What League of Legends pros are playing: Wunder’s Top Lane Pyke

First of all, let’s take a look at the rune choices. They’re very basic and not too dissimilar to a support Pyke. Wunder opts for Aftershock as a keystone as it makes quite a squishy champion a lot tankier whenever crowd control lands (like his Q – Bone Skewer or E – Phantom Undertow). This is followed by Demolish for easier access to tower plates, as well as Second Wind and Revitalize to make his Passive – Gift of the Drowned Ones even more obnoxious.

As for the secondary tree, Wunder takes Presence of Mind to ensure he doesn’t run low on mana during important teamfights, as well as reducing the cooldown of his Ultimate – Death From Below, which is excellent for G2’s constant teamfighting playstyle. Finally, he rounds out the runes with Legend: Tenacity to make Pyke even more slippery in teamfights. The top laner then adds Adaptive Force, Armor, and then Armor/Magic Resist depending on his lane opponents main source of damage.

When it comes to the item build there aren’t many surprises either. Wunder kicks off with a Tiamat to improve his wave clear, then follows with an immediate Boots of Mobility purchase to manoeuvre around the map much more efficiently. From there, it’s straight lethality – building Youmuu’s Ghostblade and Duskblade of Draktharr to increase damage in teamfights with his large lethality ratios on three of his four abilities. The build finishes with a Guardian Angel to add even more annoyance in teamfights, and one more lethality item, Edge of Night, for good measure.

In the early game, the thinking behind this pick is to push waves out quickly and look to roam around the map to group for small skirmishes or ganks towards the middle lane. Falling behind is the opposite of the goal, and as demonstrated in G2’s win against SKT in the group stage, its quite easy to hand kills over to the enemy team early on.

Ultimately in the first 10 minutes Wunder is focused on avoiding 1v1s and accruing enough gold for his first three items – Tiamat, Boots of Mobility, and a Serrated Dirk. He achieves this by darting in and out of vision to remain healthy using his Passive’s health regeneration, and picking up CS.

It’s in the mid and later stages of the game when this pick really comes online, particularly when paired with G2 Esports’ hyper-aggressive, perma-fighting strategy. Pyke can be utilised for picks using his W – Ghostwater Dive to roam around the map to target vulnerable members of the enemy team, using his Q – Bone Skewer followed by E – Phantom Undertow to pick them off. But it’s in skirmishes and teamfights when the power of the Pyke is felt most.

Thanks to his relatively low cooldowns with Youmuu’s and Duskblade cooldown reduction, Pyke can constantly get in the face of his opponents using his Q and E, making him a menace in teamfights. And that’s not to mention the most important piece of his kit – his ultimate Death From Below. Not only does his R execute enemies at about one third HP, but it also shares gold with an assisting team-mate, extending G2’s gold lead even further than usual, making Pyke the perfect choice in the top lane (or mid) for this G2 line-up.

Add Pyke’s entire kit to the unstoppable force that is G2 Esports and their unmatched ability in teamfights, and it is no surprise that they lifted the MSI trophy in Taipei. The current European champions were already a frightening opponent for most teams, but now Wunder has shown he has a number of tricks up his sleeve that will keep every EU outfit guessing heading into the summer split. The only question we can ask is, what will they surprise us with next?

Will you be heading into solo queue with Wunder’s top lane Pyke in mind? Would you like us to cover any other unique pro picks? Let us know in the comments below!