Intro
This article will be a brief introduction of all the LMS teams in 2016 Spring and talk about their pros and cons by using statics with my personal opinion. I will also try to compare teams from LMS to teams in other region for more details.
* All the stat that will be included in this article is from Oracleselixir.com and from myself record.
ahq e-Sports Club
Current Standings : 1st (6-0-0)
Player MUST watch : Ziv
Players to watch : Chawy, Mountain
As one of the top contenders in last years Worlds, ahq continue their dominating performances in LMS with a 6-0-0 start. ahq dominate all the teams in LMS with an old SKT fashion, that was like no matter how many gold difference they were, they can still managed to come back in one team-fights. The only few games that ahq have trouble was against M17 and XG, both teams are considering to be the dark horse in this season.
ahq roster did not change too much but with some strong addition like Chawy (from TPA), whom was considered to be one of the best Mid-laners in LMS; RD (from LGS), a very strong AD carry that is very talented; lastly in addition of Baybay (from M17) and Tuna, both very young and talented players to be the trainees into ahq, I would say ahq can even build one more team that have the same level of talented players into LMS but only with lesser experiences.
As we knows, ahq was a very highly team-fighting focus team, they have a total 201 kills in 12 games, the second highest in the league in addition of 100% first baron rate.... ahq only have a 56.6 early game rating according to Oracleselixirs.com, but a 43.4 rating in mid to late game, which is ridiculously high. How high is it? The highest ratings in LCK is 28.7 (KT) ; NA is 29.9 (IMT) ; EU is 36.8 (H2K), not to be mentioned teams in EU and NA only played less than 10 games. A fun and interesting stat is ahq wards placed per min is 3.32, 5th in LMS and if we put this stat in LCK, it will be ranked to second last in the league. HOWEVER, the less wards placed per min team in LCK is ROX, the best team in LCK by far with only 3.26 wards placed per min. Also IMT, the team ranking number 1 in NA only placed 3.25 wards per min. Sooooooo, I would say just according to the stat, a team placed 3.25 wards per min to 3.35 wards per min will perform better in this meta.
Lastly, the player must watch in this team must be Ziv. As the "new super star" in last year, a well-performance in last years Worlds, a world classed top laner, his carrying potential should be fully utilized in the addition of Chawy, whom could play supportive champions like Zilean or Lulu.
COUGAR E-Sport
Current Standings : 8th (0-0-6)
Player Must watch : KuKu
Players to be watch : CandyBB, SpeaR
As a new challenger team that beat the Newly formed AS ( only Mihana from the original AS) in the promotion match. Although CGE doesn't count as a "Professional" team, they had managed to live together and train before the season starts in early January. But unfortunately it turns out that they were way behind all other teams in LMS and maybe even some armature teams can beat them easily.
The original roster of CGE was AJ ; SpeaR ; JeffeRy ; Rabi2 ; Never. Rumous on why JeffeRy ( a young high skilled LB player) leaving the team to HKE was because he's not fitting into the team well thus the team find a new mid laner - KuKu (a high elo and former TPA trainee) for tryout and it turns out that KuKu fits in better than JeffeRy. While AJ was heavily out-performed by most of the top laners in LMS, and Never was under performing, CGE holds the fastest end game record in this split, 19'06 by TPA, and honestly, every teams that played against CGE managed to take a huge lead before 20 mins, teams are just competing for who can end the game the fastest against CGE.
Thus in the early Feb, CGE announced there will be a roster swap in the Top and Support role, by XUE and CanddyBB.
Seriously, CGE is really in a very bad shape now. They are all ranking at the last in all different kinds of stat, wards placed, kills, deaths or all other things (even Giants! are better than them in stat). Hopefully they can come back with the addition of the two new members XUE and CandyBB after the Lunar New Year Holiday's.
eXtreme Gamers
Current Standings : 6th (2-1-3)
Player MUST Watch : Suwako
Players to Watch : LBB, Nexus
Another new team that qualified through the promotion tournament, beating the Gash Bears ( former LGS) and lead by Yo. You can read more about the team introduction in the International Section written by Clement in the lolesports power rankings.
