LOL: My talent is top-tier, my professional skills are unparalleled.

Chapter 69 The Quarterfinals Begin! Pre-Match Discussion!

In mid-October, Guangzhou was still experiencing a temperature of 30 degrees Celsius, and pedestrians were wearing light short sleeves.

When the entire EDG team arrived at Guangzhou Airport, it was already late at night. Fortunately, they had arranged rooms in a nearby hotel in advance and were able to check in that night.

The results of the quarterfinals have just been announced, and the entire internet is buzzing about the upcoming matches.

The team that received the most discussion was naturally EDG.

This is understandable, given that EDG has won all six of their matches, and Wang Yao has made a bold statement promising to win at least one more game and reach the finals, essentially setting himself up for disaster...

If EDG is eliminated in the quarterfinals again, it will likely backfire on Wang Yao and EDG!
Fortunately, the EDG team members are relatively relaxed and not too worried about the rumors and gossip from the outside world.

Wang Yao, who had just checked into the hotel, even started a live stream to chat with his viewers.

Of course, this is also to complete the live streaming time task given by Uncle Chen of Bilibili. 200 hours is not a long time, but it is not short either.

If Wang Yao completes his livestreaming time target on Bilibili as soon as possible, it will be easier for him to accept livestreaming offers from other platforms during the winter transfer window.

"Brother Yao, if you can perform well in the upcoming World Championships, you'll be making a fortune with your streaming contract next year!"

Meiko clicked his tongue and said that his contract was also handled by the club, but he didn't get much of a share.

EDG players don't receive very high salaries for streaming; their main motivation comes from team bonuses.

In recent years, live streaming platforms have basically been losing money from investors by spending heavily on attracting popular streamers to join the platform.

If EDG wins the championship this year, it will definitely attract a large number of live streaming platforms such as Douyu and Huya to offer crazy bids to sign the players.

They can even sign a live streaming contract worth tens of millions to the FMVP domestic champion!

This year is already the peak season for League of Legends viewership, and the finals are being held at the Bird's Nest stadium in Beijing.

If they can win the championship at the Bird's Nest, EDG will be rolling in money from this huge influx of traffic!

Wang Yao shook his head. If he wanted to make money through live streaming, he would have started already. Right now, EDG's top priority is to maintain training intensity and continue to push forward in the remaining matches.

SSG's performance in the knockout stage was completely different from that in the group stage. This team could easily defeat LZ and SKT, which are considered weak teams.

If EDG is careless and underestimates their opponent, they might actually be dragged down by this team!
After one night, Coach Nofe called the EDG players together to discuss information about their next opponent.

Prior to this, EDG and SSG had no previous head-to-head record; they had only played one scrim match against each other.

For the factory manager, Samsung is arguably his most hated opponent, because Ambition, like him, is a veteran jungler with excellent rhythm and awareness.

Samsung's operational skills are unparalleled, employing a grinding, late-game strategy comparable to a tortoise formation, which in its previous life led to the downfall of the formidable SKT.

"Judging from the group stage, Samsung is a team that focuses on split pushing and macro play, and they seem to have settled on their playstyle, which can be seen from the Crown player in the mid lane."

After explaining, Nofe distributed all the data charts and analytical features of the SSG players to the players.

"Crown has made significant changes this year. Last year, he was the carry for SSG, but this year he prefers champions like Malzahar who are more of a liability."

It's worth noting that Crown's performance in the mid lane during the S6 finals was no less impressive than Faker's.

If Ruler in the bot lane hadn't been a newcomer who hadn't been out of the game for long, and hadn't suffered against the championship-winning bot lane duo of Bang and Wolf, SSG would have had a chance to defeat SKT!
For such an important carry role, Crown should logically be given a mage-type hero as one of the team's core carries. Of course, this is also related to the Ardent Censer meta in the World Championship, since mage-type heroes are relatively weak against the shield and sustain provided by Ardent Censer.

However, not picking a magic-based carry would put the team at a disadvantage against physical damage-heavy teams. EDG previously had this strategy, picking Lucian in the mid lane to farm.

Although both carries can benefit from the Ardent Censer buff, melee-heavy lineups will struggle quite a bit when dealing with tanky opponents.

If Wang Yao hadn't promptly reminded Coach Nofe and his teammates, EDG would still be going further and further down the wrong path of the "Lucian version trap".

After all, the physical armor of the front-line tanks in this version has an incredibly high stat bonus!

Without the Ardent Censer buff and armor penetration items, ADCs simply can't deal any damage to the front line. Only a very few ADCs can use their percentage-based skill damage to deal with tanks.

For example, Vayne and Varus.

"Although SSG lost to RNG twice, it was somewhat related to the players' performance on the day. If they had played a best-of-five series, I don't think RNG would have won so easily."

Coach Nofe said.

He believes there is such a thing as team style counters, but more importantly, it depends on who finds the right version of the game first.

And right now, SSG is the team that most seems to have found the answer!
Since its rise last year, the mid-lane mage carry has maintained a consistently high pick rate in professional matches.

If the mid-lane player doesn't pick a mage carry, it's hard for the team to achieve good results. For example, Scout, Xiaohu, and Xiye are all incredibly skilled at playing mage carries.
However, for mage carries, players often need to develop in the mid lane as "ground spirits," making it difficult for them to roam to the side lanes.

Now the World Championship version has changed, and the rise of Ardent Censer has almost killed off the jungle-support roaming strategy. Supports now have to stay in the bottom lane and lane with the ADC.

Top lane is another isolated lane. It's definitely not going to work if the top and jungle coordinate to gank. The only way out is for the mid and jungle to coordinate ganks to create momentum.

Galio is one of the best mid-lane picks in the current World Championship meta, with excellent wave clear and support capabilities!
Scout now often plays support-oriented mid laners like Galio and Taliyah in scrims.

"I have faith in Duoduo's online skills and his ability to provide timely support," Wang Yao said earnestly. "Our mid lane is just as strong as theirs against Crown. As long as our mid and jungle make the first move, we can gain the upper hand!"

Nofe nodded, which was precisely why he had asked Scout to practice more AP champions like Galio, Taliyah, and Malzahar during this period.

"Oh, and another thing is that SSG places a really high number of wards!"

Wang Yao promptly added to the commentary.

Samsung's operations are exceptional in terms of vision control; they would rather slow down the carry's item progression than compromise vision control on the battlefield.

The advantage of this is that, whether on offense or defense, their vision positioning helps SSG capture enough key information.

This is why SSG can always be one step ahead of the opponent, whether it's setting the pace of the offense or slowing down the opponent's development on defense.

While EDG has good discipline, their ward placement might not be as effective as SSG's across the map.

"We don't expect to be as good as SSG in terms of vision, but we must make sure that we consider whether our position has been detected when we attack!"

Nofe was pleased with Wang Yao's reminder; he liked players who were meticulous like that.

"I think we can also learn from RNG's jungle strategy and take the initiative to go to the enemy jungle to find people to fight!" Wang Yao said.

(End of this chapter)