Two big stars of the NA LCS now share the same team, TSM Bjergsen and now TSM Doublelift will be sharing a team, and both have been known to take resources to carry their team to victory. Will Doublelift’s introduction take away from Bjergsen? To answer that, followesports.com did a bit of research, and Naser Al-Naqi found some facts to set the record straight:
Currently, there is a misconception regarding Bjergsen’s play style. The community consensus is that Bjergsen requires a sizable amount of his team’s gold to impact the game. This is simply false. Typically, the average gold percentage a carry receives is ~25%. Across all competitions this year, Bjergsen has averaged 25.7% gold share, which is 1% less of what his former ADC WildTurtle received. It was only when TSM struggled that Bjergsen received above average gold share (summer regular split, 27.2%; Worlds, 28%). Supposedly, this was due to necessity because of WildTurtle’s underperformance. Critics also appear to forget that Bjergsen is more than just an assassin player and is as adept at playing the utility role. For example, TSM’s 2014 and 2015 Summer playoff runs saw success when Bjergsen played a utility role to supplement WildTurtle or Dyrus as primary carry threats in Orianna or Lulu comps.
Additionally, in an episode of Summoning Insight, LMS caster and analyst Clement Chu asserted that in his scouting report for Worlds 2014, TSM saw most success when they placed Bjergsen in a utility carry role that strengthened WildTurtle’s carry potential. With Doublelift on the team, Bjergsen can once again fulfill a similar role. Thus, the notion that TSM will not be able to provide enough resources for both Bjergsen and Doublelift is counterintuitive to what the analysis and data represents.
Moving forward, the issue is not whether Bjergsen and Doublelift will compete for resources or not, but does Doublelift require too many resources to be effective? And, more importantly, if he does receive these resources can he actually carry when it matters? In every iteration of CLG, Doublelift has served as the primary carry which receives an overwhelming amount of gold and resources. Across all competitions in 2015, Doublelift has averaged 28.6% gold share (range: 27.7%-30%). However, in 6 splits, CLG has only triumphed once.
Is it better to have Bjergsen carry or Doublift? Right now it is hard to tell, hopefully TSM will have a few line up ready for IEM San Jose, and we will see these two in action together. Naser has some more points on the carry share of these two start players over on the full article you can find here.
