Worlds 2019: Pre-Notes, Royal Youth (TCL)
The idea behind this is pretty simple: review the VoDs from one of the teams going to the 2019 League of Legends World Championship, take some notes, check some data, and provide a few points that keep coming back to mind throughout that process to give a server-centric view of their identity as a team.
With that in mind, let’s look at Royal Youth, champions of Turkey’s Şampiyonluk Ligi and their representative in the Play-In Stage.
1) Early game — deceptive dominance or deceptively dominant?
Let’s start with a simple one. Royal Youth were 16–2 this split in Turkey’s 10-team, double round robin, Bo1 format. The Turkish league has tended to show significant disparities between top and bottom over the last couple of years — both Fenerbahce and SuperMassive were 16–2 last split, and SuperMassive had a 26–2 split back in 2018 — but that’s still clearly worth taking note of.
As a general rule, teams who dominate like that in Bo1 play tend to particularly excel as an early-game team, usually with some distance between them and most of the league (even beyond what might be expected), and Royal Youth are not an exception from their gold difference at 15 minutes:
Having watched the games, when I ran these numbers, I was genuinely a bit surprised; I knew they would poll out well, but I would have expected an average closer to the lower end for teams of that profile (historically around 800–1200). As effective as their early game clearly has been, it doesn’t exactly feel…dynamic, explosive. They’re up some CS, maybe up a tower, but even to an experienced eye, it doesn’t feel like they’re in a position to suddenly take everything over.
How do we reconcile this? I explored a couple of things. Kill participation pre-15 was one, which did resonate with the feeling I was getting — relatively low KP% apart from the jungler, Closer, which suggests that however they were getting their leads, it wasn’t from a team moving as one:
2) Armut pushes to win
My next port of call was the top laner, Armut, who was curiously the only member of the lineup not to make it to the league’s All-Pro team this year. One of the relatively few Turkish pros to consistently make it to the top of the EUW ladder (rank #15 at the time of writing), and known as ‘push2win’ while a rookie in Turkish Challenger, the obvious place to look was tower differential; so, I totalled up the amount of damage done to each tower in each lane by the fall of turret plating at 14 minutes, and found something fairly remarkable:
(in this table, 1T+ represents the amount of damage that Royal Youth did to the opposing top lane tower in that 14-minute period, 1T- the amount of damage done to theirs, and 1TD the difference between them; so, for instance, if I destroyed your tower entirely, and you took mine down to 2 plates, I’d have a 1T+ of 5, a 1T- of 3, and the differential would be 2.)
In this metric, Armut crushed with enormous consistency throughout the regular season, doing more damage in 14 out of 18 games (14Y–1T–3L), and allowing no damage whatsoever to his tower also in 14 out of 18 games. (by way of comparison, in the context of what was clearly a dominant team, cyeol went 9Y-3T-6L, and Pilot/Tolerant went 9Y-0T-7L).
His numbers in more conventional categories weren’t too bad either —he had a CSD of 15.9 at 15 minutes (against Pilot’s 11.7 and cyeol’s 6.5), a team-leading 6 solo kills (according to gol.gg), a league-leading kill participation among tops of 58.3%, and a 24.6% damage share overall. With regards to damage share in particular, “this does not suggest a qualititative comparison” always applies with comparing across regions, and doubly applies to damage share which is barely a qualitative measurement, and I am only repeating it here to be 100% sure that everyone is on the same page; in any case, this is where that would place among other major regions:
- LEC: 4th out of 13 (soAZ 25.1%, Bwipo 23.5%)
- LCS: 5th out of 11 (Ruin 25.3%, Broken Blade 23.1%)
- LCK: 4th out of 13 (Khan 24.7%, Doran 24.4%)
Yet, it is that tower number that really draws interest. So we come to this:
Please ignore the urge to avert your eyes; it’s ugly, but it’s the quickest way to get the information across here. Every big box represents Armut’s champion pick in a game, organised by patch. Next to each pick are the opposing top laner, and a N or a Y. If the box says Y, then Armut DID counterpick, i.e. he picked after the opponent. If the box says N, then Armut did NOT counterpick, i.e. he picked before the opponent.
