Utility Monster and JeffGodGamer’s Week 7 Helios Power Rankings
10/09/2021
Click for last week’s Power Rankings
“It is with great regret that we must inform the loyal readers of Friend or Foe Season Four Helios Power Rankings (Monster, Utility and GodGamer, Jeff, 2021) that this series has come to an end. It’s been fun evaluating all the teams every week, and we hope you enjoyed reading our hot takes, our cold takes, and our lukewarm jokes. It’s been fun covering the league, and a big thanks to all the players for making it happen. The biggest thanks, of course, goes to the FoF staff and broadcast team who make this league possible. It’s always amazing to see the broadcast quality of a league with no entrance fee - the dedication everyone puts in really shows. A special shoutout to Chris Sunga (STC Songo), who aside from running the league as FoF Dictator, also gave us some high quality car photoshops a couple weeks ago while Jeff was recovering.
This week our job is pretty boring - we have the actual factual final season standings, so there’s not much room for subjective opinion in our rankings. (We also happen to think the final standings accurately reflect the strength of each team, it’s not just us being too lazy to come up with our own rankings.) We’ll be focusing our efforts more on a retrospective for each team’s season, as well as some playoff predictions. (Please note that we give our predictions in the form of percentages to indicate how sure we are, but not because we actually have a complicated model behind the numbers or something. We mostly just pulled the numbers out of our butts and made sure they add up to 100%.) It’s time to put on some rose tinted glasses while we reminisce about all the fun times that were had this season!
Of course, we also have to finish our position rankings, and so this week we rank the players of the highest skill position in the game, the jungle role. We also pick each player’s spirit animal. They’re all dogs, just like the junglers themselves - that one guy complaining in solo queue was right.
Good luck to all the teams in Helios in the playoffs! We can’t wait to see who we get to beat in the cross-league superfinal.”
Signing off,
Utility Monster and JeffGodGamer
(Superstar jungler and crippled ADC, respectively, for Team YUBI.)
8th - GURL [+/-] (-1 from preseason)
It was a rough season for the Gorilla Muffins, as they failed to win a single game except via forfeits. They did get a much-improved team logo, though, and we did see a fair bit of individual improvement too. Winning isn’t everything; last season, we told new teams to: “Just come to have the experience of tournament play, draft preparation, team practice and bonding, etc. If you win you'll have a great time, but even if you don't it's a fun experience, just like a rec sports league for anything else.” We stand by that advice. We hope to see GURL and their players back in action in future seasons of this league, and for now wish them a great offseason.
Jungle rank: 4th. This may come as a surprise to some, but we actually found pure llama to be a pretty decent player. Jungle is a notoriously team-dependent role, and it’s hard to look good on a poorly performing team, but he managed to get some early leads and generally farmed efficiently, doing his part to get his team victories. There may be communication limitations we don’t know about, since GURL often looked disjointed generally and junglers tend to be a big voice on most teams, but based on purely individual skill we have to put pure llama in the top half of Helios junglers. He’s a pug - he might be easy to overlook and ugly at first sight, but there’s some nice talent below the surface.
7th - STC [-2] (-3 from preseason*)
*STC took over the spot from AGS after AGS quit the league with a 0-6 record
It was a heartbreaking final week for Stop The Count Seal Team Chris, as they lost to CFG and were denied a playoff spot. They redeemed themselves by taking down our first place team, TG, on the final day, but REX was unable to capitalize and force a tiebreaker. Still, a 4-4 season for STC’s actual roster has to be considered a success, and these players would be fantastic to watch on a roster with more time to play together. Maybe next season?
Jungle rank: 3rd. WoofWoof has quietly been one of the most solid junglers in the league, and has been a key part of this team’s ability to convert mid lane leads. With IMSOLOING finally revealed as a three trick pony, WoofWoof carried the load in their final week and it was almost enough. He’s the poodle of junglers, since he’s highly intelligent, high-class, well-groomed, and hypoallergenic.
6th - CFG [+1] (+/- from preseason)
We got Coinflip Gaming’s final placement exactly correct in the preseason, but that’s definitely more due to luck than prediction ability. CFG’s roster changed dramatically right before the season, and then again halfway through, so you’d have to be Nostradamus to take it all into account beforehand. CFG’s results were as tumultuous as their roster, with a surprise 2-0 week two, including a win over RLS, followed by mostly losses. A key win in the final week of the season over STC locked their playoff spot, however, and perhaps their newest roster will be able to practice and build up synergy before their playoff match. We’re still betting on RLS, but CFG has a chance. The bright side of being a new roster is other teams don’t have much to prepare for, either. Our estimate: 15% chance to win the series against RLS, and 10% to win in either semifinals or finals. That’s a 0.15% chance to win it all - stranger things have happened, but it’s not likely.
Jungle rank: 7th. Braydude is the current CFG starting jungler, and frankly we don’t have much game tape to evaluate him. He’s only played two games, and one was offrole. His one game of Xin Zhao was pretty good, almost leading to an upset of TG, but that’s all we have. Since he’s not a jungle main, we have low expectations, but this low rank isn’t fully deserved. Braydude’s jungle skill is like a pomeranian; there’s too much fur covering the actual dog to see what’s there.
5th - PTP [+1] (+3 from preseason)
Pentakill Teemo Please bounced back in a big way from a winless season three, winning just under half their games and locking a date with INT in the quarterfinals. From a 50 minute slugfest against GURL on day one leading to a 3-1 start to a nice upset win over RLS at the end of the season to clinch playoffs, PTP provided us with high quality entertainment the entire season. Unfortunately, we think PTP has a somewhat low variance playstyle, which is inherently neither good nor bad, but it limits their chances for a playoff upset against a better team. PTP improved a lot this season, but we don’t think they’re quite on INT’s level yet. We give them 5% odds in the quarterfinals. If they win, though, it’d give us more confidence in their best-of-five capabilities, so we’d give them 10% odds in semis and finals. That’s a .05% chance to be the season champs.
