Cover-Credits:
One of the editors of Evil Geniuses, Retro, posted on social media about how EG’s attack-damage carry Kyle "Danny" Sakamaki effectively used the Fleet Footwork rune to get to the Baron Nashor pit faster in the first game against Team Liquid in the best-of-five (BO5) series. He stated that he noticed this while going through the replay files of the League of Legends Championship Series (LCS) finals weekend. However, people in the community have been really split on deciding whether or not it was intentional and if that Fleet Footwork proc really played a role in the play that ensued.
What is the theory about Danny’s pentakill?
Retro wrote on Reddit, “I'm sure we all saw Danny's unreal pentakill and baron steal vs Team Liquid, but what no one caught was that he only made it to baron pit by hitting mid-wave to proc fleetwork speed boost for 1 second.” He further claimed that the one-second boost from the rune made all the difference for Danny to make in on time to auto-attack the Baron.
Fleet Footwork is a keystone mastery in the Precision Rune tree. Attacking and moving builds energy stacks. At 100 stacks, the player’s next attack is energized.
Energized attacks heal you for 3 - 60 (based on level) (Adaptive ratio: +30% of Bonus Attack Damage or +30% of Ability Power) and grant +20% Movement Speed for 1 second.
“I ran through the replay numerous times and I can confidently say without that 5head play from Danny, we would not have seen that historical play. Let me know what y'all think, but I thought it was a super cool tiny detail that makes the play seem even more scripted than it already is,” the Reddit post said.
Nick "LS" De Cesare acknowledged this theory and commented, “This is kinda funny cuz Danny actually thinking about/valuing the fleet proc is very akin to some of the arguments ppl have made against some of the information juggling happening in pro play. Yes it played a difference here and easily could not have, but it was still processed.”
A Redditor explained how every second matters in a game of League of Legends. They wrote, “Proof that every second matters. Waiting an extra second in [the] fountain to finish an unplanned buy, any hesitation at all running towards a 2v5, anything less than boosted full speed, and things go different.”
But many in the community stated that Danny only hit the wave out of habit and that it was not intentional at all. One Twitter user said, “430->485 [movement speed] is 0.1s difference, which is less time that it takes to auto. He isn’t calculating anything, he’s just hitting the wave out of habit because he’s thinking of how to come back, not expecting turning the game off going to baron.”
Despite these different narratives and the awfully hard math and numbers that people are trying to deduce, the play that Danny pulled off – a Baron Nashor steal when smite was up and a pentakill to follow it up – will be etched in the history of League of Legends esports forever.
