This week was quite an interesting stream from SEMC, they introduced a new King of the Hill format that they’ll be doing somewhat regularly in which guilds come in and challenge the standing champion on stream. This week we had three matches: The standing champions, Wicked and Nemesis battled it out and two new challengers, Halcyon Hammers and VIP, came in and fought for a chance to challenge the champion.
Japan Vainglory launch went down, with some awesome post-match karaoke! PlayoffBeard announced that the minion candy bug with Petal’s Munions and gave us some even more interesting Petal news…
The third overall skin and first Petal skin was announced, Queen Bee Petal commanding an army of hornet while riding on a daisy! The official announcement can be read here. One of the coolest skins shown off yet, in my opinion.
One statement that may have caught some viewers attention, “of course, there are going to be skins for every hero, over time,” implying that the initial update may not contain a skin for every hero. Somewhat sad, but also understandable, if that is the case.
The story behind the infamous “skinned” Skaarf was explained, Surprise Birthday’s friend ordered it after sending in a picture of Skaarf to a company that makes plushies. So unlikely that it’s related to skins or the merch store.
King of the Hill
In the first game, Halcyon Hammers ran a team of Skaarf, Koshka and Adagio up against Team VIP’s Krul, Ringo, and Ardan. As PlayoffBeard pointed out, this gave HH a large early game advantage as all of their comp was very early-strong. HH took advantage of that with a level-one jungle invade that snagged them a kill on VIP’s Ardan as well as a few jungle creeps. After a short bit of farming VIP’s Ringo rotated down to the jungle at low health to engage up the invading HH, HH’s Skaarf quickly rotated down as well turning the fight and allowing them to trade their Adagio for VIP’s Ringo and Ardan. Shortly after HH picked up a kill on a jungle-shopping Krul, putting them at 4-1 with only three minutes in the game. VIP looks to turn their fate by setting up some traps along the map, notably they placed four scout traps in the trip-bush on their side of the jungle. This way if a fight breaks out nearby, it’s likely to go in their favor. HH followed suit dropping traps along their side of the jungle by the shop creating these sort-of defensive perimeters along their side respective jungles. A while later fighting breaks out in the jungle and ultimates fly about the map. VIP takes the worse side of the battle and gets aced, but only barely with only HH’s Adagio left and saved from death-by-scout-trap only because of his ace buff. In the next fight of the match VIP takes losses again, but is saved from an ace by Ringo retreating up to lane after seeing his allies mowed down by a Dragon’s Breath. Ringo fails to initiate upon HH with a Hellfire Brew that is blocked by Adagio, the fight then quickly turns against VIP who was in a bad position to initiate anyways. They lose their Krul and Ringo and in exchange HH’s Skaarf dies to a scout trap while chasing down Ardan. HH narrowing avoids an ace in the next fight as Ardan escapes a closing Adagio with only a sliver of health and a Vanguard buff after taking down Skaarf and losing Ringo and Krul. HH leverages that to take the first turret of the game, but unfortunately VIP cleans up quick taking down their Adagio and Koshka as the retreat back to their side. Koshka initiates in on Ardan and the team focuses him, having to quickly swap focus to the carries mid-fight. VIP goes down in an ace, but because of a lack of focus from HH Skaarf is also killed in the fight. HH fails to initiate properly in the next fight and as a result VIP is able to ace them losing only their Ringo. They rush Kraken and pushes down the first two turrets. Unfortunately they got too greedy and initiated under the third turret and got aced after killing Koshka. HH leverages this for a third turret off of VIP. VIP takes down Skaarf in the next fight, but gets aced. HH pushes into VIP’s base and shatters the vain. The final score was 23-15 with a gold of 24.6k to 16.1k in the Hammer’s favor. Halcyon Hammers go on to fight the champion.
Fury mentioned during the match that they are still working on the merch store, says that it is getting closer to debut.
In the next fight between Wicked and Nemesis, Nem ran a comp of Vox, Koshka, and Ardan against Wicked’s Krul, Ardan, and Vox. Wicked wasted time in the early seconds of the match hoping to bank Nemesis and ended up having to instead take Nem’s back jungle while Nem took their’s. Nem came back before Wicked was done and managed to pick up kills on Ardan and Krul. Nem is able to grab another kill on Wicked and take their gold count to 1.2k, double that of Wicked at just 3 minutes into the game. In two separate poorly matched fights Wicked lost two more kills to Nem. Wicked is repeatedly getting caught out solo in the jungle, but as PlayoffBeard comments that as team facing a higher elo team like Nemesis, they really need to be taking these risks to try to give themselves a significant enough advantage. Krul is consistently getting caught out and murdered by Nemesis. If you look at the builds, Wicked is simply not being responsive enough; no one on their team has built tanky 10 minutes into the game, despite an easy shield route that would allow them to hold out till late game when the odds are more even. They’ve also gone into two WP carries, instead of the meta: CP Carry, WP Carry, Tank. Nemesis has put themselves at a significant lead just 11 minutes in and is already looking to close out the game. Without any Reflex Block on the team, Wicked is getting focused by Yummy Catnip Frenzy and then instantly melting. 13 minutes in Nem aces Wicked, pushes down two turrets, grabs Wicked’s minion mine and then moves on. With his other two teammates dead, Ardan tries to stop Nem from taking Kraken, but ends up getting taken down and Nemesis takes it to finish off the game. Nemesis pushes the Kraken into Wicked base and finishes off the crystal. Wicked wasn’t able to score a single kill until after their crystal went down; final score 19-2 with gold of 18.5k vs. 9.4k. Nemesis is the reigning King of the Hill.
Nemesis feeling cocky ran a double assassin plus Ringo comp against HH’s Vox, Koshka, Adagio comp. HH grabs first blood a while after a somewhat-stalemated start. Taka dies to a trap after stealing some back-farm. Nemesis turns a near-death experience for into a kill on Gold Miner and Adagio. Nemesis while taking a lot of damage every fight, is consistently coming out on top and sending HH on the run. The match goes rather slow for a while, with Nemesis pulling forward in gold and kills. Around 15 minutes, Nemesis decides to end it going for Kraken forcing HH to fight them allowing Nemesis to take an ace and Kraken. Nemesis’s over aggressive push costs them: while they manage to take down all the turrets, leaving only one at a sliver of health, they lose their Taka and Ringo in the fight. Nonetheless, a well-timed back door would spell the end for HH at this point. With talk of back dooring from PlayoffBeard, a normal team fight breaks out and while Nemesis loses Taka they score an ace that will easily hand them the win. Final score: 18-8 with a gold of 20.8k to 12k. Nemesis holds their title as King of the Hill.
The final big piece of news was that Captain Neato will be solving the issues with staggered match starts on older devices in 1.4, no longer will players with old iPads load into the game later than everyone else.
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Sorry for this recap being so late, I’ve been dealing with computer problems and just generally being super busy over the past week. Hope this is still useful to people!