[Patch 3.10a: Worlds Balance] General Discussion - Page 46

I'm having trouble really getting at how this series unraveled—don't take it as a criticism, I mean I am, personally, unable to make out what allowed Alternate to prevail and made NiP fall here.

For all I've seen, it boiled down too:
1. Kerp > MiMer, by far, really far. Creaton+Jree < Freeze+Deficio in lane, and Freeze also has stronger teamfighting because he makes less dumb decision as EU.Zuna.
2. Bjergsen is better than FLord, however FLord is good enough that if given a lead he can take over the lane and snowball it.
3. Alternate are stronger when playing their highly aggressive playstyle, but seem to have trouble making plays when they start lacking confidence, which shows a lot when they're behind and hurt them when they don't take the initiative in the early game.
4. Winning top, and more importantly mid, lets Alternate either pull pressure on these parts of the map, relieving Creaton so he can still farm to relevance, or straight-up roam bot to bully Freeze, relieving them of their least favourable match-up. This also gives Aranae clear goals and objectives—I'm probably wrong on this, but it feels like the more idle he is, the more prone he is to making dubious calls, whereas having a set "I'll camp mid" makes him focus and prevents derps.

Which leads too:
5. The matches revolve a lot around mid because it's where the star player/play maker of each time is, and while the other lanes are skewed this one is the most balanced, thus the one where making your laner snowball as the more impact on the overall game. In turn it makes the jungle very important because of the pressure they can apply to tilt the mid match-up one way or the other.
6. Putting mid and the off-lane ahead allowed them to be threats and dictate the tempo of the game, making them rely way less on Creaton. In Alternate's wins he still had a lot of dubious flashes and decisions, but because at these points they only needed him to do damage and not dominate the fights it wasn't so impactful. On top of it, it's harder to punish him when their two other laners are such threats, giving him a bunch of leeway.


In game 1, Fizz is hard to gank while Diana isn't too strong early on, so a jungler like Vi couldn't really do much there. On top of that Vlad perma-pushing "closed" this lane too (although Kerp took a huge lead thanks to it so didn't need help), and I don't know why Aranae didn't go bot, but it removed a lot of what he could do, leading to screwing around and relinquishing the momentum to the lanes, with Bjergsen outdoing ForellenLord hard. Cue a big lead for NiP.

In game 2, it seems like the Blitz pick created a lot of pressure bot. Denying Freeze Cait also gave Creaton a very safe laner so he could farm well, despite still falling behind in cs. Blitz also put a lot of pressure on NiP's jungle at level 1, and the blue steal ultimately lead to a Renekton exp advantage after Alternate's blue was contested, letting Kerp dominate even harder.
More importantly, Bjergsen was on the much more easily gankable TF, and on top of that lacked his flash because of Blitz, allowing Aranae to camp him and let FLord snowball (FLord also got a little exp lead when he didn't follow Bjergsen as their blue was contested). As Kerp single-handedly ruined NiP's jungler it made a Bjergsen comeback much less likely as he wouldn't receive help, while focusing on mid even post-6 (FLord stayed mid, he didn't roam, he just tried to kill Bjergsen over and over again) neutralised the threat of TF ult (also the fact that he was so behind meant that even when he got to Gate bot he was unable to accomplish anything).
Alternate had strong midgame picks on top of that, so they were able to snowball hard by pushing all lanes and crush the inhib.

In game 3, despite Vi not being excessively effective making her focus on Diana before she hit her stride gave FLord the lead he needed to beat Bjergsen, and once both laners hit 6 they kept diving him again and again to make sure he'd be neutralised, again using Caitlyn to allow Creaton easy farming while Kerp did his thing of dominating MiMer.
Then, rather than focusing on mid, they spread over the whole area between top and mid (including the blue buff contest when they were stronger), effectively pulling people off of bot lane (at one point all of NiP were at their blue while Creaton was happy all alone in bot lane) to prevent the gap between their marksmen to get as wide as in game 1.
They somehow found their confidence again and went for plays, snowballing the big lead they had formed by then.


That's more or less the analysis I get from it, anyway. I'd be interested to hear anyone's opinion regarding what could explain how the series went.