in a series where Cloud9 needed more of an early impact. Hartman dealt the least damage of any jungler in the quarterfinals with 184.94 DPM. Elise and Lee Sin are relatively low damage junglers, but he did put in two games on Kha’Zix. The picks were similar to Lee’s, but he managed to deal 343.04 DPM, a huge tally for the junglers, while posting a 6 KDA and 342.46 GPM. That’s while keeping up with the traditionally farm-heavy Hartman in CS. Part of that’s because Cloud9 couldn’t keep Lee out of their own jungle—the Korean scored a 23.96 counter jungle percent.
Star Horn Royal Club’s Lee “inSec” In-Seok is famous for popularizing Lee Sin mechanical mastery, but he failed to make it work on the world stage against Edward Gaming, losing two games with the champion. Neither of the two teams’ junglers made much of an impact in the closest series of the quarterfinals.
The two Samsung mid laners dominated the quarterfinal statistics, leading into what should be one of the most explosive lanes of the semifinals.
Samsung Galaxy Blue’s Bae “dade” Eo-Jin bested Cloud9’s Hai Lam rather easily in lane, despite picking what seemed like losing matchups such as Twisted Fate into Zed. Bae turned that into a whopping 514.2 DPM and 423.1 GPM. For Lam’s part, his high risk style was once again on display. He died 27 times, more than any other mid laner by 11 deaths despite playing one game less than Royal Club’s Lei “corn” Wen. But Lam still managed a respectable 346.15 GPM and 461.26 DPM, more than Team SoloMid’s Soren “Bjergsen” Bjerg. Whether that’s worth the gold given up in 14 extra deaths is another matter.
Team SoloMid relies on Bjerg, but he couldn’t perform against Samsung Galaxy White’s Heo “PawN” Won-seok. Heo put up a ridiculous 20/5/32 KDA line, a 10.4 KDA, with 430.54 GPM and 585.52 DPM. All are tops for mid laners in the quarterfinals. While Heo certainly got help from his ridiculous jungler DanDy, it’s quite impressive he was able to do what he did against Bjerg. The Dane has consistently shown a penchant for winning lane and solid play in solo matchups, but he fell behind PawN through the series.
As for the Chinese mids, Yu “cool” Jia-Jun finally showed some of his superstar potential against NaJin White Shield, putting up a 567.54 DPM. But that was in three winning games. More impressive might be Edward Gaming’s Ceng “U” Long, who posted very similar numbers in the lengthy five-game affair with Star Horn Royal Club. Royal Club’s Lei “Corn” Wen put up a lackluster performance. One of only two mid laners with less than 400 DPM, Wen was below average in the quarterfinals, similar to his group stage play.
The marksman position might have been the most interesting one in the quarterfinals.
In the Cloud9 and Samsung Galaxy Blue matchup, we saw underrated American Zachary “Sneaky” Scuderi enter the series with a set game plan: bully Samsung Galaxy Blue’s Kim “deft” Hyuk-Kyu, who put up a ridiculous 44.90 percent damage share in the group stage, with lane dominant champions like Lucian.
The plan worked. Scuderi jumped out to huge CS leads as evidenced by his whopping 17 CS at 10 minutes advantage and carried that lead into the mid and late game. Scuderi put up 617.91 DPM, second most in the quarterfinals, with 34.03 percent damage share, the top mark. Kim was shut down. After leading all players in damage share in the group stage, Kim put up 504.05 DPM and the lowest damage share of any marksman. The problem? Cloud9 didn’t shut down Blue’s mid laner nearly so well. Still, Scuderi’s play was extremely impressive.
Other standout marksman include, as always, Star Horn Royal Club’s Jian “Uzi” Zihao. As shown above, his solo laners lost their matchups against Edward Gaming’s stars. But Jian carried his team to victory. He lead all marksman with 427.36 GPM, posting a whopping 32/10/24 KDA line while accounting for 32.24 percent of his team’s damage. His lane foe, Zhu “NaMei” Jia-Wen, failed to live up to expectations in the group stage and continued to disappoint. Granted, facing Jian is a tough matchup, but you expect more than 465.12 DPM from a star marksman in a close match. Zhu also didn’t deal effective damage—he often got caught out and killed, dying more times per game than any marksman save Team SoloMid’s Jason “WildTurtle” Tran.
The best numbers in the quarterfinals came from OMG marksman Guo “San” Jun-Liang, who just barely topped Scuderi’s DPM with 625.8. But his numbers came in three winning efforts, inflating his stats more than the players in closer series. Guo is sometimes considered the weakest link on an OMG all-star lineup. If he can perform like this when his teammates set him up, OMG could go all the way.
Samsung Galaxy White’s Gu “imp” Seung-bin may have fell behind Jason “WildTurtle” Tran in CS, but that’s because he was using champions like Twitch. Gu dominated the rest of those matches while Tran has zero impact, posting less than 400 DPM, the worst marksman mark by far.
Support stats are always hard to analyze, but some trends from the group stage continued to stick out.
Cloud9’s Daerek “LemonNation” Hart favored Morgana and it continued to allow him to put up much bigger damage numbers than most of his peers, with 189.29 DPM, the only support with more than 10 percent damage share. Hart spent less money on wards to deal more damage, the only support to spend less than 10 percent of his gold on wards at 7.04 percent. While the rest of his team was average or above in terms of wards bought, overall Cloud9 spent less warding the map.
The man of the quarterfinals had to be Hu “Cloud” Zhen-Wei. OMG brought him in to replace Fang “DaDa77” Hong-Ri, who had a dismal group stage, and Hu performed admirably. Hu put up a top GPM while posting a 12 KDA. Granted, that was in three won games, but a large reason why was Hu managed to make a positive impact with his play on Janna.
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Just three series remain before Riot Games crowns a League of Legends champion. We’ve seen every player left in the tournament play tons of games. Some are establishing themselves as superstars. Some’s stars are burning brighter than ever before. Others are failing to live up to their expectations, or showing they are not who we thought they were.
But the numbers only tell part of the story. The real story is written in the server, on the Summoner’s Rift, with the mouse clicks and keyboard presses that define the play of the best players in the world.
Published: Oct 10, 2014 02:13 pm