Analysis on Santorin’s Ganks for TSM

I will be starting a series of articles looking at when different junglers gank, how successful they are, and what lane they are ganking. I will be starting with Santorin from TSM. TSM is known for prioritizing mid lane. The problem with having this mid priority is it allows the enemy team to play around where you typically gank. However, having a wide range of ganks allows for the jungler to become less predictable and can result in higher percentage ganks. Let’s dive into each game and see just how much or little TSM has grown from this stereotype.

Side Note: If you don’t care at looking at each specific week I have a conclusion at the very end going over success rates, average gank timings, and priority percentages. 

Week 1

The first game TSM played was against C9. The first gank was at 4:29 resulted in burning Incarnation’s flash for Santorin’s flash. The second gank was at 9:15 was top lane where Santorin was able to burn Balls flash and equalizer. In the very first game of the split Santorin showed a new priority, top lane. The gank was a success and helped Dyrus gain pressure top lane. TSM accumulated a 1300 gold lead thanks to Balls and Incarnation having to play more passive. Santorin should have been able to push this lead farther though. Bjergsen had a massive CS lead, but Incarnation still never died. Bot lane was ignored for the most part.

The second game of the week was against NME. Santorin brought out his Sejuani this game. At 11:30 he ganked top lane with Lusboy to get a kill on Hecarim. At 14:16 he ganked top with Lustboy and Bjergsen and killed Hecarim. The first thing you notice is how late this ganks appear. One reason is due to the enemy jungler being Evelynn. Sejuani also doesn’t have the strongest pre-6 ganks so he delays his ganks. Even though the ganks were late they did result in two kills. Dryus didn’t get to participate in either of them, but it gave Dyrus time to farm up. At 5:30 in the game Santorin does look top to make sure Dyrus doesn’t get ganked. However, low pressure in the first 10 minutes results in just a 1000 gold lead at 15 minutes. Bot lane was again ignored.

Summary: Santorin prioritizes top lane more than mid lane this week. This is a good sign that TSM will be able to play around the map more and won’t suffer from mid lane falling. The one issue is Santorin needs to push his aggression early against slow comps like C9’s in order to snowball faster. 

Week 2

This week TSM faced some strong teams. The first game was against TIP. Rush is known as an aggressive jungler so this requires Santorin to be more proactive. At 3:30 Santorin ganks mid with Lustboy and blows Xiaoweixiao’s flash, but it was mostly thanks to Lustboy and Bjergsen. At 5:14 he ganks mid with Dyrus which results in just applying pressure. At 11:00 Santorin ganks top which results in burning Impact’s equalizer and nothing else. This gank was by the tier 2 top tower. Finally, Santorin ganked at 12:10 in the mid lane with Lustboy and they killed Xiaoweixiao. Santorin was more proactive in this game which he needed to be. He scouted top lane at 6:00, looked for a gank mid at 6:40, stopped Rush at bot lane tribush at 7:35, and after 15 minutes he went top twice for two ganks. TSM had a commanding 3200 gold lead at 15 minutes. Just by looking at all the things Santorin did reflects on the lead TSM gathered. It helps also that Rush played more passive than usual which made him have to be more reactive than proactive.

The game against CLG was very slow in the beginning. Santorin ganked once at 12:50 with Bjergsen at the tier 2 bot tower and even had Dryus teleport. This resulted in two big kills on Aphromoo and Doublelift. Afterwards TSM just played safe to secure a strong 2500 gold lead at 15 minutes. Just to note, Santorin looked for a gank mid at 4:00 and 5:30. Even though Xmithie was playing Lee sin Santorin was less proactive in this game. It might be due to playing against CLG and scared to take some risks, but the same could be said for Xmithie whose priority to be aggressive early was higher than Santorin. There were opportunities for both these junglers to take, but Santorin wasted less time to look for them compared to Xmithie.

Summary: Santorin continued to look mid and top lane. Dyrus overall seems to be playing better with the added pressure to his lane. In the CLG game Santorin didn’t accumulate to too much. If Xmithie was more confident he would have pressured lanes harder which in result would make Santorin decide to both sit back and watch his team get out pressured or start pressuring himself while farming less.

Week 3         

DIG was and still is an upcoming team for this split. TSM took DIG with a grain of salt. Shiphtur played Kog’maw this game so the priority in mid lane should be high. Santorin’s first gank happened at 7:40 in mid with Lusboy where they burn Shiphtur’s summoners, but Lustboy dies. Santorin was not level 6 when they attempted this gank and Shiphtur was close to tier 1 mid tower. At 10:20 Santorin ganks bot lane with Dyrus and just Lustboy in lane and results in burning Corejj’s flash. Santorin looked for another gank in the bot lane at 12:00, but gets spotted by a ward. TSM had an 1800 gold lead on DIG at 15 minutes. Santorin didn’t result to much this game and seemed a bit slow on his Gragas.

TDK was TSM’s second opponent for the week. Santorin ganked at 6:00 in the mid lane, but only applied pressure from the gank. He tried again at 6:50 where this time he burns Bischu’s summoners. Then at 11:35 he ganks mid with Dyrus to kill Bischu and drawing out the Seraph’s teleport. TSM comes out with an 1100 gold lead at 15 minutes. The first I want to note is Santorin has not ganked bot lane yet again. The second is Santorin never commits to a gank top lane even though it’s against Seraph’s Vladimir. If Vlad gets behind he becomes very useless. By only obtaining small success in mid lane led to just an 1100 gold lead by 15 minutes.

