LOL: Can’t I play other games professionally?

Chapter 356 Trending Topics: Lin Ruo, the Version Leader

The real ruthlessness was yet to come.

SoFM, who had seen countless jungle monsters, never expected that his eight-minute encounter with the Red Monster would be his final farewell, because after that, he never encountered a single Red Monster in his own jungle again.

Child, this is not surprising.

After all, the middle tower was lost in just 10 minutes, and he felt okay no matter what happened afterward, so being shut out in the first game was nothing special.

Getting shut out is just a matter of not getting a red buff in one game. It's just a little embarrassing, nothing serious.

Back in the lounge, the Vietnamese bandit tried to calm himself down, but the sight of the screen full of comments instantly broke him down.

He not only understands Chinese, but he speaks it very well.

[An Olaf being chased by a pig the entire game? I'm really not cut out for this.]

[First Cuzz was defeated in the World Championship with a blue-zero score, then SoFM was defeated in the Spring Season with a red-zero score. In short, they're a perfect pair.]

[Lin Gou went all out, don't let this traumatize the Vietnamese so they won't dare invade other people's jungles again.]

[Don't laugh, maybe Vietnam's richest man foresaw the potential for a beating and secretly opened the market. He's making money, you're just having a laugh.]

Is it possible that I could also open a trade at the same time? I'd get laughs and make money at the same time.

[Why didn't you say so earlier? I bet everything! Even though EDG won 2-0, I won't make much, but it's still money.]

...

The screen was filled with comments, and SoFM clenched his fists tightly. He finally remembered the most painful thing.

He was tortured by Lin Ruo for a whole year last year, and today he's being tortured by Lin Ruo again. It's so unfair! When has he ever suffered like this before?

Losing the game is not a big deal, but losing to Lin Ruo is really a big deal.

So SofM was determined to win the second game. Losing one game didn't matter; coming back from a 1-0 deficit to win two was actually more impressive.

However, he had to seize this opportunity. As it turns out, even Vietnamese bandits can't always get what they want; otherwise, he would have been the richest man in Vietnam and would have been back home building a team long ago.

In the second game, SoFM, who still chose to start on the red side, unexpectedly picked Troll jungler to gank in the counter-pick position.

As the Korean server rolled out version 8.4, Troll Warlord rose to prominence alongside Olaf. While his pick rate wasn't as high as Olaf's, his win rate was quite impressive.

Ultimately, the most significant characteristic of troll junglers is that they have a certain impact at any stage of the game.

Especially in the mid and late game, the role of front-line tanks is clear and active, and their ultimate ability can directly disable tanks.

The support and benefits to the team are self-evident.

Meanwhile, the buff to Press the Attack in this version has greatly improved Troll's early-game capabilities, especially his exceptional jungle dueling ability in the early game. His Q skill resets his auto-attacks, allowing him to trigger Vulnerability with AQA, his W skill increases his attack and movement speed, and his E skill restricts his movement.

In the early game, the most important thing for junglers is their jungle clearing efficiency, which means higher levels, faster ganks, and stronger invasions.

In this respect, the passive ability ensures sustain, Q and W provide sufficient damage, and the troll's fast jungle clearing speed without taking damage perfectly meets the requirements.

Once you reach level six, the Trundle jungler becomes even more effective, as his ultimate ability to steal both armor and magic resistance is very useful for tower diving and keeping enemies in place.

In short, there are two key points to playing Troll. When it comes to ganking, as long as you know how to use Q to slow down and stick to the enemy, and your teammates provide occasional support with manual control, killing with Troll under the Fragile state is as easy as killing chickens.

Secondly, when it comes to invading the jungle, follow the principle of invading your own jungle first, then the enemy's. Don't even think about invading before you've finished clearing your own jungle. Trolls clear jungle camps quickly and without taking much damage, so there's no need to abandon your own jungle to fight the enemy in some kind of "two women fighting for one man" scenario.

SoFM clearly understands these two points. He clears the jungle very well in the early game, and only thinks about going to the top lane to check on the Vladimir after clearing the entire jungle.

Upon seeing SoFM, he immediately considered tower diving, ignoring the vampire's Blood Escape and attempting a kill. In the end, he did kill the vampire, but he was inevitably left trapped in the tower by Lin Ruo's E-Flash version of the Meatball Impact.

