The disaster season - A statistical analysis of how far XDG has fallen.

This article was originally published on GameSpot's sister site onGamers.com, which was dedicated to esports coverage.

Vulcun was once a top NA team, landing 2nd after the Season 3 Summer Split and earning a trip to the Season 3 World Championships. However, after their disappointing loss at worlds, they have been tinkering with their team, which turned them from a 20-8 team in 2013 to a 3-11 team in 2014, the same record Velocity had after 14 games. There have been many reasons flying around as to why XDG has fallen so far, from the role swap to the “wrong meta” to the standard “Zuna sucks.” In this article I will dissect what has gone so wrong for XDG, and look at just how far they have fallen since their performance at Season 3 Worlds and the Season 3 Summer Split.

The role swap

Over winter break, the NA team went through some changes. First, they changed their name from Vulcun to Ex Duris Gloria Gaming, or XDG. Next, while they kept their roster the same, they switched their Jungle (Xmithie) and AD Carry (Zuna), to much criticism from the community. This change has been a catastrophic failure so far, with declining performance in both jungle and adc, causing them to try a second roster change, switching Zuna to support, and Nickwu to jungle. This second change still hasn't solved any problems though, and with numbers still on a decline they have attempted to return to their Season 3 lineup, switching Zuna back to AD Carry, Xmithie back to Jungle, and bringing in Sheep to support. The damage may have already been done though.

Jungle Swap

During the Summer Split, Xmithie was considered the 2nd best jungler in the league, behind star player Meteos of Cloud 9. He was 2nd among junglers in KDA, Kills Assists per Minute (KAPM), lowest Deaths Per Minute (DPM), Gold Per Minute (GPM), and 3rd in Minion Kills Per Minute (MKPM). However, XDG's junglers have thus far fared poorly during the 2014 spring split. The combined stats of Zuna and Nickwu are an extreme step down from the all-star Xmithie. They are combined 8th in KDA (out of 9), 8th in KAPM, 7th in DPM, 8th in GPM, and 6th in MKPM. The only jungler with worse stats is NintendudeX. The last thing to compare is their success rates in ganking. Xmithie at worlds, while he ganked less (mostly due to 2v1 being a more common occurrence), he was more successful with his ganks forcing a flash or kill in 68.4% of ganks, compared to Zuna’s 44.4%. Xmithie was an extremely dominant jungler, and his big shoes were not filled by Zuna nor Nickwu.

ADC Swap

Looking at the AD Carry change, Xmithie hasn’t adapted very well either. Zuna, while not putting up as great numbers as Xmithie did in the Spring Split, still put up some decent adc stats, mostly around average. 4th in KDA, 4th in KPM, 5th in DPM, 5th in GPM, and 8th in MKPM. However, Xmithie has been putting up below average stats. 7th in KDA, 5th in KPM, 5th in DPM, 5th in GPM, 5th in MKPM. While this isn’t as much of a drop in performance as the jungler post-swap, it's still not an improvement. When a team makes a role swap, they want at least one of the roles to yield better results, which does not seem the case in this instance.

Early game - Vulcun’s strength turned into XDG's weakness

While VUL/XDG has never been good at closing games, one of the important assets to their team was their ability to gain early gold leads. However, since the role swap, they have not been able to get the early leads that they previously did. At Worlds, Vulcun got an early gold lead (gold advantage at 12 minutes) in 75% of their games against “world class” teams such as Fnatic, Gambit, and Samsung Galaxy Ozone. Also, their early game GPM was the 2nd best in the group, only slightly behind Fnatic (1451 vs. 1433). However, in the recent split they have only had an early gold lead in 33% of their games, and their early GPM is the 2nd worst, ahead of only Coast. Overall, while early game GPM (for NA LCS) has increased 1% since worlds, XDG has actually gone down 5.5%. XDG's early game control has also faltered since Worlds, where they acquired first blood 87.5% of the time. This is compared to the current split, where XDG manages first blood only 16.7% of the time.

The fall of Mancloud; from star player to bottom of the league

Mancloud was touted as one of the best North American mid laners. Casters continue to talk about his record-setting Summer Split last year, where he managed to get 167 kills in 28 games. Halfway through the split this year though, he is projected to get only a third of what he got last split. While jungle, AD carry, and support continue to be mixed around, it’s Mancloud who is really faltering middle. He was brilliant in last spring, getting the highest GPM in the league (not just mid laners), 2nd highest KDA mid, 1st in KPM, 2nd lowest DPM, and highest MKPM. He was statistically the best mid laner and many pointed to him as the reason why Vulcun had been so successful. Even at Worlds, playing against some of the best mid laners in the game, xPeke and Alex Ich, he stood his ground better than any other NA midlaners, Hai and Reginald. In Season 4 however, his performance has plummeted. He is now 9th in KDA, 9th in KPM, 6th in DPM, 8th in GPM and 2nd in MKPM.

There have been many people wondering what happened to Mancloud and everyone commonly refers to the role swap as the point of his failure. However, Mancloud has just been underperforming on his own. At Worlds, Mancloud got 2 1v1 first bloods middle, without jungle help. However, in the season 4 split, he has given away 4 early solo kills and has not gotten a single solo kill. Similarly, people claim that Zuna was more focused on top lane rather than Xmithie who focused primarily mid. So I crunched the numbers and this proved somewhat false. Zuna ganked for top 30.5% of the time, middle 47.2%, and bot 22.2%. Comparatively, Xmithie ganked top 15.7% of the time, middle 47.3%, and bottom 36.8%. Both junglers put the same amount of pressure mid lane. Mancloud has simply just been underperforming this split. Whether it's due to internal struggles or a shifting meta, he quickly turned from an all-star to one of the worst mid laners in NA.

Overall, XDG has seen a major fall from the 2nd best team in summer split to relegation-status only halfway through the 2014 Spring Split. They have recently picked up a new support and switched Xmithie and Zuna back to their original roles, but it may be too late unless they pick up where they left off last split. They are already 2 games behind the 7th place team and 8th place is a terrible place to be with Chinese powerhouse LMQ lurking in the Challenger Series waiting for next split’s LCS. If their most recent swap-back does not fix their problems, Worlds might be the last of their worries.

Design by sarcasmappreciated

Stats collection help by kathix