Starcraft has often been broken into two groups. There are the Koreans, seen as elite machines programmed to do nothing but win at Starcraft. And then there is everyone else, grouped under the banner of "Foreigners".

There has long been discussion amongst the community about how Koreans simply train harder and work harder. The "Korean Training House Mentality", where Koreans will lock themselves in a room and do nothing by analyse games and practise all day, is often touted as one of their key strengths. It is perhaps exaggerated by many in the community, but the chilling effect Koreans have had in Starcraft is very real. Ever since the Koreans first landed at MLG, they have won 11 MLG titles, compared to only 1 by a Foreigner. The same has happened in IEM Season VI, with 5 Korean titles to only 1 non-Korean win.

There is the very real risk that Koreans will overrun the League of Legends scene. It is perhaps telling that many Korean teams refuse to stream their scrims and even their solo queue practise. Also, there is a sense of national pride that Koreans have that is not found amongst foreign teams. When you play against a Korean team, you play not only against the team itself but also against every single person they are friends with. They will have discussed together exactly how to dissect your play and counter it. Indeed, in the first Season of the OGN League, Xenics Storm revealed that in order to defeat CLG they combined forces with Startale to plan out builds and strategies. It is a level of co-operation that is not commonly found amongst NA and EU teams. This will likely become increasingly important in Season 3, with Riot's announcement of continuous professional leagues and competitions.

Interestingly, this competition may start to alienate the profession players from their fans. Fans of professional teams love to watch their favourite play stream, and listen in to them in casual solo queue environments. But in a competitive environment fuelled by money, there is increasing pressure on teams to focus harder on practise and less time with fan interaction.

Yet perhaps not all hope is lost. Starcraft players such as Stephano can go toe-to-toe with the Koreans consistently yet not subscribe to the Korean method of training. Could there be perhaps another answer; the elusive "None of the Above" in a multiple choice question filled with wrong answers? Time will tell.

Fantasy Mech. 3 Hatch Muta. The 6.43 Blink Dagger Era. All are defining moments in competitive esports; where a single strategy completely blows open the metagame and changes the history of competitive gameplay forever. Yet these inventions were not complete revolutions. Each of these strategies were built upon existing theory. However, the architects of these builds identified key changes that took these existing ideas to a whole new level. Fantasy's vulture drops. Saviour's muta defence and lurker traps. VirtusPro's full pressure ganks. Simple ideas created whole new paradigms and tactics that are still copied by players today.

League of Legends is no exception. Ideas such as counter-jungling and cheese compositions were not unknown qualities. However, it wasn't until IEM Kiev that teams finally put two and two together when Moscow Five burst onto the scene and stormed into the finals undefeated before crushing TSM. The same applies to the League of Legends Season 1 Championships, when the European Teams took the golden crown with their Support+AD duo lane and double AP strategy. The strict lane compositions of a Support and AD Carry duo lane, AP Mid lane, and Solo Bruiser/AP side lane are still held in the strictest reverence by all players despite repeated efforts to break the meta.

Azubu's gameplay heralds the second big shift in the metagame. While much more subtle, its effects are going to be felt for months to come. Interestingly, Azubu's play style has many similarities to the current paradigm of thinking that have been developed Chinese DotA. In some respects, it is perhaps unsurprising that many of the cutting edge theories in DotA are applicable to LoL.

There are three key aspects that Azubu has taken and made their own.

1. Early game aggression to secure a team lead
2. Cost-efficient and team-based item builds on all champions
3. Timing based movement and synergy

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We have all heard of the theories behind early game aggression. From the statistic that the team with a 10% gold lead by 12 minutes wins 90% of the time to the idea of the "snowball meta" champion by Chaox, this idea is not new. However, Azubu completely changes the way teams will now have to approach the early game.

