SKTT1 vs OMG was everything it was hyped to be. Best game by far of the first day of Group A. Both teams look so far ahead of what NA and EU typically show.
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Season 3 World Championships
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September 16th, 2013, 12:49
(This post was last modified: September 16th, 2013, 12:50 by Sullla.)
I finally managed to catch up with the last games this morning. Here are a few random thoughts from the first day of the tournament.
- The Korean teams are very good, but far from unbeatable (both SK T1 and Ozone already have losses). If you read the discussion forums at places like Reddit, the OGN fans constantly tell everyone that all of the teams in Korea are simply better at everything than everyone else. That doesn't appear to be the case. Ozone is very lucky not to be sitting with an 0-2 record right now. These teams are definitely skilled, but Korea is not destroying everyone in the way that many of the casters and analysts suggested. - Group B is completely wide open right now. Anyone other than poor Mineski could make it out of that group. It looks much more interesting than Group A, where the Korean and Chinese teams seemed to be noticeably better. - Vulcun and Gambit both had impressive showings yesterday. They play each other today, and that is going to be fun to watch. - Despite all of the time to scout teams, there have been some amazingly bad choices in the picks/bans phase. Some of these games are being won or lost in the picking phase. Solomid's decision to first pick Sona (over Ahri) was a game losing mistake; I think they would have had a decent shot to win their match against OMG if they had avoided that error. Reginald's Fizz was truly terrible in that one. Fnatic's last pick of Yorick in their game against Vulcun was equally bad, Yorick not fitting into their team comp at all, and leaving an easy lane matchup for the opposing Nasus. Weird stuff. You'd think that at this level of play, teams would avoid such obvious errors. According to the people tracking the numbers on Reddit, there were well over 1 million people watching the games live yesterday, once the 500k watching on Korean streaming sites get added to the Western ones. Over a million people live concurrently for the FIRST day of the tournament is pretty insane. I can only imagine what they'll get for the final. There's no question that events like this and DOTA's International are becoming big time sporting events. (September 16th, 2013, 01:28)Dp101 Wrote: That final game (gambit v ozone) was epic. I found Samsung Ozone quite disappointing, I had expected much more. Against Gambit they seemed to completely lose map awareness, giving up an uncontested Baron and the inhibitor turret for free shortly afterwards. IMHO, the best game was SKT1 vs. OMG, absolutely top notch gameplay. Also Faker in mid was really as impressive as the pre tournament hype suggested. 
I'm not sure that that's a fair analysis. Gambit's Baron was "uncontested" because they had a 10k gold lead, they had repeatedly swept out all vision in the top side jungle around the Baron, and the previous two times that Ozone's support had tried to go ward, Alex Ich's Ahri burst down Mata and killed him. Ozone was probably aware that Gambit was taking Baron, they simply couldn't do anything about it.
More impressive to me was how Gambit gained their lead in the first place, with Diamond outjungling Ozone's Dandy by a wide margin and Alex decisively winning the mid lane matchup against Dade. Dandy's jungle Jarvan wasted large amounts of time doing nothing, setting up ganks that went nowhere and waiting around for counterganks that didn't materialize. Diamond had a lead of something like 30-40 CS in the midgame, which is just enormous between junglers. Alex Ich's 9-1-8 scoreline pretty much speaks for itself. Gambit won mid and jungle, and did enough to break even in bot lane, which was enough to snowball the game to a win off of great objective control.
September 16th, 2013, 15:22
(This post was last modified: September 16th, 2013, 15:26 by Gustaran.)
 (September 16th, 2013, 14:16)Sullla Wrote: I'm not sure that that's a fair analysis. Gambit's Baron was "uncontested" because they had a 10k gold lead, they had repeatedly swept out all vision in the top side jungle around the Baron, and the previous two times that Ozone's support had tried to go ward, Alex Ich's Ahri burst down Mata and killed him. Ozone was probably aware that Gambit was taking Baron, they simply couldn't do anything about it. Your reasons why the Baron went uncontested may be valid, but that doesn't change the fact that this is what it was - uncontested. Ozone had 4 players alive IIRC and did neither try to stall a Baron attempt nor to steal it, which is rather rare at this level of play. Perhaps you are correct that they decided not to fight for it on purpose, but looking at the gold totals at this point in the match giving up Baron basically seemed like surrendering the game. I also feel that in OMG - SKT1 almost every team member seemed to fight for vision, so saying that the support was killed and therefore the team lacked vision is only half the story. Maybe the other teammates should have tried harder to secure vision around Baron, though I agree it is probably easier said than done when behind by such a large margin. And while Gambit certainly played well, especially in the beginning there were some clear mistakes by Ozone you don't see too often at this level of play: Mata at 8:18 flashing in only to get himself killed seemed simply like a huge blunder. And Ryze pushing up earlier mid with no vision and being blown up by Ahri & Eve was not exactly a brilliant decision either. Of course Gambit used their early advantage very well, but given the fact that Ozone was ranked #2 by some people, their strategical and mechanical play in this game was subpar - especially in comparison to the match between SKT1 and OMG.
Just to be clear, I don't think that we're disagreeing about this match.
 We both wrote that Gambit played very well, and Ozone was sloppy and off their game. My only point is that I hate when armchair strategists will blame a losing team for not being able to stop a Baron, or not having adequate ward coverage, or whatever. Maybe that's me talking as a support player, but it's just so insanely difficult to maintain vision when your team is 10k gold behind, and the other team is doing everything possible to sweep out wards and force you to play in the dark. In other words, I don't really blame teams in that situation for failing to contest objectives, because they are already so far behind that they have almost no chance, and it's often used as a point of lazy/easy analysis as to what went wrong. I find it much more interesting to examine how and why teams are able to build huge gold leads in the first place, and that was my point above. Really looking forward to the matches that start in a few hours. I hope we get a few more surprises like yesterday. |