What to make of it? Royal’s drafts early in the split (arguably through to and including patch 9.13) clearly relied a lot on giving Armut a very early top laner that was guaranteed to have pushing pressure, usually (but not exclusively) blind, and building the draft out from there. Indeed, if you go look at the specifics of many of those drafts, these would often be first-rotation picks. Certainly significant, though we should remind ourselves here that these patch metas were all ones where numerous top-mid flexes (Aatrox, Irelia, Neeko, Sylas) were running at close to 100% pick-ban presence.
Following nerfs to some of said picks on 9.14, there does seem to have been a shift in strategy as there became a greater call for pick development. It’s always hard to tell how seriously to take late-season TCL games (with regards to Annie and Yorick), but we can probably quite fairly say at least that the Kled was developed by Armut (as with other European tops like Wunder and Doxy) as a counter to a number of meta picks. As can often be the case, small changes to the meta meant that Royal went from first-pick to last-pick on top in most drafts, although looking at the game 1 and 3 losses in finals, both with counter-pick and both seeing zero KP and zero tower damage pre-15 by Armut, it wasn’t necessarily to their favour.
What, then, to take from this? One can always be surprised, of course, but a couple of things seem somewhere between likely and certain:
- Royal Youth are going to be reliant on continuing to set up scenarios where Armut has lane pressure. More on this later.
- As always, everything will depend on the specifics of the Worlds patch, and the nature of drafting will always make it difficult to determine how things like priority will play out even if we have 80% of the information available, but:
- There will be a big question mark for Armut if this ends up being a fairly open patch for top. I can grudgingly accept Mordekaiser into Karma as a probably informed counter-pick that didn’t really work this time, but Gnar into Gangplank raises alarm bells. Gangplank has been the 2nd most-played top on this patch, and fabFabulous played it twice in the semi-finals to great effect; it is absolutely the sort of pick that you make a plan into, and Gnar isn’t really that. Between that and some mixed performances on the Kled (6/5/6; 7/1/14; 1/5/11 in its three games), it does bring up some questions over how quickly Armut will be able to formulate and actualise effective counter-picks in a more open top meta. Not a problem if they’re able to pick Aatrox or Jayce every game, but early signs are pointing away from that.
3) How good can Pilot and Tolerant be?
Pilot is clearly very, very important to how Royal Youth plays. It’s a tale as old as time: he does OK to start, doesn’t really catch the eye, a 1/0/0 type of game, you look down and he’s got a small lead, great, you look away for a second, and the game’s over and he’s up 50 CS and sporting an impressive KDA from somewhere or another
All well and good. He has a 70.5% kill participation (barely behind Closer’s 71.2%) — mediocre by the league’s standards (5th among qualifying ADCs according to lol.gamepedia.com), but it’s worth noting that both cyeol and Tolerant were some way behind and near the bottom of the league in their positions, which goes to show how much mid-game play ends up revolving around Pilot in particular — and a 30.1% damage share. Recall the previous damage share disclaimer, and here’s where that would put him:
- LEC: 3rd of 12 (Crownshot 30.7%, Patrik 28.1%)
- LCS: 2nd of 12 (Bang 31.3%, Zven 30.0%)
- LCK: 5th of 11 (Viper 30.6%, Teddy 29.5%)
However, let’s look at something else. We mentioned the tower plating figures, and the CSD figures, so let’s take a look:
In terms of CS difference, signs look positive; some struggles against Zeitnot and Wolf on SuperMassive, but on the whole, a fairly consistent lead of about a kill’s worth of CS, to use that old measurement. In terms of tower damage? Not so great; there are a couple of games with clean early tower takes, but on the whole, it’s essentially even, which seems odd for a team with such a dominant early game.
This is definitely a concern, but it’s probably not THE major concern with Pilot and Tolerant’s performance. There’s always a concern in seeing a team lose ground like this, but at a certain level, it’s nigh-on unavoidable if you’re to at all play to Armut’s very-much-proven strength; to put it simply, you can’t have all three lanes hitting towers at the same time without inviting a very easy reply from the opponent, and even with two lanes, it’s difficult for most junglers to simultaneously cover top and bot.
