Just a few hours ago, Dplus KIA defeated GAM Esports in the matchup between the two teams at the 2023 World Championship. This victory can be described as a “flawless” win for the LCK representative. ShowMaker and his teammates simply outclassed their opponents, and they just needed to play their champions correctly according to the situations in the match to secure the victory. Despite having a standard draft, GAM still couldn’t create any surprises against a team that boasts three champions from the Worlds stage.
Notably, the second game was even more dominant than the first, as from the early game, all lanes of GAM were completely losing to their opponents. While in game 1, Kati or Kiaya could somewhat maintain their CS lead, in game 2, all lanes of GAM were far behind DK. Among them, Kati, who was playing the Assassin champion Akali, even had moments where he couldn’t see any minions, let alone gain experience.
It’s worth mentioning that right from the beginning of the match, SofM unexpectedly exclaimed: “Ahri with Fleet Footwork means -1 for GAM. Ahri with Fleet Footwork combined with her W skill means Akali can’t touch Ahri. After 3 Q skills (early in the game), she can’t even get minions, let alone gain experience.” Perhaps League of Legends fans understand that Ahri’s W skill will increase movement speed and summon 3 flames to attack multiple targets around her. Meanwhile, the Fleet Footwork rune will stack charges when attacking and moving. Once 100 stacks are reached, it will heal and increase the movement speed of the champion.
This rune setup synergizes exceptionally well with Ahri’s W skill mechanics. This was clearly demonstrated in the recent DK – GAM match. But even more surprisingly, ShowMaker admitted that he viewed GAM as a “practice dummy” to test this rune setup: “The defensive capabilities of Akali’s auto-attacks are lower than her magic resistance. By using Fleet Footwork, the benefits provided by the rune will help Ahri overcome the barriers of survivability. But I also never tried this in practice. I chose it just because I thought it would work well.”
It is clear that DK, in general, and ShowMaker, in particular, are very confident about this matchup. And ShowMaker’s performance also demonstrated how effective this choice was. It is very likely that Ahri with Fleet Footwork will become more prevalent in the future, especially when players like Chovy or Knight use Ahri even more effectively than ShowMaker.