League: I really didn't tank!

Chapter 374 When did you start researching Samsung?

After finishing their meal, the group walked back to the restaurant entrance, boarded a bus, and then took Lin Yuanhua and Chen Dongqing home.

Because the hotel was located not far from the neighborhood where Chen Dongqing and Lin Yuanhua lived, it saved them a lot of trouble.

This is simply the advantage of being the host country.

Upon arrival, Chen Dongqing got out of the car and escorted his girlfriend back to the building.

It wasn't until this point that Chen Dongqing finally couldn't hold back any longer, pinning his girlfriend against the wall and giving her a good shove.

After what seemed like an eternity, the two finally parted, panting, and went their separate ways.

As Chen Dongqing went upstairs, she wiped the lipstick stains off her lips with her hand. After returning home and going upstairs, she greeted her parents.

Seeing Chen Dongqing was about to leave after saying goodbye, his mother asked, "Aren't you sleeping at home tonight?"

"What are you going to sleep in?" Chen Dongqing waved his hand. "You haven't even made your bed."

My mother's diligence is ingrained in her bones. If Chen Dongqing is not at home, my mother will definitely put away Chen Dongqing's quilt and sheets and cover them with a duvet cover, always keeping them clean.

"That's nothing, I'll pave it for you right now!"

"No need, no need, don't bother. I just came back to see you all." Chen Dongqing quickly said, "It's just for one night, it's too much trouble. I'll stay at a hotel."

"That's fine too," Mom said with a smile. "You played really well today, keep it up!"

"Okay!"

The elderly couple were going to sleep soon, so the family didn't chat much. Chen Dongqing turned and walked away from the community, returning to the team vehicle.

Linko frowned and asked, "Why did it take so long? It's been twenty minutes."

Chen Dongqing remained expressionless. "Oh, my parents insisted that I stay and talk, so we chatted for a while longer."

"Okay." Linko nodded. "It'll be good to talk to Mom and Dad more."

They drove back to the hotel in silence. Chen Dongqing quickly washed up and went back to bed, falling into a deep sleep.

The scene was familiar: after falling asleep, Chen Dongqing returned to the competition field.

Meditation Training, Let's Begin!

Today's meditation training is very important, and Chen Dongqing was well prepared.

In the second game today, Doinb's Kled first killed Goldew twice, and then spread his advantage throughout the game, dominating the entire match.

Chen Dongqing, playing Jayce, couldn't find much room to maneuver and unfortunately lost the game.

After losing the match, Chen Dongqing felt that there were indeed some fleeting opportunities, but he failed to seize them on the field.

This is where the importance of meditation training becomes apparent.

If Chen Dongqing wants to raise his [Consciousness] to the maximum level of 95, then today is the only time!

The match began quickly.

In this game, Chen Dongqing did not try to change the early course of the game, allowing Gao Dewei to collapse in the mid lane.

There's no point in trying to change this through a god-like perspective; it's not something he can do on the field.

What he needs to practice is how to seize opportunities in this disadvantageous situation, and how to make a name for himself on the side lane by split pushing!

To achieve this goal, Chen Dongqing began one attempt after another.

The first priority is to maintain a stable position in the laning phase.

After the liberation of Kereit, the first thing he did was to get on the road.

If we survive this attack, it will be a major problem that needs to be studied.

Chen Dongqing has reset it countless times.

He used the bushes to avoid ganks, relied on the tower to get a counter-kill, took down the enemy top laner before Kled could come up, and even teleported to the bottom lane for a four-man gank before being caught out himself.

Chen Dongqing found countless solutions to break the deadlock and implemented them one by one.

After getting through the laning phase, Chen Dongqing began to study split pushing.

FPX's ability to gank the side lanes is top-notch, even stronger than any other team, especially with monsters like Kled and Rek'Sai in this game.

This makes Chen Dongqing's solo carry role more difficult than imagined.

To put it bluntly, no one in this world can play solo in this situation; daring to do so is certain death!

Only Chen Dongqing could rely on the mechanism of endless restarts to continuously practice and research.

After an unknown amount of time, Chen Dongqing watched as the opposing Kled once again failed to achieve his goal, while Uzi seized the opportunity to destroy the opponent's bottom lane second tower. He nodded in satisfaction.

He had completely mastered the opponent's ganking rhythm.

Chen Dongqing went back to the beginning of the competition and practiced it from start to finish.

In this disastrous situation where the mid lane collapsed, the experienced Chen Dongqing completely reversed the game with his individual performance!

Chen Dongqing opened his eyes the instant the FPX base exploded.

A system message arrived.

[This "Meditation Training" session has ended. Attribute changes are as follows:]

[Consciousness: 94→95]

[Rating: S+ → SS]

[After a night of intensive training, you have attained the upper limit of human consciousness. From today onward, all so-called operations will become a joke in your eyes!]

Chen Dongqing looked at the long string of system messages in front of him and felt a great sense of relief.

Sure enough, as expected.

Only through failure can one grow.

The reason why Chen Dongqing's [consciousness] has been stuck and hasn't moved is because he hasn't encountered a powerful opponent.