Currently, much of the EU/NA meta revolves around farming, with a heavy emphasis on the laning phase. It is common to see players sit in lane for up to even 30 minutes, with an abundance of wards everywhere to keep jungle ganks out. The real action does not occur until teams have farmed up big items and are content to fight. Games are then often decided when these fights break out over key objectives such as Blue Buffs, Dragons and Barons. However, at MLG Summer Arena, this all changed.

TSM wanted to lane to farm their power. Azubu just didn't want a laning phase at all.



In most of Azubu's games, they often lane swapped and tried to take an early tower. This is the most obvious form of early game aggression to secure a lead that we see. However they continued this style of play even in the last game of the Finals (the remade game), even when it appeared that they were playing a more "standard" game. Taking early towers helps Azubu further their strategy, but it is not the main idea behind it.

The real principle behind Azubu is creating a low economy game. This has many similarities to the early metagame in Starcraft2, when Korean players would use incredibly aggressive openings such as one-base 9pool or proxy-2-gate to force low economy situations. By forcing aggression, Azubu takes the emphasis off last hitting minions and forces teams to respond to them. Many EU and NA teams are not comfortable with playing in these scenarios. Once Azubu seizes the initiative they then try to create an early game lead and ride that to victory. Often this lead will take the form of an early tower. Indeed, in these low economy games we often saw both teams sporting very low cs scores at 20 minutes for a professional game. However, by taking towers and champion kills, Azubu finds an alternative source of income that both gives them a gold advantage as well as helping them dictate tempo.

Tempo is the second key principle behind Azubu's early game play. In the first game we saw CptJack on Sivir with a massive farm lead over Chaox despite the fact that both teams had been forced into a low economy game. By being able to control the tempo of the game, Azubu forced TSM to respond to them. That meant that Azubu could create opportunities for them to farm, as TSM were forced to react to Azubu instead of going out of their tower vision and making plays or farming. In this respects, it is perhaps similar to the old dominance of Faerie decks in Magic the Gathering. Seize tempo of the game, create an advantage both in resources and game presence, and then proceed to bury your opponents in that advantage. Even if your opponent can find an opening to regain their footing, you should be ahead far enough that they never quite catch back up to you.

It is perhaps telling that Reapered (Azubu's top lane player) often bought Philosopher's Stone on Irelia and sometimes even a Heart of Gold, even in a 1v2 lane when he was losing. A curious choice in today's meta. The prevailing theory in many schools of thought is that when you are behind and getting crushed in lane, getting GP10 items only delays you being relevant in the game and only really matter in the super long run, by which point you have likely lost. And in any case, why buy GP10 items when you could buy something that actually gives you an advantage right here and now like a Phage? However, Azubu completely forgo the laning phase and force both teams to give up time to farm. Suddenly, in a roaming environment, GP10 items are king.

But what to do about wards? Wards have been the bane of early game aggression. Teams have tried getting early an Oracles Elixir to help. The Saintvicious rule that many Western junglers use is to buy Oracles only once you have Mercs, and a gold generating item (often HoG) to ensure you have the survivability to support the Oracles. But still ward coverage is prevalent enough to prevent ganks. If they clear a ward, fall back and just reward again in a moment. Azubu's answer to this? Just get Oracles faster.

Often, we would see their support or jungler walking around with Oracles only sporting basic Boots and maybe a PhiloStone. Having already forced a low economy games, suddenly wards are a precious and valuable resource. If you lose a ward, you likely don't have the money to buy another ward because it is too early in the game. Once the wards are clear, the jungler has free reign to move undetected. Furthermore, Oracles helps Azubu further their tempo advantage. With map control, they can proceed to find farm in a low economy environment that the other team is unable to find. It is undeniable however that such an early Oracles on an essentially "naked" champion carries immense risk. But to Azubu, the upside is worth so much they are willing to take that risk. With proper teamwork, communication and calls, the Oracles carrier should never find themselves in danger. And if the Oracles is ever taken out, the team should have already secured a large enough group advantage that the Oracles has already paid for itself through intangible benefits if not actual ward kill bounty.