There are some interesting stat in this team. Before the games played against TPA and ahq, XG recorded a 16.4 points rating the Mid/Late game. The second highest in LMS and can the 3rd if we put this stat into LCK, in other words, XG mid to late game is very good which can even used to be compared to top teams across the World. However after the games against TPA and ahq, their rating dropped to -6.1, 6th in LMS. XG early game was their main weaknesses, even when they managed to take some advantage in the very early stage of the game, they will always throw it back to their opponent.
Player Must watch in XG must be Suwako. A new young talented Mid laner which can even used to be comparing against Westdoor Chawy Maple. With the highly stack of Mid lane talents in LMS, Suwako still manage to score the highest damage per minute in LMS with 730, the same as the best player in the World - Faker. You can argue that the fact that he recorded that much amount of damage is because he was playing champions with heavily poking abilities, such as EZ and Corki, thus teams that play against XG will often ban these two champions against him. But you can't argue that he is really on point when he gets these types of champions. I would say his team-fighting skills is really strong and most of the teams start to gank and focus him in the early game.
Another players to be watched should be Nexus. The first player that pull out Sion back to the competitive environment with some degree of success, he gives 459 damage per min, the 2nd highest top laner in LMS only behind Ziv (excluding XG Sub Top laner exciting), the 3rd in LCK, and the highest in EU if we put this stat across in different regions. He also managed to solo kills Ziv's Lulu 2 times in a role during the 2nd game of XG vs ahq, the few problems that he needs to solve is his CSing, deaths and Kills participation. While Kill participation was a bit hard for him to fix due to the fact that XG play around the Suwako and the Bot lane, but the amount of death during the team-fight is ridiculously high. Nexus won't die a lot during the laning phase due to his passive play style but always over extending during team-fights. LBB the AD carry of XG, manage to score the 2nd highest amounts of kills among the league in adc role. A fun fact is LBB also recorded the 2nd highest amounts of deaths in the league, but it only takes 14.9% of his team deaths, which in other words, his teammates dies a LOT.
As the season progress, XG should be one of the dark horse in this split along with M17 . Suwako may rise to be the next Maple if he can managed to fix his weak laning phase problem, with a very experienced shot caller Yo in this team, if LBB can managed to keep up his output damage on par with Nexus pulling out more new picks into the scene, XG should be able to pull out more surprising factors to the scene and may even can be competing in the playoffs.
Flash Wolves
Current Standings : 3rd (3-1-2)
Player MUST watch : Karsa
Players to watch : Rins Maple
After Steak step downed from the active roster. FW had tried two new top laners to fill his role, MMD, a long time sub from FW and Rins, a new trainee during last season. After MMD didn't perform well in the game against ahq, FW starts to use Rins in the next game against TPA, in the end Rins hard carry one of the games using Fiora, thus FW keep on using Rins as their starting Top laner until now. However, none of them can fill Steak's role successfully.
If you have watched FW games, you may think they couldn't find a way to "play" the game. you may find them they seems a bit lost in the mid to late game comparing to how they had performed in World's. Apparently, SwordArt and Karsa try to take the responsibility of shot calling, hopefully they can be back on track in time, it would be a huge loss of talents if they had failed to come back.
I can almost tell that FW was not that great in this split by just looking to their team stat. FW only get the lead on the highest amounts of kills and the highest first blood rate in the league. If we look at others stats like First Dragon / Tower rate or wards placed per minute, FW will always ranked at the 3rd - 5th range. Well we can say that they perform so consistently average but I think most of us expect more from them. Karsa, stills show a great performances with a 67% first blood participation rate, highest among all the players in LMS and even in LCK. In addition, with a 0.87 wards placed per minute which is the same as the average wards placed per minute stat in LCK Junglers. Also due to the addition of Runic Echoes, champions like Nid and Elise which Karsa is really good at now is back to the scene, thus most of the teams tends to ban his Nid and taking away Elise in some degree.
