You've only been playing for half a year, and you've already reached the finals?

Chapter 203 The Opportunity Has Finally Arrived!

"Phi, say hello to everyone!"

"Hello everyone, I'm Phi, the mid laner for EDG."

During the interview, guided by Xiaoyu, Mingjing introduced himself to the camera.

"With the conclusion of this round of matches, the regular season has officially come to an end, and EDG has once again achieved a perfect record in the regular season with an undefeated record of 16-0. What are your thoughts now?"

Ming Jing had anticipated this question, so he didn't hesitate much in his answer: "This result was actually within the team's expectations, since the team set this goal back in the middle of the regular season."

"Of course, a perfect record in the regular season doesn't mean anything; we will still focus on the playoffs."

Mingjing's answer was watertight and comprehensive.

Of course, there's nothing wrong with what they said.

Ming Jing clearly stated in an interview that the goal of winning all regular season games was to achieve a perfect record. Now that this goal has been officially achieved, it can only be said that Xiao Fei Ge truly keeps his word.

Xiao Yu responded twice, then continued, "So, what are EDG's prospects for the upcoming playoffs? Will they aim for the championship?"

“Of course.” Ming Jing nodded: “A perfect record in the regular season only has meaning if you win the championship. If you don’t win the championship in the end, then the perfect record is a joke.”

"In fact, the team has made a lot of changes and attempts during this summer season. Fortunately, our team has a lot of excellent players with strong adaptability, so there haven't been any problems. Now the team has adapted to the version, so our whole team is very confident."

EDG's transformation in the Summer Split has indeed been witnessed by everyone.

The biggest change is in Ming Jing. Since joining the Summer Split, his damage percentage and damage conversion rate have decreased significantly.

Although he is still ranked first in the mid lane, his performance is still far behind his stats before the Summer Split.

But what replaced it was a significant reduction in EDG's overall game time and a dramatic increase in teammates' stats!
A good roaming mid laner is one who can carry the entire team.

Mingjing has done this very well.

Of course, the audience's focus is not on the second half of the sentence, but on the first half.

Upon hearing the first half of his statement, the audience felt that Ming Jing was alluding to certain teams.

For example, IG, who had an 18-game winning streak in the 2018 spring regular season but ended up in fourth place.

But in reality, the audience was completely overthinking it.

The main reason is that back in 18, Mingjing was still in junior high school and had never played the game LOL before, so he was completely unaware of these memes or stories.

It was just something I felt compelled to say.

The interview session ended there. Ming Jing waved to the camera lens and then turned to leave.

Backstage, the rest of EDG had been waiting for a long time and were ready to have a small celebration dinner.

A perfect record in the regular season is certainly an achievement worth celebrating.

Furthermore, because of this first-place ranking, EDG will directly advance to the playoffs semifinals, not only gaining nearly half a month of vacation, but also having a revival under this year's double-elimination format, making the pressure quite low.

When you're in a good mood, you naturally want to eat something nice.

Ming Jing certainly wouldn't refuse a good meal. He packed his backpack and then boarded the team bus with the group.

However, the happy time was destined not to last long. Just as everyone was halfway through their meal, Maokai received a message on his phone from the training team in the WeChat group. Maokai looked down at it and then his brows furrowed quickly.

Ming Jing looked down at his phone and realized that the big thing had finally arrived.

Just now, Riot Games officially released the update announcement for version 11.15, which will be updated globally at 1:00 AM.

This version will be used in the upcoming LPL playoffs. It is a significant improvement over the 11.13 version used in the regular season, so EDG certainly cannot afford to miss it.

Upon seeing this version announcement, Maokai couldn't sit still any longer. After finishing his meal, he immediately pulled his teammates aside for a version meeting.

"This version isn't good," Maokai said, his expression displeased. "It's too obviously targeted!"

The nerfs in this version update are indeed quite significant.

The opening scene was a lightning strike.

Akali has been heavily nerfed; she can no longer cast Q during the second E dash.

It's important to understand that Akali is known as the "AD dematerializer" because of the burst damage of her EQ combo. The second E dash ensures that the Q skill will always hit, making it fast and reliable, leaving AD carries with almost no chance of escape.

This fatal blow will at least make killing squishy targets much less efficient than before.

But what's most infuriating is that after Riot Games nerfed the mechanics, they didn't compensate for any of the numerical values.

On the contrary, Riot Games also nerfed the ultimate ability's damage by several tens of points!
With this nerf, Akali's already pitifully low professional pick rate will probably drop to zero completely.

