We’ve shown you a lot of great plays from the League of Legends World Championship games this month. There are certainly a lot of them. But what about the not great ones? Witness, my friends, the glory of professional eSports stars making the same clumsy mistakes the rest of us do.
In game two of today’s semifinals matchup at Worlds, Fnatic player Huni was facing off against KOO Tiger’s Smeb alone in the top lane. Huni went in to start a proper fight, which he quickly started to lose. So as anyone would do in that situation, he turned around and started to run away.
He didn’t get very far. A giant rock wall got in his way:
As he ran back towards his base, Huni knew he wasn’t going to be able to walk around the large rock face dividing the top lane from the jungle, because turning in either direction would give his pursuer an extra moment to slice at him. So he pulled out a standard “summoner spell” called flash, a teleport ability that lets League champions blink forward or backward short distances instantaneously.
Flashing over a wall is the perfect way to put some much-needed distance between you and a foe in League of Legends. Problem is, it needs to be timed and aimed just right to work. Otherwise, you just end up stuttering forward a few millimeters and wasting one of your most powerful spells in the process. And that’s exactly what happened to Huni. Poor guy:
Personally, I find it kind of comforting to see the best League of Legends players in the world can fuck up exactly the same way all of us can and, very often, do.
The shoutcasters credited the faceplant to Huni’s mind already being on edge after losing the first match against KOO today, which made him more tense and liable to mess up delicate maneuvers like this. It only got worse for him and the rest of Fnatic from there on out, unfortunately. The team lost its second match too. This next game that’s about to begin could be their last shot.
If you have any tips or suggestions for 2015 Worlds coverage, please don’t hesitate to contact me by email at yannick.lejacq@kotaku.com. You can also find me on Twitter at @YannickLeJacq.