League of Legends LCS playoff preview: OpTic vs. CLG – the ultimate underdogs
By Josh Tyler
AD Carry
Noh “Arrow” Dong-hyeon vs. Trevor “Stixxay” Hayes
While the teams’ two mid laners were quite underrated this split, I think their AD Carries were both massively overrated. On the one side, Stixxay was voted to the all-LCS team despite pitiful damage outputs (455 aDPM, well below the ADC average of 503.5 aDPM).
In addition, despite playing with one of the best supports in the LCS, Biofrost, he averaged nothing but deficits coming out of lane (-6 gold differential, -29 XPD, -0.5 CSD). He does have some very reliable champion picks in Sivir and Caitlyn, but when putting him on something like Xayah or Ezreal, he’s been quite mediocre.
On the other side, Arrow hasn’t proven to be much better in the laning phase (at 10 minutes he averages -74 gold differential, -34 XPD, and -4.1 CSD). He at least has the defense of playing with a worse support than Stixxay, but BIG is hardly a bad support.
Additionally, Arrow has really not excelled on the two champions his team has put him on the most. He has a win rate of 40% or below on his two most-played champions (Sivir and Ezreal, making up 13 of his 20 games this split) with KDAs and GPM numbers far below his average.
In short, I don’t think there is much that needs to be done on CLG’s side to negate Arrow, since he’s been average at everything. On the other hand, if OpTic keeps those two priority picks out of Stixxay’s hands, they could effectively neutralize him and create a strong side of the map for Crown to roam to.
Advantage: OpTic