Ban the Kennen: Playing against Rekkles and Fnatic
Considering that Kennen is currently a strong top lane pick and Fnatic’s Rekkles has a propensity for destroying with the champion, it’s almost unforgivable that G2 Esports didn’t ban him in League of Legends.
Yesterday, Fnatic took down G2 in a very exciting three-game series. Caps may have outplayed G2’s Perkz in the mid-lane, but the deciding factor was Rekkles on Kennen which decimated the G2 League of Legends roster.
Nobody should be surprised that his stellar performance on Kennen earned Rekkles the Player of the Series. Kennen has been a pocket pick for Rekkles over the course of this year. We have seen him pick it many times and consistently play well on the champion. He has a 71% win rate in the Spring Split and 100% win rate during Spring Finals!
While target banning pocket picks isn’t inherently a good strategy, banning Kennen is justifiable against Fnatic. Not only do you deny Rekkles access to his pocket pick, you also deny Soaz the option of taking Kennen AD in the top lane. This has been a very popular pick in the current meta, and we very often see Kennen bans for this exact reason.
Player of the Series: @RekklesLoL #EULCS
— LoL Esports (@lolesports) June 8, 2017
➡️ 17/2/9 K/D/A
➡️ 72% Kill Participation pic.twitter.com/Jw3SkllUmK
For goodness sake! It’s even on the Fnatic Bingo chart!
To help build the hype for tomorrows match between @G2esports and @FNATIC I thought it was time for a game of Fnatic Bingo. #EULCS pic.twitter.com/nkXHpZGg0p
— Drakos (@DanielDrakos) June 7, 2017
Granted, Rekkles wouldn’t have been stomping as hard without Soaz on Shen. The global presence of Shen made it impossible for G2 to catch Rekkles alone in a side lane.
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Not only was this used defensively, it was used very aggressively to collapse (from across the map) on Zven when he was trying to farm. Poor Zven wasn’t allowed to leave the base.
It’s advisable for opposing teams to show Rekkles the respect he is due.
While Fnatic may have had a rocky Spring Split, he is still one of the top, most veteran ADCs in the European League Championship Series.
When Fnatic can organize around him, they are virtually an unstoppable wrecking ball smashing through the European teams. Why give them a chance to pick up momentum?