Samsung White vs. Star Horn Royal Club: David vs Goliath Matchup

Now that the last semifinal match has wrapped up I'd like to take a moment to evaluate the World Championship final match up. I'll be going over team strengths and weaknesses as well as contested picks and bans.


Samsung White:

PROS
- They showed a dominating performance vs. sister team Samsung Blue. How much of that is actually Samsung White playing well or Samsung Blue not showing up is up for debate.
- Executes rotations extremely well. However, there is a noticeable patterned dip in decision making in the mid to late game. Sometimes Imp goes too ham and it costs them the game or mistimed teamfights extend the game longer than originally intended. Other times his haminess finds him great success.
-Securing small early game leads almost guarantees them wins. Especially 3-buffing the enemy team.


CONS
-When they fall behind early there tends to be a discrepancy in how well they can play. This was showcased in that STOMP game they dropped to TSM.
-When they lack vision they can be out-rotated. Technically that flaw stands for every team. But, in Samsung White's case this is probably more of a problem as they rely on good vision control to catch one person out then out rotate their opponents after a pick.
-Predictable tendencies. Over the course of the World's games, Samsung White has shown a predictable pattern when gunning for neutral objectives like Dragon or Baron.


Star Horn Royal Club:

PROS
-Extremely good at capitilizing on picks and teamfights and has un-curtailed aggression.
-Extremely good at finding favorable Baron fights even when behind. This team capatilizes on mistaken Baron calls better than any other team.
-Uzi can carry the game.

CONS
-If Uzi falls behind the whole team's effectiveness becomes dwindled.
-Corn has been rather lackluster and against PawN whose champion pool is deep and mechanically adept. It'll be a toughlane to hold on to.
-If inSec fails to make an impact early the hyper aggression he's used to using often backfires on him seen in multiple games vs OMG and EDG.
-subpar rotations and likes to look for teamfights even when behind. This team's best asset is also its worst. Sure they can make plays from behind, but trying to consistently make play after play while behind is extremely difficult and often bites them in the butt.



Contested Picks

Ryze- This has been a generally solid pick all around. Both Cola and Looper have performed well on this champion over the course of World's and is an overall strong scaling pick. This will likely be a pick for contention

Janna/Thresh- I've lumped them together simply because if one of them is picked up the likeliness of the other is being picked jumps substantially. Yeah there were games where that wasn't case but they stand to be the fewer and farther between. Both of these picks bring great teamfight potential and are generally all around good supports.

Rengar- we haven't seen a lot of inSec on Rengar, but Dandy has been picking it up and the games we did see inSec on were impressive ones. This will likely be a contested pick for either jungler leaning more heavily in Dandy's favor. I predict SHRC banning Rengar at least once or twice.

Lee Sin- when you have a champion play named after you, you know it'll be a contested pick. Both junglers have shown proficiency on this champion. However, during most of World's inSec's Lee Sin play has been fairly lackluster. However, if they wanna shutdown mid lane synergy and scary ganks SHRC will likely ban this.

Jayce- I originally wasn't going to include Jayce in this since PawN has really been the only user of him. But, after Cool pulled out Jayce to great effectiveness against SHRC in the semifinals, this became a contested pick. SHRC has shown weakness to well played poke comps and out rotation. PawN is significantly better at playing Jayce than Cool. Expect to see Jayce banned at least one game.

Rumble- this top lane menace has shown himself once again and proven that midgame effectiveness outweighs late game scaling. Looper has shown proficiency on Rumble in one game which is technically hard to quantify as data. However, the impact he provided that game was second to none so. If SHRC chooses Maokai top this is a likely counter to it and vice versa.

Twitch- Both teams' ADCs have favored this champion heavily. Both Uzi and Imp have single-handily carried games with Twitch. The assassination and catch potential on this champion is extremely high and favors teams that use teamfight comps or can out rotate their opponents after a pick. Both teams can do this and therefore this will be a fought over champion.

Lucian- the power this champion brings to the table is amazing. There's a good scaling curve on him and he doesn't have any particularly weak phases in the game. He will fall off toward the end game vs say a Tristana. However, it's not nearly as bad as some other ADC picks.

Series Prediction:

Samsung White 3-1  70/30 in favor of SSW.

Honestly Samsung White just look much stronger and more stable. In my opinion if OMG hadn't dropped the ball in the last game in the Bo5, they would have stood a better chance since they rotate better and can curtail their aggression when need be. SHRC plays poorly when behind and SSW is extremely good at catching early game mistakes. SHRC does have a chance to take 1 or more games off of SSW, but, the only way that will happen is if SSW start to get overconfident and play sloppy.