League of Legends LCS preview: TSM vs. Clutch – the final gasp of TSM?
By Josh Tyler
Support
Philippe “Vulcan” Laflamme vs. Andy “Smoothie” Ta
Vulcan has, for a long time, been one of those players who is just there. He fills the role, support, adequately. He won’t lose you the game, but he won’t elevate your ADC. That has been the story of his 2019 season.
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While he was underwhelming in the Spring Split, Vulcan has rebounded in summer to play…well about average. His aKDA (1.61) and aKP (93.7%) are both below average, but he does a good job controlling vision (2.35 VSPM). His laning, too, is quite underwhelming (-21 experience but +46g at 10) considering he’s playing with such a strong-laning ADC. It should be easy to give TSM the advantage, right?
Well, unfortunately, no. Smoothie, who was a top-three support in the spring, has regressed massively in the summer. His laning stats are great, but his damage output and gold accumulation are fairly mediocre for a support.
Worst of all, though, his vision score per minute is atrocious at 2.1 VSPM. Only Aphromoo had a lower VSPM, and the average is 2.3 VSPM. Considering how much better Smoothie was at vision in the spring (2.58 VSPM) and how poorly TSM’s bot lane has done in the early part of the lane, Smoothie could be giving Clutch a window to snowball the game.
Advantage: Clutch