Rins, as a top laner new to LMS, now recorded a 277.1 gold per minute just trailing Ziv in the second place among other Top laners in the league. He also shows some great performances when using Fiora, along with a large dimension of champion pool. If he can keep pulling out more carrying performance in different champions, with the help of Steak, I think Rins can easily become a top contenders of best Top laners in LMS. In the other hands, Maple and SwordArt really needs to step up both of their plays. In most of the games that FW lost, Maple usually perform so bad in the team fights, often get caught or too greedy to make plays. That is no what we expected from him, most of us expected he can become the best Mid laner in the league after Toyz had left and the experience that he gained in World's. But for now, new young talented Mid laners like TPA FoFo and XG Suwako had already let Maple in trouble taking the honor of best Mid laner in LMS, hopefully he can step up to what he should be. SwordArt, another world-classed Support player in the team, same as Maple didn't really show up on his plays, only 64% Kills participation rate is the 2nd lowest in LMS. As we all knows during World's, the Jungle - Support synergy is one of the main reasons why FW is strong, SwordArt managed to record a 75% Kills participation rate during that time. We can easily tell SwordArt is the best support in LMS last season but we definitely can't say it now.
As a conclusion for FW. The whole team really needs to step up in order to catch up ahq, I think most of us expected more on them. This team needs to pack together and know what's to do in a particular timing, and a clear shot caller. Well if they can't, we may expect the return of their Brain -- Steak.
As a conclusion for FW. The whole team really needs to step up in order to catch up ahq, I think most of us expected more on them. This team needs to pack together and know what's to do in a particular timing, and a clear shot caller. Well if they can't, we may expect the return of their Brain -- Steak.
Hong Kong Esports
Current Standings : 5th (2-3-1)
Player MUST watch : MapleSnow
Player MUST watch : MapleSnow
Players to watch : Olleh Rokenia
Hong Kong Esports is facing a very tough split, no Toyz, no Raison. If both of them returns, I am pretty sure that they can easily be the top 3 teams in LMS. The new HKE line-up is pretty interesting, in the addition of their new Top laner - MapleSnow, Stanley decided to step down as inactive member due to the 7-member rules. MapleSnow formerly Assassins Snipers Top laner, is a very young and talented player who have suffer in last season due to his small champion pool. However, his performances by far shows that his time has come, he showed that he could play a various of champion in a very high level, such as Fiora Trundle or even Quinn ( He is the only player in LMS who played Quinn).
For the Mid lane, HKE first found Chillyz, a Hong Kong old school player to fill Toy'z role. As a result, Chillyz's didn't perform well, only can play champions like EZ and Lulu, HKE seeks to find other Mid laners to replace him. Thus, Rokenia whom originally from the Gash Bears and JeffeRy formerly from CGE was added to the roster, but Rokenia tends to be their starter. Honestly, I was a bit shocking when how well Rokenia had performed just in this few games. Despite he played AD carry role during GB and DFM, he managed to play 7 different champions in 8 games, and I honestly thinks he played pretty well.
As a team, HKE is a very objective focus team. They have the recorded of 92% first dragon rate (highest in the league along with XG) and 75% first tower rate (highest in the league along with M17). However they are not the best early game rating team, which means, they sometime may put too much focus on early objectives but not focusing on how to gain benefits by taking early objectvies. Also, HKE dragon control rate is just sooo strong with a 76% control rate, highest in the league, however, this is a 2-sided stat. The good side is they knows how to control dragon and can easily take benefits from the dragon buffs, but in the other side, dragon buffs in this meta is not that strong, the 1st and the 5th buff is what really matters, others are just meh......
I did mentioned that MapleSnow is the must watch player on HKE, rather than him. Olleh and Rokenia, the Korean-duo (the only Koreans in LMS) starts to show the Korean Synergy. Olleh still proves how Korean's heavily focusing on visions, with a 1.35 wards placed per min leading the league ( excluding Candybb due to he only played 2 games). His performances this split is showing that he is still improving, and due to the fact that SwordArt was not showing up his plays, Olleh should be one of the top contenders of LMS best Support along with M17 Dramer. Talking about Korean synergy, we knew how well it can be, but for now, the Olleh & Raison bot lane is just too good to say, they can easily be the best bot lane in LMS, and for the Olleh & Rokenia synergy, time will tell.
