LCS: How Bad Drafts Cost TSM Against FlyQuest

The Jungle

Finally, we get to the jungle where fans have correctly pointed out the insanity that is putting Dardoch on Jarvan three times and Sejuani once, with the last game on Elise being easily his best in the series. These first two are champions that Dardoch has been quite vocal about disliking, but they are also champions he performed quite poorly on during the regular season. He had a combined record of 2-5 on these champions in the regular season and in his career now has a 13-18 record.

What is more upsetting, though, than putting Dardoch on these champions he is not good on was ignoring the champions that he has excelled at. Dardoch’s three most-played champions in his career are Gragas, Rek’Sai, and Lee Sin. Gragas was tied for his most-played champion in the Spring Split (he went 3-1 with a 4 KDA). At no point during the series were these champions picked away from Dardoch (he picked his jungle blind four times) or banned.

Yes, there are compelling reasons for not picking some of these champions blind (Gragas can get countered by Jarvan, Rek’Sai by Elise) and Jarvan is the safest “blind” jungler, but to me this was another miscalculation. If TSM had properly scouted Santorin, they would have seen that his career champion pool is basically identical to Dardoch’s.

This split, however, Santorin has mostly played Lee Sin (which he has a losing record on) and Trundle. Yet TSM never allocated a ban to Trundle until Game 5 (when they planned on picking Sejuani). To me, I would have picked the Gragas and dared FlyQuest to pick Jarvan for Santorin to counter it.

In other words, TSM drafted what they thought was the ideal best blind jungle pick in the game without considering how that pick would be countered and what FlyQuest would want to pick. If they had picked something like Lee Sin or Gragas and forced Santorin to play a jungler he is less comfortable on they could have enabled Dardoch’s skill rather than hindering him.