In the opening match of the Mobile Legends M2 World Championship, Malaysia’s Todak picked Harley for the jungle in game two against Philippine’s OMEGA Esports. Down by one game, their hopes rested on Ciku to carry with this unusual Harley pick.

Last year, we did not see this hero appear in pro games. Acknowledging his absence, Moonton recently buffed him on patch 1.5.38. They added a new effect to his passive, Magic Master, which reduces two Magic Defense of every target hit for three seconds, capped at 15 stacks, to increase his damage when his ultimate is not available or on cooldown.

Even though Todak ended the game in a loss, RSG surprised by picking him in the first game against Burmese Ghouls for Jason. Traditionally a laning support mage player, RSG were intentionally shaking things up.

“Harley is a burst mage assassin and his specialty is to catch single targets, so it’s a very good hero to go around and catch side lanes,” Ho “Sync” Ee Hong explained to ONE Esports. “If you’re able to catch side lanes and snowball from there, the game will be somewhat yours.”

Unfortunately for RSG, it didn’t go according to their plan. According to Sync, it wasn’t so much the draft but more of the execution, which he confessed wasn’t as clean as Burmese Ghouls’.

The reason for this is that both teams are very aggressive, and as much as RSG are able to snowball early, Sync admitted that their over-aggression may also cause them to throw kills later on in the game.

After winning one match against Unique Deus Vult and dropping the series to Burmese Ghouls, RSG will compete for a spot in the lower bracket tomorrow.

Despite bowing out early at MPLI, RSG have been sacrificing their weekends to train and scrim together. “Initially we also thought that there was a very big gap, but throughout our scrims, training, we actually do go even with some of the teams that we treat as super, super strong,” said Sync. “So I honestly feel it’s not really a very big gap but more of [our] form at that moment”.

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