In my opinion, HKE should just aim for the top 4 in Spring. Sorry but sad to say that their performances by far was still not on the same page for the whole team. There were some interviews and rumors was told that HKE shot calls are mainly from 2 person, Dinter & Olleh. Thus it is pretty easy to have a communicate problem due to language barrier and the quality of the calls maybe affected. But after all, I think after the Raison suspension, HKE will perform better, but when the time arrived, will Chillyz or JeffeRy be the starting Mid laner? (Rokenia can't play due to the max. of 2 Korean Starter) Or will it be the RETURN OF TOYZ, we will found out eventually.
Hong Kong Esports is facing a very tough split, no Toyz, no Raison. If both of them returns, I am pretty sure that they can easily be the top 3 teams in LMS. The new HKE line-up is pretty interesting, in the addition of their new Top laner - MapleSnow, Stanley decided to step down as inactive member due to the 7-member rules. MapleSnow formerly Assassins Snipers Top laner, is a very young and talented player who have suffer in last season due to his small champion pool. However, his performances by far shows that his time has come, he showed that he could play a various of champion in a very high level, such as Fiora Trundle or even Quinn ( He is the only player in LMS who played Quinn).
For the Mid lane, HKE first found Chillyz, a Hong Kong old school player to fill Toy'z role. As a result, Chillyz's didn't perform well, only can play champions like EZ and Lulu, HKE seeks to find other Mid laners to replace him. Thus, Rokenia whom originally from the Gash Bears and JeffeRy formerly from CGE was added to the roster, but Rokenia tends to be their starter. Honestly, I was a bit shocking when how well Rokenia had performed just in this few games. Despite he played AD carry role during GB and DFM, he managed to play 7 different champions in 8 games, and I honestly thinks he played pretty well.
As a team, HKE is a very objective focus team. They have the recorded of 92% first dragon rate (highest in the league along with XG) and 75% first tower rate (highest in the league along with M17). However they are not the best early game rating team, which means, they sometime may put too much focus on early objectives but not focusing on how to gain benefits by taking early objectvies. Also, HKE dragon control rate is just sooo strong with a 76% control rate, highest in the league, however, this is a 2-sided stat. The good side is they knows how to control dragon and can easily take benefits from the dragon buffs, but in the other side, dragon buffs in this meta is not that strong, the 1st and the 5th buff is what really matters, others are just meh......
I did mentioned that MapleSnow is the must watch player on HKE, rather than him. Olleh and Rokenia, the Korean-duo (the only Koreans in LMS) starts to show the Korean Synergy. Olleh still proves how Korean's heavily focusing on visions, with a 1.35 wards placed per min leading the league ( excluding Candybb due to he only played 2 games). His performances this split is showing that he is still improving, and due to the fact that SwordArt was not showing up his plays, Olleh should be one of the top contenders of LMS best Support along with M17 Dramer. Talking about Korean synergy, we knew how well it can be, but for now, the Olleh & Raison bot lane is just too good to say, they can easily be the best bot lane in LMS, and for the Olleh & Rokenia synergy, time will tell.
In my opinion, HKE should just aim for the top 4 in Spring. Sorry but sad to say that their performances by far was still not on the same page for the whole team. There were some interviews and rumors was told that HKE shot calls are mainly from 2 person, Dinter & Olleh. Thus it is pretty easy to have a communicate problem due to language barrier and the quality of the calls maybe affected. But after all, I think after the Raison suspension, HKE will perform better, but when the time arrived, will Chillyz or JeffeRy be the starting Mid laner? (Rokenia can't play due to the max. of 2 Korean Starter) Or will it be the RETURN OF TOYZ, we will found out eventually.
Machi E-Sports
Current Standings : 3rd (3-1-2)
Player MUST watch : Dreamer
Players to watch : Bobo, Apex
Machi (which also called M17 due to the big success of their apps "M17" ) was review as the biggest dark horse of this split, shows that they really have the ability to take games over the top teams in the league. Their performances by far is pretty good, only drop series against ahq and TPA, and 1 game to HKE.