After their awakening, FPX filled this last crucial gap.

Chen Dongqing nodded in satisfaction.

This is crucial, FPX!

He is full of confidence for next week's final!

Soon, the QG team members got up on time, had lunch, and then went to Hongqiao Airport together.

Chen Dongqing looked around at the people and asked with narrowed eyes, "Where did this group of people come from?"

In front of him stood Lin Weixiang, who was chuckling, and Liu Qingsong and Doinb, who both had sour faces.

Shouldn't the FPX team, who were eliminated in Shanghai, have disbanded on the spot?

"Practice partners!" Linko said with a smile. "FPX has such good practice partners, it would be a waste not to use them. So we contacted them on the bus yesterday, but you went home at the time, so you didn't know."

"Okay." Chen Dongqing nodded.

Liu Qingsong crossed his arms and said, "Don't overthink it. We're just going to Beijing for a free trip, and we'll be sparring with you guys on the side."

"What, aren't you welcome?" Lin Weixiang shouted from the side, "If you're not welcome, we're going back."

"How could that be?" Chen Dongqing grinned and put his arm around Lin Weixiang's shoulder. "Welcome, welcome!"

The group hurried towards the waiting room, but coincidentally, the SSG team members were also there.

Chen Dongqing greeted them politely, and then chatted and laughed with the FPX members next to him.

The SSG players standing nearby felt a pang of sadness upon seeing this.

Judging from the way the FPX players look, are they going to fly to Beijing to practice together?

Didn't you two just fight to the death yesterday? How come you're laughing and joking around again today?

For some reason, Master An thought of SKT.

Two days ago, after SKT was eliminated by them, they flew directly back to Seoul the next day and haven't even sent a message to them since.

Right now, he's probably fishing in Jeju Island.

The thought that he would have no training matches to play in the next few days made Master An feel a little bitter.

This is not fair!

Before long, the three teams boarded the plane together, and one plane landed directly in Beijing.

The hotel is located right next to the Bird's Nest; you can see it as soon as you open the curtains. The location is simply unbeatable.

After Linko arrived, he helped the FPX team members check into the same hotel, and then the members of both teams met up in the training room.

Riot Games provided the training room with ten computers, just enough for the players from both teams to play practice matches.

Of course, substitutes and coaches don't have computers, so they have to figure out their own way.

Banbazi could only bring his laptop, which he connected to the projector. Then he clapped his hands and said, "Let's get started!"

Holding a pre-match meeting to thoroughly understand the opponent's style and devise countermeasures is a long-standing practice for QG.

The FPX players were quite adept at handling this situation and immediately turned their attention to it.

Everyone watched as Banbazi moved the mouse and then opened a table.

This table records the number of wards placed by both sides in the semi-final match between SSG and SKT.

(These are ward placement statistics from the S7 World Championship. There are slight discrepancies between the data and the data in the article for SKT's jungler, so please ignore them.)

"SKT is already a team that loves to buy control wards. They bought a total of 92 control wards in three rounds of this BO5, but even so, they are still far behind SSG's 156 control wards."

Looking at the data, everyone in QG couldn't help but click their tongues in amazement.

They knew Samsung had a lot of eyes, but they didn't expect it to be this many.

156 True Eyes, just considering the price, that's equivalent to 4.5 Infinity Edge.

Banbazi clicked the mouse and switched to the ward data from another semi-final match.

In the match between QG and FPX, the ward stats were incredibly easy to count.

Since both sides are purely aggressive teams, they don't like to use wards, and the matches are short, so combined they probably only have a slightly longer time than SKT.

as predicted.

Three games later, the combined number of true wards on both sides barely reached 136, which is less than the number placed by a single three-star team.

QG is the most abnormal team. Even Xiangguo doesn't have many true sight wards. The team's true sight wards are all destroyed by Shi Senming alone.

Shi Senming ranks first among all players in the entire World Championship in terms of the number of wards placed per minute.

He's definitely the younger brother in the team.

However, it is clear that you cannot say that QG and FPX are low-level teams just because they place fewer wards; these are all style issues.

"To be honest, among all these true sight wards, only Samsung can make it profitable." Chen Dongqing couldn't help but shake his head when he saw this data.

If you can't recoup those three or four thousand gold from the wards each game, then you're basically losing money.

"And that's just the control wards," Banbazi continued. "There are also trinket wards, green jungle item wards, and wards from Sightstone, the number is countless, it's impossible to count them all."

Banbazi once again revealed the heatmap of Samsung's real and fake wards in the match. This heatmap almost covered the entire map, making it virtually impenetrable, which undoubtedly stunned everyone once again.

Banbazi explained, "Simply put, they utilize the vision protection provided by true and false wards, focusing on avoiding fights and farming in the front, while split-pushing and kiting in the side lanes to drag the game into the late game and win by relying on the strong performance of their Ardent Censer AD carry. They almost never initiate team fights, which is the ultimate embodiment of macro-strategy."