A one-for-one trade isn't actually a loss, but the biggest loss is that Flandre's Gnar couldn't escape Lin Ruo's punishment afterward.

no way.

Lin Ruo manipulated the Gragas and easily killed the low-health Trundle with an E-Flash. He then used his remaining Q to slow down Gnar, who was following him out of the tower, and slowly chased him to the front of the red team's first tower to complete the kill.

Another double kill without warning.

The Vietnamese guy couldn't accept it at all, because he not only witnessed the barrel's double kill, but even the vampire's head wasn't his.

This is clearly a case of losing both money and people.

Troll Warlord is a good counter to Gragas, but is there still any hero advantage against a Gragas who goes 2-0 in five minutes?
The process and the result prove nothing. This Gragas build with magic penetration, the slow and damage effects of the barrel before a Q are quite obvious.

With the constant harassment, it is extremely difficult for SoFM to achieve the fragile effect by taking a single bite.

Of course, he could use pillars to block the barrels from moving, but Lin Ruo also had a meatball impact technique that could quickly create distance.

Both Trundle's Q and Gragas' Q have relatively short cooldowns, but the difference is that Lin Ruo's Q is a ranged skill, while Trundle's Q is a melee skill.

Lin Ruo can hit the troll effortlessly, but the latter will not have the same ability after being hit by a skill, unless they meet at a corner, otherwise the strong slow and magic penetration of the troll will be eliminated by the troll's Q.

He absolutely did not believe that the troll could lick him.

To put it simply, he's no match for the troll in a 1v1 fight, but sorry, he's built magic penetration items, so he can kite.

The explosion of that Q was absolutely exhilarating, and the recoil effect was also quite prolonged.

In subsequent team fights, facing Snake's lineup of Troll Warlord and Alistar as double frontliners to protect their late-game carry, EDG's lineup was more inclined to engage in skirmishes and engages.

The emergence of the mid-lane support Sion, in particular, added a lot of fun to the game.

The emergence of Sion in the mid lane is largely due to the rise of an item in patch 8.4: Banner of Command.

In the following days, this playstyle will gradually become popular in the Korean server.

In League of Legends patch 8.4, Banner of Command has many benefits. It increases resistances, is relatively cheap to build, and strengthens minions. Especially when combined with the Baron buff, it makes pushing towers very fast, making it a true high ground destruction artifact.

All of this depends on frequent lane control. Only in this way can the greatest advantage of the Banner of Command be brought into play, and Sion obviously has this ability in the mid lane.

When playing Sion mid, especially against AP mid laners, the E-max build makes him very strong in the early game, both in clearing waves and harassing, allowing him to hold his own against any mid laner.

This is invaluable for a utility mid laner. With a build that prioritizes E and then Q in the early game, Sion can use his E to poke squishy mid laners from a distance while kicking minions. The slow effect after hitting with E, combined with the additional damage from Comet, and if you have the Scorch rune, the damage from that single skill can cause a lot of trouble for the opponent in the early laning phase and significantly reduce their health.

The Bone Plating ability, which reduces damage taken from enemy champions, effectively enhances Sion's survivability.

Similarly, the Renewing Wind will provide a continuous healing effect when Sion takes hero damage, indirectly improving his sustain in lane.

This resulted in an unsolvable situation in the online matchup.

Guoguo's Azir was also facing Sion for the first time in an 8.4 game, and he deeply felt Sion's reliance on him, that is, he could not damage him and could not push the lane.

To some extent, he also had to guard against Sain's explosiveness.

With his ultimate, the slow from his E skill, and the knock-up from his Q skill, Sion, a support with strong ganking ability, is capable of securing kills in lane.

Fortunately, Azir's ultimate has a higher priority than Ornn's, so even with his jungler Trundle suffering, Guoguo still has the ability to survive in lane.

However, with the acquisition of the Banner of Command, Sion was able to easily gain lane control, allowing him to continuously coordinate with Lin Ruo to roam in the following games.

How the Tsar survived was no longer the point.

In short, this is undoubtedly a position that perfectly complements the jungle carry playstyle.

With Sion having lane control, Lin Ruo could invade freely while controlling Gragas, and even had to stay close by while invading with Sion who had lane control.

It's not difficult for the barrel to capture people, so it's not that he doesn't want to capture the Tsar, but that capturing the troll is more cost-effective.

Scout, who has always had absolute dominance in mid-jungle synergy, has become a complete support.

