2021 World Championship Team Break Down
DetonatioN FollowMe
League of Legends Japan League (LJL)
11-3 (1st Overall)
DetonatioN FollowMe has had a stranglehold on the LJL for the past three years, only losing a birth to an international tournament to V3 in 2020. They play a rigid playstyle that looks for solid laning, limiting mistakes, and having clean teamfights. They separate themselves quickly from other LJL teams but have found themselves lacking in the splashy playmaking that sometimes is needed to impact tournament results. This team isn’t going to out play you in terms of mechanical skill, but you will find them execute on their team’s strategy with high levels of efficiency. Coming into this tournament the question will be, can they out macro the better teams or will there be a player on their roster who will break the mold by looking to take risks? A lot of questions surround DFM and whether or not they will continue to meet old watermarks for success or reach new heights in 2021.
TOP: Evi: Evi was the highest performing top laner in the LJL in their summer split and it wasn’t really close. He had a 6.7 KDA and a first blood participation rate of 40%. He racked up huge laning numbers with +363 GD10 and +369 XPD10. He is the perfect example of the DFM way. Limit mistakes (25 deaths in 15 games), make plays when you can (42 kills in the same amount of games), and gain leads through good laning. I don’t worry about Evi racking up too many deaths in the play-in stage but I worry what his kill and assist production will look like. He could easily be left out on an island and by the time he tries to transition into teamfighting, his team will be too far behind.
JUNGLE: Steal: Steal may be worth the pick up, especially in the round robin portion of the Play-In stage. He has a little more agency and DFM actually relies on him to plan and initiate teamfights. He has a staggering 78% team kill participation and a 53% first blood participation rate. He prefers aggressive/fighting based champions with top picks like Olaf, Hecarim, and even the off-meta pick of Shaco being some of his most frequently picked. DFM will need Steal to be creative in how he sees the game, especially when they play Cloud9, HanwahLife, and LNG.
MID: Aria (SUB: Ceros): Aria is usually where the kills get funneled for this team. In 15 games for the Summer Split Aria picked up 87 kills and had 56 kills in their 11 game playoff run. His wide champion pool could be an asset in the drafting stages of their matchups, and his side lane picks are probably the strongest. Aria wants to get out to early leads in the laning phase and then move into being an issue for opposing teams on the opposite side of the map, thus requiring a response. If teams don’t respond to Aria, he will take towers, neutral objectives, and secure vision for free which is a win condition for this team. This will be hard against some of the better teams but if Aria can find a champion/skill matchup that favors him, DFM has a chance in most games.
ADC: Yutapon (SUB: Marimo): The LJL ADC seems like he would be an absolute steal in this tournament averaging a KDA over 9 in both the Summer Split and the Summer Playoffs but looking at just that stat in a bottle can be misleading. In the Summer Split he was not even the leader among ADCs for kills and was tied in assists. He has an abysmal team kill participation rate (67% in the regular season and 69.9% in the playoffs) which will not translate to any good point returns in DFS. I think he is going to be bullied by the more established ADCs like Cloud9’s Zven and BG’s Doggo.
SUPPORT: Gaeng (SUB: Fujimoto): To call Gaeng’s champ pool refined is an understatement. In the entire 2021 season, Gaeng has played a total of 7 different champions and all of them are similar in play-style. He plays tank champions with a higher emphasis on being able to initiate plays.He has a pretty normal kill participation rate of about 73% over the course of the whole year and that is respectable. I worry though, with a sub-standard ADC in the bot lane with him, that Gaeng is going to fall behind early in these matchups and just end up dying a ton. I would fade the DFM bot lane unless they come out of the gates very hot against the better bottom lanes.
This team will most like play the part of spoiler in this group. I can see them picking up a win against either Cloud9, Beyond Gaming, or Unicorns of Love and keep them from getting a more favorable matchup in the Play-In BO5 match. They will most likely have to face either Hanwha or LNG in that same series and that will end up being a very short series because of the lack of playmakers on this team.
Cann’s Final Prediction: Play-In Stage Participant