League of Legends: thoughts from the first two days of LPL play

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INCHEON, SOUTH KOREA – NOVEMBER 03: Team Invictus Gaming of China celebrates their winning Finals match of 2018 The League of Legends World Championship against Team Fnatic at Incheon Munhak Stadium on November 3, 2018 in Incheon, South Korea. (Photo by Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images) /

Two days worth of matches has gone in the books for the LPL. We’ve seen plenty of strong showings individually and from teams, but what have we learned? Here are some quick thoughts on the first two days of LPL matches.

As the first two days of play in the LPL come to a close, we’ve seen the defending champions pick up where they left off, a few new challengers to the throne emerge, and plenty of pocket picks. Which players and teams stood out after the first four matches of the season?

Today we take a look at each of the four sets (best of two) played between the first eight teams. For each match, we’ll see what we managed to learn about the meta, the players, or the teams from the results.

Ning is a monster (Invictus Gaming vs. Topsports Gaming)

Perhaps the most underrated player on the team, Ning had two incredible showings as the defending champions started their title defense with a clean sweep of TOP. In game one, he busted out an off-meta pick in Kayn but ended up with seven kills and more gold than either of his solo laners.

In the second game, Ning put up an incredible 5/1/14 scoreline on another off-meta pick in Zac. That performance included having a 95% kill participation and doing almost 14% of the team’s damage on a tank.

When you’re putting down numbers like that and styling on other teams by playing champs that were not picked or banned since, you deserve the two MVP awards for the series as Ning did here. Just imagine if he’d gotten to play Sejuani or Camille.

SoloQ players are going to hate Doinb (FunPlus Pheonix vs. Rogue Warriors)

FunPlus (“FPX”) easily handled the Rogue Warriors in their match on the first day of play, but we also got to see FPX mid laner Doinb break out a pocket pick of his own: Yasuo. And, just like every Yasuo on the enemy team in your soloQ games, Doinb went off, posting 4/1/8 scoreline. He also contributed 23.7% of his team’s damage, had an 85.7% kill participation, and was up nearly 4,000 gold over Rogue Warriors’ mid laner HuaTian by the time the game mercifully ended.

Rogue Warriors were so scared by Doinb’s performance in Game 1 that they actually banned Yasuo during the second ban phase of Game 2. That was the first (and only) time the Unforgiven was banned, forcing Doinb onto Kled. Although he didn’t perform as well on the mid Kled pick, you can thank Doinb’s Game 1 performance for “inspiring” your mid to first-time Yasuo in soloQ.

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