League of Legends: LEC Summer Playoffs Preview: Schalke 04 vs. Team Vitality
European League of Legends has reached the business end of the 2019 season with the LEC playoffs well underway. Schalke 04 take on Team Vitality in Round 1 for a chance to finish in the Summer Split’s top four.
Day one of the LEC playoffs provided viewers with a huge upset as 5th place Rogue took down 3rd place Splyce in a clean 3-0 sweep. Now, Team Vitality will be hoping to follow suit and take down Schalke 04, securing themselves a place amongst the top four League of Legends teams in Europe.
Schalke 04: Tricks up Their Sleeve
For the second year running, Schalke 04 have missed out on Spring playoffs only to remedy their mistakes and finish in the top six in Summer. This time last year, the German organisation were starting their run to the 2018 EU LCS Summer Playoff Final, and with Splyce already out of the equation, surely they can sense an opportunity to do exactly the same in 2019.
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Schalke achieved an 11-7 record in the regular season – their second best return since joining EU’s top division – and have won 4 of their last 5 games. They were accomplished at tackling the teams below them in the table, with 2-0 head-to-heads over Excel, Misfits, and Team Vitality, but could never find the cutting edge to take down the rosters around them consistently, like Origen and Splyce.
This is, in part, due to the Schalke play style. This team sets out to play a relatively patient early game, crafting out a few small opportunities to gank and build a gold lead, before exploding around the first contestable objective, mainly elemental dragons. Having your team’s victory depend on a team fight win in the first fifteen minutes of the game is likely to bring success with Abbedagge and Upset on the line-up, but can often backfire, putting Schalke on the back foot early on.
While their late game decision making is excellent, Schalke’s game plan really revolves around getting a lead in the early game and snowballing it in the mid game, closing out after a single Baron. This obviously boils down to the DPS provided by carries, peel offered by IgNar, and the split-push plus TP flanks carried out by Odoamne. But there’s no doubt that the most important piece of the Schalke puzzle is Korean jungler Trick and his ability to control the early game and find key ganks to put his team in the lead.
One to Watch: Kim “Trick” Gang-yun
Aggressive ganking like Broxah is one method to get ahead in the LEC, or playing a passive game like Xerxe could be another avenue for success, but Schalke’s jungler prefers to operate somewhere in the middle. Trick isn’t the most proactive jungler in Europe, nor is he the most passive, he instead plays with information and looks for one or two early ganks in top or mid to get an item advantage for the first team fight of the game.
Opting for tank junglers who prefer level 6 ganks, such as Sejuani and Skarner, Trick prefers to hand off gold to his laners, putting himself behind in order to create a stronger team fight later in the game. Although his damage numbers and early game CS/XP are among the lowest in the LEC, Trick’s KDA is the third highest of any jungler (4.6, only behind Jankos and Xerxe), and the utility he provides in late game teamfights makes him a key component for Schalke going into the playoffs.