In the Magic City, the base of the Top Esports Club.
The joys and sorrows of people are never the same.
Compared to the tense and serious atmosphere of the WE training room, Top Esports' training room was relaxed and cheerful.
The summer split of the LPL usually carried a heavier gunpowder smell and fiercer competition than the spring split. Any team with aspirations for the World Championship would track potential threats based on the tournament's progress, then study and focus on them accordingly.
WE had started with two consecutive wins and were in quite good form, so they naturally made it onto Top Esports' watchlist.
Although coach White Crescent and sask were not professional players from the exact same era, White Crescent knew sask quite well.
He had previously believed that his own team's style was a natural counter to WE, and after today's scrims up to this point, that notion was even more firmly cemented in his mind.
If 369 couldn't beat Breathe, it didn't matter; playing safe with utility champions would do. Once the opponent fell behind, Breathe would start growing impatient.
If the bot lane couldn't win, that didn't matter either. While zhuo had some flaws in both skill and temperament, Jackeylove was solid. Watching the scrims, not just against WE but against other teams as well, there were several moments when White Crescent—standing right behind them—felt his blood boiling, yet Jackeylove still managed to hold it together.
As long as the ADC's mental didn't collapse, the bot lane wouldn't be a major problem.
Greatness, requires no further elaboration!
League of Legends was a game of the mid lane and jungle, and their Top Esports boasted a mid-jungle duo ranked in the top three of the entire LPL. Winning games was simply a matter of course.
Knight would apply pressure, and Karsa—dubbed the Radar God—would hunt down Beishang in the jungle every single time.
"Play properly, everyone. Let's finish up early and go eat," Knight said, rubbing his shoulder.
"No problem, it's a walk in the park," Karsa replied with a smile, feeling completely at ease.
The jungler and mid laner complemented each other; when the mid laner established dominance in lane, the jungler had a very comfortable game.
"Seriously, Karsa, come gank bot a few times. Your boy's getting dizzy these last three games; this Elk is literally riding my face," Jackeylove twisted his wrists and called for the jungler.
Of course he wasn't afraid of Elk, but the reality was that their opponent's bot lane synergy was simply much better than the hodgepodge combination on his own side.
Aside from the lonely top laner, the mid-jungle and bot lane pairings had to be looked at as cohesive units; talking about them or playing tricks by separating them individually was just absurd.
"Alright, alright, no problem."
"Then let's start," White Crescent said immediately as he saw the WE players type "go" in the chat window.
White Crescent was quite satisfied with the team under his command.
Undeniably, Top Esports generated immense traffic, and coaching such a team brought a heavy psychological burden.
Yet White Crescent felt it was still pretty manageable for him. First, he didn't need to worry about his core players' champion pools; second, he didn't need to worry about the players' mental states. With Jackeylove around to regulate everyone's mood, internal explosions within the team were rare.
Third, whether during scrims or official matches, the players were always highly focused. White Crescent guessed this might be directly related to Knight; after all, if their attention wasn't sharp enough, they might not fully understand what Knight was trying to communicate.
"Huh, did they change their draft?" 369, the top laner, let out a soft exclamation of surprise.
Upon receiving Karsa's response, Jackeylove—who had been entirely relaxed a moment before—turned a shade of green upon seeing the mid lane champion locked in by WE.
Twisted Fate.
Even a fool could guess that this bastard was coming to hunt him down.
Inside the WE training room.
Li Yao looked at the draft he had personally orchestrated and was quite satisfied.
Jayce in the top lane, Rumble in the jungle, Twisted Fate in the mid lane, and Xayah-Rakan in the bot lane.
By comparison, Top Esports had Gragas in the top lane, Viego in the jungle, Syndra in the mid lane, and Ziggs paired with Trundle in the bot lane.
Jackeylove had backed down.
He didn't want to play a standard ADC and suffer this game.
Actually, the most compatible ADC options for Top Esports' composition would have been Xayah or Aphelios.
But Xayah had been sniped, and Aphelios couldn't possibly function against WE's team composition.
Knight was still playing aggressively.
Yet the obnoxious thing about a champion like Twisted Fate was that as long as he played cautiously enough, it was extremely difficult to deny him minion CS during the laning phase.
The 1450-range Q skill, Wild Cards, allowed Twisted Fate to secure any minion from a safe position.
Unless they picked a champion with mobility and gap-closers like LeBlanc to frequently trade health with Twisted Fate in the early laning phase and whittle him down, it was truly difficult to pressure him to death.
Syndra's strength lay in her Q skill after leveling up; in the very early stages of the laning phase, Syndra's damage wasn't actually that high.
When both mid laners first recalled, Knight was extremely dissatisfied with his laning performance.
Seven waves of minions, and he was only up 11 CS on Twisted Fate.
On the surface, it seemed decent, but let's not forget that Twisted Fate's passive provided extra gold on minion kills, meaning Twisted Fate's actual economy wasn't any lower than his.
And when Twisted Fate chose Mercury's Treads for his first item, Knight began to develop a massive headache.
Especially since the other lanes were starting to fall behind as well.
Rumble's clear speed was among the best of all jungle champions, and Beishang's Rumble wasn't just a threat in the early game either.
As a jungler renowned for his tempo, Beishang had very few issues with Rumble's early clearing, ganks, or even casting his ultimate after reaching level 6.
His biggest problem was usually poor positioning during teamfights—making him an easy target to engage on—and poor timing when diving in to deal damage.
However, certain team compositions didn't require Rumble to walk up and deal damage frontline.
