EDG have an Interesting Bind
Writers block sucks but I'm back (hopefully)
EDG are an exciting team to watch, mostly because of their exciting gameplay and excellent mechanical skill but that doesn’t mean EDG aren’t willing to innovate and I think a good example of that is EDG’s Bind. Important to note that I will only be using China’s Champion Qualifiers as KangKang and Smoggy swapped roles after Tokyo. I also want to acknowledge that T1 did play Gekko on Bind first and the comp is basically identical except T1 play Raze while EDG play Jett which I think actually does end up making a difference especially on defense because of KangKang as a player.
Why Gekko?
Gekko has been discussed as a potentially solid pick on Bind because a lot of the map can revolve around taking control of hookah, showers, and long which is really strong for Gekko because you can use Wingman/Dizzy, pick them back up and then repeat until you decide to execute, with Viper as well it’s definitely possible to take short control or even uhall as well. Bind’s sites are also very strong for Dizzy, it’s very open so Dizzy has line of sight to a lot of defender positions which makes it very easy to clear a large portion of the site when executing.
Gekko obviously has pretty significant downsides when played on the defense end, namely the decision between full value but unretrievable utility usage, or medium/low value but retrievable utility usage, but EDG kind of mitigate that in probably the most EDG way possible.
EDG’s Comp
EDG run a double initiator, double controller comp which means no sentinel, this isn’t too uncommon on Bind, we’ve seen teams play comps like double duelist with a Viper which also typically doesn’t run a sentinel.
On paper you can start to see how EDG want to approach Bind, on attack it’s going to be heavy map control into very explosive executes and on defense it’s going to be Viper & Harbor acting as defensive anchors while Jett/Skye/Gekko can take fights together.
EDG’s Bind stats back this up as well, EDG won 67% of their attacking rounds over the course of the Chinese Champions Qualifier while only winning 51% of their defensive rounds now the level of competition certainly isn’t the greatest but in my head this makes sense, EDG’s comp on attack has less things that can go wrong, the game plan is fairly simple and easy to pull off.
Defensively though EDG’s comp has some holes, Viper & Harbor are good defensive anchors but there are points where they’re weak, Viper can’t keep her smokes up forever and she only has 2 mollys, Harbor suffers from the same thing, when his High Tide (E) goes on cooldown there are potential timings the enemy team can use to execute, it’s very different from a more traditional controller where they can cycle smokes in a chokepoint basically forever if there’s still pressure being applied. That’s also not to mention that just taking a lot of fights on defense just goes poorly sometimes and those will lose you rounds too.
Pistols
Attack
A Site
Two Part Rotation Bait
This ones a two parter, part 1 is what you see above which is hookah control, with the vision denial of the Harbor wall and the noise of a player combined with the Skye dog this is very likely to pull an enemy rotate to B leaving A pretty weak and open for an execute.
Part 2 then is pretty simple, quietly leave B, regroup A and hit site, crunching showers together to clear it out.
You can see this pistol here:
https://www.youtube.com/live/BjfSfy4-k3U?feature=share&t=8205
Substack won’t embed Youtube clips or vods of livestreams that are linked to start at a certain time so sorry for just the link it’s gonna be like this for the rest of the article.
There’s a variation of this strat where Gekko & Jett group with Viper in part 1 leaving only Harbor & Skye to fake the hookah control and then they just execute as 5 short. You can see that variation here:
https://www.youtube.com/live/mMJKZ9xICmw?feature=share&t=6723
B Site
Fast B
For an execute I think this is pretty good for a rush style of pistol round, I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a Skye flash that’s supposed to come through the Harbor wall long if the dog spots anyone but it wasn’t in the VOD cause they got an early pick.
The struggle comes in the post plant though because you have to dedicate two players to watching the flank, one for hookah, one for long, which can make your actual post-plant site hold pretty weak if the enemy smokes off long/hookah.
You can see this pistol here:
https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkxb09MJQrLA60tSzMWLoJVWrbN5cyiVe-P
Contact Long, Lurking Jett
I don’t think this is a set strat, it felt very reactionary because BLG were being aggressive short. But you can watch it here:
https://www.youtube.com/live/flnFItLoqbA?feature=share&t=7922
Defense
Defensive setups especially on pistol can be a bit weird to talk about because so much of a defensive round in general is just responding to what the attackers are doing. But that doesn’t mean I can’t give you the initial set ups at the start of the round.
