LPL team eStar Esports punished its jungler, Yan “Wei” Yang-Wei, who forgot to take smite in the first game against Bilibili Gaming, by withholding his salary for one month, the organization announced today.
The team issued a statement via Twitter earlier today, saying Wei forgot to change his summoner spell from ignite to smite, the latter being a crucial spell for junglers. Despite Wei apologizing to the coaches and his teammates, eStar said it would “deduct the salary of Wei this month, and conduct team criticism to prevent such mistakes.”
When the team realized Wei had ignite, the players brought the issue to the attention of the referee. In a translated video posted on Twitter, the referee told the team there would be no remake and that the team would have to play the game with the chosen summoner spells.
The team reacted positively, with the players assuring Wei it was an honest mistake and deciding they would be aggressive and try to fight as a team to negate the power of objectives throughout the game.
.@eStar_Esports_ posted the team's reaction to jungler Wei accidentally choosing Ignite instead of Smite against BLG. Wei was fined by the org for this.
But punishment aside, I was most surprised at the camaraderie and support shown by the team in this video! pic.twitter.com/K5w9Ew8VXG
— Linda Pro League 🦦 (@iCrystalization) June 16, 2020
The first game was a blunder by eStar. After picking their champions, something happened where their jungler, Yan “Wei” Yang-Wei, didn’t take smite, an essential summoner spell for League junglers. As a result, Wei had a hard time clearing his jungle because of his lack of a jungle item.
A couple of years ago, Riot introduced this restriction on jungle items so that laners would stop abusing them. But this means if a jungler forgets to pick up smite, they’ll fall far behind due to the lack of bonuses they can get from a jungle item.
Even though eStar were close to winning, the lack of smite was too crucial and they lost in the end due to the superior objective control from BLG.
The second game was clean by eStar, though. Wei redeemed himself on Ekko after his smite blunder in the first game. He built an early lead for his team and secured all neutral objectives with the exception of the first Rift Herald. With these leads, eStar cleanly equalized the series at one game apiece.
The third game was the Wings show, however. He played superbly on Ezreal and secured a huge advantage for the bottom side of BLG. His mechanical prowess left eStar powerless in the face of a fed Ezreal.
The biggest surprise wasn’t his skills, however, but the Hail of Blades LeBlanc against Kassadin.
