Pro Play By Play - Caps' Ahri

Pro Play By Play - Caps’ Ahri

Spoiler alert: G2 absolutely decimated Rogue in the LEC finals over the weekend, largely due to a ferocious performance from their mid laner Caps. Throughout the playoffs, Caps demonstrated his prowess on Ahri after she was recently buffed, and was able to play it twice in the finals. Let’s break down an important team fight from game 3 of the series.

The Play

State of the Game

After a very chaotic early game, G2 find themselves in a slight gold deficit of around 3k gold. Rogue have very strong split push potential between their Twisted Fate and Jayce, while G2 can make plenty of picks with Ahri and Pyke or engage team fights with Ornn and Trundle. As the fight breaks out at around 21 minutes, Baron has just spawned and securing it would mean establishing firm control over the game.

The Collapse

The play begins with Rogue looking to make a play in the top lane. Ahri (Caps) has a 250g bounty and has just bought a Mejai’s with 10 stacks, while Trundle (Jankos) has no Flash. Therefore, catching both of them out would be huge for Rogue and allow them to take the Baron. Ahri lands a Charm on Twisted Fate (Larssen) just as Jarvan (Malrang) attempts to knock up Ahri with his combo. However, Ahri is able to escape thanks to the movement speed from her W:

Jarvan and Ahri trade blows but neither commit their ults, as Ahri can simply use her ultimate to escape Jarvan’s. All the while, Braum (Trymbi) and Jinx (Comp) start to roam up to the top lane for Rogue in an attempt to trap G2 in from both angles:

As soon as G2 spot Braum incoming from a pink ward in the bush, Ornn (BrokenBlade) begins his teleport on a minion in the lane. Jayce (Odoamne) immediately responds with his own, while Xayah (Flakked) and Pyke (Targamas) start to roam up to the top lane from the mid lane.  

The Escape

Caps then uses Ahri’s ult to get close enough to Charm Twisted Fate, but Larrsen Flashes back toward his tower in time to escape:

Caps then uses the second charge of his ult to get closer to Jarvan and nearly finishes him off with a Q. Jarvan responds by using his ultimate on the Ahri as Jinx is close by and can start shredding through her, so Caps is forced to Flash out of the Cataclysm:

Jarvan and Jinx then Flash forward to try and finish off the Ahri, which would be a huge shutdown for Rogue and proc Jinx’s passive. However, Caps is able to survive on less than 10 health as Jinx did not crit on the final auto:

Critically, Comp starts to run toward the rest of G2’s members as he assumed Caps would die to his last auto attack and wanted to start damaging the rest of G2. When he realises Caps has survived, he attempts to finish him off with W and R but Caps is able to dodge and escape:

Meanwhile, on the other side of the fight, Braum has been chunked by 3 members of G2 and is forced to Flash away.

The Clean Up

With Caps still alive on less than 50HP, Twisted Fate pops his ultimate and teleports next to Caps to finish him off. However, Caps times his Charm perfectly for when Twisted Fate completes the cast:

Additionally, this extended team fight has bought enough time for the Pyke to join the fight. Though Twisted Fate finishes off the Ahri once the Charm CC has ended, he is immediately hooked by the Pyke and is about to be stunned by his E. This forces Twisted Fate to pop his stopwatch:

Though this temporarily saves his life, this buys enough time for the rest of G2 to rejoin the fight. Xayah is able to damage the Twisted Fate and get him low enough for Pyke to get the kill with his ult, and use the reset to finish off the low health Braum. G2 now find themselves in a 4v3, and find a final kill on the Jinx by using the Ornn ult.

Summary

Rogue were undoubtedly unlucky when Caps survived, as Jinx had completed a couple of crit items and would have killed the Ahri with a crit. The fight would then have been completely different, as Rogue would have been in a 5v4, could have used the Jinx passive to shred through G2 and the Jinx and TF ults to completely stomp the fight.

Nevertheless, Caps played this fight out superbly, dancing around the edge of the fight and baiting Rogue to invest tons of resources into killing him. Off the back of this fight, G2 took down the Baron and continued to win every single fight until they destroyed the Nexus.

Anybody attending MSI should be worried, because G2 and Claps are back.

Rilea (Twitter)