This low economy environment is the first crux of Azubu's plays, and is integral in helping them create an advantage and then keep it for as long as possible. The margins of their advantage may sometimes seem small. However, all Azubu needs is the smallest of snowballs to start the boulder that will cascade down the mountain and crush everything before it.

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Starcraft is famous for its timing attacks and watertight builds that are a core of professional gameplay. Each decision, even those as small as worker count on individual mineral patches, is designed to synergise with the next until a key timing is reached. Azubu has taken the same principles behind Starcraft timing based builds and applied them to League of Legends. This bares many similarities with the major advancements in DotA theory from the Chinese teams.

Abuzu prioritises aura and team utility items. In many of their games, we would see the AP player buy an Abyssal Sceptre as their first major item, or finish the full WotA rather than just sit on Hextech Revolver. Aegis was often a shared burden between the jungler and support and rushed as fast as possible. The non-Aegis buyer would pick up the fast Oracles talked about earlier. Further advancements in item builds were often items that had secondary functions. Zhonyas Hourglass, Locket of the Iron Solari, Randuin's Omen, Shurelya's Reverie, Zeke's Herald. All of these items have combinations of active components, auras and utility. All of these items are designed to allow the team to be mobile and continuously moving, applying pressure on the map. Even the AD Carry, the role with the least flexible build, was no exception. In the group stages, CptJack would consistently get a Bloodthirster first on many AD champions, forgoing the expensive Infinity Edge. Bloodthirster was better choice in a low economy environment, it also allowed him to continue healing while moving between lanes and keep roaming with his team.

The idea of getting aura and team-based items is itself not new. Neither are aura rushes or naked Oracles on supports/junglers, although it is still rare. However, the biggest change we have seen how strongly Azubu places such a strong emphasis on their team-supporting items. They even change their entire farm mentality to support it.

For nearly the entirety of LoL, and in much of western DotA, support items have been considered something your support gets when they finally bank the money for it. In fact, the idea of the 0cs support is burned into the brains of the LoL community. However, Azubu has recognised just how valuable support items are. During the group stages, whenever someone recalled to heal or buy, Azubu`Lustboy would often and proceed to farm the minions there.

Take the third TSM v Azubu game from the Group Stages. Lulu rotated mid to farm the waves there. Mid lane rotated to the jungle or recalled. The jungler rotated to top lane or recalled. Top lane recalled or went bot. Like clockwork, Azubu would shift lanes to utilise their time and gold efficiently. But throughout this, Lulu would find farm. Indeed, by the mid-game mark, Lulu was sporting over 60 cs. That's unheard of in professional play. That's almost the level of farm some junglers would have. But there is a very strong reasoning behind this.

Supports are roles who are expected to benefit the team by getting off their rotation of utility/CC skills and heavily influencing fights through intangible benefits rather than damage. Having the survivability to cast those spells a second time doubles your usefulness in a fight. This is even more relevant in LoL thanks to the ability to buy Cooldown Reduction. CDR items not only allow you to get your key spells off more often, they are often paired with resistance or health stats which supports love. Furthermore the low cooldowns on spells in LoL compared to DotA should make Supports more influential as less is needed to survive to get your second, or even third spell rotation off. More influential spells means more powerful teamfights. More powerful teamfights means winning.

Indeed, this idea has been one of the key advancements of Chinese DotA over the past few years and responsible for the success of many Chinese teams. It perhaps somewhat curious that the World Elite League of Legends Team was not the first to utilise this especially as 820 and 2009, the WE DotA managers, were the captains of teams at the forefront of Chinese DotA development. Their DotA philosophy however, takes these ideas even further than we have seen in League of Legends.

Just like in LoL, support items are all very powerful items that contribute to all aspects of a team. However in DotA, anyone that gets farm should leverage the strength of these items. The role of the carry is not to selfishly farm items for himself, but to carry the team to victory. If that means buying items that are seen as "support" items, so be it. In DotA, we have seen this lead to heros such as Dragon Knight buying items like Pipe of Insight and Nature's Prophets buying Mekansm, over more selfish item choices such as BKB or Hand of Midas.

