Building off of my previous post on the discussion of itemization, I want to talk more about drafts and how seeing “winning” and “losing” drafts is a rather invalid way of analyzing League of Legends.

When analyzing professional League of Legends games, viewers should understand that pro players are not infalliable, therefore mistakes are often made throughout the game. In fact, as a quick thought experiment, assume that there exists a perfect game state in League of Legends that will always allow you to win your game, but you’re not a robot so you’re prone to making a mistake in a given game state in every second. So let’s say every second in-game you have a 1% chance at making a mistake. My next assumption will be that the game will last 1975 seconds or about 33 minutes (This is based off of the average game length from every region in 2020 before Worlds). By using a binomial distribution \(P(successes = x) = {n \choose x} p^x(1-p)^{n-x}\). So in this case \(x\) would be 1975 with \(n\) being 1975 and \(p\) is 0.99. The probability that absolutely every move in every given second is perfect, given that the professional player makes the right decision in a given second 99% of the time, is less than 0.0001%. And assuming all 5 players are coordinated perfectly in not making mistakes this probability would be raised to the power of 5. This is a very general experiment, but it does reveal how difficult it is to play the game “perfectly” as some analyst try to push viewers to assume is possible.

So what does this have to do with drafts? Well, while some drafts can be objectively better than others, what matters even more is how the other team denies those teams win conditions or how successfully they execute their own. In order to exemplify this, I want to go into a couple of drafts where people will say that the other team lost because of draft, when it was more because of problems that existed in the execution of the drafts.

For my first example, I want to go into LCK Summer Finals 2020 Game 1, Damwon Gaming (DWG) versus DRX. DWG, as the 1st seed in LCK Summer Regular Season, was given side pick, in which they chose Blue side. The large reason for choosing blue side is priority pick on an extremely strong meta champion that other champions can be drafted around. In this case, one of the biggest first picks in all the major regions have been Caitlyn. Now let’s look deeper into the draft.

Patch 10.16

Blue (DWG)

Ban 1: Lucian Pick 1: Caitlyn

Ban 2: Karma Pick 2: Volibear

Ban 3: Ashe Pick 3: Lux

Ban 4: Irelia Pick 4: Syndra

Ban 5: Ekko Pick 5: Ornn

Red (DRX)

Ban 1: Pantheon Pick 1: Jhin

Ban 2: Sett Pick 2: Lillia

Ban 3: Twisted Fate Pick 3: Renekton

Ban 4: Hecarim Pick 4: Pyke

Ban 5: Zoe Pick 5: Akali

Let’s first break down the logic for these draft decisions. DWG’s first ban Lucian was aimed at Chovy, DRX’s star midlaner. Lucian is extremely strong in the midlane right now with strong burst potential and with correct use of his dash, is very difficult to catch. The second ban, Karma, is to stop the strong flex between top, mid, and support. Doran has had a history of performing with Karma top, so by denying the triple flex, it avoids not being able to counterpick when they could have. Their final ban is towards Ashe. As DWG has first pick, they put priority on being able to pick Caitlyn. One of the strongest answers in the meta is to trade the poke and damage for utility through Ashe, but by denying that opportunity, answering Caitlyn is not as easy. Let’s now go through DRX’s first round of draft.

DRX’s first ban is Pantheon, which LPL and LCK has shown to create huge kill and roam potential as a support and could be flexed as a mid pick. Beryl has shown some games on it already and DWG probably has the effectiveness of Pantheon from extra data such as soloq and scrims. DRX’s next ban is against Sett, which has been used as a quadruple flex in Korea as a Top, Jungle, Mid, and Support pick. Sett also has good lockdown which might be a problem if it’s easy to burst someone that gets caught out. Their last ban is on Twisted Fate, which has been a high priority Mid pick thoughout the split. When Twisted Fate hits level 6, both lanes will have a difficult time pushing for priority without huge risk of not only worrying about the jungler, but also the mid laner. This can negate a lot of stronger early games from counterpicks and drafts.

So as expected, DWG first picks Caitlyn which has been strong as a first pick in a way that does not give away much about team composition. In response, DRX picks Jhin and Lillia. Jhin has been used as an answer to Caitlyn in many regions, as it allows for equal trading in lane and play a range advantage in teamfights. Lillia on the other hand is an interesting pick, which has been brought up as a champion of skill expression with her release in patch 10.15. One of the first big players to really try playing around with Lillia is Tian, who ended up failing to push Funplus Phoenix past Victory 5 in LPL Finals. However, DWG Canyon pointed out in an interview with Ashley Kang that the champion has large amounts of skill expression with the champion asking how well the player can utilize her movement speed passive. Furthermore, in LCK, Pyosik has shown some good results with Lillia and has shown that she is great at early game counter jungling and the question then becomes how well a player can navigate a teamfight using Lillia’s movement speed.

In response, DWG pick Volibear and Lux. Volibear is a flex pick with a strong priority heavy top laning phase, or a good utility ganking jungler with a lot of tower dive potential. The benefit of flexing this early is that you’re not sure whether you’re counterpicking for top or for jungle if you’re DRX. The Lux pick is a great synergy with Caitlyn, as landing a bind would lead to a 3+ second root that could lead to a kill or at least lane priority/control.