Retake A, Long B Control
I don’t think this setup is that strong, A obviously is weak but it’s a retake setup so that’s expected, but even at B I’m not sure what the strong part of EDG’s setup is supposed to be, if you run at Gekko there’s nothing he can do, he’s by himself and Smoggy doesn’t buy the molly in this set up. I guess B long is fairly strong with the Harbor wall but if you can push Gekko out of hookah you can then crunch long or if you’re long you could group up a little bit and Skye dog/flash through the Harbor wall.
Also there might be a Viper orb short but I can’t tell from the minimap.
Here's this pistol round in action:
https://www.youtube.com/live/wYlPsGoN_Ek?feature=share&t=15960
Retake A, Aggro Hookah
I like this set up a lot more, you’re still playing weak A but now you’re actually doing something proactive with your numbers advantage towards B which I think is a much better game plan for this comp.
Watch this pistol here:
https://www.youtube.com/live/BjfSfy4-k3U?feature=share&t=9710
There’s another variation on this strat where the Viper wall is different & it’s a crunch outside hookah through the TP.
You can watch this variation here:
https://www.youtube.com/live/mMJKZ9xICmw?feature=share&t=8227
Retake B, 4 A Trap
This set up is pretty good, the trap play can be really effective but it does kind of depend on how soon Gekko & Skye flash, too early and people can still take cover around short, too late and people are already too close for the flashes to be effective.
There is a potential weakness as well if the enemy team realizes you’re bluffing showers control but teams probably won’t know that without doing prep.
Watch the pistol here:
https://www.youtube.com/live/flnFItLoqbA?feature=share&t=9451
Attack
When it comes to EDG’s attack I think I was half right, half wrong, the executes are certainly strong, but I was definitely incorrect regarding certain aspects of their map control, it’s not very heavy as in they take multiple parts of the map, it’s usually just a single part of the map, they also take map control with Skye, Gekko instead is relegated to watching for pushes, it’s very common for EDG to not use any Gekko utility until they execute which definitely on paper seems like a less than optimal use for Gekko, but it works for them.
Two Types of Rounds
EDG basically only have two types of rounds, it’s either a really fast execute, or they play a map wide default where they take some early map control towards B and then just regroup for an execute. I didn’t see EDG play a round really slowly, and they rarely take map control A.
Map Control B into Execute
Let’s start with their default first, because it does play into how EDG play their faster execute rounds.
Long B Control
I would consider this the most common EDG default, Harbor wall to get close long, everyone else watch for any aggression on other parts of the map, the agent placements aren’t set in stone obviously, sometimes Gekko is with Harbor, Skye long and Jett is like OPing showers. I need to mention here that this part of the round is where a lot of EDG’s individual skill comes into play, in a lot of rounds while EDG is defaulting they’ll successfully get a pick on an enemy player peeking and that obviously influences the rest of the round a lot.
But sometimes this long control isn’t very substantial , if the enemy team realizes that EDG aren’t pushing past their Harbor wall and taking garden, the enemy team might still try and play up which nullifies the attempt to create questions around long.
So EDG have some more substantial long control set ups that flow off of their initial one. For example:
Here the initial Harbor wall is still up so it’s a very fast continuation, EDG use their second Harbor wall to cut off garden from site, and then flash through their own Harbor wall into garden to clear it and the corner next to the teleporter.
Or if EDG want to stick to basics, just use Skye dog once your Harbor wall goes down.
If EDG feels like they’re getting stalled out too hard at B long, for example if the enemy Brimstone smokes bottom long, they might transition into hookah control instead, something like this.
It’s very similar to EDG’s rotation bait except they might actually go B.
Executes
Let’s just go over a few executes. Some of these are EDG are transitioning into them from their default, some are EDG executing at the start of the round, so the circumstances and available utility differ slightly but the overall idea should be the same.
A Executes
EDG’s A executes are a little more free flowing so I’m just going to give a basic example and talk about how EDG iterates upon the base version depending on a variety of factors.