League of Legends has not reached this level of item theory evolution yet. Caster champions in LoL are capable of scaling, unlike their DotA counterparts, so we may not see Shurelya-rush Ahri in tournament play any time soon either. But there is no doubt that as we move to the Season 2 Championships, and with big changes planned for items in Season 3, itemisation theory in LoL will undergo even bigger revolutions.

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Timing has been a key aspect of real-time competitive play since the very beginning. But again, Azubu takes existing ideas and proceeds to push the boundaries further with them. Anyone capable of listening to Korean will have been rather surprised listening in to the voice communications of Azubu, especially if they were used to that of TSM or CLG. The Koreans time everything. From Summoner Spells, to wards, to the cooldown on spells they time it all. It is perhaps the unsurprising evolution from timing objectives such as Baron. After all, these things have known times and can be predicted. But it is the first time we have really seen a team take these things serious enough to continuously make a note of them throughout a game.

But timing is not just about making notes on your opponent. Timing is also about creating windows of opportunity for yourself and then using them. And this is where Azubu shines.

Bloodthirster as the first item on an AD Carry in lane has often to be considered superior to an Infinity Edge if you can use it to bully the other AD while you have an item advantage. This idea demonstrates the concept of a timing window. However, this example shows a weak example of being able to use your timing window effectively. In other games such as Starcraft, timing windows are designed to hit at a key point in the game when you have a clear advantage and can capitalise upon it to gain a further advantage either by doing damage to your opponent or seizing tempo to dictate the rest of the game. For example, Saviour's famous 3 hatch muta build was designed to contain a Terran player, take control of the game and place the Zerg player in the lead. (This is of course a simplified explanation.)

League of Legends suffers a unique problem that many other games do not have. The first problem is that each game is vastly different from the next due to everything from picks and bans to laning strategies. Therefore, there are very few standard methods to consistently create an advantage. The second problem is that are very few methods to utilise an advantage. The highest level of items in LoL, such as Infinity Edge and Trinity Force, are incredibly cost efficient. This means that it is rarely a viable strategy to amass many second-tier pure mid-game items such as Spirit Visage because in the long run you will be trumped in item quality by the other team. And with only 6 item slots, every one of them must count. As a result, we see two teams building incredibly similar items and the only difference is how fast they can achieve them. Therefore, the timing windows teams can create are purely dependent on their ability to farm as hard as possible.

Azubu eschew this idea and instead create timings of their own. This is where all their previous ideas come together. First, they create a low economy environment and seize control. This is perhaps the closest LoL will get to the equivalent of an opening build in Starcraft. Secondly, they obtain cost-efficient and team-based items. With these items, they then immediately go force a teamfight at an objective, often a tower. But how does this differ from the current timing windows teams use?

Azubu's cost-efficient and team-based items give them an immediate power spike they can take advantage of. Think back to the Bloodthirster and Infinity Edge comparison. The timing for a BT AD Carry to dominate an IE AD Carry is limited by how fast the other AD Carry can finish the IE. In a regular farming game, this is often a very small window. However in a low economy game this window is magnified, allowing the BT AD Carry more time to be stronger. Furthermore, by ending the laning phase as soon as possible and forcing big fights, the BT AD Carry shows their strength even more as they will be outputting more damage and surviving for longer. This magnifies the advantage the BT AD Carry has compared to a regular game when both players would likely continue to sit in lane and farm and maybe take a tower.

