Just How Good is Team Curse’s Quas?
Just How Good is Team Curse’s Quas?
After finishing the Summer 2013 split in sixth place, Team Curse acquired a new top laner, Quas, and moved long-standing top laner Voyboy to the mid lane. There was a lot of hype surrounding Quas heading into the spring 2014 split due to his strong play in the amateur scene and his unconventional champion pool. Many LCS viewers were anxious to see how Quas would perform against NA’s best teams, especially since there was a shortage of high-quality top laners in the league. Yet Quas had a fairly lackluster rookie split. Curse finished the spring split with only 11 wins and finished in fourth place in the playoffs. In looking at a few simple stats, Quas managed the fourth highest KDA and third lowest deaths per minute, but his play and his stats overall were fairly average. There was little doubt that C9’s Balls and TSM’s Dyrus were a cut above the other top laners, Quas included.
Going into the summer 2014 split, most LCS followers would have ranked Quas as a “bottom 4” top laner given the addition of Seraph and ackerman to the LCS. Yet in a summer split in which perennial standouts Balls and Dyrus noticeably slumped and newcomer Seraph failed to live up to expectations, Quas quietly had a great season (at least statistically).
Recent patches have caused the NA LCS to shift away from the 2v1 or 2v0 meta and toward the standard laning meta, and the outcomes of games seem to be more dependent on ADC performance and team fights. Most NA teams aren’t relying on their top laner to hard carry games, but rather to perform consistently well in lane and team fights. One interesting stat is that in the second half of the split in which there were predominantly standard laning phases, Quas died only once pre-15 minutes. The stats below help show that Quas is a consistent player and is arguably one of NA’s best top laners.
Quas has the second lowest % difference between his average KDA in wins vs his average KDA in losses – which is remarkable given that he leads both categories. In comparing his KDAs directly to those of Dyrus, you can see that Quas and Dyrus have the two highest average KDAs in wins, yet Quas’ average KDA in losses is more than double that of Dyrus. In losses Dyrus is known to go on tilt on occasion, whereas Quas is a much more consistent player. In fact, in Curse’s last five losses, Quas’ KDAs were 9.00, 8.00, 7.00, 0.00, and 10.00 – incredibly high in four of the games given that top laners average a 2.07 KDA in losses. Now, some might argue that his high KDAs in losses might actually be a bad thing as it could be a sign that he’s not taking enough risks to overcome deficits or that he’s unable to carry his team to victory when fed. Regardless, Quas stays actively involved in games as evidenced by his high kill participation %.
Quas played the second fewest champions this split (8), but won on 6 of them. Whereas other top laners play more champions and perhaps venture outside “meta” picks, Quas plays standard picks and, basically, does his “job” as a top laner (and does it well). Top laners average 378 GPM in wins and 311 GPM in losses. Based on Quas’ win-loss record, his expected GPM is 342. His “average” GPM (not “overall”) is 350, which is 2.43% higher than his expected value (highest % among all top laners). Sticking with the same method, Quas has an “average” KDA of 5.79, which is 43% higher (highest % among all top laners) than his expected KDA of 4.05. These stats show that Quas has performed better than expected given Curse’s record.
Curse will play CLG in the upcoming playoffs. The four-game series in the regular season was 3-1 in favor of Curse (L-W-W-W). In Curse’s three wins, CLG managed to kill Quas only two times total. Quas is one of Curse’s most reliable performers and will be a key factor to the team’s playoff success.
Previous Article: Just How Good is Evil Geniuses' Altec?
Data collected with help by the onGamers Stats team: Derek 'Kathix' Adams, Jesse 'JALbert' Albert, Steven 'whedgehead' Falgout, Kent 'Traepoint' Frasure, Christoph "geilerHarry" Lansmann, Jake Morales, James 'PelkaSupaFresh' Pelkey, and José 'Vodkita' Ribeiro. Design by Ben 'Sarcasmappreciated' Li.
