League of Legends LCK: how Gen.G’s Volibear support helped them take down Griffin
By Josh Tyler
In a surprising upset in professional League of Legends, Gen.G took down the best team in the LCK, Griffin, thanks to an unconventional pick.
Most watchers of professional League of Legends would have thought that this morning’s LCK bout between Griffin and Gen.G would be a one-sided affair. It turns out that they were right, but for the wrong reason.
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In a stunning upset, Gen.G defeated Griffin 2-0 in the series, marking only their second series loss of the Summer Split. However, the victory by Gen.G wasn’t the only thing about this series that was stunning. Fans were also probably stunned by how they dominated that first game for a win.
For their last pick in the Game 1 draft, Gen.G showed a team that appeared to have Camille top, Sejuani jungle, Kalista ADC, and Lux support, with just their mid lane left for the counter pick. However, Gen.G shocked everyone by revealing that the Lux was actually going to be their mid lane pick into Irelia, and instead locked in Volibear for their support.
This marked the first game that Volibear was played in LCK in the Summer Split in years. And shockingly, it worked.
Gen.G’s bot lane of Park “Ruler” Jae-hyuk (on Kalista) and Kim “Life” Jeong-min (on Volibear) dominated the game, going a combined 5/2/21 in Game 1. Life himself went 0/1/12 on Volibear, with an 85.7% kill participation. Their performance was so good that, with Gen.G locking in Kalista for Game 2, Griffin was forced to ban the Volibear to prevent the oppressive duo.
But why did Volibear support have such success?
Well, for one, he was paired with perhaps the best engage ADC in the game in Kalista. By using her R – Fate’s Call aggressively, Kalista was able to throw the massive tank right into the fray of Griffin and removing the obstacle typical for Volibear players of getting kited by carries. In addition, with the Fate’s Call usage, Volibear’s targetted flip on his Q – Rolling Thunder was buffered so that the Griffin player/victim was almost instantaneously flipped once Voli came out of the toss.
Second, Volibear actually works very well into Griffin’s team composition in Game 1. With two very immobile mages in Karma and Karthus who really can’t kite Volibear, he has the easy ability to run them down for a pick.
In addition, Griffin also had Chovy on Irelia in the mid lane. Volibear does quite well into a champion like Irelia, as he can interrupt her dash, potentially denying her a reset on her Q – Bladesurge if he times it right. He can also interrupt dashes from Nautilus and Kai’Sa, denying potential engages from them.
Finally, Gen.G has a comp that perfectly enables that engage from Volibear. In addition to Kalista, having Lux mid to throw a shield onto Volibear as he’s thrown into the melee is huge for this composition. But they also had great primary engage with Camille and Sejuani, both of whom can lock down targets from a long distance away, thus enabling Volibear to close the distance even if Kalista’s ult is not up.
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I don’t expect for Volibear to become the next big tank support in the meta, given that there are some very easy counters that good teams will pick into him (just in the support role, Tahm Kench and Braum can both fully negate Volibear’s engage). But in this specific composition and game, Life and Gen.G showed their creativity with this pick and let the thunder roar.