Nirvana Top Laner, Reborn Tokyo Girl

Chapter 248, Page 245: Power Beyond Logic

We have Shimamura-san
It sounds a bit exaggerated, but it's a sentence that gives everyone a strong sense of confidence.

Yes, what's so scary about it?
Since joining the team, Shimamura Yuna has not only taken on the role of the team's carry in the game, but has also provided the most mental support outside of the game.

She is not the type of "leader" who would give passionate speeches or say things that are full of positive energy.

This is not an attribute she was born with, and even now, she can't say she's good at it.

However, she clearly realized one thing: she was the strongest person in the team and the one who bore the most responsibility.

Therefore, she needs to take responsibility not only in the game but also outside of it.

In her own way, she clumsily but earnestly tried to encourage her teammates and make them understand her good intentions.

Everyone understood, so everyone wanted to respond to her.

This team, which had actually been embroiled in internal power struggles during the second stage and whose relationships seemed good on the surface but were actually somewhat strained, finally came together with the arrival of Yuna Shimamura.

The team's belief level is rising at an extraordinary speed.

The match soon officially began, entering the draft phase.

The current version is actually more inclined towards jungle carry builds.

In other words, although it's not a particularly traditional jungle carry version, the heroes aren't all stereotypical jungle carry heroes like Kindred or Nidalee.

The teammates weren't the traditional type where all the other laners were just utility players, serving the jungle carry.

However, in the current version, some high-damage warrior-type junglers have a very high impact on the game while ensuring their own development.

A player who knows how to play jungle carries, paired with a team composition that allows jungle carries to perform better.
It does indeed have some significant advantages in the current version.

From this perspective, AL has actually benefited somewhat from the current version's advantages.

After all, there's probably no one in the entire LPL who can claim to be better at playing jungle carries than their jungler Tarzan.

No one even dares to say that anyone can play jungle better than their jungler Tarzan.

This year's AL, last year's WBG
It can be said that Tarzan is the absolute core of the lineup, the most crucial and irreplaceable link in achieving results.

In contrast, TIAN.

You can't say he's a player who can't play jungle, nor can you say he's a weak player.

If he were truly weak, he wouldn't have been able to play for top-tier LPL teams for so many years and consistently be a top choice for various teams.

However, it's obvious that he's only so-so at playing jungle carry roles.

The player's inability to play jungle carries well is a long-standing problem that he has never been able to solve over the years.

To address this issue, his former championship-winning team underwent significant personnel changes, which sparked what might be the most dramatic power struggle in LPL history.

Now that things have come to this, after so many years of practice, Tian's performance as a jungler must be better than it was back then.

But let's talk about where the good points went.
Perhaps it's only at the level of being usable.

It's fair to say that WBG naturally lags behind Tarzan in the jungle position.

However, as mentioned earlier, in the top lane matchup, WBG boasts what is arguably the strongest top laner in the world right now, giving them a clear advantage over the veteran top laner, Flandre.

So, one side has a huge advantage in the top lane, and the other side has a huge advantage in the jungle.
The key to this match is who can turn their advantage into a winning position.

That being said, WBG did not target the jungler position too much in the draft phase.

They simply banned Pantheon in the first round on the red side. Pantheon is a tanky and powerful character with incredible fighting ability, and he and Tarzan are practically inseparable.

Tarzan has created countless highlight moments with this character this year.

Ganking, controlling resources, dealing damage in team fights, and tanking damage.

If Tarzan gets this character, he becomes an almost invincible all-around character.

WBG believes there are actually many viable junglers in this version, and you can't ban them all if you want, so there's no need to target them too much.

However, the Pantheon role is absolutely not one that Tarzan can give up.

JDG also banned a jungler champion from the current meta, namely Qiyana.

This character deserves special mention.

This character, who hadn't been in the jungle for many versions and hadn't even appeared in matches for many versions, has suddenly become a very strong, even somewhat OP, character in the current version.

Absolute numerical values ​​result in absolute strength.

Whether it's the early-game ganking impact or the mid-to-late game teamfight initiation and damage output once the character is fed, this role is absolutely not to be underestimated.

This is definitely a positive development for Xiaotian.

For a long time, Xiaotian was perceived as a jungler who focused on tempo and protecting teammates.

When it comes to representative heroes, characters like the Prince and Sejuani are probably the first thing that comes to mind for many people.

But that's because too much time has passed.

Kiana hasn't been back on the court for too long.

This hero, which is considered the representative hero of Xiaotian's championship, has not been played by him for a long time.

At this moment, when the meta shifts to this rare guest in the jungle, it's hard for anyone not to give Xiaotian a little respect.

Xiaotian might not be particularly good at playing jungle carry roles.

But absolutely no one would dare to question his Kiana.

Although AL could also pick this hero first, in their minds, this hero itself wasn't a particularly high priority.

Therefore, the blue team, having had their first chance, chose to make other decisions.

Both sides made their lineups based on their respective tactical objectives and the characteristics of their members. After a few minutes of drafting and banning, the lineups for both sides were officially determined.

The character choices on both sides are as follows.
AL, Sion, Poppy, Clockwork, Sivir, Lulu.

WBG, Vampire, Monkey, Taliyah, Yuna, Leona.

It can be seen that both sides' business plans follow the same logic: they avoid going to extremes.

It's not like we'll blindly build a bunch of exaggerated four-protect-one top lane lineups just because WBG's top lane is strong.

Similarly, AL won't give Tarzan an exaggerated jungle carry role plus four utility teammates just because he's a strong jungler, and won't insist on letting Tarzan carry the whole game.

This can be considered a feature of this version, or rather, it reflects the current understanding of the version by the mainstream strong teams.