Summary: This was a lackluster week for Santorin. It all about the mid lane this week with just a little bit focus on bot lane. There was basically no top lane priority for Dyrus. The success of these ganks were mostly mediocre with basically just blowing summoners, which isn’t bad at times but they need to result into stronger gold leads to make full use of them. Only one kill was achieved. Overall, TSM starts shifting back to their usual mid priority this week.

Week 4

First game of the week was the game of the week against TL. This is another top 3 team TSM faces and again Santorin barely ganks in this game like in the CLG game. The one and only gank is at 4:14 in the mid lane which results in Santorin blowing his flash for Fenix’s flash. I won’t list all the times, but at 6:40 Santorin looked mid and then proceeded to look mid at least 3 more times. Remember IWillDominate is playing Sejuani who has a weak early game. Santorin took advantage of this weak early game once. Bot lane was completely ignored again. To show that at 15 minutes Wildturtle was down 24 creeps to Piglet meanwhile Bjergsen was up 30 creeps to Fenix. Also, at the 15 minute mark TSM was also down 2100 gold. If Santorin was more proactive in ganking then it would cause IWillDominate to farm less and delay his tankiness. Since he didn’t IWillDominate was up 16 creeps at 15 minutes and IWillDominate got off a successful gank top lane on Lustboy. If you watched this game you would also notice how Piglet and Xpecial were pushed up in bottom lane and denying Turtle creeps.

Final game of the week was against GV. Keane played his famous Urgot mid, but Santorin would have no part in Keane getting strong early. Santorni ganked at 4:05 in the mid lane, but only applied pressure. He ganked mid again at 6:30 and this time killed Urgot with Lustboy’s help. Then at 8:55 Santorin ganked mid and killed Urgot with Lustboy again. Finally, Santorin ganked one more time at 11:00 in the mid lane and killed Urgot, but Bjergsen died as well. TSM came out with a 2300 gold lead. Looking at the gank results Santorin had 3 successful ganks all in the mid lane. They shut down Keane’s Urgot early, but still ended up struggling against GV. Now I will admit that Wildturtle got caught several times which resulted in Tristana becoming strong, but Tristana was also never punished by Santorin. Even though Tristana can rocket jump away from ganks Santorin can knock Tristana out of her rocket jump and the pressure applied makes Altec have to play safer.

Summary: The trend continues. Every single gank was mid this week. The Urgot game had some warrant to it since Urgot can be abused early, but Tristana became strong since she was ignored. Santorin also became too passive in the TL game. This was another big game like CLG and he shrank away. Unlike the CLG game though, TL had Sejuani for scaling compared to Lee Sin.

Conclusions

Mid>Top>Bot

This formula use to be Mid>Bot>Top, but TSM has now switched bot and top lane. Santorin ganks mid 68.42% of the time, top 21.05% of the time, and bot 10.53% of the time. His first gank is 75% of the time mid. His second gank is 50% the time mid, 66.67% mid for his third gank, and 100% of the time for the 4^th gank. The most important ones to look at are the 1^st and 2^nd gank since the later the game gets the more affected the ganks will be by other variables. So for now I will ignore the 3^rd and 4^th ganks.

I would also like to add the growing trend of this split so far. If you look at Week 1 Santorin incorporates top priority into his ganks. Week 2 he begins to prioritize mid a bit more, but still has some top and bot priority. Week 3 he eliminates top priority while looking bot lane with Dyrus helping out. Week 4 was all about mid lane ganks. TSM is slowly going back to their mid priority play style. Even though Bjergsen did win TSM both games for week 4 TSM still struggled to win the games due to their bot lane being weak and Dyrus not being big enough to impact the game on his own.  

Before looking at Santorin’s first and second ganks it is clear that Santorin is most comfortable with Rek’sai over any other jungler so far based on amount of times he has played Rek’sai and the gank successes.

When he chooses Rek’sai he goes for earlier ganks with the one outlier being the CLG game. If I include the CLG game Santorin’s average first gank is at 5:51. If I don’t include the CLG game then his average first gank is at 4:27. Include the mid lane priority and a good assumption is if Santorin is playing Rek’sai he will be ganking mid lane between the 4 to 6 minute mark. The success rate of getting a kill is 38.46%, success of just applying pressure is 23.08%, and the success of blowing a summoner is 38.46% with a 7.69% of losing a teammate. These are the percentages for just the mid lanes ganks which consist of 13 ganks. If I look at the success rate based on all 19 ganks then the success rate of getting a kill is 42.10%, success of applying pressure is 21.05%, and the success of blowing a summoner is 36.85% with a 5.26% chance of losing a teammate.

It is important to look at the average gold lead to note that TSM on average is 1387.50 gold ahead of the opposition at 15 minutes. Santorin on average ganks 2.375 times or 2 times pre 15 minutes. Even though there are times Santorin can be more aggressive and take the advantage farther TSM isn’t lacking gold at the very least. We also can’t say Santorin never ganks since his average is around 2 ganks.

TSM’s bot lane also needs to start individually performing better in order to create more trust in ganking their lane. Bjergsen is already known to carry games and if he gets the lead he needs then he can take over, but TSM’s bot lane isn’t known for that currently. All it takes is for a team to counteract the mid priority by TSM and play aggressively in the top and bot lane with jungle support. Dyrus has been improving, but teams haven’t bothered him as much lately since they are putting more emphasis on mid and bot lane. I would be interested to see what happens when a team abuses Dyrus again and continue to take advantage of TSM’s weak bot lane.

Credits towards lolesports for using their VODS to track when Santorin ganks. My next analysis will be Xmithie on CLG since CLG can have priority in all three lanes.