Here it’s simplistic, Skye dog if EDG thinks the enemy is playing close or maybe has an OP, otherwise they can pop the Viper orb and walk up, then explode out onto site with Skye flash and Jett dash, then they can path showers to clear it with Gekko.
Let’s get a little more advanced though, for example if Gekko has ult then maybe he goes short and it’s Viper that’s holding for the showers push and going late. Or maybe the enemy team is playing really strong short now and they’re leaning off of showers to do so because EDG don’t really take showers. Then EDG do something like this.
Gekko molly to take showers control, but because EDG don’t really take showers control the enemy team might think the molly is just to prevent any early aggression, they can slow walk up and then pop for a site split, they can Viper molly uhall to prevent the peek when the orb goes down, they can Dizzy flash out showers etc.
B Executes
This is a fairly simplistic B execute, you can see how EDG can take strong long & hookah control because of their double initiator, this Gekko/Harbor combo to clear long is also usable in their default if they’re swapping agent positions but it’s a bit of a struggle to get Wingman back since it expires in garden.
See this execute here:
https://www.youtube.com/live/mMJKZ9xICmw?feature=share&t=7758
Again though EDG are pretty free flowing when it comes to their executes, the necessities obviously will be there like Harbor will smoke, they’ll flash out etc, but for example if they have Gekko ult, then maybe Gekko & Skye swap places and they use Gekko ult to clear out hookah.
Now there aren’t a lot of executes to go over because EDG like to switch up the minor details in their executes depending on a variety of circumstances, but EDG also gets picks fairly often during their default and that influences how EDG choose to execute, or the enemy team makes decisions that prevent EDG from doing their perfect execute, like maybe EDG has a player die early or the enemy team is denying space that EDG is failing to take or expends resources that they won’t have for their execute.
Defense
Now I think it’s important to clarify that EDG didn’t play a lot of defensive rounds, they usually started on attack and did pretty well where they didn’t have to win that many defensive rounds, but BLG did go the distance with EDG twice on Bind and those games are where I’m going to draw the most conclusions cause I can’t analyze defensive rounds that never happened.
It Breaks Down Here
This is where things start to get a bit complicated because I am correct in my initial guess that EDG would fight a lot on their defense, but analytically it starts to break down because EDG are a confidence based team where they’ll take a lot of solo fights or make solo plays and it works more often than not because mechanically they just shoot better.
I Can Show You Something
That doesn’t mean there’s nothing to show and talk about though, EDG do have an initial start of round setup they like to do before making psychopathic plays across the map.
It’s not very complicated but it’s something. A is really weak, but they kind of mitigate that by getting KangKang an OP as soon as possible which then lets him play really aggressively towards short and showers to shut down early control. The Skye flash long is purely for info because I’ve seen them flash, hit nothing so they think no one is long, and then solo push through the Harbor wall and die.
Now again EDG will swap positions very often, especially when they get KangKang an OP, one round he might be OPing showers, maybe next round they set him up long behind the Harbor wall and as such Gekko or Skye moves over to A.
I also think the A players in this default setup do have a tendency to fight showers because if EDG get long control then they can crunch through the teleporter, or Skye dog through and fight, but I can’t confirm this for sure because the Chinese games are like disconnected from the API or something and I can’t generate a heatmap to confirm.
This is all I can talk about though cause how am I supposed to analyze KangKang deciding his initial OP setup isn’t good enough so he solo pushes shower with the OP and somehow gets a kill.
Conclusion
I’ve learned that EDG are a poor choice of team to do analysis on. Seriously though, while EDG don’t really abuse Gekko to his full potential it oddly enough might be the best pick for their second initiator because it just lets them dump utility and overwhelm site anchors with their aim, no fiddling around with Fade eye lineups or whatever. Defense though I have no idea, as Bren said “YOU’RE GONNA GET SHOT IN THE FACE!” - Platchat episode 140
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Sorry if this article isn’t great, I’m a bit rusty having not written for a while but things should improve in my next few articles as I get back into it, which speaking of, next article will probably be Sentinels Pearl vs 100T/C9 (probably).