LPL team eStar made a rookie mistake today by not taking smite in game one of their series against Bilibili Gaming, which they lost 2-1. Even though they were close to achieving victory, their lack of smite allowed BLG to take objectives uncontested.
BLG’s ADC Wang “Wings” Shu-Kai was the saving grace for the League of Legends team, displaying prowess on Aphelios in their first game win and Ezreal in their second victory. He went deathless in the Ezreal game, showing how to kite properly on the Prodigal Explorer.
The first game was a blunder by eStar. After picking their champions, something happened where their jungler, Yan “Wei” Yang-Wei, didn’t take smite, an essential summoner spell for League junglers. As a result, Wei had a hard time clearing his jungle because of his lack of a jungle item.
A couple of years ago, Riot introduced this restriction on jungle items so that laners would stop abusing them. But this means if a jungler forgets to pick up smite, they’ll fall far behind due to the lack of bonuses they can get from a jungle item.
Even though eStar were close to winning, the lack of smite was too crucial and they lost in the end due to the superior objective control from BLG.
The second game was clean by eStar, though. Wei redeemed himself on Ekko after his smite blunder in the first game. He built an early lead for his team and secured all neutral objectives with the exception of the first Rift Herald. With these leads, eStar cleanly equalized the series at one game apiece.
The third game was the Wings show, however. He played superbly on Ezreal and secured a huge advantage for the bottom side of BLG. His mechanical prowess left eStar powerless in the face of a fed Ezreal.
The biggest surprise wasn’t his skills, however, but the Hail of Blades LeBlanc against Kassadin.
Kassadin is notorious for surviving the laning phase against LeBlanc due to how much built-in resistance he has in his kit via his passive and Q against magic damage. BLG’s mid laner adapted to this by picking up the Hail of Blades keystone to proc multiple auto attacks in quick succession and chunk Kassadin’s life away.
This tactic was successful and BLG’s mid laner won the lane because of this. With the advantage built from their mid and bottom lanes, BLG cleanly closed out the series over eStar.
Both eStar and BLG have some tough opponents coming up, though. They’ll be facing teams that are higher than them right now in the LPL’s Summer Split standings. EStar has to face LNG Esports, who reverse swept FunPlus Phoenix, while BLG will take on the Victory Five roster that’s been playing exceptionally well so far this split. You can tune in to the official Riot Games LPL channel this week to catch them in action.
