League of Legends: MSI team preview – Bombers

The roster

Top: Min “Mimic” Ju-seong

Home country: South Korea
Most-played champions: Urgot, Kennen, Aatrox

Mimic was a stud among OPL top laners in Split 1, posting an ungodly 9.52 KDA buoyed by the most kills and fewest deaths in the league among top laners. Although his gold and kill contributions were middle of the pack, Mimic proved himself to be a capable, independent laner. He posted the best CSD and Gold differential at 15 and the second-most solo kills among top laners.

Jungle – Choi “BalKhan” Hyun-jin

Home country: South Korea
Most-played champions: Lee Sin, Kha’Zix

When you see a champion pool like BalKhan‘s, you expect the player to be driving play out of the jungle and boy is this guy ever doing that. He led all OPL junglers in kills and assists in Split 1. While his KDA and kill participation leave a lot to be desired, his high damage and gold leads at 15 minutes indicate that his deaths generally come later in the games and are usually worth for his team.

Mid – Tommy “ry0ma” Le

Home country: Australia
Most-played champions: Lissandra, Leblanc, Ryze

The first Aussie on Oceania’s number on team, ry0ma has spent a fair amount of time in the OPL on teams like Chief Esports and Sin Gaming (and the infamous Tainted Minds). This season ry0ma leads OPL mids in all the categories you would expect – best KDA, fewest deaths, highest GPM – but he’s not massively above his competition like BalKhan and Mimic are. In Oceania, that competition is not nearly as good as he will face at MSI.

ADC – Victor “FBI” Huang

Home country: Australia
Most-played champions: Kai’Sa, Ezreal

If there’s a guy to watch out for on Bombers, my money would be on FBI. This guy has the highest KDA and most kills of anyone – regardless of position – in the OPL. This guy outputs over 650 damage per minute, which would be respectable in the LCS let alone the OPL (he’s almost 100 DPM above the second-best ADC in this statistic).

The one thing that does concern me is that FBI doesn’t tend to leverage these stats through great early games. Although he has a gold and CS lead in laning phase, he also has the lowest first blood rate of all OPL ADCs.

Support – Jake “Rogue” Sharwood

Home country: Turkey
Most-played champions: Alistar, Tahm Kench, Braum

But a reason for those laning struggles can be found by looking at his support. For a guy on a team as dominant as Bombers, Rogue hasn’t been nearly as dominant as I would expect for someone in his position.

He dies more than most OPL supports, his champion pool is tiny (he only played five supports during the whole season and playoffs), and his vision score is right in the middle of the pack. If you’re the support on the best team in the league and you’re not dominating vision (he’s in the bottom half of the league in wards cleared per minute) that’s an issue.