Before and After: Stats analysis of TSM’s Roster Swaps – Mid game Kills are down and Wildturtle dying more than ever.

As the 2014 season approaches its second half many teams have been changing their roster in order to attempt a run at the 2014 World Finals. This is part 2 (for part 1, Dignitas, click here) in a series analyzing each of the team roster changes in the form of statistics from the past split to this split. We will break down each of these on the basic statistics like GPM, KDA, and CSPM, as well as some more advanced statistics like Kill Shares, Gold Distribution, and Solo Kills.

This week we will break down TSM, who changed their Support and Jungler over the offseason and while they got off to a good start in superweek (3-1) they have recently been struggling (1-3 in last 2 weeks).

Team Solomid - Spring vs. Summer

Last split TSM was a favorite for first throughout most of the season but ended up second behind a late-split surge by Cloud 9. So TSM’s middling start this split is a supreme downgrade and as such will see negative trends in most of their basic statistics as they go from a 2nd place team to a now 5th place team. Another thing worth noting though is that they had the 2nd quickest games last split but now have the longest games out of any NA team, averaging a 41 min game time (and 43 minutes in wins, compared to 33 minutes last split).

The interesting stats come out though in the objective and early game section. In objectives TSM retains a bit of their strong objective presence of last split, however now they give up significantly more dragons and barons - probably due to them having the long games. Also looking at the early game section of stats we see that while they are struggling some in the early game with less first bloods, towers, and dragons their key failure is in gold lead gained from 10-20 minutes. They were the best team in that phase of the game last split with averaging 4% more gold gained, but now they are actually negative. To look more at this lets breakdown the kills of TSM.

TSM Kill Stats - Spring vs. Summer.

The kill stats are really telling for TSM this year and where they are really failing. Last split we can see that they never really killed much in the 0-10 min phase, but they didnt die much either. They hold this same early game philosphy this split and give up the least deaths in the 0-10 minute phase. However, last split they were aggressive in the 10-20 min phase to make up for this 0-10 build up time, and had a ton of action in that phase of the game. This playstyle hasn’t translated well in with the roster changes and has left them as a team that doesn’t die that much (2nd least DPM in the NA LCS), but doesn’t get kills (6th KPM in NA LCS).

TheOddOne vs Amazing

Amazing was a really hyped pick up from Europe as he was often seen as the “best Lee Sin in EU” and won many of Riot’s weekly MVPs, however after the move he has been heavily scrutinized especially for his champion pool. Overall though, Amazing’s stats don’t look that terrible, mainly because of his low deaths (2nd lowest DPM at .045, only behind crumbzz, almost 1/3rd of the DPM of brokenshard). Also while junglers are getting in general less % of gold from their team Amazing seems to be getting above average, at 2nd among junglers.

Gleeb vs. Xpecial

Xpecial being benched was a big controversy as many people have said that Xpecial was the best support in NA last split. The untested Gleeb was met with a lot of skepticism when he was chosen, and so far he has not really filled the big shoes of Xpecial. While his stats are down from Xpecial’s stats, the big problem with the roster change has been the Gleeb-Wildturtle duo. Wildturtle has 22 deaths this split, only RobertxLee has died more (26). For comparison, Altec and Yellowpete have only died a combined 14 times. While Xpecial has not been doing so great on Curse so it’s not really fair to fully blame Gleeb, the bot lane of TSM has really been underperforming this split and is one of the reasons I think TSM has fallen into the middle of the pack.

Overall, while TSM has been falling a bit compared to last split I still believe they have the potential to become a top contender. With the pickup of recent coach Locodoco and the strong mechanical players their team has by the end of the split they could make a run for the worlds spot, but only time will tell.

Data collected with help by the onGamers Stats team: Jesse 'JALbert' Albert, Derek 'Kathix' Adams, Steven 'whedgehead' Falgout, Kent 'Traepoint' Frasure, Jake Morales, and James 'PelkaSupaFresh' Pelkey. Design by Ben 'Sarcasmappreciated' Li.