In particular, while making the cuts, the designer also specifically mentioned that it was "slightly dominant in professional competitions."

"Where's the strength?" Saint Gun Bro was speechless. "That's a bit shameless, to be honest."

In this meta where Lee Sin and Irelia dominate, Akali has no chance of being strong.

Only a handful of teams worldwide can pick Akali for mid lane, and even then, it's usually a counter pick against specific champions.

It goes without saying who it's targeting.

Moreover, Lee Sin and Irelia were not spared the designers' skillful touch.

Lee Sin's [Thunderbolt] damage has been significantly nerfed, from 260 to 220 at max level.

"The situation regarding this change is still unclear," Maokai said. "The analysts are still studying it."

“No need to study it anymore.” Ming Jing, who was extremely sensitive to data, shook his head. “It’s impossible to play online.”

As mentioned before, the AOE skill value of Lee Sin is very extreme, roughly enough to just barely damage a ranged minion, and when combined with Iron Spear, it can just kill a ranged minion.

Now that it's been nerfed so much, Mingjing can easily calculate that a normally developed E+ Iron Spike Whip can no longer kill ranged minions instantly.

This means that if Lee Sin wants to clear the wave, he either has to wait for his second E, or he has to withstand the damage from the enemy mid laner and punch each ranged minion.

Either way, it's a devastating blow to lane pushing efficiency.

The same applies to Irelia; her W damage reduction was reduced by 5%, and her AD scaling was reduced from 150% of total attack damage to 120%.

However, this change is not as fatal as the Lee Sin change.

After all, Irelia's wave clear efficiency was severely overpowered, with the 150% bonus being purely filler. Now that it has been nerfed a little, it's just returning to the normal model, roughly the same level as Lee Sin before the nerf.

But with these three changes, it's obvious who the biggest victim is.

It's important to know that while Irelia is a mid-lane fighter pick that's no less powerful than Lee Sin, there aren't many players who can master Irelia with a maxed W skill.

Even Fryego has been nerfed; his Q skill has been reduced, but it now deals extra damage to jungle monsters, meaning the goal is to force Fryego back into the jungle.

Where can I find someone who is good at Akali, Lee Sin, Irelia, and Fryegor?
Ming Jing was speechless upon seeing this.

Riot Games has indeed become a bit shameless. But on second thought, the fact that Riot Games has made such targeted nerfs shows that they really have no other choice.

When MSI ended, Riot Games made a major patch change, completely eliminating jungle carries and returning to the era of rhythm-based jungle duels. At that time, they probably genuinely believed that this change would limit EDG.

As a result, EDG turned the tables and won all their regular season games, which was like a big slap in the face to the designer!

As it turns out, JieJie is perfectly suited for rhythm-based jungle duels; he was born for this role.

But with the World Championship approaching, the designers can't make major changes to the game, so they can only target individual heroes.

"This mainly affects the draft phase," Maokai shook his head. "The opposing team suddenly has all their ban slots available."

In the past, when opponents faced EDG, Lucian, Akali, and Lee Sin were insurmountable obstacles, and it was common for all three heroes to be banned at the same time.

With this patch, only Lucian remains.

With the opposing team freeing up two ban slots, the difficulty of the draft phase has decreased by more than just a little.

"And the environment is probably going to change too," Ming Jing said quietly.

Moreover, the key point is that the reason why mid laners have been dominated by warriors in the regular season is mainly due to the intensification brought about by Lee Sin.

The Lee Sin was aggressively pushing the minion wave in the mid lane, and the mage couldn't keep up with the pace, forcing the opponent to use a warrior to counter him.

Now that the source of the involution problem, Lee Sin, has been solved, the mid lane might return to mage matchups!

"However, there is some consolation. Tahm Kench has been reworked."

Tahm Kench swaps his W and R abilities, and can only devour enemies after reaching level six.

This change is quite impactful, as many teams will choose Tahm Kench to counter EDG's early-game 4-man gank.

But now that Tahm Kench has been nerfed, EDG's four-man gank on the second lane will only be more effective.

Maokai then added, "Besides that, Graves has been buffed again. His attack damage has increased by two points, which is the second buff Graves has received in the Summer Split. The last one was an increase in attack damage scaling. However, jungle carries are not as strong now, so Graves' pick rate in the jungle is still not very high."

Ming Jing looked at the changes before him and began a brainstorming session of data calculations in his mind.

