A wild Nunu Jungle spotted at MSI 2017
G2 Esports surprised everybody when they chose Nunu for the jungle in both their games on Day 2 of MSI 2017 but was it worth it? It was quite the situation to watch in League of Legends.
Day 2 of the Group Stage at the Mid-Season Invitational was off to an exciting start. TSM had lost to SKT1, and Flash Wolves had just secured their first win of the tournament against Gigabyte Marines. Fans of League of Legends were in for a treat to see how the strategies would unfold this time around.
G2 Esports was getting ready to face off with Team WE. In champ select, several strong jungling champions were banned, including Elise, Ivern, and Lee Sin. G2 picked Lulu, Shen, and a surprise Kog Maw for Zven. Team WE went for Graves, Ashe, and Kled for 957’s top lane. Team WE started heavily banning more junglers in the second ban phase, targeting G2’s Trick. Banning Rengar and Kha’zix didn’t leave Trick with many options.
G2’s second pick phase answered our question and left the casters wondering. G2 locked in Nunu for the jungle. It’s difficult to imagine a more surprising jungle champion to be picked for such an important matchup at an international tournament. Nunu hasn’t been patched recently (not since 6.2) and the LCS isn’t playing with the 7.9 patch which made so many huge changes to tanks.
Graves was a rough matchup for G2 Trick’s Nunu pick. An early gank on bot lane left G2 without an answer to the heavily damaging Graves. Trick didn’t seem to have an answer while Graves chased him down lane and auto attacked him to death for First Blood.
The game quickly fell apart from there. Zven was caught out several times by an Ashe arrow. Even when Nunu was able to channel his ult, there wasn’t enough damage to follow up effectively. Even Perkz was unable to make anything happen on LeBlanc.
The advantage that Nunu was supposed to bring to the match was not apparent to anyone as Team WE celebrated their victory over G2 Esports.
It’s okay because G2 Esports brought out Nunu jungle again!
This made it even more baffling when G2 chose to select Nunu in the first round in their match against Gigabyte Marines. Why would they prioritize Nunu into an earlier pick phase? The odds of Nunu being banned must have been slim. He hasn’t been played competitively since 2014!
The game against GAM was very back and forth. At many points in the game, it looked very bad for G2 Esports. While Nunu managed to secure a couple kills and a handful of assists, I would say the real difference in this match up was Perkz on Fizz. Just look at how he cleans up 1v3 after Gigabyte Marines take Baron.
Next: Kled wrecks Flash Wolves at Day 1 of MSI 2017
I can’t find any substantial way in which Nunu contributed to the team composition. While it made for an exciting off meta pick, one can hope G2 decides not to use that again. Nunu offers very little against strong early game teams and contributes little to team fights unless he fully channels his ultimate move. I’m not a professional player, but I think almost any option would be better than Nunu in the LCS right now.