The League of Legends betting podcast is brought to you by my Patrons at patreon.com/jilladellol. There you can find bonus content like in-depth articles on macro trend analysis and league previews, as well as thoughts on breaking news and the podcast picks before the show is released to platforms. You also get to support your creators more directly. patreon.com/jilladell, that's G-E-L-A-T-I-L-L. Good afternoon everybody, it's currently about 4.40 p.m. eastern on Thursday, August 1st, 2024. We have another really, really short day, just two matches in the LCK tomorrow. A quick review of the Thursday morning matches today. Today was Shavana Day. I have some thoughts on this champion. I kind of talked a lot about this in the sports department discord this morning during these matches, but I'm also aware that Hamwah lost with it against KT the other day as well. But I'm going to talk about this for a little bit because if teams are going to be playing this champion, this is something I have very, very strong opinions on. And if for no other reason, then a disclaimer or being open about it, I think this champion's pure dog shit. I think it's one of the worst champions in the entire game. I think it's just always a bait. Basically for those that don't know, for those that just follow this casually and don't actually play the game, Shavana, AP Shavana specifically, the magic damage dealing version of this is a solo Q special. The idea is when you get your dragon form Q, it's just a ridiculous poke tool. It's like a mantra, karma Q on steroids, you can almost one shot people with it. And yes, that's fun and cool and neat and it's really, really good in solo Q when nobody can dodge shit. But in organized play, what ends up happening with this is that's the entire kit, more or less. Like this version of the champion, it's all about that. It's all about the dragon form Q. It's not just the dragon form Q, it's not a dragon form too, but the dragon form Q is what you're really, really trying to get to. So the entire kit's about that. So you're basically playing a character, trying to, you're picking a character for basically boom boom damage, like showy damage numbers and what's it called? Like she has a really, really fast clear, which can be a good thing. But you're basically picking a champion entirely for the allure of like that, you know, one shot in the carries idea. The thing is you need the game to be going in your favor in order to do that. You need early game control, you need control of, you know, ideally you want to pick up a few dragons because of the passive and everything. But like she's kind of, she's like all the worst parts of like NAR and snowballing champions. And what I mean by that is like, like it's a situational bar management, like with NAR's rage bar, then you have to like, she's also kind of a snowballing champion, kind of like you're like fast clearing junglers, think like Olaf or something like that, where she needs to be ahead a lot in order for this like fantasy of one shot in the carry to ever become close to a reality. And the thing is like, even when you get really, really far ahead, you still need to actually hit the carries with the thing because if you don't, she kind of just doesn't do anything outside of this big damaging skill, right? It's a relatively short cooldown, but it's not like she becomes like a 1v5 machine, right? She's just a poke champion, like it's literally if you could play like Jace or Karma jungle, that's what she is. Except worse, like I think those other champions have like better parts of their kit, like they have more to their kit than just that. And it's like, I don't know, I think she's literally like a bottom 5 champion in the game. I think it's awful, I think it's a huge bait, I think it doesn't provide any utility whatsoever, I think it's just pure shit. Now, that's my opinion, I have a really strong opinion on this. What I will say is apparently some of the best teams in the world disagree with me on this, so I'm, you know, take that for what it is. I know we like to shit talk these coaches and all this kind of stuff, like if the best teams in the world and the best players in the world think this is good enough to play on stage, I could be wrong. I probably am wrong, but you should all know up front that I think this champ is dog shit, I think it's a huge bait, and it's going to influence some of my decisions as long as teams are looking to play it. So, today with Shavana Day, yeah, I don't know, I just think like, we saw it three times today, I guess we'll just talk about the games now. Yeah, I don't know, both DRX and Breon tried it, this was a depressing series, man, like, yeah, I don't know, this was, that team, that Breon team, I keep calling them like Eor. From Winnie the Pooh or whatever, like, 'cause they're just depressed. It really puts into perspective how much of a leader of men UMT was, because UMT like 1v9 hard carried this team for like more than a year. And without him here, we've seen how like little, for lack of better terms, how little balls this team has to fucking do anything, they have zero gumption. They have no idea when they're ahead or behind in a game, they have no idea when they're ahead or when they're in a decent state in the game. They don't, they don't really, I mean, I guess they posture a little bit, which is good, but like, this team essentially just rolls over and dies. They don't even put up a fight, it's fucking depressing to watch, like, I don't know, I've, over the course of history, Edgar's been a great coach, like, over his entire career, but like, this whole stint he's had with Breon has not been good. So he probably needs to go, this whole team probably needs to go, but it's the end of the season, so who the hell knows. Furex Gen-G, Furex tried the Siobhanas well against the best team in the world, which, like, yeah, exactly. They got warped, they were competitive for like a grand total of 15 minutes across both games in this series, and, you know, Gen-G to Gen-G things. Yeah, I don't know, not much else to say about this slate. We ended up getting our Dragon Underhome in the first Breon D.R.X game by Miracle. That game had like no kills for the first 25 minutes and no significant gold lead. I was honestly shocked that we got that Underhome, but it turns out it was just Hextech into Baron and End, so we got lucky there, I guess. Yeah, I don't know. Let's go into these games for today. One more quick note, I just forgot, like, my little summary statement about Siobhanas. For those that don't follow the game and don't want to know all the minutiae and all that shit, the TLDR here is that it's an extremely high-risk champion with an extremely low reward. Like, the reward seems like it's a high reward, but in practice, like, functionally speaking, it's not. So that's why I don't like it, that's why I'm