I'd like to interrupt our regularly scheduled programming to give my thoughts on this weekend's tournament. Those of you who lament the lack of an item spotlight should tune in to Mondays with Monte tonight at 8:00 PM CST, where I'll be discussing Season 3 items and showcasing a few of them in replays.
IPL5 was a grueling, four day affair which tested the endurance of the players, and tested the K-Pop tolerance of the viewers. As the final tournament before the cataclysmic Season 3 changes, IPL5 delivered with some of the best teams in the world. There were pentakills, breathtaking plays, upsets, and surprises. It was a fantastic tournament.
While much will change in Season 3, there is at least one lesson we can learn from this tournament which will undoubtedly still be relevant in the days ahead. It's an obvious one, but nevertheless is often forgotten. League of Legends is a game of information warfare.
This isn't about secret strategies and cheeses that teams jealously guard against, but the actual game itself. From champion select to the late-game, the flow of information dictates much of what happens. Teams with information and knowledge of their opponents can act confidently, making plays and dominating a match. Those without struggle, toil, and often lose. It's a story that was told multiple times over the course of the weekend, but never more clearly than the final day of play.
For a simple yet never before seen example, consider Fnatic's Evelyn and Shen combination in their third and last series against TPA. During Fnatic's final push TPA could not know where Evelyn was. If she was still with the bulk of her team, initiating on them would only have invited a Shen ult and defeat. But if she was with Shen anyone who went to stop his split push would have no chance of success. Evelyn's quantum state cowed TPA, ultimately leading to Toyz' demise and Fnatic's victory.
On a grander scale we can look to the grand finals themselves. In game 2 Fnatic had a commanding lead against WE, but eventually lost. What turned the game around for WE was superior map control. When WE realized that Fnatic had lost Oracle's without replacing it, and were also skimping on wards, WE went ward crazy. With Fnatic's jungle lit up like a Christmas tree the plays that had been dominating WE stopped working, and WE used their superior information control to make plays which would normally have been very risky. Many of sOAZ's deaths were the result of Fnatic ceding information control to WE. By the time they realized what was going on and bought a new Oracle's, WE had already taken the lead by a large margin and the game was all but over.
The final match of the grand finals demonstrated what Fnatic should have done with that lead. WE took a strong early advantage, grabbed an Oracle's, and denied Fnatic as much information as possible. Behind and without any way to see WE's plays coming, Fnatic struggled in their attempts to catch up. While they held the gold deficit steady for a time, eventually the lack of information control caught up with them and WE's lead exploded. It was a textbook example of how the unknown can force a team into a situation where their only option is to fall further and further behind.
Denying your opponent information, forcing them to make assumptions, and then defying their assumptions to catch them by surprise are core principles for everything from laning, to jungling, to champion select, and to overarching team strategy. Even with the upcoming nerf to Oracle's and the proliferation of wards thanks to Sightstone, the control of information will continue to be a critical part of League of Legends.
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