Watching the games, in practice, it’s not so much a question of the duo never having 2v2 pressure; they don’t create much in generally unfavourable matchups (which is admittedly a little concerning in itself given the caliber of opposition), but they aren’t being blown all the way back, and they get the push in favourable ones. There did seem to be a degree to which Tolerant in particular was out of step with what Pilot and the team were thinking on map movements and recalls early in the split, but they did improve on this as time went on (as the 4T- numbers tend to reflect).
A bigger concern for me is looking at their performance in 2v2 and 3v3 skirmishes, as below:
If it were a case of bot lane simply not getting attention, that would be…to call it a ‘fix’ is perhaps misleading, but it would mean synergy untested rather than missing. The worry is that bot does get attention, andtime and again, throughout the split, in those occasions where Royal are forced into fights with JGL/ADC/SUP in particular, they look out-of-sorts, and often find themselves on the wrong end of things.
This is particularly curious because one of the things that Royal did very, very well at the start of the split was fighting level 1s with that trio plus cyeol, enjoying multi-kill level-1s vs. Bursaspor in week 4 and Aurora in week 5, though, admittedly, both were defensive and in response to very ill-conceived offensives.
Speculating is difficult, but the impression one gets is that none of the trio are communicating with one another particularly well. This is natural; Pilot is in only his third split in a primarily English-speaking region, and all three are speaking in a second language at best. In addition, Tolerant — who has shown little indication throughout his careerto date of being anything other than a very passive support in terms of his role within the shotcalling setup of his teams — has visibly struggled to get used to playing with Closer and the team, notably doing much of his best work in situations where he’s free to move out of sync with them on a map flank (and perhaps explaining his continuing priority on Nautilius).
These sort of communication issues — and the trust surplus or deficit that forms with it — are not easy to address, unfortunately, even with the greatest of will and the greatest of buy-in in the weeks leading up to Play-Ins. Are Pilot and Tolerant the weak link of Royal Youth? I would absolutely say no to that, because cyeol exists, and because they have done their job to date. Are they the part of Royal Youth that is, as it were, capped out, with the most limited potential to grow coming into Play-Ins? Until proven otherwise, yes.
4) Vicinity and the late game.
Here’s a great headline statistic for you. Royal Youth are 17–1 in games under 35 minutes this split, and 5–3 in games over it.
Does it actually mean anything?
If we were talking historically, I may be a little surprised by just how few games of Royal Youth’s have gone over 30 (well, 31) minutes, even given their domestic dominance and early-game prowess, but this is the fastest global meta on record, and G2 just put up an entire 18-game split where they averaged 26.9 minutes per game (oracleselixir.com) — something that I am fairly sure is a record for any region by a significant margin, and one that I am also fairly sure will not be broken in league play for a very long time to come.
So, in the words of Mônica, ata. What, then, of the content of those games, and of how Royal seem to play out both mid-game and late-game scenarios? The natural inclination with any team outside of the international elite is to be pessimistic. It is, of course, a cliche — “[x team] don’t know how to Baron.” — but there is usually truth in cliches.
Royal’s mid-games tend me towards pessimism. This is the scene that sticks in my mind, from their week 8 game against Bursaspor:
Look where Royal’s pinks are located here. There is one pushed up on the lower-visibility side of the red bush, but the other two are both in river, and their regular wards are all very, very close to those pinks.
This is not the pattern of a team that is trying to set up for Baron or for towers. This is a team that simply wants a pick. Is that wrong? In a sense, no. I will spare you the long version of the lecture on vision control and neutral objective setup, and try to boil it down to general terms:
- The aim in any battle for a neutral objective is to push up with regular wards and sweepers/pinks slowly, necessarily with at least one wave of staggering recalls while maintaining control to renew wards etc., until you have a situation where you can start the Baron and see any incoming threat from any angle several seconds before it sees you.
- This is slow, and requires far more coordination between the jungler, support, and laners than you think.
- Therefore, why would we do that when we can block out vision in this far smaller area in one trip, and wait for someone to misstep?
- Teams hence ‘struggle’ on neutral objectives because doing those proper setups ends up being a long way down the list (and as an additional bonus, is hard to rep if you can’t get a lead anyway).