As a world-class mid laner, he definitely doesn't like playing Sion mid, because in his opinion, while Karma and Galio are both support mid laners, they at least have a certain carry and damage potential.

In comparison, Sion is purely a tank. But there's no way around it; since winning the Spring Split championship last year, Lin Ruo has had absolute say in the team's draft and tactical decisions.

Facts have proven that Lin Ruo's ideas are always forward-thinking and correct.

Scout played two practice matches with a try-it-out mentality, and the results were quite good.

He immediately changed his mind. Well, actually, it's not bad to play as a tank, where the enemy can't damage him or push his lane.

SoFM also knows that since last year's Spring Split, EDG has had another benchmark in the industry: being a version leader.

Therefore, there's a saying circulating in the League of Legends community: when your coaching staff doesn't understand the current meta, please take a look at EDG's draft picks.

He was initially skeptical, but after witnessing the magic penetration Gragas and mid-lane Sion today, SoFM had no choice but to believe it, because he was thoroughly defeated.

Excellent, today's match will undoubtedly become a study specimen for all the teams.

No, it should be that it already is.

"I told you, can't you play Sion mid? Look how fast you're pushing the wave."

In the RNG training room, Xiaohu, who had been playing Sion mid lane in Korean solo queue for the past two days, slapped his thigh excitedly.

This Sion is really good at playing mid lane.

He just didn't expect EDG to win so quickly. Strong points that have been tested in the version will have a trial period in training matches before they can be used in the competition.

The speed at which EDG used this game clearly indicates that they only played one day of scrims before using it again.

It's too fast. Xiaohu thought he had already put in a lot of effort to find the strong point of Sion in the mid lane before the Korean server trend, but he didn't expect EDG to have already brought it to the competition to hone it.

This shows that their team has absolute confidence in their mid-laner Sion.

As Xiaohu was pondering, Xiaoming next to him blurted out, "Damn it, it must have been Lin Gou who did it. There's no one else in EDG besides him."

Without hesitation, Xiao Hu chose to believe her; he couldn't help but admire Lin Ruo's cauliflower.

But he also has a problem. Why is Lin Ruo, who doesn't play mid lane, so sensitive to the strengths of the mid lane?

It's one thing to understand the AD carry role, and it's another to understand the jungle role, but to already understand the mid lane role before even playing it?

That's terrifying. Compared to EDG's overall strength, Xiaohu is more worried about their unpredictable tactical points.

The reason why the outcome of many matches can be seen after the draft phase is because the difference in tactical awareness is too great.

While others are cooking properly, you're feeding the audience garbage, even making the most basic and simplistic mistakes like leaving the screen blank.

It's no wonder your draft was crushed.

When facing teams with similar strength, the difference in draft picks and bans is undoubtedly the absolute pinnacle of defeat.

Unfortunately... this EDG team is significantly stronger than them overall.

Xiaohu can't believe how terrifying the atmosphere will be when he faces EDG again.

However, before that, Snake, who was just starting out, had already experienced it for them.

Korean-style operations are terrifying, and E-style operations are even more frightening. SoFM was completely bewildered when they witnessed a single minion push down their top lane high ground.

Forgive him for never having seen this kind of tactic before. After all, the version had only been updated two days ago. The uncultured Vietnamese guy, whose brain had just been damaged by the Barrel's nuclear barrel explosion, could only say "Awesome!" to express his shock.

If EDG crushed their opponents in the first game with their sharp offense, then in the second game they used a strategy-driven, operational approach to outmaneuver them from start to finish.

Snake thus became a victim of the version, with EDG defeating them—who only had a superficial understanding of the version—by utilizing their profound understanding of it.

On social media forums, even before the match ended, terms related to EDG's understanding of the current version and their draft strategies had already become popular topics.

As the nominal jungler, Lin Ruo, who is actually the creator of the EDG version, has naturally become the focus of everyone's discussion.

If many LPL viewers were unaware of Lin Ruo's contributions to EDG's tactics before, then after watching EDG's championship documentary at the beginning of the year, everything seemed to become clear.

There's no other reason than that the documentary has so many scenes of Lin Ruo and Nofe setting up tactics that Lin Ruo seems like a coach.

If this doesn't explain Lin Ruo's importance in EDG's tactical arrangements, then Nofe's poor performance during the first half of the Spring Split while coaching SKT seems to confirm all the facts.

(End of this chapter)