Let's talk about Ezreal. While there was a time when he was considered to be a weak pick, ever since Season 2 during the Holy Trinity of ADCs he has been incredibly popular. Even after several nerfs he remained a nearly constant pick despite mixed results in terms of effectiveness. But like a phoenix rising from the ashes, Ezreal would be reborn and reclaim his former popularity. Although, this time he was a little blue.

Blue Build Ezreal is something almost every player has experienced in their matchmaking career. This build revolves around building blue items such as Muramana and Iceborn Gauntlet and abuses Ezreal's low cooldown on Mystic Shot and the fact that it applies on-hit effects. It is incredibly good for kiting and does decent damage, but relies heavily on snowballing. Playing from a deficit is incredibly hard because a lot of gold is required for the full effects of the build to kick in. Regardless, it became the go to build on Ezreal in all situations for the general LoL player base.

This sparked many debates about the merits of the build and whether or not the extra utility was worth sacrificing the raw damage output of an ADC with a traditional damage oriented build. Although it took a bit longer than expected, pro players found out the best way around this was to simply play Blue Ez in the Mid lane. This allowed them to keep all of the pokey utility while still staying relevant in the late game. Ezreal is incredibly safe in a solo lane due to Arcane Shift so this evolution was only natural.

Blue Ez Mid has been popular in OGN for several weeks now and it's slowly working its way into the NA LCS. It was picked three times in Week 6 and was 1-2 overall. Mancloud particularity seems to be liking Blue Ez as he played it in both of Vulcun's Week 6 games. Three games is a pretty small sample size and doesn't do the pick justice. If we expand the scope the include OGN Blue Ez Mid has been much more successful. You just can't get rid of Ezreal and he doesn't seem to be going anywhere soon as Blue Ez Mid is only going to increase in popularity in NA as the weeks go on.

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Bans:       

6        CLG        73.8K
vs.
17        VES        81.0K

Bans:       

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Both teams entered this game slightly out of their comfort zone. Vileroze rejoined Velocity from his leave in Week 5, but returned to the Top lane while ecco remained Mid. CLG chose to field a double AD strategy, with Ezreal Mid. Although Vileroze looked underwhelming in his new role, missing quite a few Shadow Dashes, and getting fairly bullied by Nien’s Irelia and jiji’s incessant Nunu, CLG’s draft and play was even more lackluster, costing them the game.

CLG demonstrated their superior experience and game knowledge, taking the early map and objective control. Double AD allowed them to push in Bot and Mid turrets, while Nien kept control of Top lane. CLG secured the first Dragon of the game and even snuck a Baron with just Nunu and Tristana.

However, CLG’s draft meant their team fighting would need to be extremely crisp. In OGN, we often see double AD paired up with extreme amounts of front line disruption, namely in the form of Zac. This allows the team to create space and stall out the teamfight, letting the power of two AD carries shine in an extended DPS war. With only Irelia and Nunu for distraction and Crescendo for lockdown, CLG could not afford to fight sloppy. Crisp execution meant they could focus down anyone trapped in the duration of Crescendo and Absolute Zero, but any sloppy positioning from CLG would destroy the delicate balance required to pull off their strategy. This was exacerbated by Velocity’s composition: Thresh, Lee Sin, Orianna, Shen, and Varus all come with their own form of CC to lock down CLG’s front line or back line.

The unsung hero though for Velocity, was Evaniskus.


Either by lack of practice or lack of respect, CLG played a very sloppy game against Velocity. Link consistently found himself ahead of his tank line and thus singled out by a Death Sentence from Evaniskus. Whenever CLG managed to assert some map control, with great map rotation to clear out Velocity’s jungle and towers, Evaniskus would find the right engage and instead turn the tables on CLG. Although Velocity were slowly losing out on objectives, they managed to retain the kill lead, and thus stayed close in gold and high in morale.

Despite these setbacks, CLG still abused the zoning and poke of Blue Ezreal with the raw siege damage of a Bood Boil-Rapid Fire Tristana, and were the first team to take an inhibitor tower. But in the ensuing fight over the inhibitor, everything went wrong for CLG. CLG won the initial engagement, but Doublelift flashed for the kill onto ecco. This bought time for Lee, Shen, and Varus to return to the field sporting Homeguard. With CLG low from the earlier engage, Velocity chased them down and mopped up both AD Carries, allowing them to take Baron and momentum for the game. Velocity used Baron to siege and a clutch Death Sentence opened up the inhibitor for Velocity. This enabled them to fully abuse Shen’s ability to split push. Velocity would secured a second Baron uncontested, before winning the final teamfight and taking their second game off of CLG.

CLG demonstrated the potential of a double marksmen lineup to control objectives, but in every teamfight, Death Sentence, Flay, and Shockwave (and sometimes Shadow Dash) found the priority targets, locking up CLG’s DPS and buying time for maplestreet do all the counter damage.