In other words, the lineup will not be overly designed to target a particular position.

More often than not, players will be given their preferred strong characters on each line.

Trust more in hero strength; any build is based on hero strength.

Instead of blindly trusting team composition based on outdated meta elements.

The only truly unique character is probably Yuna Shimamura's vampire.

This character, which is not considered a particularly high priority by other teams, is now regarded as an important character that can be selected in the first round of a BO5 series at WBG.

However, this choice wasn't made blindly. It's not that the character was inherently very strong.

First of all, as mentioned before, Shimamura Yuna's vampire is indeed very strong.

Very few people play this hero, and almost none of them understand or are proficient in it, or can make good use of the positive changes to this hero.

Yuna Shimamura is probably one of the few players in the professional scene who can take full advantage of all of Riot's positive changes to the champion Vladimir.

On this basis, Shimamura Yuna also has her own unique understanding of long-range vs. short-range and late-game carry vs. tanky champions.

This hero was originally just average.

She's not as good as Gwen, not as good as Jess, not as good as Alola.

It's not as good as many of the common characters that can be used in this version.

However, this choice is perfect when the opponent is Sion.

Soon after, in the actual game, Shimamura Yuna perfectly demonstrated with her performance why her vampire is in a class of its own in the current version.

It has been a long time since I last fought against Shimamura Yuna.

In the past two months, AL has played in EWC and the regular season of the third stage, experiencing many ups and downs.

The team's reputation has changed from a dark horse that emerged unexpectedly to a top team that has declined in performance and is rife with controversy.

Saint Gun has experienced one of the most delicate periods in his professional career.
Although he is no longer at his peak, he has been thrust back into the spotlight due to the team's performance.

His physical abilities had reached an all-time low, but he burned with all his might, fueled by a burning desire to win.

He felt he had done a pretty good job.

You can sense the limits that your physical abilities bring you.

This upper limit is a constraint, a shackle, a limitation on his abilities imposed by time and age.

You can also feel yourself trying to reach your limit, or even break through that limit.

I am indeed much weaker than before.

But I am not entirely useless.

Even now, I can still compete with many top professional players and play my part, even if I have to give it my all.

Over the course of the year, he gradually regained his confidence in being able to start and perform effectively on the field.

However, two domains have passed since MSI.

During those two months or so, Saint Gun never forgot the sense of powerlessness he felt when facing Yuna Ueshimamura.

That feeling that no matter what I do, it's wrong.
If you choose to be conservative, your opponent will snowball your advantage without limit.

Choosing to confront him head-on would make his own actions appear full of flaws to Shimamura Yuna, so he focused on doing more and taking more measures.

In Saint Gun Bro's mind, playing against Yuna Shimamura was like playing against a master of fighting games.

If I try to do something proactively, my actions are always countered, resulting in a loss of momentum or a poor finish.
But if you do nothing, you'll be pushed to the side of the board and locked in the toilet where a bunch of people will beat you up.

Although it's often said that compared to a certain game in the same genre that claims to emphasize strategy, League of Legends is indeed a very fighting game.

The outcome of the laning phase determines the priority of early team fights.

The outcome of early skirmishes often determines the course of the entire match.

The end result is a complex interplay of laning details, involving various distance control, cooldown calculations, and control cancellations—a kind of fighting game-like accumulation of mechanics.
But that's what they say.

Ultimately, this game is still a MOBA game.

With a massive hero pool of nearly 200, and the fact that the game's objective isn't just about laning, this game makes it difficult for players to focus on researching strategies against different heroes and how to use skills effectively in lane, unlike fighting games.

On the one hand, human energy is limited.

If you do too much in one area, you'll do too little in another.

Players who are particularly obsessed with their laning phase often have problems with their overall game sense and team fight performance.

On the other hand, even if you do research, it may not be useful.

League of Legends is not a game where you can win just by laning; players still need to allocate a lot of energy to paying attention to other things.

This means that even the best players, whose laning skills are relatively top-notch, often find it difficult to create a truly significant gap between themselves.

For a professional player, investing too much time and effort in online practice is not cost-effective.

It's difficult to maintain this level of strength indefinitely.

A change in the version or the hero pool will have an impact.

Even a slightly lower training volume can have an impact.

Your skill level may not be maintained, but the time and amount of training you've invested are real.

The end result is that you may have passed your peak, and you won't be able to achieve anything in terms of either skill or game sense.

Therefore, after playing for a long time, a professional player will not be too obsessed with this thing.

In terms of results, laning is something that's just barely enough.

It will often present a curve.

When a contestant first debuted, their skills were top-notch.

Then, as you slowly slide down the controls, your game experience increases rapidly.

Ultimately, a player's peak is when their skill level doesn't decline too much while their game experience increases significantly, achieving a perfect balance.

For most players, this is a normal curve.

But Shimamura Yuna is different.

She is one.
A player who achieves the best of both worlds.

She's clearly very young.
But in addition to having the obsessive dedication of young people to mechanics, she also possesses an unusually large number of laning strategies that most young people lack.

At the same time, her overall strategic vision and her gaming experience were almost all optimal solutions.

It can't be said to be a conventional optimal solution; her understanding has many aspects that differ from those of the average person.

But she just can win; she can make people feel that "all the decisions she makes are right."

That's incredible.

Two months have passed, but Flandre still has a deep memory of this player.

In his view, this was a very unreasonable person.

Sometimes he feels that it's just that he was abused at the time, so he has a bit of a filter on his past.

He felt that when they faced each other again, he might find that Shimamura Yuna wasn't as strong as he had thought.

But the result...
'No, isn't this exactly the same as before!'

(End of this chapter)