The VIPL third place match was played on Saturday, where the two top Korean teams faced off for bragging rights and a cool $9,000. These matches had everything a fan could hope for: top talent, excellent strategy, gold swings, nail biters, and epic finishes.
As these games unfolded, there were key things that are important for players new and old. Let’s jump into the first match and explain a few of the swings and potentially why they happened.
The Best oFfense
Is a good defense. Some professional sports teams flip this around, and make up for their lack of defense with strong offense, and the same is true in the VIPL. However, in this match, the early swing in favor of pQq was thanks to smart defensive purchases.
Rain’s first few buys had his inventory starting to fill up with tier one offensive items, and a Weapon Infusion that he consumed around three minutes in. However, even with his infusion burning, Rain and Mauloa got bullied out of the middle of the jungle. He returned to the jungle shop and purchased two more tier one items, this time both defensive.
Now armed with a Light Shield and a Light Armor, Rain has 60 bonus armor and 60 bonus shield, bringing him to 99 of each at level five. Wine alternatively built an Oakheart as his early defensive investment. While he invested slightly less into defense, the effective life totals were not even close.
| Player | Armor | Shield | Health | Mitigation | EHP |
| Wine | 39 | 39 | 1562 | 28.1% | 2172.5 |
| Rain | 99 | 99 | 1262 | 49.7% | 2508.9 |
This purchase from Rain was brilliant. In a double mirror match (Vox and Glaive), he matched his opponent’s damage, and invested 300 gold into soaking up much more damage. Also, by making his life total more resilient with higher shield and armor values, he actually improved the effectiveness of Adagio’s heals on himself by almost double.
With this highly efficient build, Rain went on the offensive, repeatedly sticking his nose where it didn’t belong, soaking up damage and letting druid do work in the meantime. This propelled druid into an early 5-1 kill streak, giving pQq a massive cushion of a gold lead to work with.
Throughout the game, almost every player was drinking infusions. It has become so commonplace that I expect to see it even on supports in the late game! However, just because they are so common doesn’t make it a no-brainer choice. Druid actually used multiple Weapon Infusions during the early stages of the game, despite playing crystal power Vox.
Crystal Infusions buff Cooldown Acceleration and provide a scaling amount of crystal power, depending on your level. In the early levels, it’s simply not as influential as the flat amount of attack speed gained from a Weapon Infusion. Druid drank his first Crystal Infusion roughly 16 minutes into the game, after he had completed Alternating Current, Broken Myth (he must be a fan), and Shatterglass.
Invincible Armada rallied from a 4-12 kill deficit at 15 minutes, to cut it to 11-13 just before 19 minutes in. In every play they had focused druid, keeping him from being able to execute his vicious and devastating combo in team fights. However, it was only a matter of time until druid got the opportunity he needed to take over the game.
Here’s the setup:
Then wait for it…
Invincible Armada forced themselves into a small choke in the jungle, Mauloa stepped up to catch all three with a self-targeted Gift of Fire, and no one could escape druid’s ultimate.
The Executioner’s Axe
After the small setbacks from the first game, pQq came into the second game focused, and it showed. Rain decided to turn up the heat early, diving the SECOND turret just 2:40 into the game. If you saw those same juicy targets, it would be hard to pass up an opportunity like this!
Waits for his Afterburn to be up and for Invincible Armada to line up perfectly, then commits.
Sangho wishes he was anywhere else right about now.
Then proceeds to walk out like a cool cat. Wine does use Afterburn to push Rain under the turret, dropping him critically low. The reaction from the casters, Valdes and MonteCristo was priceless. If you missed this action unfolding, I truly pity you.
Rain is forced to suffer another turret hit, then must face the trek past Wine. In the final moment, Mauloa lands the Gift of Fire on Rain, saving him from certain death. Then Rain continues to create space between himself and Wine, and Mauloa has the damage necessary to finish Wine off.
After the 0-3 start, Invincible Armada was never able to recover. The final score was 12-2 in favor of pQq. Rain was a reliable and consistent threat throughout this series, and understandably was crowned MVP. I wish I could say I called that jungle match up closer, but Rain played it excellently.
Below you can find the box scores of the games.
Game One
| pQq | Kills | Deaths | Assists | Creeps | KDA |
| druid | 8 | 5 | 7 | 197 | 3.0 |
| Rain | 6 | 2 | 5 | 116 | 5.5 |
| Mauloa | 2 | 5 | 11 | 15 | 2.6 |
| In. Ar. | Kills | Deaths | Assists | Creeps | KDA |
| Sangho | 7 | 5 | 4 | 190 | 2.2 |
| Wine | 5 | 6 | 6 | 89 | 1.83 |
| Ruin | 0 | 5 | 10 | 9 | 2.0 |
Game Two
| pQq | Kills | Deaths | Assists | Creeps | KDA |
| druid | 5 | 1 | 3 | 183 | 8.0 |
| Rain | 4 | 1 | 8 | 97 | 12.0 |
| Mauloa | 3 | 0 | 5 | 9 | 8.0 |
| In. Ar. | Kills | Deaths | Assists | Creeps | KDA |
| Sangho | 2 | 4 | 0 | 160 | 0.5 |
| Wine | 0 | 4 | 1 | 55 | 0.25 |
| Ruin | 0 | 4 | 2 | 3 | 0.5 |
Miss the finals? Check out our review here.