The above setup and resulting engagement actually works. Bursaspor are ahead in that screenshot, but they get too far forward in mid, and one (extremely slow) engage and fight later, Royal get a game-ending 4-for-1 fight from what had been a small gold deficit.
The biggest fundamental issue with this sort of play is this: you have to be better at teamfighting than your opponents, which in turn means at least one, usually both of two things: 1) you have better synergy as a team than your opponent, 2) you have better individual players than your opponent.
The concerns I expressed about the Closer/Pilot/Tolerant axis in terms of synergy and communication really extend to the entire team, with additional little caveats along the way (the big one: Closer has been with the organisation since close to its inception, but both cyeol and Tolerant are in their first split, and Armut and Pilot their second). This team does not generally look fantastic when it has to teamfight or coordinate on the map.
Two particular moments stand out for me. The first is from the second game of the split, that 47:09 slog against SuperMassive (who, it should be noted, were using their substitute top laner in that game). Armut/Closer/Tolerant go on an insanely deep pursuit of aforementioned top laner (Luana), catching her at river…and leaving themselves completely split for a counter-attack by SuperMassive. cyeol and Pilot are both able to teleport in but Pilot doesn’t do much, and it’s only a cyeol quadra (taking him from 1/3/1 to 5/3/1) that saves the day and realistically starts to turn the game there.
The second is the final fight in their game-1 finals loss, again to SuperMassive. Is it a surprise that they lose this fight? Not really; they’re 9k down at its inception. But take a look at how Tolerant moves relative to Closer; at how Armut is desperately trying to manage his rage bar; at how cyeol ends up using his package. This is not a team that has all that much knowledge in how the guy next to them is going to act.
So, poor synergy. Are they individually good enough to overwhelm the opposition? I am inclined to sing the praises of Armut and Closer, although I think they’re perhaps a step below some of the top non-imports players that Turkish teams have sent to international competitions before; skipping the most recent example, I would be reasonably confident that someone like prime HolyPhoenix or Zeitnot would be at least respectable in a major region, whereas I’m a little short of being there with the Royal duo as of yet.
However, even in their cases, there’s not enough there to make me think that they’re going to overwhelm Play-In competition. Armut, Closer, and Pilot are almost certainly above the curve, though that still means Pilot is weaker than you’d want for an import slot. Tolerant, I’m sceptical about. cyeol is the real wildcard here. I haven’t gone in to too much detail about it, because there’s not really any way to get around it: his body of work over the split has been poor, and not in a particularly interesting manner. He either narrowly wins lane or takes the odd beating, he’s in the area when Closer goes top-side, he doesn’t do too much in fights except for the two or three fights per split where he suddenly gets 3 or 4 kills and then goes back to not doing much, and he coasts through with decent KDAs.
In my view, even though there’s a lot of mids in Turkey still trying to find their footing, he shouldn’t have been All-Pro, and I wish I knew what I was missing there; I ca. There are moments where he flashes brilliance, but he will have to improve extremely, incredibly quickly to get to where he needs to be in 2019.
Royal aren’t a bad team, but they give a similar sort of feeling to Fenerbahce at MSI 2019 . There was a standard set throughout most of 2016, 2017, and 2018 that the Turkish representative would have a clear leg up on most other play-in teams (even if they had certainly drifted behind Vietnam towards the latter end of it). This time, as with Fenerbahce, we have a team with good, but not overwhelming, talent, that should still get to Bo5s, but seems a long-shot to make it to the main stage.
I will leave on a positive note. This is a screenshot from game 4 of the finals. Royal are facing elimination, and have had their ups and downs all game, but look at this:
Look at the vision control, look at the care taken on the positioning of all five members. This Baron ends up never in serious doubt, and while they make a mistake afterwards by over-pursuing into an eventual 2-for-3, it’s executed incredibly well.
By all accounts, Royal Youth have one of the better braintrusts among Play-In teams; Enatron (also of KlikTech fame) has coached there for three splits now (an eternity in coaching years, let alone Turkish coaching years), and has had Closer by his side the entire time as he has grown from heir apparent behind Malrang to league MVP.
That’s not the worry. Getting to that stage against other Play-In teams will be the worry. Executing it consistently will also be the worry. If I were invested, I would continue to have those worries. But if the tree goes up, they’ll get the angel on top.
