China at Worlds: Adapt or get demolished

?With the Season 3 World Championships drawing near, many are curious as to how the Chinese teams will perform.  The LPL teams are perhaps the most mysterious teams entering the tournament which may result in the downfall of other regions.  While OMG and Royal Club are not without fallacy, their unique playstyle may just spell disaster for their opponents.

?Royal Club has a significantly different playstyle than most teams in the world.  The most similar comparison that can be made is early season 2 Moscow Five, all the way down to the heavy focus on aggressive counter-jungling being the primary focal point of the team.  While this is generally an unappealing alternative to the fast pushing style that was so prominent throughout most of Season 3, Royal Club had found a way to make it work after dropping the fast tower-pushing strategy they themselves used to use.

Even though we've compared their playstyle to that of early Moscow Five, we can also see hints of CLG's AD-Carry centric strategies used by Royal Club, but through a different means.  Royal Club puts a ton of emphasis onto Uzi to carry, but they don't do it in such a restrictive manner of how CLG used to play. Gold is very rarely sacrificed from other threats in favor of Uzi; instead, the composition is centered around him.

A good example of this is how Royal Club's Tabe frequently withdraws from using utility supports and instead focuses on AP carry supports to quickly burst down the enemy foe and get Uzi some much needed gold.  In fact, Tabe's support Annie is seen as enough of a threat to warrant a ban.  Even then, he'll pull out crazy stuff like support Cassiopeia.

Complimenting bursty supports, Royal Club tends to prioritize Yorick as a pick, especially with Uzi on a hyper carry.  This allows for a scary combination of an early-lead Vayne or Twitch combined with having double DPS by the time the big items come rolling in.  The icing on the cake is usually solo laners with mispositioning tools to allow for easy cleanup.

Royal Club is going to pack an excellent punch in the World Championships because their aggression is not to be trifled with.  It surpasses any form of aggression which is used to describe other teams due to the unpredictabilility of their approach to counter-jungling and level 1's. While most teams would  typically back off their engage when minions spawn, this is no obstacle for Royal Club, and dominance will be asserted early.

Key Champions:

?OMG's playstyle is a little harder for most people to identify because they are so flexible.  If you enjoyed Toyz' performance last year at Worlds, then look no further than Cool.  Guaranteed, Cool will be the least studied, most underrated mid-laner at worlds and teams are going to regret not studying him.  From powerful Orianna play to strong AD assassin play, Cool can play it all and has one of the largest reportoires of champions in the industry.

Make no mistake, as the whole team as solid and has no single star.  One of the best changes for the team was LoveLin's role swap from support to jungler.  LoveLin is a strong example of a role conversion gone right, as he's morphed into a strong jungler while retaining the skills he had as a support player.  This change has not only been better for the bottom lane, where he was replaced by BigPomelo, but also better for the rest of the map to help ensure lane dominance.

Though it's hard to pinpoint if you're a casual viewer of LPL, OMG is a heavy advocate of the strategy of starvation. This is a tactic that was picked up in the spring split of LPL that has carried over into OMG's strategy today.  What this means in contrast to Korean teams is that rather than rushing towers and dragons down right away, OMG punishes the enemy team with a slower, more painful defeat.

OMG tends to use heavy shoving champions and abuses proxying like no other.  This has made them especially strong since the changes to turret buffs, where OMG will shove waves, roam, commit to a dive, and sit behind a minion wave, often times resulting in the opposition missing one or even two full waves.  Gogoing compliments this by picking either slippery or non-contested duelers who can, for example, shove top on blue side and safely starve the jungler on purple side of double golems.

To compliment the push-and-roam tactics of OMG, their highly favored champions usually consist of champions that have the best wave clear in the game as well as high mobility or high dueling capabilities , including champions like Gragas, Orianna, Kennen, Renekton, and lately, Rengar.  

OMG's strategy is very genius against teams who rely on teamfighting which makes them a particularly strong opponent for the European teams. As per Chinese nature, the high scaling champions combined with starvation of the opposition means that unless something goes horribly wrong, OMG will come out on top of every team fight from midgame onward.  Teams facing OMG will likely not fight when it is an opportune moment for the enemy, so teams not used to this style are going to have a very rough time.

Key Champions:

In an international tournament such as this, a clash of regional playstyles is always exciting to see.  Most of the regions share a relatively common meta with slight distinctions to add flavor to each region.  The teams hailing from China twist and meld that completely, meaning if teams did not study hard enough for OMG and Royal Club, they will get crushed.  The advantage of team intelligence is on the side of these two teams.

Overall, expect a much stronger showing from China this year in comparison to World Elite and Invictus Gaming's attempt at clenching Worlds last year.  Korea may trump China in many categories, but innovation is not one of them.  Adapt, or be destroyed. All-Stars was most definitely not a powerful guage of China's strength as they did not have the individual team strategy to go along with their mechanics. This is China's niche and now it's their moment to shine on a global scale.

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This article is a playstyle analysis feature by Michale "Drexxin" Lalor.  Feel free to follow him at @GGDrexxin for more editorials, features, and Chinese LPL Coverage.