"This tactic would have been absolutely unworkable last year, because the bot lane in S6 simply didn't deserve the resources the team would allocate to protecting it. But this year, it works perfectly; you could say that the Ardent Censer is what makes this tactic work."

Immediately afterwards, Banbazi showed SSG's hero picks from the group stage, along with commentary:

Why did SSG perform poorly in the group stage? Because at that time, the top lane meta was still dominated by tanks. Cuvee was carrying a tank, so he couldn't split push effectively.

"But in the knockout stage, the top lane champion priority changed drastically. Cuvee, with his Jayce, Kennen, and Gnar picks, officially filled SSG's last weakness, making SSG a near-perfect team!"

"This is a pure meta team!" Doinb couldn't help but remark, "This meta was tailor-made for them!"

The people around him all agreed with Doinb's words.

The top lane focuses on split pushing, the jungle focuses on passive play and dictating the pace of the game, the mid lane focuses on utility, and the AD carry needs to be consistent with Ardent Censer.

All five members of SSG are extremely well-suited to this version, which explains why they were able to make it all the way to the finals as the third seed.

If it were a different version, they would probably end up in the quarterfinals or the round of 16.

This is what makes esports competitions so cruel and unreasonable.

You can dominate 90% of the year, but at the last moment, a slight version change or a fluctuation in your state of mind can cause you to fail.

On the contrary, some teams that perform only moderately throughout the year only need to go all out for one month, or even just one best-of-five series, to win the final championship.

Winning for a whole year is too difficult.

Of course, in this world, there is a team that has already achieved the Grand Slam.

"But, it's not a big problem," Banbazi continued with a smile. "We're just as compatible with this version, aren't we?"

Top lane split push? Bottom lane support?

QG boasts the world's best top laner, the world's best jungler, and the world's best AD carry. What meta can't they dominate?

"To break SSG's tactics, it's actually quite simple; there are three paths," Banbazi said with a smile. "First, the simplest: use brute force. SSG's core strategy is simply to avoid fights, so we'll use our strongest ability—initiating fights—to force them into engagements!"

"Secondly, it's a bit more difficult. You need to choose a late-game lineup and drag the game into the late game to see who has the best late-game performance."

"Third, this is the most difficult part: breaking their vision tactics. If their vision protection fails, they will collapse on their own."

After listening to these three ideas, the QG team members thought about them for a while.

"The first and second ones are indeed feasible," Uz said. "We're very good at those two, but the third one is less likely."

If vision-based tactics were so easy to break, Samsung wouldn't be where it is today.

Moreover, QG is not a team known for its vision control, so how can they possibly find a way to counter it?

Chen Dongqing often plays a split push strategy without vision, and he does it very well. He has spoiled the QG players, and when they ask them to place wards, they can only do the basic ones and can't play anything fancy.

"That's what I think too." Banbazi nodded. "My idea is to focus on the first two problem-solving approaches over the next few days, mainly practicing the early-to-mid-game aggressive playstyle and the late-game four-protect-one playstyle. Do you guys have any questions about that?"

"Okay!" Everyone in QG nodded, with no objections.

But just then, someone else raised their hand and spoke.

"The third option isn't entirely unacceptable either," Chen Dongqing said. "I do have an idea."

"Oh?" Banbazi said, "Tell me about it."

Chen Dongqing said, "Theoretically speaking, as long as you remember the warding habits of each player on the opposing team, and the status of their control wards and the times they enter and leave the jungle, you can roughly guess their warding setup and find opportunities to counter it."

Chen Dongqing's words caused a brief silence to fall over the people in the training room.

"Is this possible?" Shi Senming asked sincerely.

Chen Dongqing turned her head and asked, "Can't you do it?"

"Can humans do that?"

"Hehe." Chen Dongqing crossed his arms and said, "Anyone with hands can do it."

If someone else had said that, everyone present would have thought that person was bragging.

But if Chen Dongqing said that...

After hesitating for a long time, Banbazi said, "Really?"

Chen Dongqing nodded seriously: "I'm absolutely certain! I know exactly how the five people on the other side ward.

"Alright then," Banbazi said with a smile, "Let's try it out in a practice match."

Soon, the training match was about to begin.

Before the game started, Chen Dongqing went to the FPX team and had them play a custom game. Then he explained the general warding strategy to the FPX players.

Following Chen Dongqing's steps, the five FPX players created their vision control and found it to be quite effective!

Not only that, Chen Dongqing also gave them a detailed introduction to the gaming habits of the SSG members.

"In the mid-game, they often ignore the AD carry and just stick with the jungler and support incredibly tightly."

As Chen Dongqing spoke, he flipped through the video footage, looking for evidence, leaving those around him stunned.

When did this guy start researching SSG? How come they've never seen it before?

But SSG's performance proved that Chen Dongqing's words were true.

Therefore, neither team hesitated and immediately began a training match.

FPX simulated SSG's game strategy, while the other four members of QG searched for a way to counter it, and the matches went by one after another.

In this training match, FPX learned some operational techniques, and QG also learned how to play an operational game, both of them gained a lot.

Time quickly came to November 4th.

Final day.

(End of this chapter)