M17 is very strong at the early games. Their early game rating was 64, trailing TPA by 3 points only. Bobo in the Top lane, shows his laning skill is very strong, can even compare to ahq Ziv and TPA Morning, but his mid to late game performances still had a lot to improve, especially on his use of tp and team fighting skills. Apex, a Karthus main, a high elo player who replaced Republic in last season, shows that he can compete the title of best mid laner in the league. His laning phase skills is super good, he has the highest first blood participation rate for Mid laners in the league, 42%. But same as Bobo, his laning pahse performance and his mid to late game performances is not on the same level, if he can work on it, he should also become on of the best mid laner in the league. (Also I am still waiting for his Karthus )
M17 bot lane, Dee & Dreamer. Was originally considered to be one of the best bot lane in LMS last season, moving on to this season, they both still showed a pretty consistent performance, but not that threatening as before. Although they both have a 42% and 50% first blood participation rate respectively leading all the other's bot lane, Dee damage per minute is the lowest in the league of ADC role, only 466 damage per minute. In the other hand, Dreamer is really the star of M17, his Alistar plays was godly hard to describe, he knows when to use his abilities in the right timing. With the highest kills participation in the league ( not including LilV and CandyBB who only played 2 games) with 79.5%, the only thing he should improve now is his champion pool, he only played tanky supports like Alistar Nautilis Trundle etc. Well of course, the fact that he only played this kind of champions is because he was forced to play it due to M17 needs him to be the main engage.
Honestly there are not much to say about M17 by stat. The only remaining unknown for the team is their Jungler - Taizan. He has the least numbers of kills in the league, even lower than CGE Jungler SpeaR, the team that get rekt every game (Sorry I don't mean that... but that's pretty much the fact), and have a negative cs difference & gold difference. which should not be the case where M17 is a very strong early game team. With the addition of Ender, the original top laner of Machi back in 2014, although he is still not yet on the starting line-up, I assume he will bring a new style into Machi.
Player MUST watch : Dreamer
Players to watch : Bobo, Apex
Machi (which also called M17 due to the big success of their apps "M17" ) was review as the biggest dark horse of this split, shows that they really have the ability to take games over the top teams in the league. Their performances by far is pretty good, only drop series against ahq and TPA, and 1 game to HKE.
M17 is very strong at the early games. Their early game rating was 64, trailing TPA by 3 points only. Bobo in the Top lane, shows his laning skill is very strong, can even compare to ahq Ziv and TPA Morning, but his mid to late game performances still had a lot to improve, especially on his use of tp and team fighting skills. Apex, a Karthus main, a high elo player who replaced Republic in last season, shows that he can compete the title of best mid laner in the league. His laning phase skills is super good, he has the highest first blood participation rate for Mid laners in the league, 42%. But same as Bobo, his laning pahse performance and his mid to late game performances is not on the same level, if he can work on it, he should also become on of the best mid laner in the league. (Also I am still waiting for his Karthus )
M17 bot lane, Dee & Dreamer. Was originally considered to be one of the best bot lane in LMS last season, moving on to this season, they both still showed a pretty consistent performance, but not that threatening as before. Although they both have a 42% and 50% first blood participation rate respectively leading all the other's bot lane, Dee damage per minute is the lowest in the league of ADC role, only 466 damage per minute. In the other hand, Dreamer is really the star of M17, his Alistar plays was godly hard to describe, he knows when to use his abilities in the right timing. With the highest kills participation in the league ( not including LilV and CandyBB who only played 2 games) with 79.5%, the only thing he should improve now is his champion pool, he only played tanky supports like Alistar Nautilis Trundle etc. Well of course, the fact that he only played this kind of champions is because he was forced to play it due to M17 needs him to be the main engage.
Honestly there are not much to say about M17 by stat. The only remaining unknown for the team is their Jungler - Taizan. He has the least numbers of kills in the league, even lower than CGE Jungler SpeaR, the team that get rekt every game (Sorry I don't mean that... but that's pretty much the fact), and have a negative cs difference & gold difference. which should not be the case where M17 is a very strong early game team. With the addition of Ender, the original top laner of Machi back in 2014, although he is still not yet on the starting line-up, I assume he will bring a new style into Machi.
