“What? I thought G2 won both games in the set?” is something you might say dear reader. But what’s real isn’t necessarily what’s reality. Let’s be completely honest – G2 lost Game 2. However, however, HOW-EV-ER, it seems that the Unicorns of Love couldn’t possibly allow their greatest rivals this split to lose, couldn’t possibly conceive of the notion that won games should be won, couldn’t possibly consider that maybe one shouldn’t teleport most members of the team into a small, highly telegraphed spot where three of some of the most game impacting ults could easily be used on them.
Let’s backtrack a little bit first. Game 1 was squarely G2’s win. No question about it. Twenty kills to five, eleven towers to three, over a 15k gold lead – that was their win fair and square. Moreover, Perkz had a dominating performance on his Orianna with a k/d/a of 9/1/7; he even got some solo kills on Exileh!
I just wanna show you guys how good Exileh is. This is UOL’s primary carry. He’s basically one of the best mids in EU right now, and Perkz styled on him! Absolutely ridiculous considering how rare solo kills are in professional matches, particularly against the top players.
And then we get to Game 2. I’m sure we all remember a short little poem that came about during last season’s control mage meta:
My Ryze is bad,
My Azir is worse,
You guessed it right –
I’m G2 Perkz!
So, I’m not one to say that Perkz deserved all the hate he got online that season, but man, it’s sometimes hard to deny that Perkz really needs to just buckle down and work on some of these champions. During Game 2, Perkz was the only one to go negative on G2’s side (besides the support, obviously) on his Azir. Moreover, his kill participation was atrocious – out of the seventeen kills that G2 acquired, he participated in seven with the next lowest being Trick with eleven. That’s just absurd.
UOL looks good.
Anyways, while Perkz was spectacularly failing at Azir, the rest of G2 was spectacularly failing all around the map. Time after time, G2 would overextend, get picked, and then lose something or UOL would force an engage, win the fight, and then take something. UOL just played extremely confidently throughout the game while taking every advantage they could, such as the catch they got right before 20 minutes that allowed them to take Baron almost as soon as it spawned.
And then G2 managed to just take Baron before UOL even realized what they were doing. Keep in mind, this is still under the “UOL looks good” heading. That’s cause UOL takes advantage of G2’s positioning errors during the resulting fight in order to snag kills on Expect and Trick. Then even though they lose a tower and a drake, they manage to get another three kills on Perkz, mithy, and Trick again.
UOL looks bad.
The game cools down for a bit before picking right back up when G2 tries to take Baron again. There, the Ivern bush funkiness along with Daisy causing some havoc and Jhin ulting in the background allow Xerxe to steal the Baron. So now, dear reader, you’re wondering how this is UOL looking bad, especially when they go and take both nexus turrets. Well, you see, that’s the issue.
They took the nexus turrets and then got almost got completely aced since the Jhin got chunked by Graves’ ult and Vizicsacsi and Hylissang (i.e. the tanks) had lost almost all their health just facetanking the towers. Consequently, there was basically no way to for them to turn around and win this fight. Moreover, they were actually at a slight item disparity since G2 had just spawned and spent all of their gold, whereas the large gold lead that UOL had just acquired was exactly that – coin in the bank, but not yet spent. Afterwards, G2 gets a couple towers and Elder Dragon.
UOL looks ugly.
Ok, so UOL at this point has a few options:
- they can try to pick a fight with G2, which they’ll probably immediately lose since Elder Dragon provides an absolutely ridiculous amount of damage to each spell and auto-attack;
- they can just wait out the less than two and a half minutes that the Elder buff lasts, while manipulating waves in order to try to siege G2; or
- they can try an extremely risky plan to backdoor the enemy team while THE ENEMY TEAM IS SITTING RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEIR NEXUS.
We all know which option they chose. Why? Only UOL can say, but as /u/KJShen and /u/Glorfindel212 discussed, it might’ve been because UOL were concerned that they’d thrown too hard and thought that they needed to end the game as soon as possible in order to prevent any further throws on their part.
Ok, so as to not completely denigrate their idea – it almost worked! If any number of minor things were different – if G2 didn’t have Elder so they wouldn’t have such ridiculous teamfighting power; if Ryze had Realm Warped the team closer to the nexus so that they could immediately start hitting it, instead of having to walk through Rumble’s ult, around Azir’s ult, and after the root from Varus’ ult wore off; if, instead of using Abyssal Voyage to get Ryze to the Ivern and the Jhin, they were positioned in such a manner that when the call was made Ryze would’ve been beside one of them and Tahm Kench beside the other, thereby having three points of entry into the base to split G2’s attention with instead of the two that actually happened – it might’ve worked!
But it didn’t. Did they have to do this? I don’t think so. Was it worth? Not at all.
Don’t get too mad UOL fans, I know I’ve thrown games away while trying to make big, flashy plays, why don’t you guys share some of yours? Or even some favorites from the competitive scene?
League of Analysis 