League of Legends news » Playing from the Shadows

If Chawy could play one champion like Westdoor, he would pick Zed. If Westdoor could play one champion like Chawy, he would pick Viktor. The assassin and the control mage. The teammates and the rivals. 

Chawy and Westdoor have been playing together on ahq e-Sports Club as teammates for the entire 2016 LMS Season. Two mid lane stars -- with very different backgrounds and skill sets -- both competing for the same spot on the starting roster of the team. 

We’ve seen numerous examples of substitutes being used in competitive League of Legends before -- Faker and Easyhoon of SK Telecom T1 would be the most high-profile example -- but there are a handful of more recent, local examples too. Bunny FuFuu and Smoothie of Cloud9, Expect and Kikis of G2 Esports. All of these relationships were based on splitting time, and all of them eventually came crashing down. 

Here at Worlds 2016, plenty of teams are turning to substitutes for different reasons. PawN and Scout of Edward Gaming sub to alleviate PawN’s injury problems. CoreJJ and Wraith of Samsung Galaxy sub based on who is playing better during scrims. We even saw Bengi return to the Worlds stage in favor of Blank for SKT. So what is driving teams toward the use of substitutes when splitting time has had nebulous results in the past?

The answer in ahq’s case starts with Westdoor. 

 

While the long standing mid laner for ahq developed his reputation on Twisted Fate -- a champion that is still target banned against him this Worlds -- it's his array of highlights on assassins that has dazzled more recently. Give him a Fizz and he’ll show you that the “Unkillable Demon King” is just a king. But it was this mastery of assassins that left holes in the rest of his champion pool. He was easily target banned, and his one-minded playstyle of deleting the enemy carries would force the team to play around him instead of with him. 

This was on display for everyone at Worlds 2015 when ahq reached the Quarterfinals and came face to face with SKT. Despite Westdoor getting a solo kill on Faker, his playstyle was pointed out as a reason for their 3-0 loss. After the match, people thought Westdoor was going to retire.

"I think a lot of people misunderstood,” says Westdoor. “I was saying goodbye to the Worlds stage because we lost at Worlds. It wasn’t about retiring, it was just saying goodbye to the Worlds stage. Being at the final eight isn’t good enough for me."

In the fallout from their loss, ahq’s management went in search of a substitute they could use to complement Westdoor’s skillset. A robust player, with a deep champion pool, who could play with Westdoor on a rotational basis to shield him from bad matchups and target bans.

 

Their search led them to Chawy. A six-month competitive ban had just been lifted from his head over an elo-boosting incident that occurred four years prior. Now he was free to sign with a new team, but a player like Chawy was a rare breed. Not only is he a top mid laner in Asia, but being from Singapore, he also speaks English. “I got offers from other regions,” says Chawy. “But I didn’t go over because I felt quite comfortable in the LMS region. This year when I joined ahq, it was because ahq offered me starting play. They promised me that I would get to play in Worlds. This was my dream, so I put my dream before other things like salary and great offers.”

Chawy signed with ahq and would go on to play in the 2016 LMS Spring Split on a rotational basis with Westdoor. The idea being that Chawy would start red side games, while Westdoor would start blue side games. As blue side gets first pick, theoretically teams on blue side could quadruple ban someone out, so starting Westdoor on blue side would keep him safe from this style of targeted banning. Also, as red side gets last pick, if you have a big champion pool, you can respond to just about anything. So Chawy was a great choices for starting the red side games.

“I feel like in the future more players will be subbed to split play time,” says Chawy. “There are not a lot of players like Bjergsen or Faker who can play every kind of champion. Some players are better at mages, some players are better at support champions, some players are very good at assassins, so if you mix these players together they might actually form into a pretty good team.”

Westdoor’s opinion was quite different in regards to the value of a substitute on a League of Legends team. “So I think having split time at a position is a backup solution,” he says. “Theoretically if all five teammates are performing well and find ways to win games they shouldn’t need a sub.”

The difference in their answers says a lot about how they view themselves and each other. Chawy, the substitute, justifying his existence on the team and Westdoor, the starter, reminiscent of a time when the mid lane was solely his. Both answers have merit -- and could technically be true. But there is an obvious conflict of ideals at play here. One that, in the future, might fail to reach a conclusion.

When ahq finally debuted their new rotational system in the Spring Split it was surprisingly effective. So effective, in fact, that ahq went on to finish first in the regular season. It was praised by critics, and coming into the Spring Finals, ahq were considered favorites against their LMS rivals, the Flash Wolves. But it was here where ahq’s system was exposed. Both Chawy and Westdoor struggled against Maple in the mid lane and ahq would lose 3-0.

The loss was crushing. In the aftermath ahq’s management pivoted away from the rotational system to something that was more in line with Westdoor’s way of thinking. They put out the decree that starting positions for the Summer Split would be based on rank in the highly competitive Korean Solo Queue ladder. Westdoor and Chawy would no longer just be competing against the other LMS teams for a spot at Worlds, but also each other.

“This is the first time I’ve experienced it like this,” says Chawy of their system. “Last time [I played] in a team, there wouldn’t be so many subs. There wouldn’t be another player, behind you trying to fight for your role. This year was quite different because we had to get used to two players trying to fight for each role. For us our competition is quite high, quite tough, because both of us are the most hard-working players in the team.”

In the end it was Westdoor who climbed higher and faster. He started over Chawy for the entirety of the 2016 LMS Summer Split. It seemed that the substitute system had once again fallen short of its intended mark. Now, instead of using two players to complement each other’s shortcomings, it was as if they were being used as a motivational tool. Now they were rivals, at least in Chawy’s eyes.

“To me our relationship is more competitive than friendly,” says Chawy of his relationship with Westdoor. “But we do learn from each other. I’m better at mages than he is, and he is very good at assassins, so if I want to learn something about assassins I’ll ask him, and if he wants to learns something about mages he’ll ask me.”

In the Summer Split ahq finished third in the regular season and would meet Flash Wolves again in the Summer Finals where they were reverse swept. When they qualified for Worlds 2016 through their Regional Qualifier, many people wondered if we would actually see Chawy attend the tournament, let alone start. Then, on September 30th, Chawy took to the stage in their Group C match against EDG. He would finally get to fulfill his dream of playing on the Worlds stage, and he would be laning against a former World Champion in PawN. 

Despite giving up first blood, Chawy put on a great performance in his very first Worlds appearance. He was strong in lane, created picks with the double bomb combo on Zilean, and showed the mental fortitude to play from behind with the rest of ahq. They would eventually go on to lose the game -- though not by much -- and Chawy’s individual performance was good enough to merit considering a more liberal use of substitutes by ahq here at Worlds as Group B concludes on Friday the 7th of October.

In the end there is only so long you can play in someone else’s shadow, and right now it feels more like the role of substitute is kind of like a departure lounge -- a place where you’re waiting to take off to the next stage of your career. Be that a new team, or retirement. Though if any team here at Worlds can show the value of strategic substitutes, then surely it will be ahq.

For now, both Chawy and Westdoor will be unified under the one goal -- the Summoner’s Cup. And they’ll no doubt do whatever it takes, be it sub or start, to reach that goal. Both players kept their expectations for this Worlds under wraps and rightly so. Actions speak louder than words and it’s better to show than tell. Though when we asked them what American city they were most excited to see, Chawy just smiled and spoke with a laugh.

“The one with the Finals!”