How did WLA win PSL Season 8?
A contrasted performance was enough to win PSL for the CIS team.
PSL Season 8 was a very closed race until the last day between 7 teams.
In the end, the CIS team We live again grabbed the title along with 6,500 € promised to the winner. Despite being around for a while, none of the players was known before this tournament and this renowned success will be a major step in their career.
Thanks to their result, they’ll have the opportunity to compete next two weekends at RYE Royale, a best-of 24 series where they’ll hopefully carry on their confidence going into this new tournament.
In this article, we’ll dig through Twire’s map replays to understand why the team has been successful and what EU teams can learn from the uprising team for the future. The analysis has been based exclusively on map replays for the article, and more detailed analysis, especially from VODs could be a way to learn even more.
Miramar
Playing from Pecado, the team showed some Team Liquid vibes, leaving their loot spot between 3min30 and 4min almost every game, their goal was to find a near center position, playing not only for central shifts but also for potential game-winning circles. Except for a few matches where they ended up on a pretty bad spot, they could often compensate their early departure with additional loot from decent compounds.
From there, the team would face two kinds of situations:
- Shifts away: they never managed to find their way in when forced to leave their position. They often ended up dying trying to get into the circle (26 points in 6 games). The team has likely embraced its weaknesses accepting to take the maximum out of its poor scenarios, and trying to grab every extra point in Its last breath,
- Positive shifts: once guaranteed to play the late-game, the team was merciless and managed to find a way to play for the win every time (43 points in 3 games). Thanks to patience and discipline, the team methodically solved situations. They played around a strong understanding of late-game situations to consolidate a solid 69 points on their weaker map.
Miramar is a map where the topology can become your worst enemy when you’re not used to playing around, and even more when you deliberately decide to have a position heavy gameplan. It sounds like WLA has accepted heavily one-sided gameplay on the map.
My main concern about their strategy, and even if it has been proven to be viable, would be the lack of adaptability, and the necessity to find better average outcomes when not being able to play from their first position.
In a lobby where teams are playing excessively on the edge (RYE, shiftW, SKADE, and Sniip to some extent as well), instead of trying to find a solution rotating around, they could consider doubling down on their first idea and bombing strong positions during 2nd or 3rd phase to get back to their comfort zone: central positions where they’d be waiting for the right time to strike.
Erangel
Not surprisingly, more Team Liquid vibes on Erangel from WLA. They played from Pochinki with early timings, straight rotations, and gameplans based around positioning.
Opposed to Miramar, the team had really poor success with this strategy and often ended up fighting their way in. In some games, they faced their Miramar devils, taking fights they had no chance to win in the first place, or ending up pinned down between two teams. In more than half their matches, they ended up with spare points.
However, it became interesting as the tournament went on. Along with two games where circumstances have been favorable, they managed to get more than 10 points from situations they’ve consistently failed to play from so far. Both situations involved a winning team fight on the edge to get the good position they could play the late-game from.
Their performance in these 2 games hopefully opened a lot of perspectives for them, helping them to figure out alternative gameplans and even if Erangel is much more forgiving when it comes to last-minute adaptations, it still requires a good understanding of the map and strong decision making to make it out difficult situations. If they can reproduce that kind of behavior, they could become an absolute threat on this map.
Conclusion
From a neutral point of view, I appreciate WLA's ability to reproduce gameplans which proved their worth. Even if it’s not the sexiest, they have understood strengths and weaknesses and managed to play around properly during PSL.
However, their strategy leaves them exposed to their main weaknesses: 4v4 team fights and circles RNG. It’ll be up to other teams to establish plans able to limit their ability to take over matches regularly if they don’t want an other title to fall into their hands.
RYE Royale will be the opportunity for a lot of teams to take their revenge and will be streamed on twitch.tv/raiseyouredgegaming starting March 6th at 7 PM CET.
Maxime “Znooper” GONY
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