Having learned from the previous rework of Irelia, he wouldn't overlook any minor changes.
Seoul, inside the DK base.

Showmaker clenched his fists, his face beaming with uncontainable excitement as he witnessed the moving scene before him.

It's worth noting that DK in the summer regular season no longer had the influence they had in the spring season. With a record of 12-6, they were tied with GEN and NS, and ultimately only managed to secure first place in the regular season thanks to their tiebreaker score.

Furthermore, after that, there were three more teams with a score of 11-7: T1, LSB, and AF. It can be said that the gap between these teams is extremely small!
The root cause is that Showmaker is not adapted to this unbalanced mid-lane warrior meta.

Now, this version is finally gone!
DK is back!
These version changes have sparked discussions on all major esports forums.

Thanks to the analyses of various bloggers, even viewers who don't have a deep understanding of the game have come to understand who the biggest victim of this version is.

As a result, various online forums in China have seen a surge of criticism against designers.

[This is ridiculous! The designer has absolutely no shame; they're just going to nerf it directly, right?]

[First year watching the game? Don't the designers do this every year? They nerfed RNG in S8, Top Esports in S10, and last year with the jungle carry meta, they didn't nerf any of the popular jungle carries, but specifically nerfed Karsa's signature Trundle. Did you expect that?]

[If you ask me, we shouldn't have won the MSI championship. Even if we had, not many people would have praised us, and we would have been criticized instead.]

[If they're nerfing Lee Sin, Akali, and Irelia, they might as well nerf Lucian too! What are the designers even doing?]

[Don't rush, if we nerfed him all in one patch, what will we do next? Let's nerf Lucian again at Worlds, wouldn't that be great?]

Come work at Riot Games tomorrow!

This is going to be tough.

[No problem. You don't think Xiaofei only knows these few mid laners, do you? At worst, we can have Scout go mid and Xiaofei go back to bot lane as AD carry. Isn't that great?]

That doesn't make sense.

Amidst the various opinions, the date arrived at August 12th.

The playoffs have officially begun, and the LPL summer season has entered its most intense phase.

The impact of the version changes was quickly reflected in this playoff.

Although the playoff matchups are arranged in order, the teams facing off in the first round will be limited to the seventh to tenth positions. There is no significant difference in strength between the teams in this range, and based on past experience, the matches are usually quite intense.

But this time, with the version changes, the first round of the competition took a completely different turn.

First up is LNG, ranked eighth, versus SN, ranked tenth.

Leng Shao icon demonstrated exceptional adaptability to the current meta in this tournament, playing LeBlanc twice and Syndra once, leading his team to an easy advancement.

Then it's WE's seventh match against OMG.

WE's mid laner Shanks is also a mid laner who is good at traditional mages. While his opponent Creme was still playing Sylas and Irelia, he directly picked Syndra three times, helping his team sweep their opponent 3-0!

Understanding the version of the game determines the outcome, and this time it was another powerful sweep, with WE advancing!

Anyone can see from this that the trend of the version has completely changed.

After the decline of warrior mid-laners, strong lane-farming mid-laners like Syndra and LeBlanc rose to prominence.

This is undoubtedly a major test for all mid-lane players. In the playoffs, where there is almost no room for error, those who do not adapt to the current version will be eliminated!

Under this immense pressure, even Ming Jing increased his training volume for the ranking matches.

LeBlanc and Syndra are considered essential champions for mid-lane players.

Unfortunately, Mingjing is a newcomer to the game, and these two heroes weren't popular in previous versions, so he hasn't really played them much, and he really needs to practice.

Fortunately, Ming Jing's talent was undeniable, so he wasn't worried.

However, some people are happy.

In a corner of the lounge, Scout secretly watched Ming Jing, who was working hard to rank up, his eyes shining brightly.

During his time on the bench, Scout has been in a state of high tension during training.

Without practice matches, he used ranked games to replace them.

In terms of ranked matches, he far surpassed other top players in the Korean server by several times. Coupled with his impressive win rate, his ranked score far exceeded that of everyone, including Mingjing, placing him at the top of the leaderboard!
He relied on his best mage hero!
Given Scout's unparalleled dominance in the Korean server, many fans are calling for him to play.

However, due to Mingjing's FMVP-level performance, coupled with Scout's inability to adapt to warrior matchups, these voices were suppressed.

But now, the version has finally been updated.

If Mingjing has flaws in the new version, then his opportunity will come.

(End of this chapter)