Introduction

On May 8-10th 2015, Team Solo Mid (TSM) played in the Mid Season Invitational which included the winners from each regions: Korean, Europe, China, SEA, and wildcard team. Coming into the tournament, they were favored coming from a win from the NA LCS 2015 Spring Championship and IEM Katowice 2015. Despite these recent wins, TSM went 1-4 and knocked out of group stages in convincing fashion. Many people were blaming the players to the coaching staff for the disappointing performance on Reddit and social media based on the performance. This article hopes to shine some light into one aspect, the jungle pressure provided by TSM and opposing teams.

The first 10 minutes or until all outer towers are taken by either team is looked at. This provides an insight of the early game jungle pressure exerted by each time.

2015 TSM Spring Split and Playoffs

In 2015, TSM aquired a new jungler Santorin who earned the 2015 NA LCS Spring Split Outstanding Rookie award helping TSM continue the dominance they have shown in the prior split.

In 26 games, Santorin ganked a total of 34 times in the first 10 minutes. During this time, there was only 4 games in which a gank did not happen in the first 10 minutes.

First taking a look at TSM gank times:

The reason for the first ~3 minutes and between 7:20-9 minutes is low is due to Red/Blue buff re/spawn times.

Most ganks tend to favor the Duo lane of Wildturtle and Lustboy but generally even among all lanes.

TSM vs Others

Looking at how other teams focused their ganking attention is also important:

Most ganks tend to be aimed at Bjergsen and Dyrus with less attention paid to the duo of Wildturtle and Lustboy. TSM was under more pressure in the first 10 minutes with the opposing jungler attemping 47 ganks to Santorin’s 34.

2015 Mid Season Invitational

TSM

This still follows the same trend of favouring the duo lane. Granted it was only 5 games but almost no focus given to mid and there was no help for Dyrus.

TSM vs Others

Taking a look at other teams, shows a drastic difference:

Again, TSM was ganked 15 times compared to Santorin ganking 6 times in the first 10 minutes of the game. As well there was 2x more pressure put onto Dyrus compared to Bjergsen.

#Conclusion

Although this does not answer the question about the poor performance, it gives insight into just how different Santorin’s ganks were compared to the Spring Split. As well as the MSI teams adopting a focus Dyrus strategy compared to Bjergsen being the focus in the Spring Split may of thrown TSM and being a best of 1 format, adapting to a team style was not possible although all teams seemed to favor the focus Dyrus strategy.

The data collected was limited. Vision was not taken into account or was it a successful gank granting a kill or burnt summoner. This would need to be collected to move towards a more solid conclusion.

Data

Data can be found at link below:

Data