League of Legends LCS draft or execution: An analysis of TSM vs. Echo Fox

Game 2

Echo Fox’s draft

Echo Fox’s draft looked pretty good coming out of picks and bans. Corki and Jinx combo well with Jarvan IV’s ability to buff attack speed in team fights. Braum is also a strong support that combos well with Jinx in lane.

This is clearly a late-game team fighting team with two carries with immense scaling. But one odd aspect I noticed was that Echo Fox had the option to select Tahm Kench instead of Braum and choose not to. This seems odd since TSM was able to effectively get onto and kill ADC Apollo “Apollo” Price and/or Fenix last game even with Echo Fox having a Kindred.

On the top of the map, Chogath scales well into the late game and also synergizes well with Jarvan IV’s attack speed buff, but he is not currently in the meta, is vulnerable to ganks, and his crowd-control is very inconsistent.

In this spot, Ornn would fill a similar role but would be less likely to die to a gank, provide another form of hard-engage or peel and arguably scale even better into the late game than Chogath. The small upside to picking Chogath is that you gain lane priority in top lane for the first few levels, far less than what Ornn would have brought to the table. This might have been an issue with Colin “Solo” Earnest’s champion pool or was just an oversight by the coach.

TSM’s draft

TSM’s draft is a night and day difference from Game 1. TSM drafted a very strong team fight/dive composition that can start fights early and does not even sacrifice scaling or lane priority away for it.

Vladimir, Galio, Reksai, Lissandra and Kalista form a beautiful dive/team fight composition that has multiple options in how to engage a fight, has a ton of crowd control in order to keep it going and is potent at almost every point in the game. This gives TSM a lot of flexibility to choose when they want to force objectives and when they want to sit back and wait on items.

It is nearly impossible to peel this dive composition off your carries as they have multiple gap closing abilities, knock-ups, a taunt, and multiple roots to go with it. Bot lane and mid lane have a lot of gank assist and Vladimir is a very self-sufficient laner to survive in the top lane.

TSM also made a very intelligent decision to ban Kindred this go around. This pick helped neutralize not only some of TSM’s hard engages in Game 1 but also neutralized Akaadian from being able to do almost anything in the early game.

Comparing the two drafts

Echo Fox looks to have lane priority early in almost every single lane yet again, however, there are two HUGE differences this time around.

After level six all three of these lanes effectively swap from being in Echo Fox’s favor into TSM’s favor. Also, TSM drafted a winning jungle matchup to help them get through the early levels.

Akaadian has free reign to gank whichever lane he wants because TSM is favored in the top lane jungle 2v2, the mid lane jungle 2v2 and even post level six TSM is favored in the bot lane jungle 3v3. While Echo Fox’s draft looked good on the surface, it matches up very poorly vs TSM’s draft. Unless they gain advantages before level six or they refuse to fight for objectives until late game where Jinx and Corki can carry, they will get decimated.

 How the game played out

TSM decimated Echo Fox this game. TSM’s draft setup Akaadian to succeed and he moved around the map and ganked lanes to his heart’s content, which netted TSM a huge early game advantage.

TSM was then able to expand this lead by forcing team fight after team fight and eventually snowballed this lead into a victory. The game was very one-sided with an ending kill score of 18 kills for TSM and only three kills for Echo Fox.

Conclusion

TSM drafted a very potent team composition that was also very good against what Echo Fox had brought to the table. While TSM clearly out drafted Echo Fox, this does not explain the game being so one-sided.

In Game 1, Echo Fox won the draft but they still almost lost. This game TSM won the draft and they completely decimated Echo Fox.

It is true that TSM drafted more for the early game in comparison to Echo Fox’s draft in Game 1, however, the draft is a poor excuse to lose a game 18-3. Echo Fox constantly fought against TSM when TSM’s composition was stronger than Echo Fox’s.

Echo Fox had no business contesting early dragons or Rift-Heralds and they chose to anyway. Had Echo Fox just given up early objectives and waited to make their stand later in the game, they would have a chance to win the game. The final verdict is Echo Fox had a bad draft and poor execution that led to their defeat.