As a final pick, I think without 100% certainty, Renekton was chosen because of the lack of knowledge as to whether Volibear would be a flex pick or not. Nuguri has shown to play Volibear top before and Renekton would at least leave this to be a skill matchup. And if it is not Volibear top, Renekton still ends up being a good answer to a lot of other top laners.

With the final round of bans, DWG have bans on Irelia and Ekko, which is to deny Chovy even further, as Chovy is probably the strongest member and DRX and one of the big reasons why DRX would be able to win the game. DRX, on the other hand, opt to ban Hecarim and Zoe. Hecarim is a ban in consequence of the Volibear flex, as Volibear is not a confirmed jungler, Hecarim is able to match Lillia extremely well. So the ban is to avoid any counterplay against the Lillia pick. The final ban Zoe, is due to the composition DWG is running. With Caitlyn and Lux creating space during teamfights, Zoe has a lot of room to poke out the enemy team before objective fights, making it difficult to engage on the side of DRX.

So DRX’s first pick after these bans is Pyke, obviously reserving counterpick for Chovy. Pyke is a great pick given Keria’s ability to find picks and playmake. As DWG’s final picks they pick Syndra and Ornn, which provides DWG with a really strong scaling option into late game, securing the win if they can keep an even game state for long enough. In response, Chovy is picked Akali, giving kill potential and rounding out DRX’s composition to aim to find picks and accelerate the game. Now let’s talk about the matchups more specifically.

Top Lane:

The Renekton against Ornn matchup is somewhat of a skill matchup. The nature of the matchup is give and take. Ornn can take a lot more abuse than other tank toplaners which makes Renekton’s kill threat a lot weaker than with other top laners. But, that does not mean he doesn’t have kill threat on Ornn. If Ornn attempts to push for priority without having the necessary resources (jungle pressure, items, etc.) to do so, Ornn will lose to Renekton. But on an even bigger scope, how do these champions play into their compositions? For DWG, Ornn provides a powerful frontline into the late game that no champion on DRX really has an answer to unless they are ahead. For DRX, Renekton provides stronger early game and strong dive potential. Keeping that in mind, let’s look into the jungle matchup.

Jungle:

A lot of LCK and LPL players have pointed out that Lillia is an extremely skill expressive champion, reflecting how well a professional can use her speed buff to navigate fights and apply pressure. We saw a good showing of Lillia in LPL Summer Finals through JDG Kanavi. While, he didn’t win, he showed Lillia’s ability to create early aggression by stealing camps early and being able to kite out a lot of junglers as well as provide a good way to engage if a well placed ultimate is activated. In this case, Pyosik definetly has the mechanical prowess to pilot Lillia and into Volibear, Lillia has the ability to kite him out in any fight. Volibear does not need too much of an introduction here. He provides a lot of tower dive pressure as well as a very straightforward game plan, which makes it very easy for anybody on DWG to follow up.

Mid Lane:

How both midlaners play is fundamentally different, with Syndra being a control mage that scales extremely well into late while Akali has much more kill potential early and way more opportunities to pick off stragglers in teamfights or rotations. The question in laning phase is how much Showmaker is willing to respect Chovy’s Akali because Akali’s all-in early can lead to a terrible laning phase for Syndra, or the Syndra can respect Akali more and give up more CS in return.

Bot Lane:

The laning phase matchup is a skill matchup with the trading patter for Jhin eneabling to go even and pressure for lane advantage against Caitlyn. But the biggest reason why he’s counterpicked often against Caitlyn is his ability to match range if not out range Caitlyn during teamfights with his ultimate and W. Furthermore, with Rapidfire Cannon, Jhin can easily poke heavily with his auto attack. However, supports dictate the pace and the dynamic of the bot lane. In this case, with Keria on Pyke, they have a means to accelerate the game quickly with his hook as well as his gold generation, in addition to his ability to roam and outplay in teamfights. Lux on the other hand, can engage by landing her bind, but more often than not in this matchup will look to hold it to disengage against Pyke. Lux however comes with the benefit of free bush checks and long range nuke damage for teamfights which complements the playstyle Caitlyn provides.

So why did people say that DRX “lost” draft here? Well the lack of an answer to Ornn as well as the fact that DWG’s composition just scales better. In order to face this problem with Ornn, DRX needs to be further ahead and win the game. So, if you look at the singular win condition of respecting pressure and scaling for items, of course DWG has the better composition. But, the game isn’t so clear cut in that win conditions are the same. DRX’s composition provides a lot of outplay and force and should be taken advantage of to create early leads. With a strong topside with Renekton, Lillia, and Akali, getting first Herald should not be difficult on the side of DRX. Furthermore, if Renekton pushes Ornn in, it’ll take a much longer time for Ornn to scale up to the items he needs to be unkillable. Next, with the Pyke pick, Keria needs to be looking to make points of acceleration in the game by coming around for a surprise all-in and execute, creating a considerable lead for DRX. If DRX was able to accelerate the game enough, DWG would have been too behind to be able to win the game. However, this is not what happened.

In the end the game played out with both teams respecting pressure and Ornn basically becoming unkillable, thereby leading to DRX’s loss in Game 1 and later on the sweep. But this is not a problem so much with draft, but rather how the game was played out. This is a really important distinction that should not be thrown under the blanket term of “winning” draft or “losing” draft. The next draft I would like to talk about in my next post will be 2020 LPL Summer Finals Game 4, which will also show why itemization isn’t so clear cut as people sometimes make it out to be.