League of Legends eSports: Chinese mainland welcomes a new champion
By Gong Zhe
Screenshot from Bilibili

Screenshot from Bilibili

League of Legends (LOL) eSports team JD Gaming (JDG) has beaten Top Esports (TES) 3:2 to become the Spring season champion in the Chinese mainland region.

Match one

TES got big advantage at the early stage but lose a team fight trying to further scale up. JDG slowed it down in the mid-game.

At about 24:00 TES top laner "369" failed to kill his JDG counterpart "Zoom" and got himself down in turn. JDG ceased the opportunity and won two consecutive team fights to reverse the game.

Match two

"TES realized helping 369 didn't work and decided to raise midlane instead," match caster "Zzitai" told the audiences watching the game online.

JDG failed to win early stage fights and gave advantage to TES again. But this time, TES carried it to the end.

Though Kanavi stole a drake kill from TES but he failed to steal the Baron and JDG lost the game.

This is the first time Zoom lost a match in his entire Spring season.

Match three

JDG jungler Kanavi outperformed Karsa gaining a big advantage and maintained it for nearly half an hour.

But at around 28:00 JackeyLove and Knight managed to win a near-impossible two-verses-five fight with their exceptional technique, deleting four JDG members from the game.

Match four

Before match four began, there was a long break time because players found a bug in the game that one of the hero characters had a flawed skill. After discussion, the LPL officials decided not to ban the character and notified both teams.

Since the character Azir has been frequently used in the Spring season, a longer break time was given to both teams to change their strategies.

The first half of the match was 50-50. But a bad decision to call for a drake by Knight and then JackeyLove resulted in both players dying, and JDG taking the Baron to finish the match.

As the two teams tied at 2:2, they had to play a sudden death match to determine the winner.

Match five

TES made an unusual decision to swap the top and mid laner. But that didn't work out as LvMao's special pick of Bard made multiple skill shot with his ultimate ability, freezing many TES members to secure wins of team fights.

LvMao's excellent performance earned him the Final MVP honor.

JDG received two million yuan (roughly 283,000 U.S. dollars) as a prize for winning the Spring season. The team also won 60 champion points allowing them to be at a better position on the run for the world championship. 

Coronavirus-affected eSports

Chinese teams are showing some great performances on the League of Legends (LOL) eSports stage by winning the last two world championships.

The competitive scene in the Chinese mainland region has gotten fiercer, as the two champions, Invictus Gaming (IG) and FunPlus Phoenix, were both knocked out in the semifinals of the LOL Pro League (LPL) Spring season.

The Spring champion should have been qualified in the international 2020 Mid-Season Invitational event, but the event was canceled due to health concerns about the COVID-19 pandemic.

Also threatened by the global outbreak, recent eSports matches were mostly held online instead of face-to-face combat.

Though the Spring season final of LPL was held offline, no viewers were allowed to watch at the stadium.