League of Legends LCS playoff preview: OpTic vs. CLG – the ultimate underdogs
By Josh Tyler
Top lane
Kim “Ruin” Hyeong-min vs. Niship “Dhokla” Doshi
He may not be an MVP contender, but Ruin was certainly one of the stronger top laners in the LCS this split. Despite having pretty pedestrian KDA and KP numbers, Ruin was able to secure the most gold per minute of all top laners, both raw (276) and adjusted (278.4).
The low kill participation (56.9%) would indicate he spent a lot of time on sidelane duty, but Ruin was still able to contribute some decent damage and vision relative to others in his lane. Most eye-popping, though, were his laning numbers (80 GD, 84 XPD, 0.3 CSD at 10 minutes) which put him, in aggregate, as the third-best top laner in terms of laning (behind Impact and Huni).
On the other hand, despite a vast improvement from his horrific spring split, Dhokla has been one of the weaker top laners in the LCS. He has negative CS, XP, and gold differentials at 10. In fact, looking at his statistics by champion, if he is not on either Aatrox or Poppy (who made up 13 of his 20 games played in summer) his numbers disintegrate like ashes.
The key will be for CLG to ban out those champions from Dhokla and not worry if OpTic tries to do the same in kind. Ruin has shown a high amount of flexibility in his champion pool (11 unique champions played in 19 games this summer) and overall should be favored even if Dhokla gets one of his pocket picks.
Advantage: CLG