It’s been around one and a half years since Heo “Huni” Seung-hoon left Immortals and with it, the NA LCS. Many League fans remember the day that Huni threw the match against Team SoloMid by picking Lucian top. It was deemed by many to be a random pick that cost Immortals the match, their perfect scoreline and their chance at Worlds. They had one more chance to qualify by playing CLG. Alas, even after winning the match they were beaten out by Counter Logic Gaming for the 2nd place seed at the 2016 World Championship by a mere 10 championship points. Disgraced, Huni left for Korea to join SK Telecom T1 where he has played for the last year, improving his skills. After the massive upset at Worlds where the SKT dynasty was ended at the hands of Samsung Galaxy (now KSV), Huni was set to play in NA again after being picked up by Echo Fox.
Throughout Huni’s entire career many have said that he is a bad player who is extremely overrated. Now as Huni returns to the NA LCS he has set out to prove to all those people that they are wrong. What better way to accomplish this than by picking up where he left off, with his infamous Lucian top. Despite the heavy criticisms, Huni was determined to show to the world that he was a top-tier player and so, on January 20th, he walked onto the stage, full of confidence and delivered the ‘Huni special’, instalocking Lucian and riling up the crowd.
Source: Riot Games Flickr
Huni started off the match by playing as expected. He went for pokes to force his enemy laner in FlyQuest’s Lee “Flame” Ho-jong out of lane so he could gain a CS advantage. He pushed this advantage further by buying a second Doran’s Blade and a Vamp Scepter on his first back to stack lifesteal. These purchases allowed him to go for aggressive trades that would always come out favourably for him. This resulted in him getting a 30 CS advantage and a solo first blood tower at a mere 10 minutes into the game.
It was due to Huni’s massive gold lead that he managed to gain lane priority. It was incredibly important that he gained this advantage as it not only allowed him to make the split-second decision to teleport into the team fight at 12:46, but it also meant that Flame had no teleport as he was forced to use it to get back to lane to stop the growing CS lead. Upon Huni’s teleport in, he instantly flashed away from Jang “Keane” Lae-young’s Cassiopeia Miasma and used his ultimate to not only pick up a kill on William “Stunt” Chen but also to disperse FlyQuest, allowing for easy picks. Echo Fox ended the fight with four kills plus first blood. Thus, allowing them to take vision control of the enemy jungle and begin to slowly bleed them of gold and experience.
Later in the match at 18:45 FlyQuest make the mistake of walking into complete darkness. This allowed for Joshua “Dardoch” Hartnett (on Zac) to slingshot in and isolate Stunt with his ultimate. The rest of Echo Fox moved to collapse onto FlyQuest, However, FlyQuest had no answer. Huni, due to his lane priority, had forced Flame to walk the long way around to the fight. This meant he couldn’t get to the fight in time to do anything, securing an Echo Fox victory in the fight. With the end of this fight finally came the conversion Echo Fox was looking for, beginning to pull ahead of FlyQuest by entire items.
With Echo Fox now having a firm lead, they were looking for an opportunity to end, and at 24 minutes into the game, they found just that. As Jason “WildTurtle” Tran (on Varus) tried to stun lock Huni with his ultimate, he was met with his own unfortunate demise as Huni QSS’ed the ult and proceeded to blow up WildTurtle. This converted into a Baron dance that was eventually won out by Echo Fox.
Source: Riot Games Flickr
The match was over after the very first team fight as Echo Fox slowly began to seal FlyQuest’s fate, ending after they were unable to recover from failing to stop Echo Fox getting Baron. Huni ended the match with a very impressive 4/0/6 KDA, cementing himself as a top-tier player and silencing the naysayers once and for all. The best part? He did it all with a smile on his face.
Featured Image: LoL Esports Flickr
Other Images: LoL Esports Flickr, LoL Esports Flickr
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