Just hours ago, Cloud 9 defeated Evil Geniuses with a score of 3-1 in the winners’ final of the LCS playoffs. With the high performance of the entire roster, the members of “Cửu Vân Bang” easily crushed their opponents, with former SKT star Bang and his teammates managing only a single win and now accepting the challenge to qualify for the grand finals from the losers’ bracket.
In addition to their good play, Cloud 9 also brought back a champion that hasn’t been seen in the jungle for a long time, Nocturne. The interesting part here is that Evil Geniuses seemed unable to counter this pick, even though it isn’t too difficult to do so in a professional environment. After the match had been going on for a while, caster RiotJatt suddenly recognized the huge advantage of Nocturne, which wasn’t due to player skill but rather the result of playing online and maintaining distance during the pandemic.
RiotJatt: “I want to explain an interesting thing I just realized about Nocturne that makes him suddenly extremely strong when playing online instead of on stage. The situation occurs when he activates his ultimate, Paranoia, and you only have 600 vision around yourself; when playing online or in solo queue, you only have ping.
When playing on stage, teammates can say ‘he’s diving at me’ and you would turn to look at your teammates’ screens for information; this happens a lot and is one of the reasons Nocturne is not a strong pick in tournaments. However, when playing online, especially during this pandemic where players must sit far apart for safety, you can’t do that. I truly believe Nocturne is much stronger for this reason, and it might be why Cloud 9 is currently dominating.”
For those who may not know, when playing on stage, gamers sit very close to each other, and just a slight turn can give us a grasp of our teammates’ situation. Although this is not often mentioned, it truly is a huge advantage when playing on stage, as the speed of information exchange and processing is extremely fast compared to online play.
Perhaps for this reason, Nocturne is not a strong pick in the professional scene; his greatest strength is disrupting the enemy team with his ultimate, but if opponents move together as one solid block, how can he dive in? However, when playing online, particularly in the current context of needing to maintain distance during this pandemic, the act of “checking” teammates for information is no longer possible, and that demon can roam freely.