At 6 minutes and 50 seconds into the game.
369, whose TP had just landed after being forced back, was immediately pinched by the roaming Rumble and the advancing Jayce, losing half his health.
Moreover, the two of them hovered around, applying constant pressure to 369.
Under normal circumstances, this situation would be resolved simply by Karsa moving over to neutralize the crisis for Gragas.
Yet this game, WE had Twisted Fate.
Twisted Fate lingering in the middle river area exerted enormous psychological pressure on 369.
Once Rumble intercepted a wave of minions and cleared it alone, a flash of light enveloped him as he hit level 6.
His ultimate cascaded down, reducing Gragas to low health. Twisted Fate activated his destiny ultimate, and a yellow card stun helped Jayce secure the kill.
"Nice!" Breathe beamed with joy.
In the previous games, even though he had been applying pressure, he couldn't secure kills and was prone to getting caught out of sheer overaggressiveness.
In this game, he finally experienced what it felt like to have a mid lane supporting him.
Mole harvested an assist and immediately teleported back to the mid lane to protect the minion wave.
Karsa attempted a bot lane gank, only to be evaded by the agile Xayah-Rakan duo.
Once the mid-jungle duo sputtered out, Top Esports' weaknesses were completely exposed.
Even so, Top Esports showed commendable resilience; the two teams traded blows for 28 minutes before someone on Top Esports finally typed "GG".
Mole let out a long breath of relief.
His Twisted Fate stats for this game ended at 0/1/12.
For a mid laner, having zero kills certainly couldn't be considered flashy.
Yet his impact in this game was massive.
He had also earned the recognition of his teammates.
And all of this stemmed from Li Yao's suggestion.
Therefore, the moment this scrim concluded, Mole cast a grateful look straight at Li Yao.
Not just him, but everyone else on WE quietly shifted their attitude toward Li Yao because of this scrim.
Although Ziggs was a somewhat cheap champion and the bot lane had been targeted, Elk and Missing hadn't felt miserable playing this game.
Because they knew every single time Karsa came down for a bot lane gank.
The psychological pressure a player faces from a predictable threat versus an unpredictable one operates on completely different levels.
With advance warning, you could formulate countermeasures ahead of time, preventing panic when the crisis actually arrived.
Why could they foresee the danger in this game when they couldn't before?
The reason was simple: while Beishang exerted enough pressure in the top lane, Karsa hadn't gone to help Gragas; meanwhile, Syndra couldn't keep a Glacial Augment / Mercury's Treads Twisted Fate in check, and even if Viego went down there, it would be hard to secure a kill. Since neither top nor mid could be helped, where else could the jungler possibly be?
This was no different from taking an open-book test with the answer key right in front of you; for Elk and Missing, it was effortless.
"Well played, well played," sask said, his face beaming with delight.
His joy came straight from the heart.
As a coach, sask knew all too well how much this seemingly unremarkable scrim had actually given to WE.
First, the team had gained an entirely new draft system.
Second, within this system, Beishang's heavily criticized Rumble could be continuously brought out.
As this game demonstrated, the tasks Beishang needed to perform in teamfights were minimal. Twisted Fate could split-push and draw pressure in the side lanes; once the opponents grouped up to push, Beishang could use his ultimate to clear waves, and Jayce's poke would curb the enemy's advancing speed.
Furthermore, to prevent Twisted Fate from flying in with his ultimate to reinforce during a push, the opponents couldn't afford to get too close to their defensive towers. The moment Rakan initiated an engage, the damage from WE's three core damage dealers—Jayce, Xayah, and Rumble—along with Twisted Fate's core crowd control, would likely arrive in the blink of an eye.
This composition was also highly flexible; aside from Twisted Fate and Rumble, the champions in the other three positions could be swapped out.
The top lane could be switched to Gwen or Camille.
The bot lane could be swapped for engaging support champions like Nautilus or Leona, paired with ADCs like Ezreal or Aphelios.
It was a system with immense plasticity.
For the fifth scrim against Top Esports, sask applied the principle of drawing inferences and adjusted the draft slightly.
Top Esports seemed somewhat unwilling to concede defeat and left Twisted Fate unbanned this time, picking LeBlanc to counter him.
Yet facing the extraordinarily cautious Mole, even with Knight on LeBlanc, they failed to tear through Mole's lane the way they had in the first three games.
To his dismay, Knight discovered that Mole—whose mental state had previously shattered and whose mechanics had warped—had actually found his groove again after the previous win. Several neat little positioning adjustments to dodge his chains ended up throwing off Knight's own rhythm.
"Awesome!"
After claiming another scrim victory, Breathe stretched lazily.
Even though they had been losing all day long, as long as they won the final two games right before finishing up, it felt as though all the previous losses had simply vanished into thin air.
"So satisfying," Beishang clapped his hands.
In these past two games, his teammates would land their crowd control first, allowing him to precisely drop his ultimate and deal tons of damage.
Once the enemy team wasn't at full health anymore, his positioning didn't need to be quite as meticulous; he could just Flash in aggressively, heat up with his red-bar flamethrower, and dish out AOE damage to fulfill his mission.
This was the first time Beishang felt that AP junglers could be this simple.
Mole had also come back to life.
Elk and Missing no longer carried that sense of helplessness where they tried their absolute hardest yet simply couldn't win.
"Come, come, pour a cappuccino for Brother Yao!"
Breathe waved his arm grandly.
Looking at the training room that seemed to have recovered its vitality, Li Yao felt a certain spot in his heart stir.
Going from Little Yao to Brother Yao had taken less than two hours.