Week 6 of the LCS not only brought us a new name for the League's ranged auto-attacking Champions, but also a resurgence of marksmen rarely seen so far this season: the "hypercarries." Named for their nearly-insurmountable strength in the late game, hypercarry marksmen such as Vayne, Kog'maw, and Twitch sacrifice early game safety for the deadly force of powerful steroids, percent health damage, or extraordinary range. However, thus far in the NA LCS, late-game might has been eschewed for laning dominance (through damage, poke, or safety), as shown by the most frequent markman picks: Caitlyn, Ezreal, and Draven. In fact, until Week 6, Draven was picked or banned at least once every week but his passive nerf and this renewed preference towards hypercarry marksmen kept him out of Champion Select. In comparison, 2 of 5 Ashe picks, 2 of 6 Kog'maw picks, 3 of 8 Twitch picks, and 4 of 8 Vayne picks occurred this week, a week which also included one pick of the more frequently seen Tristana.* This statistical explosion of these Champion choices suggests that their inclusion in Week 6 is not an anomaly but a shift in strategic thinking within the NA scene.

One reason for this change might be the update to Patch 3.9 for the NA LCS this week. Certainly this explains the lack of Draven picks: the removal of his signature bleed damage from Wicked Blades is a massive nerf to his laning presence, though going from frequently picked/banned to NO picks/bans may overstate the size of this nerf. Only one other change might suggest a patch-related reason for an increase in late-game marksmen Champions and that's the increased death streak gold. This change implies that even a hypercarry might reach deadly strength when properly fed, since the value of continual kills is now far greater. However, the main reason for a return of late-game marksmen is undoubtedly the sudden adoption of the Dual Marksmen composition in the NA LCS. Four of this week's eight games featured a marksmen Champion in both the standard duo lane and one of the solo lanes. The hypercarry marksman is essential in both versions of this composition: in one, the hypercarry remains in the duo lane and a marksmen with more mid-game strength (such as Ezreal) gives the team a damage threat while the hypercarry reaches its full potential while in the other there are simply two hypercarries and the opposing team is forced to deal with two major damage threats. Though the Dual Marksmen composition only yielded a single victory this week, the prevalence and strength of Bulwark-building junglers suggests that it is unlikely we have seen the last of either the composition or the hypercarries which are so integral to it.

* As a side note, Ashe is one of only two Champions that have been picked 5 times or more and holds an 100% win rate. The other is Riven. LEARN YOUR FROST ARCHER NA.

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Bans:       

25        Dig        57.5
vs.
16        CLG        48.8

Bans:       

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The Game of the Day for Day 2 was a fast-paced bloodbath between scene veterans Dignitas and CLG. Champion select brought some surprises in CLG's choice to go with the increasingly popular Double Marksmen strategy and the selection of the rarely-picked Kassadin for scarra. There was little action early in the game: only a trade of Blue buffs between the two junglers and a few failed ganks. The craziness began with the duo laners in the bottom lane engaging the first of many fights. Doublelift managed to grab first blood on patoy with a timely Expunge, but moments later scarra Teleported in, helping imaqtpie's Varus to secure two kills in response. Two minutes later scarra roamed to the top lane with crumbzz to gank Link and bigfatlp. They killed Link's squishy Twisted Fate almost immediately, but stuck around too long without getting bigfatlp because Nien's Vayne arrived and cleaned up KiWiKiD and scarra. The high kill count of the game mostly derived from ganks and teamfights that occurred similarly to this one: scarra and Crumbzz roamed together as a pair with massive mobility and execute potential and picked off CLG members early, only to die due to overcommitment, poor positioning, or the reinforcing strength of CLG's semi-global ultimates. Nevertheless, against a Vayne, Twitch, and Twisted Fate, dignitas' execution duo allowed the team to pull far ahead in both objectives, kills, and turrets. At 22:45 CLG changed the tempo of the game with a powerful teamfight initiated by Link's Destiny/Gate, getting CLG a 4:1 trade and pushing them to an 800 gold lead after their previous 2K deficit. However, dignitas fought right back by disregarding their better judgment and attacking Baron, which they miraculously took before CLG arrived and turned that advantage into a free three kills and CLG's middle inhibitor. Though CLG still managed to find kills on dig members through the rest of the game, dignitas' lead was insurmountable. They continued to bring down turrets and objectives by zoning CLG's squishy carries with their deadly and well-itemized assassins. After a little over thirty minutes, dignitas had demolished all of CLG's inhibitors and finally returned two minutes later to finish off the Nexus. With this loss, CLG was not only 0-2 for the week, but they were now tied in the standings with fellow S2 Troika members TSM and dignitas.

Week 6 was truly the calm before the storm. With a bye week scheduled between Week 8 and 9 to avoid conflict with The International 3, there are no more eight game weeks left in the season. Riot is packing 44 games into the last three weeks of play, including a monstrous 20 game super week. That's a lot of League of Legends left to play and with the standings being as close as they are, a lot can change over the course of those games. Looking at the near future, Week 7 is an incredibly important week for both Coast and Curse, who are tied in 6th place. That's the magic cutoff point for the playoffs, so both teams are desperate to not fall down to 7th. Coming out of Week 7 we could be looking at a vastly different landscape in terms of the standings.