Midnight Sun e-sports
Current Standings : 7th (0-2-4)
Player MUST watch : M1ssion
Players to watch : Kaiwing Wulala
Only the Substitute players from the original third-runner up line-up was left. MSE keep on having roster changes every week to find the best line-up until now, Ninuo Wulala M1ssion Corgi Kaiwing. This should be the best line-up for MSE now, they even take 1 game from TPA and show some satisfied performances in last week games.
MSE should now focus on improving the team synergy before anything. They need to work out the team synergy together before the last game of the first round, which they will face the newly CGE. This game will decide who will be the last in the league, MSE not only needs to win this game, but need to dominate CGE to prove themselves still can be the contenders of top 6 team and avoid to get in the Promotion tournament. Not much to mention about their stat, due to most of them were just above CGE, nothing really much special as expected.
About the players, M1ssion as the star of the team, his champion pool is still his main weaknesses, if he wants to improve, he must widen his champion pool. Due to Wulala mainly plays carrying type of Jungle champions like Elise or Graves, M1ssion can play more functioning types of champions such as Liss and Lulu while Kassadin is a must ban against MSE for most teams. The problem is here, another champion that M1ssion is really good at is Viktor, but if Wulala keeps on playing this kind of carrying type jungle pick which lack of cc and engage, it will be so difficult for Viktor to deal damage if the team doesn't have enough cc. Another star player of MSE should be their Support player - Kaiwing. A Hong Kong high elo support player, his Thresh plays is very on point, thus managed to win a game from TPA with a 87% kills participation rate.
Player MUST watch : M1ssion
Players to watch : Kaiwing Wulala
Only the Substitute players from the original third-runner up line-up was left. MSE keep on having roster changes every week to find the best line-up until now, Ninuo Wulala M1ssion Corgi Kaiwing. This should be the best line-up for MSE now, they even take 1 game from TPA and show some satisfied performances in last week games.
MSE should now focus on improving the team synergy before anything. They need to work out the team synergy together before the last game of the first round, which they will face the newly CGE. This game will decide who will be the last in the league, MSE not only needs to win this game, but need to dominate CGE to prove themselves still can be the contenders of top 6 team and avoid to get in the Promotion tournament. Not much to mention about their stat, due to most of them were just above CGE, nothing really much special as expected.
About the players, M1ssion as the star of the team, his champion pool is still his main weaknesses, if he wants to improve, he must widen his champion pool. Due to Wulala mainly plays carrying type of Jungle champions like Elise or Graves, M1ssion can play more functioning types of champions such as Liss and Lulu while Kassadin is a must ban against MSE for most teams. The problem is here, another champion that M1ssion is really good at is Viktor, but if Wulala keeps on playing this kind of carrying type jungle pick which lack of cc and engage, it will be so difficult for Viktor to deal damage if the team doesn't have enough cc. Another star player of MSE should be their Support player - Kaiwing. A Hong Kong high elo support player, his Thresh plays is very on point, thus managed to win a game from TPA with a 87% kills participation rate.
To be honest, MSE is not a team that we should be expected to be in the top 5 teams this split. However, I still thinks they will improve quickly due to a very experienced logistics team.
Taipei Assassins
Current standings : 2nd (3-2-1)
Player MUST watch : FoFo
Payers to watch : REFRA1N Morning
After the announcement of Chawy leaving to ahq, many people think that TPA will suffer in this split due to how TPA rely on Chawy in last split. However the return of Bebe let the fans have hope again, the replacement of Chawy is FoFo, a very young and talented high elo trainee in TPA during the last season. TPA now has the best early game rating in LMS, and even can top in the LCK. Not only their early game performances is good, their vision control is the highest in the league, with 3.69 wards placed per min & 1.64 wards cleared per min.
