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2019 LJL Summer Spilt Championship Preview

By s. samek

League of Legends. Photo courtesy of Riot Games.
League of Legends. Photo courtesy of Riot Games. /
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The LJL is hosting a final bout to see who will represent the Japanese league at the League of Legends World’s play-in stage.

Only two teams remain in the LJL playoffs meeting to represent Japanese League of Legends. V3 Esports will face off against Detonation FocusMe (DFM).

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The lineup for V3 looks like this Shirou “Paz” Sasaki in the top lane, Kim “Baby” Dong-woo and Moon “Neo” Ji-won in the jungle. In the middle lane you have Kotoji “Ace” Mugita and Norifumi “Recap” Yamazaki then the bottom lane duo of Yuta “Yutorimoyashi” Noguchi and Han “viviD” Gi-hun. V3 finished third in the Summer Split with a record of 14-7 and earned the third seed for the playoffs. In the playoffs they defeated second seed Crest Gaming Act 3-2 in a best of five to reach the finals.

The bottom lane looks to be the strength here for V3. Yutorimoyashi was the fourth-best player by kill rate in the LJL during the Summer Split with 5.2 kills per game. His duo partner viviD was rated highly on the assist list with 8.8 per game, to rank fourth in the LJL. Vivid was with Detonation Focusme for the Spring Split, but then left to play for V3.

Then we have the top seed in Detonation Focusme. This is a team you may remember from their spot at World’s in 2018 as the Summer Split winner of the LJL. During that run, they were in a group with Kabum and Cloud 9, finishing 1-3. They won a tiebreaker over Kabum to advance to the play-in knock out stage before they were dispatched 3-0 by Edward Gaming.

DFM’s roster includes Shunsuke “Evi” Murase in the top lane, Moon” Steal” Geon-yeong in the jungle, Kyohei “Ceros” Yoshida in the middle lane and the bottom lane duo of Yuta “Yutapon” Sugiura and Yang “Gaeng” Gwang-yu. To earn the number one seed for the Summer Split, they went 17-4 and tied for first place, but secured the bye into the finals.

Detonation Focusme also has a strong bottom lane. Yutapon had a KDA of 7.7 for the Summer to take the third-best rating in the LJL in that statistic tied with teammate Gaeng. Yutapon had the second-best kills per game average at 6.2. Gaeng averaged a league-best 11.6 assists per game while Steal contributed 8. 3 assists per game to also make the top five in that statistic.

V3 and Detonation Focusme played to a 2-0 head to head during the regular split in favor of Detonation Focusme. They most recently battled in Week 10, with DFM taking the win in just over 33 minutes.

This looks to be an excellent series. There’s plenty of talented matchups worth looking at. The bottom lane I would say is in favor of Detonation Focusme.

DFM’s duo has the statistical advantage in both ADC and support. The Detonation Focusme bottom lane has also won six MVP awards during the season, while V3 only won five MVP awards. Still, V3 has a strong bottom lane as well and should use it to try and score an upset.

Evi has bested Paz in MVP awards for top lane during the season as well by a four to three count.
The Jungle sees a two MVP count for Steal to one for Baby. Combine that with Steal’s strong assit numbers and I’m giving the edge to DFM.

With four MVP’s to three, it could be another advantage for DFM in the form of Ceros over Ace. Making it an advantage in all lanes and positions for DFM by MVP numbers.

It looks to me like DFM is going to be making a return trip to worlds in 2019. They own many of the best players in the LJL and make up a strong chunk of its statistical leaderboard.

They also have been the best overall team in Japan, winning the Spring Split playoffs after a 20-1 record in spring. While they may have lost a step from that impressive spring, I don’t think it will be enough to trip them up. DFM is my prediction to win this series.

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The best of five final series takes place on September 16th 2019.

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