Chapter 349: This year we are invincible!

At this point even Qing Gang Ying can jungle, so everyone should know that this version's jungle monsters are actually not strong; precisely, it's not that the jungle monsters are weak, but because the smite was reworked, jungle sustain has no pressure—if one really insists, even marksman champions can be taken to jungle, only efficiency and effect differ.

In such a version environment, jungling with Male Blade is not particularly unusual.

Actually, as early as the S5 season, someone had already tried jungling with Male Blade, but it wasn't mainstream; ranked games were relatively obscure, and in matches nobody played it.

Now Male Blade had its E skill reworked in 6.22, changing from an output skill to a roaming support skill that can vault over walls everywhere.

Liang Yan played several games after Male Blade's rework, all used for jungling, and his evaluation is:

Jungle clearing efficiency is just average, sewer-level.

Gank ability is also just average, because there is no crowd control, and the sole dash skill Q's displacement distance is really too short, often failing to catch people.

Early on, lacking level advantage, the damage isn't enough to speak of, often failing to kill someone.

It looks like after the E skill rework, roaming ability would be explosively strong; for mid lane it's like that, after all mid lane Male Blade has to clear minion waves, can't act twice a minute, can tolerate a long wall-vault cooldown, but for a jungler whose living is Gank, a level‑1 E skill with a wall cooldown of nearly three minutes is hard to accept—even if you alternate ganking top and bottom lanes, there will be a very long skill vacuum period. This version of Male Blade lives off this skill; if you can't exploit its strength, there's no point picking it.

In summary, Liang Yan temporarily cancelled the plan to bring Male Blade jungle to the stage; at least he must wait for Riot to slightly buff the E skill, reduce its cooldown, etc., before he can pull it out to play.

Ranked doesn't matter; just play casually.

Besides Male Blade, Liang Yan also jungled with Little Fish Person, Jayce, Bo Bi, Titan, Lulu… and so on and so forth.

Quite bizarre, huh.

No mistake, this is the hero pool of the strongest rank‑1 player on the Korean server.

On top of that strange hero pool, he maintains a win rate always over 70%, his ranked points exceed second place by over two hundred, far ahead. That's truly terrifying.

If a random person opens his match record and doesn't know this is Firrrrrre, nor looks at the summoner spells, they'd absolutely never guess he's a jungler.

So why did Liang Yan Cai, after returning less than two months ago, suddenly gain several million followers? There's a reason for that.

Invincible skill, brilliant antics, backed by outstanding eloquence and a likable personality, topped with high looks—it's outright lethal; it's hard not to blow up.

Oh right, these days Liang Yan has been playing EZ.

It's not yet the time for EZ jungle to come into its own; this strategy really started to become popular, if Liang Yan remembers correctly, it was at the S7 World Championship.

He's just playing it out of idle habit—first pull it out to mess around, get a feel for it.

……

Version research work is in full swing; LPL teams aspiring to achieve rankings this year have begun frantically scrimmaging.

As the opening day draws near, the LPL circle privately starts circulating a saying:

Damn, VG is invincible!

Uh, literally.

No matter which team they face, VG's practice match win rate stays above 90%.

Even when filming spring promotional videos and pre‑match trash talk, all teams have toned it down considerably; anyone can be cued, but they try to avoid hyping VG.

As the promotional videos roll out, VG gradually takes on a somewhat invisible vibe.

Almost no team mentions them.

Netizens, clueless, start wildly guessing:

【Why does it seem like nobody is talking about VG】

【VG has no sound at all—could it really be that bad?】

【I've said it before, VG is toxic—whoever joins falls apart, Jiao Shen included!】

Such remarks, many also believe them online.

The few true VG fans, seeing the VG team's updated group portrait on the LPL official website, looking at that fresh lineup they had high hopes for, suddenly feel a bit lacking in confidence, anxiously thinking:

Sigh, after all, is it still not good enough……

And as a few new VG members, they're already eager for the spring season to arrive quickly—even the usually stone‑faced Sima Laozei shows a few signs of unease, his face occasionally flushing with excitement.

Sima Laozei feels unprecedentedly strong, and unprecedentedly confident of inevitable victory in the upcoming season.

In practice matches, Gangzi, who felt "I'm really too strong," would every few days couldn't help but shout:

"Damn brothers, this year we are invincible!"

Finally, the long offseason ended.

January 19, the 2017 LPL Spring Regular Season kicked off at Zhengda Guangchang.

As the event organizer shifted from the Banana Plan to Riot's direct‑under‑the‑fist vision fist culture, the LPL's main venue also changed, moving from the Hongqiao Tianji Performing Arts Center in the outer ring to Zhengda Guangchang in the city‑centre Lu Family Mouth.

The opening match was RNG versus IM.

Although RNG's dreadful performance in the S6 World Championship damaged their team's popularity, the traditional powerhouse's foundation remains; as long as Uzi doesn't leave, the team's popularity won't collapse, and after this year's major roster overhaul they also shouted the All‑Chinese lineup slogan, instantly regaining some blood—popularity compared to last year actually hasn't suffered much loss.

Moreover, today is also the opening day.

Plus, with the venue change bringing new hype and other factors, today's two match tickets are practically sold out, snapped up early.

Originally VG had no match today; just sending a representative to the opening ceremony would suffice, but Lu Wenjun knew everyone would surely be curious, so to avoid affecting tomorrow's match he used his connections to get seven tickets, giving the group a chance for an offline experience.

"Alright alright, everyone go pack up a bit, we're setting off soon!"

In the mid‑afternoon, after VG folks finished a practice match, Long Ge clapped and shouted; the crowd instantly surged out like chicks bursting from a coop, dropping their headsets and shouting oh‑oh as they rushed out of the training room, each one excited beyond measure.

Each returned to their dorm to tidy up, gathered at the main gate, Long Ge handed out a mask to everyone, hinting at a slight disguise to avoid causing a stir.

But after everyone put on the masks, they looked at each other—damn, the seven beasts all wore black masks, looking like they were up to some shady deed, even more conspicuous than no disguise; anyone who knew them could tell at a glance this was a bunch of VG guys.

So in the end they gave up, all took off their masks.