beefing with it, and I think it's just so situationally weird that, like, I don't know, I just hate it, I think it sucks. Anyway, week seven, day three in the LCK, it's our only slate tomorrow, it's a two-gamer here. We have noxion red force plus 11.89 on the money line, plus 1/8 maps up, plus 2.50, the minus 1/2. Is that plus 2,231? It's time of life esports, minus 2,281 on the money line, minus 1/2 is at minus 3.21. So we know the deal with homo life against weaker teams, they are nails, I know they just lost to KT Rolster. Using chivana, by the way, just saying. I know homo tend to take care of business here, but this is a prohibitive price. Model likes knowing shimsides, because it made this plus 533 to minus 613. Actually showed a decent edge on the kill total overs as well. The last two times these two teams played against each other was 25 to 9, and 19 to 5 wins for homo, respectively. The first would have gone well over the total, the second would have landed, would have lost by the hook at that point in time. Noxion, over the last three weeks, noxion were averaging 25.38 combined kills per game, but homo just 23.24 in that same span. I think if you like noxion to be competitive and put up a fight in this match, the kill total over is probably the best way to play it. I think, especially if, you know, just to bring up the chivana conversation again, I'm going to call it the sickness as teams wanted to play this champion. If homo had the sickness and want to play that champ, I actually don't hate playing some noxion live in draft if we end up seeing that. I really do think it's enough of a liability. The problem with it is, like, even in its best case scenario, it's not even that good. Like, it's okay. And in its worst case scenario, it's quite literally just a do nothing champion. Like, it doesn't have any CC, really. I mean, if you hit people with the ult, it does, but it's not really reliable. It's not good. It basically has zero impact if it doesn't get ahead, and even when it gets ahead, I don't even think the impact is that crazy. Noxion have a pulse. They're not the worst. They aren't, like, they're not eliminated from playoffs yet. They're actually, like, kind of outside looking in. Like, if things go really, really badly for fear X move, like the rest of the way, they could conceivably, like, win out and get there. I doubt it. I highly doubt it, but they're not eliminated yet is the point I'm making. So, you have to keep that in mind as well. We should be getting a game effort here from the new old boys. So, like, I would lean, noxion, map money line, kill spreads, kill total overs. Some pick one of those as your preferred method of choice to back them. What I will say is, like, if you're playing the map money line or the kill spread because of the Shavana pick, the bad part about it is if she gets behind and, you know, for the reasons that you'd be fading her, kill total overs are likely to die with that as well, because, like, she kind of just does nothing in the games where she doesn't get fed, so it's like, if you're playing that angle, don't play kill total overs. If you're playing just for this to be competitive and not involving Shavana, then I do like kill total overs. Ultimately, no action for me. I would lean toward, like, I would just wait till live and see if you can, you know, take a fade Shavana spot with, like, an 8 to 1 or something like that on the live money line. For the map, I'm saying. Next match, we have D plus K minus 600 on the money line, minus 1 A, minus 1 45 against Kwongdong, freaks plus 427 on the money line, plus 1 A, so plus 120 minus 1 A, is that plus 1032. Model made this minus 271 plus 241, so well short of the price, really likes Kwongdong sides here. Also liked D plus first blood, really, really huge divergence in first blood for these two teams. D plus Kia have a 71, almost a 72% first blood rate to Kwongdong's 25%, even at minus 144, and even introducing a bunch of volatility because of first bloods, you know, it's a volatile thing. Still showed a pretty strong edge on that, so I like that angle if you want to have something interesting on this one. Also liked under 12 and a half towers and under one and a half barons and a light edge on the kill total overs, but a very light edge. D plus are going to have side choice for this series. Model continues to like Kwongdong because the agnostic economy is decent, but if you've watched this team of the last month or so, this is like a, this is a movie we've all seen before with this organization, unfortunately. They, they just, they look so good for like basically all of 2024, they looked so promising, and then the last like three or four weeks they've just like completely fallen off a cliff. You know, they've won just three games in the last three weeks, two of those were against DRX, the other one was against Breon, but they lost that Breon series outright. They haven't had a statistically significant gold lead at 20 minutes since week three. It was against D plus when that happened, but still, D plus on the other side of this, you know, have had a bunch of these tragic losses to the good teams, but they've had a brutal stretch of schedule here. This is a soft, this is the easiest match they've had in a little while. So I'm not going to overpay for D plus, but if you forced me to back aside in this one, I'd probably play D plus to sweep at whatever it is like minus 145. They have choice for this. They should win this match. I just think like, I mean, you could make a case like Kwongdong are now like backs against the wall, like they need to start piecing together some wins here. Like they could still make playoffs. They could as bad as they've been struggling, the last few weeks, if they if they win this match, they are right in the thick of things for a playoff spot again. So like there are only one match out of the six spot from fear X. So it's not over for them yet. If you think that they kind of get off the snide, get picked themselves up off the map here, Matt here and get there. I think that's a reasonable case to make. So I wouldn't overpay for D plus Kia here, but they should get the two. I actually like neutral. Like if you made me play something in this that wasn't aside, I'd probably play the neutral unders because D plus have been kind of steamrolling when they win. And there's all got flagged by the model because Kwongdong have not been really all that competitive and a lot of their losses either. So that's how I would play this if you forced me to take something. But ultimately this is another one. No action for me. I'd lean under 12 and a half towers. Yeah, no action on this slate tomorrow, kind of a bummer, but is what it is. Maybe we'll find something live here tomorrow morning and if I end up releasing anything, I'll put that on the Patreon. Until then, best of luck and see you tomorrow.
