Chapter 147

September 2nd, afternoon.

G2 base, training room.

Wrong, Lao Zhang, you're doing it wrong. Playing top lane Titan isn't like this; don't keep thinking about farming.

But my two waves are about to push into the tower; not taking them would be too wasteful.

Don't worry about whether the minion wave reaches the tower; you're a tool player, just think of yourself as a support. Exactly, you are a support. Imagine a support Titan: when a fight breaks out in the jungle, what would a support do? First, provide assistance, don't worry about the lane.

Because you're purely a tool player, you don't need to farm; your only role in team fights is control. If you can land a full combo, you're qualified; dying doesn't matter. As long as you steadily land the control you should, your teammates will naturally follow up.

But this is ranked...

Ranked should be played this way too; you need to form the habit. What Titan needs is level, not gold. Leveling up increases your crowd control duration; items cannot.

Titan received an epic-level buff in patch 6.16. Now, targets hit by Titan's ultimate 【Deep Sea Impact】 are not only knocked up but also stunned for 1–2 seconds, and the knock-up duration increased from 0.5 seconds to 1 second, doubling it.

The knock-up time is fixed at 1 second.

The stun duration increases with the ultimate's level.

When the ultimate reaches level three, it means that if you're hit by it, you must be controlled for at least 1 second; if you don't have cleansing, after the knock-up lands you'll be stunned for another second.

This is actually a very buggy skill, but because this is a long-range support meta, hard supports suffer too much in lane, so nobody uses it.

It's also because the coaching teams of this era aren't very capable; no one thought to use Titan's ability in this way, let alone build a system around Titan's lockdown control trait. Thus, even though Titan got a huge buff in 6.16, it only appeared once on the S6 stage.

But Liang Yan doesn't have such limitations.

His mind holds too many weird tricks to play, and any one you pick out is a dimensional strike.

Also, in the late game levels rise slowly, and two people sharing lane experience doesn't affect level much. So whenever the opportunity arises, you can actively call the jungler to help push the lane, let him take the last hits, and you both gain some experience—because he has damage, he can farm gold to finish off fights, while you lack damage and don't need much gold.

Once you max your level three ultimate, you basically won't need to farm lane at all. If our support is Janna Karma–type, you can even give your gold to them and just buy a ward stone to be a pure support.

You handle crowd control, your teammates deal damage; when we engage, we instantly kill the enemy's strongest damage dealer. Even if you die after initiating, it's still a win, because your gold has been shifted to your teammates—less gold exchanged for more gold, so the ensuing skirmish will surely be ours. This system's strength lies right here.

I don't fully get it yet, but this theory sounds awesome!

Put simply, it's the Tian Ji horse racing idea. Think about it more; once you fully grasp this playstyle, our system will have a 100% win rate against anyone.

Then why don't you teach Mi Xi?

Mi Xi doesn't need teaching; they're naturally a support. Playing Titan as a support is the same as playing Sun Girl—if you can play one, you can play the other; just get some practice.

Oh...

After this game, switch accounts; we'll practice duo queue faster.

Sure!

If one of us fills the support role, I'll take Titan support and you play something else; that way we'll also practice the flex playstyle.

Okay. But you don't need to practice heroes?

I... I've practiced already.

When did you practice? I've never seen you play.

I'm a genius; after one bot match I know everything.

Pfft.

……

The game version is currently updated to 6.17; compared to 6.15, there aren't many changes, and no region has used these two versions yet. But we can glimpse the impact from high‑rank ranked games on the Korean server—these updates will surely have a huge effect on the competitive environment.

For example, after Blade Girl was nerfed in 6.16, few people play her anymore.

After the formerly popular Captain was nerfed in 6.17, its pick rate in Master+ tiers plummeted by dozens of points.

Meanwhile, after Ezreal's passive attack speed was buffed, he suddenly became hot in the bottom lane, though his build path changed—previously he relied solely on Q for damage, now he builds Blade of the Ruined King, giving him respectable auto‑attack damage.

Also, Jayce— in 6.17 his hammer form's attack damage scaling changed from AP to AD, and he quickly blew up in the top lane.

Those heroes that suddenly became popular in the playoffs, after these two versions they were mostly cleared out, rising and falling like tides; G2 hasn't even touched those champions.

Sometimes when the G2 members look back and think carefully, they feel as if their team is blessed by the gods of fate, because they always stay on the right path, wasting no effort or time on detours. Although we don't yet know what the Worlds version will be, everyone firmly believes that G2's accumulation for the Worlds version will be deeper than that of any other region's teams, including LCK!

Days passed, and the G2 players gradually returned from vacation.

The earliest to return was actually Tang Anna, who came back on the fourth day of her break. Liang Yan asked why she returned so early; she said her family was away on a trip, she was bored alone at home, but her tone sounded rather cold.

Liang Yan felt puzzled; after thinking it over he still couldn't figure out what he had done to upset her.

Or maybe relatives came over?

Time moved on; the promotion series of all major regions entered the final stage, and the last S6 slot was gradually decided.

This year's Worlds has 16 slots total; each of the four major regions gets three, namely:

LCK, LOL Champions Korea, Korean Champions League.

LPL, LOL Pro League, China mainland Professional League.

LCS-EU, LOL Championship Series Europe, European Championship Series.

LCS-NA, LOL Championship Series North America, North American Championship Series.

So the 'four major regions' actually have an official definition; you need three slots to qualify as a major region, otherwise you're just a wildcard entry.

That's referring to LMS.

LOLMasterSeries, Hong Kong-Macau-Taiwan Master Series.

Others are all sorts of xx championship series; the mainland is even simpler and domineering, directly calling it the Professional League—utterly orthodox—but you don't even dare to give your league a name with some prestige, being petty and calling it some 'Master'.

It's just lame.