FoFo the new Mid laner who replaced Chawy, shows that his laning phase is very strong in his first appearances against FW Maple. He can use various control mage champion such as Ryze and Lissandra, but his GP was not that impressive. I would say his laning phase abilities is just under Maple, with the help of REFRA1N continuously sitting around him, he is able to gain advantages to snowball. However, same as M17 BoBo, his usage of tp and team fighting skills still has rooms to improve. There's a very fun theory that if FoFo and Suwako from XG can combine together, they can easily overcome all the Mid laners in LMS and maybe can compete with top Koreans Mid laners.
By stat, REFRA1N has the highest KDA and kills participation of 7.2 and 71% in the jungle, his play style is a bit like ROX Peanut where he is not focusing on ganking, but on farming and counter jungling. He shares his team 56.8% of total jungle cs, in return, he placed 0.93 wards per minute, the highest in LMS and the 2nd highest in LCK. REFRA1N do not need to help Morning in laning phase, he can always gain advantages by himself. Morning recorded the highest CS difference @ 10 with 11.8 cs and largest gold difference @ 10 with 404 gold in the top lane. He also show that he can play different kinds of champions, Trundle Fiora Poppy Tahm etc. One more interesting stat is although TPA had not yet played Lulu once in this split, every team tends to ban Lulu against them but no one knows why.
I must say their coach always has a good plan in the early game. From S4 World's to now, no matter how the roster had changes, TPA early games can still be top 3 among the league. Although this TPA line-up consists of 3 players that are very experienced, their mid to late game performances still had a big room to grow. But for the mean time, this TPA can still aim for a sit in Top3 if they can keep their performances by far. This roster consist of all what a rising team should need, a new young talented rookie, and some experienced players to let them. But how far they can go, I think this will depends on their last match -- playing against their long time rivalry and their old teammates, ahq and Chawy.
Player MUST watch : FoFo
Payers to watch : REFRA1N Morning
After the announcement of Chawy leaving to ahq, many people think that TPA will suffer in this split due to how TPA rely on Chawy in last split. However the return of Bebe let the fans have hope again, the replacement of Chawy is FoFo, a very young and talented high elo trainee in TPA during the last season. TPA now has the best early game rating in LMS, and even can top in the LCK. Not only their early game performances is good, their vision control is the highest in the league, with 3.69 wards placed per min & 1.64 wards cleared per min.
FoFo the new Mid laner who replaced Chawy, shows that his laning phase is very strong in his first appearances against FW Maple. He can use various control mage champion such as Ryze and Lissandra, but his GP was not that impressive. I would say his laning phase abilities is just under Maple, with the help of REFRA1N continuously sitting around him, he is able to gain advantages to snowball. However, same as M17 BoBo, his usage of tp and team fighting skills still has rooms to improve. There's a very fun theory that if FoFo and Suwako from XG can combine together, they can easily overcome all the Mid laners in LMS and maybe can compete with top Koreans Mid laners.
By stat, REFRA1N has the highest KDA and kills participation of 7.2 and 71% in the jungle, his play style is a bit like ROX Peanut where he is not focusing on ganking, but on farming and counter jungling. He shares his team 56.8% of total jungle cs, in return, he placed 0.93 wards per minute, the highest in LMS and the 2nd highest in LCK. REFRA1N do not need to help Morning in laning phase, he can always gain advantages by himself. Morning recorded the highest CS difference @ 10 with 11.8 cs and largest gold difference @ 10 with 404 gold in the top lane. He also show that he can play different kinds of champions, Trundle Fiora Poppy Tahm etc. One more interesting stat is although TPA had not yet played Lulu once in this split, every team tends to ban Lulu against them but no one knows why.
I must say their coach always has a good plan in the early game. From S4 World's to now, no matter how the roster had changes, TPA early games can still be top 3 among the league. Although this TPA line-up consists of 3 players that are very experienced, their mid to late game performances still had a big room to grow. But for the mean time, this TPA can still aim for a sit in Top3 if they can keep their performances by far. This roster consist of all what a rising team should need, a new young talented rookie, and some experienced players to let them. But how far they can go, I think this will depends on their last match -- playing against their long time rivalry and their old teammates, ahq and Chawy.
