Gaming
Secret’s super support shone brighter than the rest of the field in China.
As the ancient exploded and Team Secret were finally crowned as champions of a Valve sponsored event at the Shanghai Major, all eyes instantly turned to Clement 'Puppey' Ivanov, the captain of the team who was also celebrating his birthday on the day of the final. His incredible jungle skills were finally allowed to shine, thanks to a meta that heavily featured the likes of Enigma and Chen, two of his signature heroes, and on more than a few occasions he completely out drafted his opponents, including in the final game of the event.
Puppey may have had a very good tournament but he was outshone by his support partner Johan 'pieliedie' Åström, who throughout the event proved to be not only Secret’s best player, but the best player of the whole of the Shanghai Major. His play right from game one was always on point; his Lion became one of the most feared heroes of the event and his death counter remained low throughout, something he has struggled with in the past. All of these factors mean that pieliedie is ourMVP for the Shanghai Major.
The most obvious talking point from pieliedie’s impressive event was his dominance on Lion. Coming into the event it was a hero he had seldom played this patch, but in Secret’s third game he found himself on Lion and showed off just how good he was, picking up 10 assists and just one death in a 32 minute game against TI5 runners up CDEC.
After that performance Lion became a regular pick in the second phase of the draft for Secret, and the wins kept on racking up. More and more people started to notice just how good pieliedie was on the hero, resulting in a few respect bans from the likes of EG. Secret responded to this by taking the hero as a first or second pick in most of their games against Liquid in the upper bracket finals and the grand finals.
In Secret’s 19 games in Shanghai pieliedie played Lion in 11 of them, and lost only twice on the hero, once to Frankfurt Major winners OG (despite picking up seven kills) and once in the final to Liquid. Many other teams in the later stages of the event tried to replicate Secret’s success by also picking the hero, but often it failed to work out, resulting in Lion sitting at a 65 percent win rate for the entire event; if we take out pieliedie’s games from that stat the win rate is much closer to 55 percent.
With Puppey off in the jungle more times than not it was left down to pieliedie to keep Jacky 'EternaLEnVy' Mao safe, as well as keep up ward vision and secure kills. Almost without fail he managed to do this in every game, regardless of the hero he played. EE ended up having one of his best ever tournaments, partly thanks to the vision and zoning provided by pieliedie. By being relatively active from the start he also managed to create a lot of space in the jungle for Puppey who was mostly left alone in the early stages.
Throughout each game pieliedie would remain relevant, something not every support player can claim. In the mid game his stun into Finger of Death combo on Lion resulted in a number of pick offs, and as big team fights kicked off he would often hex an opponent just as they were about to unleash a potentially fight turning spell. Lion may not be the most glamorous hero, often doing the dirty work of locking down opponents, but in the hands of pieliedie he genuinely looked over powered and in need of a nerf.
Of course Lion wasn’t the only hero that pieliedie played: in fact some of his more impressive plays came on other heroes. One of his most technically impressive plays came on Vengeful Spirit, where he body blocked EHOME’s Ren 'old ELeVeN' Yangwei for what seemed like an eternity, which allowed EternaLEnVy to pick up the kill.
Another, perhaps more impressive play, came in Secret’s Upper Bracket match against OG. The series was tied at one game each, meaning the loser of the final game would be cast into the perilous lower bracket and would have to play a best of one series against Virtus Pro. Secret had a decent lead but were by no means assured victory as Secret’s mid laner, Aliwi 'w33' Omar thought he had secured a pick off onto David 'MoonMeander' Tan, only to be jumped on by the rest of OG and looked to be facing certain death. Just as Earthshaker’s Echo Slam was about to send him to the grave, pieliedie appeared from nowhere on IO, tethered to W33 and relocated back to the river, allowing the rest of Secret to come in and after a relatively long fight win the series. The timing on this is sublime: half a second later and W33 is dead, then the fight probably goes OG’s way, which would have most likely given them at least one set of rax and evened the game out.
It was plays like this, along with the sheer consistency of pieliedie that clenched him our MVP award. When his teammates were having less than ideal starts, which happened a little too often for tournament winners, he would be there to help turn things around. When fights broke out he would control the most important heroes, and plays like the two highlighted above prove just how good he mechanically is. Without pieliedie in this kind of form there is a strong case to be made that Secret wouldn’t have won the major, fortunately for the squad and all of us watching we got to see one of the best supports in the world play arguably the best he ever has.
For more eSports coverage, follow @RedBulleSports on Twitter and like us on Facebook.
.png)