Jungle rank: 8th. Like CFG, we have very little to go on for PTP’s jungler. A new addition to the roster, gl esports has only played three games with the team, and only two in the jungle. PTP’s one win with him was when he played ADC, which doesn’t inspire confidence. However, gl esports’ op.gg does indicate he is an ADC main, so it makes sense. It’s entirely possible 8th is too harsh, but we don’t know enough to put him any higher. What’s another very furry dog? The jungle skill of gl esports is like a pomeranian bearded collie; there’s too much fur covering the actual dog to see what’s there.
4th - INT [-2] (-3 from preseason)
It was ultimately a somewhat disappointing end to the season for In The Trees; after starting the season strong with several dominant wins, they ended the season with some head-scratching losses. A big throw against TG in week five probably cost them a shot at a first round bye, and jungle Blitzcrank was not the move against RLS, leading to the fastest-ever FoF loss and giving INT the 4th seed. Still, we don’t want to forget the dominant early season wins against TG and CFG, nor the amazing comeback win against REX in week five. INT has the experience to make a deep playoff run, and they’re our dark horse contender for the season. We think they’ll comfortably win their first round match against PTP, though they shouldn’t take it for granted. We think they are actually a pretty even match for TG and RLS and only slight underdogs against REX. We give them 95% odds against PTP, followed by 45% odds in semifinals and 40% odds in finals. That’s a 17.1% chance of winning it all for the math nerds among you who know how multiplication works.
Jungle ranking: 1st. We’re overall very impressed with INT’s jungler and team captain BoExplode87. Even if he’s not always played to his full potential over the last couple of weeks, he was dominant early in the season and he’s always a threat to take over any game. Even in their shakier games he never looks like the problem with his team’s gameplay. Bo is clearly the lead husky for sled team INT, delivering diphtheria medication to Nome and stomping on anyone who tries to stop him.
3rd - RLS [+1] (-1 from preseason)
Restless Leg Syndrome played some of the most clippable League of Legends of any team this season. Ahntye’s Sett baron steal in a day one loss to TG was the subject of FoF’s first ever TikTok, and seemingly everyone on the team has had highlight moments of their own. RLS also defeated every team in the league at least once except for TG, so they’ll hope to avenge that score in the playoffs. RLS was perhaps slightly overhyped by us coming into the season, but a strong finish indicates they belong in the conversation for playoff contenders. We think RLS has an 85% chance to win quarterfinals, followed by about 40% odds in semifinals and 30% odds in finals. That’s a 10.2% chance of becoming the season champions.
Jungle ranking: 6th. This may come as a surprise to some, but we don’t rate Warleader very highly. He seems good at following up on strong solo lanes, but not at making his own advantages. His ability to play for his bot lane also seems a little lacking, which is magnified in games when RLS plays with a sub top laner. He looks good in his team’s victories, but we think that’s a symptom of winning rather than Warleader being the cause of the victory in the first place. He’s not a bad jungler, but he isn’t good either. His spirit animal is a Saint Bernard, big and loyal and good-looking… but not all that intelligent and a little slobbery.
2nd - REX [+1] (+1 from preseason)
Rex Regalis was a fan-favorite new addition to the league, with a controlled playstyle and one of the top four Joshes in FoF. They were the first team to manage to beat INT, and they also managed to eke out a 4v5 win against PTP when their ADC had internet issues. REX also played two of the most exciting losses of the year against INT and TG, and while the team regrets some of their plays from those games, we as viewers have no complaints. REX is our personal favorite in the playoff picture, since we think their team will translate their skill well to longer series. We give them just under a 65% chance to get to finals, and just over a 60% chance to win there, for a total 39.3% chance of being the best team in Helios.
Jungle ranking: 2nd. Raafaa is a high risk, high reward player, which makes his overall level a little hard to evaluate. We think he does well often enough to justify the number two spot. While in his poor outings he often looks to be playing very, very poorly, a large part of that is REX drafting compositions that rely on Raafaa to be the sole focal point in the early games. The fact that he generally looks good with all that compositional pressure is impressive, and when he’s on his A game he looks unstoppable. Raafaa is an energetic beagle, bred as a scent dog to hunt down laning foxes in early ganks, all while looking small and happy and cute.
1st - TG [+/-] (+4 from preseason)
We honestly think we did pretty well in preseason when ranking the teams, given that we had no information to go on, but the success of Terracotta Gaming was certainly our biggest miss. In fairness to ourselves, we didn’t expect the number of roster swaps TG would undergo, nor did we foresee a support player becoming such a serviceable jungler. TG’s definitely had some close calls, especially against INT and CFG in the second half, but they enter playoffs having won 9 of their last 10 games, and with a great chance to win it all. Still, yet another last minute mid lane replacement and some doubts about their drafting strategies working in longer series make us favor REX slightly. We still think TG has considerable chances, especially given their first round bye and ability to select their semifinal opponent. We give TG a little over a 60% chance to win their first semifinal series, and about a 45% chance to win finals, for a 27.8% overall first place rate.
Jungle ranking: 5th. Honestly, this is a pretty impressive place for Oriri to end up, as he role swapped from support mid-season and has never looked worse than serviceable in his new role. Recently his play has improved enough for him to look like an actual jungle player rather than an autofilled tank player relying on strong lanes, including a nice outing on Taliyah. We still don’t quite think Oriri is a top jungler in the league since he does benefit so much from such strong lanes, especially mid and bot, but he’s not . He’s his team’s service lab, helping to set them up for success and making sure to look at his minimap for them since they’re blind.
