The importance of Vladimir in the MSI 2018 finals transcript

The importance of Vladimir in the MSI 2018 finals.

Hey guys, it's Byron here and today we're going to be talking about why Vladimir was such a big pick for RNG this MSI, in particular in game 3 of their finals match vs KingZone Dragon X.

Now before this game, Vladimir had been banned out in first rotation by KingZone, however in this game they chose to let the Vladimir through in favor of taking away RNG's Ornn pick, which they had played in both their game 1 victory and game 2 defeat.

During the draft, it was picked up in the 2nd rotation, and was flexed into the mid lane to play into BDD's Sion.

With this pick, they were able to stomp KingZone in 26 minutes, and give Xiaohu his best KDA of the series. But why was it so successful?

1) Vladimir enables a very safe style of laning, that can be very difficult to punish in the early game. This seems like a weird point as it's into a Sion, however it's very important for RNG to give Xiaohu a safe pick as he's been a big target on a lot of teams radars.

By picking Vladimir, it meant Xiaohu's teamfight-oriented play could be enabled, as he can get through the laning phase fairly easily and into the teamfighting phase without much trouble.

2) Vladimir is very good at getting onto a back-line. With the way KingZone had been playing in the series so far, they have been prioritizing Uzi as their biggest target, and they have been prone to overextending to try and kill Uzi, however into a Vladimir, this playstyle is going to struggle a lot more, as if they focus their teamfight on diving Uzi, Xiaohu can move behind them and jump onto the Varus or Gangplank, which leaves KingZone with two options. Either bring members of the team back from diving Uzi to peel for the backline, or let him die and try and trade his life for Uzi's.

The former means that KingZone will likely lack the ability to get onto Uzi, as with champions like Janna, Shen and the inbuilt peel of Ezreal by his side it's going to take a hard committal from KingZone in order to kill him, and leaving Uzi alive in a teamfight will likely end in disaster for KingZone.

The latter, on the other hand, means that even though Uzi dies, their back line damage sources of Varus and Gangplank will die too, meaning that the fight will likely end up being RNG favored, as the Vladimir will be able to easily out-dps the remaining tanks on KingZone's side

Due to this game, KZ were forced to ban our the Vladimir again in game 4, and due to this they pass up on banning Uzi's Kai'Sa, allowing RNG to pick that source of comfort for Uzi and convert that into a 3-1 victory versus the korean champions.

Thanks for watching :)