It is not just item based timings that Azubu uses. They use take advantage of the times when they are higher level thanks to successful ganks. Take for instance one of their games when they had a Maokai and Taric. Maokai's ultimate and Taric's W both increase the survivability of their team. This is not something new. However, what Azubu does is as soon as these champions reach key levels (level 9 for maxed Taric Shatter, or level 11 for Maokai's second level of ultimate) they will go force a fight. When Maokai reached his second level of ultimate, they marched up to a tower, threw down his ultimate in front of the tower and challenged their opponents to fight them and there as they proceeded to attack the tower. This is something teams will rarely do. Often, many teams prefer to wait for a positioning advantage to start a teamfight or wouldn't think to delay a push by twenty seconds more to gain one more key level. However, Azubu create their own advantage and force the other team to fight while they have a key advantage.

Another great example of a timing that Azubu utilised was in the Group Stages against TSM. Using a pink ward, they watched a TSM ward time out. Once vision was down for TSM, they immediately moved in on Baron and secured it for free. Azubu recognised that TSM would not have vision and would not suspect them to be in that area for approximately fifteen seconds. After all, if your ward on Baron just timed out having not seen anything, you would not suspect the enemy team to be near there. Nearly every team kills any wards as soon as they are spotted. Therefore they saw a timing window they could hit and took the opportunity presented to them.

By keeping track of the timers or approximate times on everything in game, Azubu can function like clockwork and take advantage of any window of opportunity given to them. They understand how long they have to utilise an advantage they hold. But most importantly, they are capable of creating their own windows of opportunity, and taking advantage of these timing windows. And all of this is thanks to their early game play, and careful itemisation choices.

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There is perhaps one final aspect of Azubu that should be touched upon. Unlike everything written before, it is not unique to them but it is worth mentioning.

Supports have the unique burden of needing to maintain ward vision for their team while still being gold starved. Even with GP10 items and openings to farm they are still under immense pressure to make big plays for their team. Indeed, it is often said that the support is the only reason any bot lane ever wins. Allow us to consider some of the most fearsome bottom lanes currently in League. CLG.NA's duo of Chauster and Doublelift. CLG.EU's duo of Krepo and Yellowpete. TSM's Xpecial and Chaox. TPA's Mistake and Bebe. WE's If and WeiXiao. All of these duos have something in common that teams such as Curse.NA lack.

Each of these supports have played carries at a high level before.



Supports who have never played carry positions before don't really develop a proper feel for how much each point of gold is really worth to them. Neither do they truly understand lane dynamics from the perspective of their team mates and what to expect. Indeed, many of these top supports have also played Carries before, which has helped them develop reactionary senses, reflexes and the ability to quickly analyse a team fight. For example, Chauster was once CLG's AD Carry and temporarily their AP Carry. Xpecial was an AP Carry before being picked up by TSM, and consistently beats Regi 1v1.

When all is said an done however, Azubu has shown us some of the biggest developments in League of Legends theory to date. As I finish, it is pertinent to note that many other successful teams have taken existing theory from DotA and used them to their success whether they realise it or not. The classic CLG.NA splitpush composition. The cold and efficient CLG.EU 4-protect-1 lategame farm compositions. The brutally relentless Moscow Five roaming gank squads and counter-jungling. It is possible the next big idea will come from DotA as well.

One of the biggest changes that we may see in LoL is the adaptation of the Chinese DotA "1st position, 2nd position, etc." hierarchy, where players are given priority on farm and gold. In a low economy game, every point of gold becomes increasingly important and must be allocated appropriately. With the AD Carry scaling the hardest it will likely be the 1st position, with the AP Carry 2nd position and everyone else somewhere from 3rd to 5th. Indeed, if the low economy meta becomes standard, we may even see a big change in popular hero picks. AP Mids such as Swain may become the new FotM as bruisers, junglers and supports become unable to afford key items such as Frozen Heart.

Azubu's playstyle will likely be at the forefront of the Season 2 Championships with other teams likely to copy their style and use it themselves. Dignitas recently claimed the IPL Elite Circuit by finally beating Team Dynamic with ease thanks to the Korean style of play and exorcising their ghosts. And they will not be the only ones trying to adapt the Korean style for their own use.

Teams will have to come up with all new strategies to answer the question: How will we respond to Azubu's playstyle? It will be interesting to see their answer.